“I’m sorry. I have to take this.” My hands shook as I put the phone to my ear. I listened quietly and then burst into another round of tears. Big, fat ugly ones. The kind that came with a full-on snot storm.
“Jesus. What’s the matter now, Olive?”
Before I could answer him, he scooped me up in his brawny arms. He held me effortlessly, making me feel like a mere waif. Trust me, many pregnant women in their last trimester didn’t weigh as much as I did. I reveled equally in my misery and the strength of this powerful man. My Donut King. On my next breath, he began kissing my tears away, planting the most delicate of kisses all over my wet cheeks with his soft lips. The sexy little sucking sounds made my heart beat into a frenzy while electricity whipped through my system. Oh what this big beautiful sex god could do to me. My arms curled around his broad shoulders as the kisses kept coming.
“I suck at tears,” he murmured.
He could suck at my tears all he wanted. I continued to bawl.
“Seriously, Olive, what can I do to stop you from crying?”
“Kiss me!” My lord, my master! “Take my mouth. Smother it with yours”
I couldn’t believe I was begging this gorgeous man to devour me. And I was in his arms. I’d only met him ten minutes ago. I knew nothing about him except I wanted him to own me, possess me, and never let me go.
CHAPTER 3
Owen
Holy shit. She tasted delicious. So delectably sweet, partly thanks to the lingering flavor of the cream-filled donut she’d eaten in the focus group. Too immersed in my work, it had been a long time since I’d kissed a girl and gotten off on it. I’d never kissed anyone like her. And I’d kissed many.
My mouth consumed hers, intermittently gnawing and sucking, and once parted, our tongues tangoed as if we’d danced this dance forever. She followed my lead perfectly, her tongue swirling and twirling, while adorable little sexy sounds escaped from her throat. She was totally turning me on. As her hands tugged at my hair, an erection of mega proportions was raging beneath my trousers. I hardly knew her, but I had to have her. Minutes later, her crying died down.
“Good girl,” I whispered, breaking the all-consuming kiss.
“More,” she breathed out.
Christ. She was insatiable. And I was falling in love with every bit of her.
“Shh.” I smacked another hot kiss on her soft lips and then asked, “Why were you crying so hard?”
Her eyes began to water again. God, she was an emotional one, but I loved that about her. Everything about her was extreme. In many ways, she mirrored me.
“You don’t need to know.”
“Yes. I. Do.”
Another tear blinked out of one eye. Oh, no. Here we go again. I couldn’t handle it.
“Olive…” I stretched out her name, audibly making the two syllables sound like “Aaah…love.” She was quickly becoming my love. “Please tell me what’s going on.”
She gulped down a breath. “My landlord terminated my lease. I’m being kicked out of my apartment today.” Her full lips quivered. “I have no job. No money. And no place to live.”
“What about friends or family?”
She simply shook her head as the tears began to pour down her cheeks. It was fucking gutting me. Big time. And then—PING!—an idea sprung to mind.
“What can I do to help?” Besides marrying you and making you mine forever. And that could easily and happily be option number one.
“I don’t know.” Her misty eyes gazed up at mine. “Maybe just give me the hundred dollar focus group fee. At least, that’ll get me a night in a cheap hotel until I figure out my life.”
God. She was so cute. So humble and modest. She wanted so little from me. I’d never met a woman like this in my thirty-five years. Well, except my beloved late mother, may she rest in peace. With this fond memory, I responded.
“I’m sorry. I can’t do that.”
“I understand.” Her lips trembled with despair.
She was no longer gutting me. She was killing me. Her sad chocolate brown eyes were melting me as if I was the Wicked Dick of the West. No more playing games. Looking straight into her soulful eyes, I, the straight shooter (in more ways than one), told her exactly what was on my mind.
“Listen, Olive.” All the air left my lungs as I uttered her breathy name. “I have an opening.”
Her plump, pink lips parted like a rose in bloom. “What do you mean?”
“What I mean is I have a job opening. My assistant quit the other day and I’m in desperate need of another.” I refrained from telling her that my last assistant (unlucky number thirteen) had a nervous breakdown because she couldn’t get into my pants or keep up with my demanding workload. All she wanted was a full load of my seed.
Olive’s long-lashed eyes fluttered. “You’re offering me a job?”
“Yes. Under one condition. I need to find out if you’re a good fit.”
Want more Olive and Owen yumminess? One click the cover below.
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ENDLESS LOVE
SNEAK PEEK
NELLE L’AMOUR
ABOUT
A special SNEAK PEEK of the long-awaited sequel to New York Times bestselling author, Nelle L’Amour’s critically acclaimed masterpiece, Undying Love. Please keep in mind this excerpt has not yet been professionally proofread and is subject to change.
WARNING! SPOILER ALERT! Please do NOT read this sneak peak of Endless Love if you have NOT read Undying Love. Undying Love is available at all retailers as well as in paperback.
Undying Love
Copyright © 2017 by Nelle L’Amour
Kindle Edition
All rights reserved
First Edition: July 2017
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be re-produced in any form or by any means without prior written consent of the author, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
True love stories never have endings.
—Richard Bach
PROLOGUE
Allee
Four Years Earlier
Madewell~
By the time you read this letter, I will be gone. I have no clue where I’m going or why this is happening to me. I only know I will miss you.
Your name, Ryan, comes from the French word “roi” which means “king.” My name Allee is almost identical to the French word “allée” which means “gone.” LOL. When I am gone, Madewell, I want you to rule with your heart and live your life. You have so much potential, so much to live for. You have a great future ahead of you, with me or without me.
I know one day you will fall in love again. You will because I’m telling you to. I don’t want you to mope around mourning me. Why mourn what you can’t have? I’m sure whomever you meet will be someone I would like.
There’s one other thing I want you to do. Make up with your father. He is the only one you will ever have. We have all erred in our lives, but we all deserve the chance to be forgiven. I hope you will forgive me for leaving you too soon. It’s not your fault, my Superman, I could not be saved.
Go on living, my sweet superhero. Although our time together was so short, it was the best time I ever had. You gave me everything—love, laughter, Paris, and all of you. Just because I’ve stopped living my life, don’t stop living yours.
One last thing…Write, Madewell, write. Write for me. I’ll be reading every word from wherever I am. Always remember…
I love you more~
Allee
CHAPTER 1
Willow
I’d started crying from the minute Allee found out she had incurable cancer. I felt her pain and Ryan’s in every bone of my body. The words on the page became blurs as my teary eyes brushed over their first and last dance…their fateful trip to Allee’s beloved Paris…Allee’s final words as Ryan lay beside her in her death bed. Their song, “I Won’t Give Up,” played in my head as I flipped the pages. Then, I totally lost it when I came to Allee’s love letter to
her Superman. Big fat ugly tears pouring down my face, my sobs clogging my ears, I bawled until there were no more tears to shed. The last page of the book was soaked. Ready to fall apart like me. Emotionally drained, I closed the book and gazed at the cover. A beautiful young couple in love. They had everything to live for; unexpectedly, death took all that away. But their love, immortalized in this memoir, would never die.
The title of the book stared me in the face. I had experienced my own Undying Love. I’ll never forget the day I came home from high school, and my father sat me down at one of the tables in his deli. In fact, it was the very one I was sitting at today.
“Pumpkin, would you say if I told you Mom is no longer with us?” he asked, his eyes watering.
Confusion sent a chill through me. “What do you mean, Pop?”
And then he told me. My mother, Belinda, had been hit by a cab. Instant death. The tears just poured and poured. Enough to make brine in a barrel of pickles. The sadness was unbearable, the guilt unshakable. I never told her how much I loved her during my rebellious teenage years nor did I get a chance to say goodbye.
Pop and I went on with life without mom. His deli, Mel’s Famous, was a landmark institution on New York’s Lower East Side, and regular customers kept him busy. As for me, I threw myself into my dancing at Julliard. An aspiring ballerina, my dancing kept the pain away. My father was concerned about my obsessive-compulsive behavior and made me see a shrink. I’d become dangerously anorexic. All skin and bones. Dr. Jules Goodman saved my life.
Dr. Goodman was now saving my life again. I was on a sabbatical from The Royal Latvia Ballet Company. On my way to becoming a prima ballerina, I had collapsed on stage while performing in Vienna. The in-house doctor said I was exhausted and malnourished. That’s what my dad was told. Only Dr. Goodman knew what really brought me almost to complete destruction. Physical and emotional. The real extent of the damage. For now, as I healed, that secret needed to stay between us. Gustave Fontaine, the company’s infamously handsome and brilliant director, had gone on to another dancer. And not just any ballerina. Mira Abramovitch. My archrival since we’d been in tutus together in pre-school. I had given him everything—my heart, my soul, my body. My passion. But I was just another conquest. Stupid, stupid me should have known better. The other ballerinas in the troupe had warned me, but foolishly I thought I was different. Special.
Being back home in New York, living with my dad, was good for me. Afraid of losing the other great love of his life, he took care of me, feeding me lots of homemade chicken soup—the soup that made Mel’s Famous legendary. Slowly, I put back on the weight I’d lost though I was still very thin by most standards. The obsessive desire that had almost consumed me was gnawing at me. Now six months away from the stage, I was aching to put on a leotard and my toe shoes. To dance for him.
Gustave had been my cocaine. I could never get enough of him. He would be showing me how he wanted my leg to extend and before I knew it, my legs were extended around him, and he was fucking me without mercy. It was like that. We would fuck anywhere, anytime we could. Between acts. During intermission. In my dressing room. Behind the curtain. On the stage floor after the lights had gone off. He knew how to arouse me like no other man could. Orgasms pirouetted through out my body. One after another after another.
I don’t know if I loved him. But for sure, I was obsessed. His beauty and sexuality were irresistible. He told me I was his. So when I found him humping Mira in my dressing room, I was crushed to the bone. I loathed her and all the other ballerinas he’d fucked. I was nothing to him. Just another beautiful body to fuck and control. My downward spiral began and accelerated at the speed of a bullet train until I was a shell of the person I was. Thinking back to the devastating events of the past year, self-loathing seeped into my bloodstream.
Don’t go there.
“What’s the matter, pumpkin?
The husky voice stopped me before I could descend into darkness. I looked up. My father. In his perpetually stained, floor-length deli apron over his ill-fitting baggy pants and a Mel’s Famous T-shirt. There was alarm in his voice and his warm chocolate brown eyes. His bushy brows furrowed.
“Oh, Pop! I just read the saddest book ever.” I showed him the cover.
My burly father smiled with relief as he wiped away my tears with the edge of his apron. “The author’s a regular. He comes in here from time to time.”
“Ryan Madewell? Really?” My tears subsided. “Do you think he’d be willing to sign my book the next time he comes in?”
My father’s smile broadened. “It doesn’t hurt to ask.”
“And, Pop, it doesn’t hurt to lose weight.”
Ryan Madewell showed up at my father’s deli exactly one week later. I recognized him instantly because I’d spent the whole week Googling him.
With a laid back but confidant gait, he strode up to the well-stocked deli case and surveyed the contents. An Indian summer kind of day, he was wearing black jeans and a simple white T-shirt. God, he was gorgeous. Tousled sandy hair, gemstone blue eyes, a movie star-handsome face, and a six foot-plus lean, buff body that shouted, “I work out.” In his Google images, he was gorgeous too. Just not this heart-stopping gorgeous. His hair was now longer, the scruff on his face thicker, and his muscles more pronounced, making him even more impossibly sexy.
I was minding the store while my father was at the bank making a deposit. Almost three in the afternoon, it wasn’t very busy. In fact, he was the sole customer.
My gaze stayed fixed on him while he lingered in front of the meat counter. Finally, he said, “I’ll have my regular—a pastrami sandwich to go with a side of slaw.
“Would you like it hot?” I asked, my eyes meeting his.
There was a short stretch of silence before he replied. “Yeah, I like it hot.”
His soft, raspy voice was so damn sexy. I swear my temperature rose ten degrees.
“What kind of bread?”
“Rye, please.”
Rye bread for Ry-an. I wondered what it would feel like to be sandwiched between him and a mattress. Oh God. This guy was making my mind travel to places it hadn’t been for a long time.
I prepared the sandwich for him. I was good at this, having made deli sandwiches ever since I could remember. Putting the slab of pastrami onto the meat slicer, I held out my plastic-gloved hand as one lean piece of meat after another fell onto my palm. After heating it, I set the three-inch high pile on the counter.
“Would you like mustard?”
“Just mayo, please.”
Without overthinking it, I squeezed some mayonnaise from a nearby plastic bottle onto the two slices of bread. Something about the way the creamy white condiment squirted out from the pointed cap sent a rush of tingles to my core. It was totally erotic. Jesus! What was I thinking?
I felt his eyes on me as I spread the mayo with a knife and then transferred the pastrami onto one of the slices of bread.
“That looks delicious,” he said as I completed the mouthwatering sandwich.
So do you.
I wrapped up the sandwich and threw it with the pre-packed slaw into a paper bag.
“Would you like anything else?” I managed.
“A cream soda would be great. In fact, I’ll have that now.”
Retrieving a bottle from the cooler, I handed him the soda, my fingers brushing against his. They were long, strong, and purposeful. The fingers of a writer.
He held the bottle in his right hand, and for the first time, I noticed the gold band on his ring finger as he popped off the cap with his other hand. His wedding band. I was surprised he still wore it. Obviously, he was still clinging to Allee. Maybe he wasn’t ready to let go. My stomach tightened. I tried not to linger on it or on what it symbolized and instead focused on his lush lips as he wrapped them around the nuzzle. Tilting his head back, his eyes closed as he savored the cold, carbonated beverage, and as he swallowed, a satisfied moan escaped his throat. A pulse beat between my legs, and I
wondered if this is what he looked like after having an orgasm. In my head, I began to undress him, imagining how beautiful he must look in the raw. Then, I remembered his beloved late wife’s last words to him—telling him how beautiful he was. Indeed, he was.
“How much do I owe?” he asked, bringing me out of my reverie.
“It’s on the house if you sign my book.”
His beautiful squiggle of a brow arched and then he quirked a wry smile, made sexy by the way the left corner curled upward. “So, you know who I am?”
I quirked a shy smile. “Yes. I loved your book. Will you sign it?”
“Sure.”
I was taken aback. I suddenly realized that the book was upstairs in our apartment above the deli. “I have to get it. Would you mind minding the store for just a few minutes?”
“Not a problem.”
I hurried to the back of the restaurant and raced up the flight of stairs to the apartment my dad and I shared. The book was on a nightstand in my bedroom. I reread passages of the book every night before I went to sleep. I think it helped me from having the nightmares that haunted me.
When I jogged downstairs, book in hand, Ryan was behind the counter, attempting to cater to a twitchy elderly man. I had to bite down on my bottom lip to stifle my laughter. The customer, one of our pickiest, was asking for an extra lean roast beef sandwich, dressing on the side, and French fries well done. Poor Ryan. No matter how many pieces of meat he sliced, it was never lean enough for Mr. Picky Wicky.
Scurrying behind the counter, I said, “I’ll handle this while you sign my book.” He let out a loud sigh of relief.
“What’s your name?” he asked, taking my book from me.
Naughty Nelle Page 47
