by Lili Valente
Table of Contents
Title Page
All Rights Reserved
About the Book
Dedication
PART ONE
CHAPTER ONE
PART TWO
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
PART THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Sneak Peek
Acknowledgements
Tell Lili your favorite part!
About the Author
Also By Lili Valente
MEANT FOR YOU
A Sexy, Flirty, Dirty Romance
By Lili Valente
All Rights Reserved
Copyright Meant for You © 2017 Lili Valente
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. This erotic romance is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners. This e-book is licensed for your personal use only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with, especially if you enjoy hot, sexy, emotional romantic comedies featuring alpha males. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work. Cover design by Bootstrap Designs. Editorial services provided by Help Me Edit.
About the Book
What if there was one man—one gorgeous, brilliant, sexy as hell man—who was meant for you?
Yeah, well, there isn’t. Love is a hard slog up a snowy mountain infested with rabid cougars, and meant-to-be love is just a lie. I learned that the hard way when all my romantic dreams went up in smoke, and the boy I loved walked away without looking back.
Or so I thought…
***
Seven years ago Fate ripped me away from the only girl I’ve ever loved. Now Addie and I are snowed in at a romantic mountain lodge, drinking cocoa around the Valentine’s Day tree, and there’s no way I’m going to let her slip away from me again.
One way or another, I’ll prove to Adeline that we belong together.
She might not believe in love, but I do, and I’m going to use every sexy, wicked weapon at my disposal to convince my girl we’re meant to be.
The best part of trying to win the one who got away? I know exactly what makes her laugh, what makes her melt, and what makes her squirm…
MEANT FOR YOU is a sexy, swoony, true love conquers all Standalone romantic comedy.
Dedicated to my family,
who make me feel like I’m exactly where
I’m meant to be.
Love always.
CHAPTER ONE
Seven Years Ago
Nate
As any self-respecting Pennsylvanian will tell you, there’s a good chance the devil lives in New Jersey. The sulfuric turnpike smell, toxic waste dumps, abundance of creepy urban legends, and the New Jersians’ rabid consumption of pork rolls and gravy-drenched French fries all point to some sort of demonic influence.
So when the hardware store where I worked went out of business the day after graduation, and I found myself with three months of unexpected freedom stretching out in front of me before it was time to leave for Duke, a road trip to investigate the New Jersey devil situation shot to the top of my to-do list. I’d just read a horror novel about a hellmouth located in Passaic County and thought it would be interesting to see if the real life setting—a series of underground tunnels and storm drains near Clifton—did the book justice.
I’d spent most of my high school career playing football or running drills with the private coach my dad hired to help me get better at playing football—the best at playing football—but much to my old man’s eternal frustration I preferred to spend my downtime reading instead of watching game tape in the basement. In books, there were no limits, no rules—at least not for writers brave enough to break them—and I couldn’t conceive of something more exciting than a job with no rules.
I was eighteen. Rules—and my father, most of the time—were the enemy.
As I hiked down the culvert to the entrance to the Jersey hellmouth, picking my way around the rusted out shells of old cars, shattered beer bottles, soggy cardboard boxes, a few headless dolls, and other assorted detritus one would expect to find near a portal to a creepier dimension, I pondered rules and which ones I would have broken if I were the author of The Devil You Need.
I’m rewriting the ending to give a couple of secondary characters a happy ending, just to mess with the “almost everyone dies and then there’s a terrible twist that assures you everyone who lived is totally fucked” horror novel convention, when I turn a corner and find myself no longer alone.
There, standing under the “Entrance to Hellmouth Here” sign helpfully spray painted on the concrete wall of the culvert, stands a pretty kid in overalls with dark brown curls, a heart-shaped face, and big blue eyes framed by a pair of wire-rimmed glasses. I meet her gaze across the trash-littered landscape, where someone thought it would be funny to dress a department store mannequin as a werewolf clown and leave it propped up against a shopping cart, and I laugh. I can’t help it.
She smiles, cocking her head as she leans on her walking stick. “What’s so funny?”
“Nothing. Sorry.” I motion her way. “You’re just not what I expected the devil to look like.”
Her smile widens. “Interesting. You’re exactly what I expected him to look like.”
“Oh, yeah?” I ask, intrigued. “How so?”
“Well, the devil’s supposed to be pretty, right?” She gives me an up and down look that’s unnerving coming from a kid. “Tall, dark, and handsome with a smile that makes you think it’s okay to stay and chat a while. And then before you know it you’re dancing in the pale moonlight and your soul is just another charm on his necklace.”
My smile fades. “Do your parents know you’re out here by yourself?”
“Um, no. But my parents are pathologically overprotective, and I’m starting at Rutgers next fall. I figured it was time to start living my life on my own terms.” She props a hand on her hip, which is curvier than I expect it to be beneath those overalls, and lifts her chin. “What about you, does your mommy know you’re out exploring the hellmouth and talking to strangers?”
“No. She doesn’t.” I tip my head in acknowledgment of her well-executed dig. “But I’m headed to Duke next year, so I gues
s you and I are on the same page. What brings you to the hellmouth?”
“A book I read.”
“The Devil You Need?”
“Yeah,” she says with a grin. “You, too?”
“I have a thing for eighties horror. How about you?”
“Oh, I have a thing for everything. I like to push my reading boundaries, explore it all.” She shrugs as she lifts a small boot, rolling her ankle. “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious, right?”
I blink, surprised again. “Einstein?”
Her eyes glitter as she laughs. “The pretty devil knows his quotes.”
“I have no special talents,” I quote, deciding I like this girl, and that I don’t mind being called a pretty devil, either. “I am only passionately curious.”
“I like that one, too.” Her lips purse as she nods thoughtfully. “All right, then. Shall we go in together? A hellmouth seems like something that’s more fun as a shared experience, don’t you think?”
“I do. I’m Nate.” I amble closer, holding out hand.
“Adeline.” She takes it, sending a shiver of electricity prickling across my skin.
It’s not attraction, not exactly, not that first morning. It’s a spark, a flicker of recognition, a warning that things are about to change in ways I never could have imagined when I woke up in my bed that morning, so certain the path was mapped and the way was clear.
***
But by the next time we meet up—on an allegedly haunted stretch of beach, to which Addie has brought a ghost-themed picnic and worn a vintage nineteen fifties bathing suit that makes it clear she’s not a little girl, not even a little bit—I’m thinking about kissing her. I think about it all the way up and down the beach, through our picnic, into the water and back out again, the need to taste her clawing away at me as I wrap a towel around her shivering body.
“Thanks,” she says, her teeth chattering. “Geez, that was cold. I can’t feel my legs from the knees down.”
I sit down next to her on the blanket, tugging my own towel around my shoulders. “But worth it, right? I never pass up a chance to get in the water.”
“I’m not sure I believe you.” Her tongue slips out, sweeping away the water beaded on her lips.
My brows lift. “Oh yeah? Why not?”
“I think you’re hesitant to take certain plunges.” She gazes up at me through her thick lashes with a smile that makes me want to push her back onto the blanket and kiss her until neither of us can breathe. “So what’s it going to be, pretty devil? Are you going to kiss me, or what?”
I lean in, pressing my lips to hers, laying claim to her smart little mouth. And from that first brush of skin again skin, it’s clear that this is something different than any kiss I’ve ever known. I get hard—instantly, urgently hard—but that isn’t the strange part. Other girls have made me want, but Addie is the first to make me ache. The need to explore every inch of her—body, mind, and soul—swells in my chest as we kiss, making the moment when I finally roll her beneath me almost painfully sweet.
“You feel so good,” I murmur against her lips, pulse spiking as she spreads her legs and I settle between them, rocking gently against her through our damp clothes.
“Wow,” she says, breath coming faster. “That feels good.”
My jaw clenches as my cock swells thicker, harder. “Want me to make it feel even better?” I tease my fingertips along the elastic at the top of her thigh, dying to slip my hand beneath her suit and find out if she’s wet. “Best part about a haunted beach: there’s no one around to see what we do on our blanket.”
“That’s true,” she says, swallowing as my lips trail down her throat. “But, Nate?” She tugs lightly at my hair.
I pull back. “Yes, Adeline?”
“I’m only sixteen,” she says, uncertainty in her eyes for the first time since we met. “I graduated early.”
I brush the curls from her face. “So you really are Einstein.”
“No, I’m just a nerd who was homeschooled and is good at taking tests.” She rolls her eyes. “But I’m still living with my parents and will be for the foreseeable future, and I’m, um…not really allowed to date. I thought you should know.”
I nod, but it’s hard to think straight when her thighs are wrapped around me. “Does that mean you want me to stop?”
“I don’t know.” Her teeth dig into her bottom lip. “To be honest, I’m not sure where we’re going. I mean, I know, but I don’t know. If you know what I mean?”
“You’ve never been with someone,” I say, putting the pieces together. I might not be as smart as she is, but I’m pretty quick on my feet.
And I’m usually quick to run from virgins as fast as those feet will carry me—being someone’s first time is the kind of thing that has always seemed more scary than sexy—but I don’t pull away.
I stay, watching her cheeks flush as she confesses, “I’ve never even kissed someone. At least not if you don’t count Gary Yates behind the equipment shed at church camp last year, and I don’t because you’ve made it clear to me that Gary had no flipping idea what he was doing.”
I smile, not bothering to keep the smug from my expression.
She laughs, slapping me lightly on the shoulder. “Oh, stop. I was just thinking how nice it is that you’re not an arrogant jerk even though you’re stupidly beautiful.”
“There’s nothing wrong in taking pride in things you do well, Adeline.” I press a kiss to her cheek and then to her neck, loving the way she shivers as I murmur into her ear, “And if you want me to show you all the ways I can make you feel good, I would love to.” I force myself to pull my hand away from the curve of her hip, wanting to be sure we’re on the same page before this goes any further. “But I’m only here until the end of August. I’m taking sixteen credits and every spare second I’m not in class is going to be eaten up by football. I’m not going to have time to make a long distance relationship work, not even with someone like you.”
Her eyes narrow. “Someone like me?”
“Someone smart and beautiful and totally…weird,” I finish, though that isn’t exactly what I mean. I don’t mean weird, I mean different, special, but Addie doesn’t seem upset.
“I think you’re smart and weird, too,” she says, wrapping her arms around my neck. “And more exciting than reading a book.”
“That’s high praise.”
Her gaze drops to my lips. “I know. Don’t make me regret it, summer boy.”
“I won’t, summer girl,” I promise, as I cover her mouth with mine. I kiss her until she’s squirming beneath me, silently begging for more, and then slowly, carefully, I give it to her. I brush my thumbs across her nipples through her suit while she makes these hot, sexy sounds at the back of her throat that drive me wild.
Finally, I can’t resist tugging the fabric down low enough to get my mouth on her bare skin and suck her nipple between my lips. I tease her with my tongue, laving her swollen flesh until she moans, digs her hands into my bare shoulders, and murmurs, “Please, oh please, Nate.” Only then do I slide her swimsuit to one side and slip my fingers between her legs.
That first moment, when I realize how hot and wet she is, almost destroys me. Imagination can be a dangerous thing, and as Addie lifts into my hand, crying out my name, mine starts working overtime. Just imagining how incredible it would feel to push inside her, to make her come on my cock, is almost enough to make me go.
Which would probably be for the best. I don’t have a condom and making out under a towel and having full-on sex on the beach are two entirely different things. If someone happened by right now, I could have Addie covered in a second. But if I were in the middle of something more serious, I’m not sure I could stop.
God, I don’t want to stop.
I want to go and go. I want to make her come on my fingers and then strip off her clothes and show her how much better it is when we’re climbing together, every stroke of my hips taking us both clos
er to the edge.
“Oh my God.” She trembles as I find her clit and rub it in gentle circles. “Oh my God, Nate.”
“Have you come before?” I continue to slide my fingers in and out of where she’s so wet that I’m dying to taste her. But not this time, not yet. I don’t want to go too far, too fast. I don’t want to scare her away. I want every minute of the summer she’s promised.
“Yes, but—” Her words cut off in a moan. “Oh, God. But not like this, not like—” Her back arches, her lips part, and her delicate features twist. I know she’s coming even before I feel her body tighten around my fingers.
“Fuck, yes, Addie.” I rock my throbbing length against her thigh as she rides the wave, the look on her face the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen. I groan, eyes squeezing shut as I come so hard, insanely hard, simply from the friction of rubbing against her through our clothes.
I should be ashamed of myself for having the self-control of a fourteen-year-old, but when I see Addie’s blissed out expression, all I can do is smile. “Good?”
“Let’s do that all the time,” she says, grinning. “Every day until you leave.”
***
We sneak away so often that Addie has to invent a fake volunteer job and I start lying to my dad, saying I’m meeting friends in Jersey to scrimmage so he won’t ride my ass about getting out of shape before training starts in the fall.
I’m not getting out of shape; I’m logging more miles on the trail than I have in years. Adeline and I hike to every haunted corner of New Jersey and then move into Pennsylvania, joining a rock-climbing expedition to an ancient burial ground hosted by a group of paranormal investigators that Addie assures me her über-Catholic mother would say are going straight to hell.
