But I didn’t want to mess things up with his family. So far at least, they seemed to like me, the ones I’d met, anyway. I had yet to even meet the woman his father had married late in life, who I guessed was still technically his stepmother? I didn’t know the legal description of their relationship, all I knew was the reality which was non-existent. As far as I knew, they never spoke.
He rarely spoke to his mother, either, though we did have a stiff, formal visit with her over Thanksgiving. I knew Ash’s paternal grandmother was the British royalty, but his mother was the one who acted like it, receiving guests in her formal drawing room, sitting so stiff-backed and going on and on about her prize roses and hounds I’d had to stifle a yawn more than once.
But I’d do anything for Ash, and having been raised on a steady diet of family and then more family, I did think it mattered to have a relationship with them. Thankfully, with some of his family members it came easy. Gigi, his sister, was a darling, so light and pretty and sweet and happy at first I’d wondered if it could be real. But so far it seemed that way. She really was as lovely as the first impression she made. I didn’t know his younger brother Heath yet, but I liked how much he’d helped Ash out when he’d needed a friend. I was grateful he’d been there, a person to turn to in his pain. And as for Ash’s grandmother? She set a new standard for me, showing me exactly the sort of person I hoped I’d be able to become when I grew older.
We headed back into the party, right on time for Ash to hop on stage and sing a few numbers from his new hit album of standards. Leave it to Ash Black to entirely reinvent himself as a classic crooner and still have the world falling at his feet. I didn’t think that was the end of the rock star. If I were a betting woman, I’d say it was more than even odds he’d come up with something hard-hitting and rocking out in the next year or so. But I was so happy for him that he’d explored this side of himself, too. That he’d felt free and comfortable enough to do it. I hoped I had something to do with that.
He strutted on stage and gave me a wink. And by my side, a massive bear of a man appeared, as if keeping watch over me while Ash was busy. Ash gave him a nod of thanks.
Heath. I wondered if Ash had asked him to hang out with me while he sang?
“Hi there,” I said, feeling slightly intimidated. Ash was a large man, but his brother made him look almost slim. Heath put the barrel in barrel-chested.
He nodded at me. Big Man No Talk. OK. But he didn’t give off a scary vibe, just Mountain Man. Who happened to be at a black tie affair.
“Enjoying the party?” I asked, half making conversation, half seeing if I could get him to crack a smile. I didn’t exactly get a smile, but I did get a quick side-glance as if to check whether I knew what an idiotic question I’d asked. “I know you’re not,” I whispered in confirmation.
“Not my thing,” he agreed in a deep voice.
I smiled, thinking of Gram’s decree. Married within the year. Some woman was going to have fun with him. He was all the cake you could eat and more.
But not for me. My cake was up on stage about to launch into a little number he’d first debuted at the annual holiday part last year.
“I’ve got you under my skin.” Ash gave me a smile as he sang and it made my heart somersault. Wow, did he have a way with words. And with his hands and lips and body. Heat stole through me, remembering our stolen moment outside the ballroom.
I couldn’t believe I had him, really had him as my own. When he’d asked me to marry him, I’d been literally bowled over. And when I say literally, I meant it. I’d lost my balance.
Thankfully, we were just in my parents’ dining room. It had happened back in September. We were in New York so I could help some of the library branches with back-to-school initiatives. Ash’s generosity knew no bounds. He’d created the fund he’d originally agreed upon, to restore and keep the SoHo branch running for 20 years, and then kept right on going, establishing a whole foundation to supplement children’s programming in library branches throughout the city. I felt like a kid in a candy store, I had so many ideas and now had the means to help bring them to life. And even better than that was getting to go into other branches and talk to the long-suffering librarians about their wish lists—then wave a magic wand and expand their collection, or double their staffing, or fix their lighting, or whatever had been plaguing them for years on end. It was the best job in the world.
That and songwriting, of course. Now that Ash and I were together, that happened spontaneously, naturally, all the time. Sometimes naked. We made music together the way we talked, the way we made love. It was a natural expression of how we felt, and we didn’t have to think about it, it just happened when we were together. I didn’t know what exactly would come of it, but I did know I was excited to have the opportunity to find out.
And my parents, well, they were over the moon happy. I was so glad Ash proposed to me at my parents’ house, so they could be part of it. He’d asked my dad for his permission and then waited until after a Sunday family dinner. Then he’d dropped down on one knee and I could barely tell you what he said after that because it was as if all the blood rushed up into my head and the ocean was roaring in my ears and I was crying and then I wobbled right out of my seat and fell into his arms and we sort of tumbled-kissed-hugged together in the dining room.
“Does that mean yes?” Ash asked, laughing and hugging me.
“Yes,” I confirmed, wiping tears from my eyes.
“She always makes me wait.” He shook his head, referencing the fake proposal when I’d been so star struck and terrified on the stage in front of a live audience of thousands. I much preferred the real proposal in my parents’ dining room.
“You need anything?” Heath’s rough, deep voice boomed at me in the middle of Ash’s next song. Yes, he’d definitely been asked to keep an eye on me while Ash did his set. So sweet.
“No, thanks. I’m doing great.” And I meant it as I stood and swayed to the music, smiling up at my rock star fiancée. I had all I’d ever wanted. I didn’t need a thing.
THE END
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First Declan and Kara kicked off the Beg for It series with Unleashed. Then we met Ash and Ana in Undone. Are you ready now for Heath’s story in Untamed? He’s a big, strapping man with insatiable appetites. You may need to read it with some ice water nearby.
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UNTAMED
There’s a massive, ripped mountain man named Heathcliff. He’s brooding, bearded, and sexy as hell. Then there’s city girl Violet, a TV producer hungry for a hit show. You’d best not get in the way of her Louboutin heels or make her chip her nails. They both have secrets they’re trying to hide. They’re having even more trouble keeping their hands off of each other. When Violet’s reality show starts filming in Heath’s tiny Vermont town, what could possibly go wrong?
Heath
All I want is life out of the spotlight. I’m up here in my cabin in the woods and I like it that way. No one knows who I am and no one cares. Then she shows up, strutting along in heels with her long, sexy legs, tossing around her silky, golden hair and smelling like vanilla and honey. It should be easy to ignore her. She’s exactly the high-maintenance, gold-digging type I’ve steered clear of my whole life.
The only problem is the blisteringly hot sex. Melt down the cabin, end winter and start spring sex. Other
than that, I see no reason that my life is going to change at all.
Violet
Where even is Vermont? When I got the call to scout the location for our network’s next reality show, I seriously had to pull out Google Maps. When I first got there, I was counting the hours until I convinced those country bumpkins to sign away all their privacy for the next six months.
Funny thing about these rural places, though. They grow ’em big. Crazy big, if you know what I mean, ladies. There’s this guy. Just thinking about him, I’ve got to stop for a second and fan myself. I’d tell him to get lost only I can’t seem to form words around him other than “yes,” “more,” and “I’m going to…Oh!” It must be the orgasms melting my brain. He’s nothing like the type of guy I’m after, believe me, and once I’ve wrapped up this deal I’m never looking back.
At least that’s what I’m telling myself. But each time he touches me I can’t remember my name, let alone my sales pitch. And I’m starting to realize that if I seal this deal and get my big win, we might both have a lot to lose.
NOTE: Untamed is a sexy, standalone, hot adult romance. It’s the third story in the Beg for It series about the dominant, alpha males in the Kavanaugh family and the strong, sexy women who make them finally meet their match.
CHAPTER 1
Violet
There came a time in every woman’s life when she had to wonder, what the fuck? For me, that time was now. Driving through central Vermont in a January snowstorm in the middle of the night in a hot red MINI Cooper convertible. What. The. Fuck. And did I mention I didn’t have GPS? No bars on my phone, no way to know if I’d accidently slipped down into the ninth circle of hell.
But hell would be hot, wouldn’t it? Here, it snowed. Why snow? I personally didn’t see any reason for it. I understood, plants and I guess people needed water and all that, but that could happen with perfectly normal rain. Back in L.A., we didn’t even have to deal with that too often.
Yet here I was, a world away from home, peering at road signs through a raging blizzard trying to navigate the way pioneer settlers did back hundreds of years ago, practically bushwacking and using my thumb to figure out which way the wind blew to head west. All because the network I worked for had decided it was a brilliant idea to send me out into the wilderness. And I’d been stupid enough to go along with it.
“No one’s done it before!” my boss had declared, hunger in his eyes. The Fame! network had grown, well, famous, for making the world’s hottest, hippest, edgiest, over-the-top reality shows. But we needed something new. Rich housewives throwing cocktails into each other’s faces? Done. Gorgeous young models ranting and smashing lamps against walls? Seen it a million times. Young celebrities waxing their privates and ‘accidently’ flashing them on camera? Yawn.
But no one had tapped into that glorified small town America vibe. Yet. Sure, we’d all enjoyed fictionalized accounts on TV. The wacky locals on Northern Exposure, the close-knit drama on Friday Night Lights. My personal favorite was Stars Hollow from the Gilmore Girls. The sleigh rides, the quaint downtown with the village green, and of course the hottie down at the local diner you got to see every morning. Sure, other reality shows had ventured into the wilds, but those were done by the Discovery or History channels where people had bad teeth and wore sensible shoes.
Our network sold sex. Not explicitly, of course, but the people on our shows knew how to work it. Plucked from obscurity, featured on TV, our reality stars went on to launch their own brands.
That was why I was being sent to this remote, not-even-on-the-map, tiny Vermont town. It was my job to answer the question, could it sell? Sure, I’d be checking out the location to verify that it was off-the-charts cute and quaint. And I’d start brokering all the headaches—I mean agreements—to allow us to film there. But most of all, I’d be looking for diamonds in the rough. The celebrities waiting to be discovered. Because a hit on our network needed sex in the form of hot “real” people with enough chemistry and appeal that viewers would tune in week after week to see what happened next.
I had my doubts. A huge long list of them. But I had to admit, I felt a tingle of excitement, too. What if I pulled it off? What if I tapped into a goldmine and found the real Stars Hollow? A hit reality show like that, the first of its kind, would be huge. I probably wouldn’t shoot straight up to producing my own show, but at least I could break out from being the one who fetched coffees for the ones who brought the coffees to the people filming the Kardashians. OK, I wasn’t actually that far down on the food chain. I’d worked myself up in the seven years I’d been in L.A. I was 25 now and had spent a couple years of actually working on shows, but I hadn’t been able to do anything yet that I really owned. Anything that I honestly felt invested in. Not yet. But someday I would.
Now if only I’d flown in on the same flight as my co-worker, Sam, joining me on this mission. Then I wouldn’t die before it all began. I’d somehow gotten booked into Burlington with a nighttime arrival while Sam had flown into Boston where he’d party with friends, stay at a harborside hotel and then drive up to Vermont at a decent, daylight hour the next day.
I had to talk to our network’s travel people. Better arrival cities and times were up there on my list of demands. But at the top: no convertible MINIs without GPS in Vermont. I knew the Fame! network has appearances to keep up, but that only worked if its employees stayed alive.
Wait, up ahead. There was a God. I saw a sign, battered and weathered: entering town of Watson, VT. Population 1,708. I’d never thought I’d be so happy to be entering into a town of nothing, nowhere with no one living in it. I supposedly had a condo reserved for me in this town for the month. With any luck it wouldn’t take anywhere near that long to suss out if there was a story to build there, and then, if there was, to get the locals on board with filming a reality show.
Lights! Up ahead. I whimpered a bit in relief. Pathetic, I know, but I was a city girl through and through. Ask me to navigate traffic in L.A. or the subway in NYC and I’d have no problem. Here, I half expected a Yeti to pop out in front of the car and swallow me whole.
At a stoplight, because apparently even the main highways in Vermont had stoplights, I took a left, then a right and low and behold, the shimmering glimmer of a window. It looked like it might be a bar. I managed to pull my tiny car up front in what may or may not have been a parking space. How could you even tell in all this muck?
I zipped up my parka, placed my fingers on the door handle and braced myself. At least I had my parka. Last week in a panic over my upcoming trip I’d done some late night online shopping. I’d bought the largest, craziest looking parka I could find, the kind with enough padding for an army and wild fur tufting out along the edge of the hood. It made me look about three times larger than I actually was and right now I felt grateful for it.
No cell phone service, no GPS, I was at the mercy of whomever I happened to find in what I hoped was a friendly bar. Small towns were supposed to be friendly, right? Maybe a kindly baker or an elderly quilter would greet me inside and give me directions to my condo? Yeah, that would probably happen.
Stepping out, I instantly learned that my shoes weren’t as onboard with the snow program as my parka. Damn it. Picking my way along the icy, snowy path in heels I had to admit, I probably should have invested in some sturdier footware. But my shoes! I loved my shoes. I felt so sexy and powerful in my shoes.
Right now, though, one hand against the building as I guided myself toward the front entrance, I mostly just cursed. Cursed my boss for having this lousy idea in the first place. Cursed myself for agreeing to go along with it.
Pushing open the door, I walked into heaven in the form of a small, simple, mostly empty bar. It was warm. It had electricity. And who knew, if I was lucky they might even have some vodka.
The ten or so people inside all watched me as I made my way over to the bar. I didn’t make eye contact with any of them. I just needed to warm up, figure out where I needed to go and then
get there. The time for making nice with these people would come once I was no longer numb.
Then I looked up. Sitting at the far end of the bar, I saw a man who looked like he’d been talking to the bartender. But now neither of them said a word as they looked over at me, watching me pick my way along the rough wooden floor planks in my heels. I didn’t so much notice the bartender, though. It was the other man that had me riveted.
My step wobbled. I could blame it on the heels or the melting snow I’d accumulated on my parka in my short walk to the door. But those weren’t the reasons for the wobble. It was the man.
Thick black hair, dark intense eyes, broad muscles filling out his shirt, he was straight out of a late night naughty fantasy. True, I was a city girl, but I had to admit I had a soft spot for a good Highland romance, the type featuring a massive Scottish warrior who’d brave fire and brimstone to be with his woman. The type so broad and tough he’d fell an army with the swoop of his battle axe while still managing to grasp you in his free arm, pull you up with him on his horse and ride off with you pressed against his huge, barbaric, manly chest.
He was sitting right there at the bar watching me. I swallowed, feeling my face flush. I tried to look away. I had street smarts. A woman on her own didn’t walk into a bar and instantly make steady, heated eye contact with a gigantic strange man. My brain knew that. But my brain wasn’t in charge at the moment. Something else had taken over entirely and I continued walking toward him with nothing but a vaguely formed “wow” on my lips.
“Welcome,” the bartender greeted me.
“Hi.” I managed to veer my attention away, at least for a moment, and stop myself from climbing straight into the man’s lap. That wouldn’t do. Even though it had an almost undeniable appeal. I chose a stool a couple down from him—proud of myself for exercising such restraint—and sat down.
Undone, Volume 3 Page 20
