by Naima Simone
He promised to stay away…but some promises are made to be broken.
Plain-Jane computer programmer Khloe Richardson needs a date—one to make the prince of her dreams jealous. Maybe then he’ll finally see her as a desirable swan and not the ugly duckling in the second office from the left.
But when she bids on a bachelor at a charity auction, the man she wins is millionaire Niall Hunter—who once made intense, passionate love to her and then left without a word. She’s determined not to let her guard down again—among other things—around the infamous Irish lothario.
Niall never imagined his penance for one hot-as-hell night with his best friend’s little sister would be transforming her from a shy wallflower to a sultry siren. Helping her attract another man is torture...especially when he promised his friend he’d stay away. Plus, she wants forever, and he’s not a forever kind of guy. But Niall can’t stop wanting her. Can’t stop touching her. Can’t stop, period. And damn if he can remember why he has to...
Table of Contents
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
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
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Discover the Bachelor Auction series… Beauty and the Bachelor
Witness to Passion
the Secrets and Sins series
Secrets and Sins: Gabriel
Secrets and Sins: Malachim
Secrets and Sins: Raphael
Secrets and Sins: Chayot
Discover more category romance titles from Entangled Indulgence… Beauty and the Boss
Pretending with the Playboy
Wrecked
Winning the Boss’s Heart
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2016 by Naima Simone. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.
Entangled Publishing, LLC
2614 South Timberline Road
Suite 109
Fort Collins, CO 80525
Visit our website at www.entangledpublishing.com.
Indulgence is an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC.
Edited by Tracy Montoya
Cover design by Heather Howland
Cover art from iStock
ISBN 978-1-63375-528-4
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Edition February 2016
To Gary. 143.
Prologue
Oh feckin’ hell, he was wrecked.
Groaning, Niall Hunter clapped his hands to his pounding temples and rolled over…and immediately wished he’d remained still. Or comatose. Comatose was good. Especially when his head shrieked like a damn banshee.
“Christ,” he mumbled, and with more caution than his first ill-advised attempt, levered off the mattress and eased his legs over the side of the bed. White sheets tangled around his hips, the scent of alcohol—the reason behind the pickaxes happily hammering away at his skull—sweat, and sex greeting him like a Morning After brand of coffee.
He scrubbed a hand down his face, the scratch of hair over his palm reminding him his razor wasn’t just decoration for the bathroom. At some point he needed to use it.
“Stop being such a pussy,” he muttered, pushing to his feet. Given alcohol had been his go-to bed partner in the past month, he should be well accustomed to this god-awful state. Sometimes a woman joined him and made the twosome a nice little ménage—him, a faceless, nameless one-night stand, and a bottle of whiskey—but only alcohol could quiet the relentless grief and guilt that clawed at him day and night. Not shut it up. Just…quieted it for a little while.
Snatching his discarded pants from the previous evening off a chair, he dragged them up his legs, leaving the waistband unbuttoned. On bare feet, he shuffled across the floor toward the door, casting a cursory glance toward the bed. He would need hot, strong coffee before tackling the “Hey, had a nice time last night, got a cab waiting for you downstairs” talk…
“Holy shit.”
The harsh growl rumbled out of him and exploded into the room, seeming to bounce off the white walls. But the woman with the sheets gathered around her waist, the delicate expanse of her bare back taunting him like a red flag, didn’t even flinch. She continued to sleep like a babe, her light snores a testament to her exhaustion.
As if the sight of all that creamy skin flipped a switch in his head, memories flashed across his brain, three-second freeze frames that converged into an erotic, hot as hell collage.
His mouth latched around a dark brown nipple, his tongue circling and tugging on the beaded tip.
His lips skimming down a softly rounded stomach to the glistening, plump folds between long, graceful legs.
His hands holding those same legs wide as he buried himself over and over in the tightest, sweetest flesh that had ever squeezed his cock.
He shut his eyes, but that only caused the pictures to stream quicker, brighter. And that was wrong. So goddamn wrong. Because the woman whose breasts he’d sucked, whose pussy he’d feasted on and thrust into for the better part of the night had been Khloe.
Khloe, who’d been a virgin.
Khloe, who was his best friend Michael’s little sister… The best friend who had died barely a month ago.
Fuck. Fuckfuckfuck.
Blinding pain burst behind his sternum, and he sucked in a ragged breath. What the fuck have I done? He escaped the room and the woman in the bed who tempted him even now. With the visions from the previous night fresh in his head, his dick didn’t give a damn that it or Niall shouldn’t have ever touched her. All his “little head” cared about was a repeat performance.
What the hell had he been thinking?
He winced as he descended the staircase to the first level of his home. That’s just it. He hadn’t been thinking. At least not clearly. When Khloe had shown up on his doorstep, surprising him by flying into Dublin from Boston, he should’ve sent her to the nearest hotel with the promise of getting together over breakfast the next morning. When he was sober. But instead, his alcohol-addled head had invited her in. And her visit of friendship had turned into a night of the most mind-blowing sex he’d ever had. She’d been innocent before she’d appeared at his house…before he’d taken that wide-eye innocence and filled that emerald gaze with passion and knowledge Michael would’ve killed him for placing there.
Any woman. He could’ve fucked any woman. But Khloe? He shook his head, the flare of agony at his temples sending black and gold dots scattering before his eyes.
He stumbled, stubbing his toe. Pain blared from his foot, and he hopped to the side, leaning against the corridor wall.
“Goddamnit.”
He glared down at the large brown box that blocked the hallway leading to the kitchen. Why in the hell would he leave the thing right there…?
Again, memory dawned, and grief welled up inside him, a fresh, hot geyser that overwhelmed him, plowing him down until his ass hit the floor, his back thumping against the wall.
Fingers trembling, Niall reached for a flap. Dragged the box closer.
Pictures, books, ticket stubs—physical mementoes—greeted him like old friends. This time, Niall didn’t fight the deluge of memories. He picked up a pile of photos. Images of him and Michael as teens at dances, at school then later as adults in college, in the New York offices of Duir Music, the record label Niall’s family owned and ran. He softly snorted. Yeah, Michael’s parents hadn’t been happy when their son had abandoned his plans of becoming an educator to follow his heart into the music business. Nor had they been fans of Niall who, in their eyes, was no better than the snake with Eve, tempting their son away from the path of stability and respectability into the world of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll. They hadn’t seen the passion for music in their son that had originally connected him and Niall.
Grinning, Niall palmed a dirt-smudged baseball. Coming to live in Boston at thirteen years old had exposed him to America’s favorite pastime and the Red Sox. Exposure to what had become two of the biggest loves of his life had been worth the move across the Atlantic.
With a low hum of pleasure, he reverently withdrew the first edition of The Great Gatsby, his favorite book. The novel that’d been a gift from Michael for Niall’s twenty-seventh birthday.
Hearing the outraged squawks of book collectors everywhere ringing in his ears, he smoothed his fingertips over the clear book jacket that covered and protected the mint condition dusk jacket, and opened the novel.
A smile hitched the corner of his mouth. He could so easily become sucked into the world belonging to Nick Carraway, Jay Gatsby, and the village of West Egg. Through the years, he often had. Michael had witnessed Niall’s headlong fascination with the tale of decadence, idealism, and ultimately disillusionment. And his gift to Niall had been the best he’d ever received.
He gently thumbed through the pages, every so often pausing to read then continuing. As the familiar outrage at Tom’s hypocrisy rose in him, he flipped past the scene and…stared at the thin, white envelope that fluttered from the book and glided to the floor like a paper airplane.
“What the hell?” He frowned, bending to swipe up the card-sized mailer. He flicked it over. “Fuck no…” he breathed.
His heart stalled in his chest then revved into hyper drive as he studied his name written in a bold handwriting. A handwriting he knew as well as his own. Though his pulse hammered in his ears like a mallet striking an anvil, he carefully opened the envelope and removed the single sheet of paper within.
“Niall…”
Jesus Christ.
If he hadn’t been sitting on the floor, his knees would’ve buckled under the shock that plowed into him with the force of a wildly swung haymaker. Jesus Christ, he silently repeated. It couldn’t be. It fucking couldn’t be. But as he scanned the letter on Duir Music’s stationery, he couldn’t deny he was reading a message from his best friend like a visit from beyond the grave.
“Niall, considering you’re reading this letter means I was right about you not being able to resist toying with this first edition of The Great Gatsby I plan on giving you for your birthday next month. Not that I ever doubted you would do the exact opposite of what I said.”
He laughed softly. Niall’s hard-headedness had been a running joke between him and his friend. “A hard head makes for a soft behind,” Michael had often remarked. To which Niall would accuse him of checking out his ass, and they would be off and running. The teasing from Michael’s letter was spot on though. He was surprise he’d lasted this long without opening it.
“Anyway, it’s three o’clock in the morning, and you’re knocked out next to me while this plane is trembling so much it feels like it’s about to drop out of the damn sky. I hate fucking flying. So with the seat belt sign lit up and the wind playing dodge ball with this steel coffin, I have the right to be a little maudlin. We just celebrated Khloe’s twenty-first birthday, and God, she was so happy. She deserves to be happy like that every moment of every day. She’s one of those honest-to-God pure spirits. Beautiful inside and out. I don’t plan on going anywhere anytime soon—well, if this plane decides to stay in the air, I don’t. But if something should happen to me, Niall, take care of her. I don’t consider you my best friend—you’re my brother. And Khloe’s, too. Mom and Dad…they love us. But they have their ideas of what our lives should be, and I don’t want her to end up trapped in someone else’s mold trying to make them happy while she’s miserable. And with her selfless heart, that could very well happen.
“Khloe needs a man who will love her with everything he is, who will devote and commit himself to her and provide the home and family she craves. A man better than us. Watch over her for me, Niall. Protect her from being hurt and used. No man will ever be good enough for her, but promise me you’ll be there to kick the ass of anyone who even faintly resembles us. She needs better. Deserves better. You’re the only one I trust with her happiness. Love you, Niall. I don’t say it enough—and you’ll probably never hear me say it aloud if I’m sober—but I do. Michael.”
Protect Khloe from being hurt and used. She deserves a man better than us. He stared at the paper until the words wavered, jumbled, and then straightened out. Pressure coalesced behind his sternum, building until his lungs, heart, and arteries were replaced by air.
Though Niall had been the one born and lived for over half his life in Dublin, sometimes it seemed as if Michael was the more Irish out of the two of them. Niall’s grandmother had often said Michael had “the Sight.” Not that Niall bought into that mystic tripe, but even he couldn’t deny his friend’s often uncanny intuition about people, business dealings, and acts under their label. And a month before his death, he’d given Niall his passwords to his various accounts as well as shown Niall where he’d stored all his important papers such as insurance and his will. At the time, Niall hadn’t thought anything about it, but… Jesus.
The paper crackled in his tight grip as the words from the letter reverberated in his head.
He’d failed the last request of his best friend.
Instead of protecting Khloe, he’d fucked her.
“Shit,” he muttered, laying the letter on the floor beside him. “Just…shit,” he growled, scrubbing his hands over his face. He’d truly screwed up. God, he had to make this right.
Pinching the bridge of his nose, he squeezed his eyes shut.
The only unselfish thing he could do was not allow her to delude herself into believing there could be more between them. She knew him—knew his reputation when it came to women. He wasn’t cut out for long-term commitments, for relationships.
“Khloe needs a man who will love her with everything he is, who will devote and commit himself to her and provide the home and family she craves.”
He couldn’t give her that; Michael knew Niall couldn’t give her that. As his friend had mentioned, she deserved a man better than Niall. He’d already failed his friend by taking the innocence of his sister. Shoving to his feet, he stared for several long moments at the box and the letter before heading for the stairs.
The very least he could do from here on out was honor Michael’s wish. Watch over Khloe. Protect her.
Even if it meant from himself.
Chapter One
Three years later
“Remind me again why I agreed to this asinine idea?”
Khloe Richardson paused in the entrance of the cavernous ballroom that glittered from the crystal chandelier to the bejeweled guests. She clutched her purse to her stomach as if the ridiculously small
and sparkling bag could calm the nerves playing kickball with her intestines. God, she felt like such a fraud. She belonged in a small, messy office filled with computers, modems, and technical manuals. Not in this brilliantly lit room where the formally attired men and women of Boston’s social elite congregated and socialized.
Beside her, Morgan Lett—her best friend, co-worker, and enabler—plucked a fluted glass off a passing tray. She sipped with an appreciative hum. “Oh my God, this is better than sex,” she purred. Then, arching a perfectly waxed, blonde eyebrow, she said, “And the answer to your question is we’re here so you can avoid spinsterhood like it’s a cubic zirconia.”
Actually, there were some pretty nice fake diamonds out there, but since Morgan probably wouldn’t appreciate the observation, Khloe instead murmured, “Oh yeah, that’s right.”
Still, attending the Rhodonite Society’s annual Masquerade Bachelor Auction just smacked of…Match.com meets flesh peddling.
And desperation. Couldn’t forget desperation.
This scheme of Morgan’s to find Khloe a date at a bachelor auction, of all places, reeked of impulsiveness, lunacy, and a whole lot of Hail Mary. The exact antithesis of Khloe’s usual predictability, sanity, and OCD-ish need to plan, chart, and graph. But love did that to a person. It stripped away common sense, persuaded a woman who reveled in algorithms and code to buy a formal gown, death-defying heels, and take part in this…spectacle. More specifically, love for Bennett Charles—brilliant, successful, handsome, sophisticated, and chief operating officer of System Solutions Unlimited, the firm she and Morgan worked for.
An image of the company’s executive unfurled in her mind’s eyes. She’d been adoring him from afar for the past six months. But other than the occasional conversation before a staff meeting or a friendly but slightly vacant smile, Bennett didn’t seem to notice she existed. And if not for a terrifying car accident a month ago that she’d miraculously managed to walk away from with little more than scrapes and bruises, she might have been content with moseying along, quietly crushing on him. Her older brother, Michael, had died in a car accident three years earlier. Her brush with death and knowledge that tomorrow wasn’t guaranteed had jolted her awake from a catatonic, emotional slumber. Not one more second would she sit on the proverbial shelf, a spectator in life and gathering enough dust to create a sandstorm.
