by Sienna Ciles
One Night with Him
(An Alpha Billionaire Romance)
By
Sienna Ciles
www.SiennaCiles.com
Copyright
First Edition, November 2017
Copyright © 2017 by Sienna Ciles
This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is entirely coincidental. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and situations are the product of the author's imagination.
All rights reserved. No parts of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without written consent from the author.
License
This book is available exclusively on Amazon.com. If you found this book for free or from a site other than an Amazon.com country specific website it means the author was not compensated for this book and you have likely obtained this book through an unapproved distribution channel.
Table of Contents
One Night with Him
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
EPILOGUE
Sneak Peek: Accidentally His
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Finish reading Accidentally His, Now Available on Amazon
Sneak Peek: Taught
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Finish reading TAUGHT, now available on Amazon
Sneak Peek: Lost and Found
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Finish Reading Lost and Found, now available on Amazon
About The Author
Chapter 1
Mandy
I groaned audibly as I opened my eyes. A dull pain was throbbing somewhere in the front of my skull, and my eyes felt puffy and dry. Discomfort stirred in my belly; not quite nausea but close. The hangover wasn't bad but it wasn't particularly pleasant either. Still, I'd had worse, and I would get through this one easily enough.
I was on the left side of my bed – the one I always slept on – lying on my left side. I was tempted to roll over and try to get more sleep but the sun was already blazing bright through the gaps in my drapes, and I figured it had to be maybe eight or even nine o' clock in the morning – at least two hours later than the time I usually got up. No, as sluggish as I was feeling, I didn't think it would be a great idea to stay in bed. I had already wasted so much of the morning.
The bathroom door was right in front of me, so, summoning what little willpower I possessed in this state, I stretched out my left leg and managed to get myself out of bed. My glasses were on the floor next to the bed, so I stooped down and picked them up and then put them on, and the world became a lot less blurry. I staggered over to the bathroom with single-minded purpose, and stumbled in, closing the door behind me without looking back.
My phone was lying on the floor, which meant I’d definitely had a pretty fun time last night. I was usually quite fastidious about putting it on the bedside table when I went to bed. It was, after all, a new iPhone, and I made a point of taking care of my things. I guess I got that from my dad, who was a mechanic, and who insisted on fixing things to the point where they couldn't be fixed anymore. He had instilled a sense of responsibility in me from an early age about properly taking care of and maintaining my things so that I could extend their lifespan.
I sat down on the toilet and started browsing through my Facebook newsfeed as I went about my business.
I saw something right away that immediately ramped up the level of nausea I was experiencing. Connor, my ex, had put up some photos of him and his new girlfriend on their vacation in Thailand. I knew that it would be a bad idea to look at them but I did anyway. Morbid curiosity, I guess.
There they were on a beautiful white sand beach, fringed with palms, with bright turquoise water. And then the next one, dancing around a huge bonfire on the beach at night. And then the next, scuba diving in those clear waters with millions of brightly colored fish all around them.
“Ugh, Mandy, why didn't you unfriend this jerk?” I muttered to myself as I closed his photos and went on browsing through the newsfeed.
That was a good question actually – why hadn't I unfriended him and deleted him from my Facebook? Well, it wasn't as if we’d had a crazy bad breakup. There hadn't been any cheating or betrayal or anything like that – well, nothing that I knew about, at least. In fact, I had been the one who had made the decision to break up with Connor. He had just been the wrong guy for me. And he was a jerk – seriously. I mean, we had dated for almost eighteen months, and while he had been Mr. Charming in the beginning, as time had gone on the illusion about himself that he had worked so hard on creating in the beginning had quite quickly fallen away, and the selfish brat – yes, a thirty-three-year-old brat – at the core of who he really was had soon been exposed.
But even though my feelings for him had quickly evaporated when I had found out about what a horrible a person he really was, I guess for some reason I still had a soft spot for him. It wasn't attraction – that had faded away – but I guess, in a way, I still liked his company. He had a great sense of humor and knew how to make me laugh. He would have made a great friend, a good buddy, and I guess that's why I was still in contact with him.
I wasn't jealous of the new girlfriend, because I was better looking than her, a bitchy thought in my mind managed to tell me. No, I wasn't jealous of her at all. I sure as hell didn't want to be dating Connor. It was just… seeing them so happy, having this amazing time in this exotic location. I guess it felt like Connor's life had gotten way better since he and I had ended our relationship, whereas my own life had kind of, well, stagnated.
It had been almost a year now since he and I had broken up. In that time, he had gotten a major promotion and had started earning an impressive salary. He had met this girl, and yes, I was prettier than her but in all seriousness, she seemed like an awesome person. This was the third overseas vacation they had been on together in the nine months they had been dating, and every vacation seemed better than the last.
Me? I had quit my job after having had what had seemed like a very promising offer from New York come my way, only to then have that offer fall through, leaving me unemployed and stuck here in Los Angeles. I was very good with money, always had been – another thing I could thank my dad for – so I wasn't worried for the short term, because I had plenty of savings and investments to keep me afloat for a while.
I liked working, however, and being unemployed was just, well, frustrating and unfulfilling. I needed to work, I needed to climb that corporate ladder.
And that's why I had gone to that convention. Ellen – my best friend – had set it up for me and had gotten me in. She had a connection in a high-level multinational corporation, who she had heard were looking for a new marketing director. And me? I happened to be one of the best marketing directors around. I'd always known how to get a buzz going about something. It had started in junior high when a group of my buddies – I had been a bit of a tomboy back then – had started a garage band. They weren't that great, really, but
I had gotten so into creating a buzz about them and promoting them that they had quickly become pretty much the most popular band in school, even more so than much better bands who deserved that honor.
And thus, I had taken my first steps on the path in the field of marketing.
And things had been going well for me in terms of work for the last few years. I had managed to increase my former company's sales by a margin neither they nor I had actually expected to see. The CEO had been delighted, and I had been proud. The problem was, it was just too small a company for me to really get anywhere. They made drumming equipment, and they did it well. They’d developed a range of solid products – but it's a niche market, something that was never going to break into the mainstream and net me a position of real power. That was why I had jumped at the opportunity to take the job in New York when it was offered to me. It would have been with a high-powered finance firm and offered way more opportunities to climb the ladder than the little drum equipment company I had been with.
But then that had fallen through so yeah, here I was. I remember things going well last night at the convention, and I had met with Ellen's connection, who assured me, after a brief interview, that the job would very likely be mine. He was going to call me back today sometime to confirm. I decided to call Ellen to see how she was feeling and to thank her once more for arranging the meeting for me and allowing me to get a foot in the door.
I brushed my teeth and then called her up.
“Ellen!” I said as she picked up the phone. “How are you? How are you feeling this morning?”
“Hey, Mandy,” she replied. “Ugh, not so great. Those last two tequila shots we had last night, I don't think they were such a hot idea.”
I chuckled. “Maybe not but did you see how you were dancing after those shots?”
She laughed. “I saw how you were dancing, and if that's any indication of how I was dancing... Oh, boy, yeah, things got a little crazy around midnight, didn't they?”
I chuckled. “They really did. But hey, it was an occasion to celebrate, right? I mean, the guy who interviewed me, he was real impressed, and he pretty much told me that the job is mine.”
“Yeah, that's awesome news, Mandy! I'm so glad I was able to help you, and that it ended up working out so well. You're just waiting for the phone call to confirm it, right?”
“I am, yeah.”
“Well, then quit yakking on the phone with me and get off the line in case the guy calls!”
I laughed. “I just wanted to see if you were still alive this morning after all the craziness of last night,” I said with a grin.
“I am... barely. But hey, speaking of craziness, what ended up happening with that guy you went home with?”
I froze as panic suddenly hit me.
“Wait, wh-what?” I managed to stammer. “I...”
She laughed.
“No way, you totally forgot about him?! Or did you like, invite him up to your place and then kick him out when you got to the door?”
It all came rushing back to me in a flood of images and memories – blurry images and fuzzy memories but... there was no question about it. I had brought a guy back from the afterparty. And we had... we had slept together. I had been drunk... really drunk. And during the course of waking up this morning I guess I had somehow totally forgotten about that! But yeah, he had been there, and we’d had... well, a pretty damn wild time.
“No, uh, he's... we... I...” I stammered to Ellen.
She simply laughed. “You can give me all of the juicy the details later, Mandy. I need to have a shower and get going, and you need to keep your phone line open in case that guy calls you to tell you that you've got the job. Wait, wait, let me rephrase that – you need to keep your phone line open for when the guy calls you. Because the job is totally yours, right? You've got this!”
“I, I, yeah, I've got this,” I managed to mumble, still in shock about totally forgetting about the guy I had brought home last night.
“You sound like you could use a little more sleep,” Ellen said. “Go get back into bed, just put your ringer volume up real high in case the guy calls. I'll talk to you later, all right?”
“Yeah, talk later. Bye.”
“Goodbye, Mandy, and good luck.”
I put the phone down and stared at my reflection in the mirror for a while. “Is he... is he still out there?” I murmured to my reflection.
He quite possibly was still out there. After all, I had woken up on the left side of the bed on my left side, facing the bathroom, and I had gotten straight out of bed like that without turning around or looking around. I mean, in my still-kinda-drunk state, I hadn't really thought about the possibility that, you know, there might be someone else in my bed! Oh, man. This, at least, was not a regular kind of thing for me. While this wasn't the first one-night stand I'd had, it wasn't as if it was something I regularly did. In fact, it really was something that I had only ever done a mere handful of times in my life.
We’d had a lot of alcohol last night, Ellen and I... and then there were those two tequila shots to really get our motors revving. And when I get a bit of tequila in me... things can get messy. Crazy, even.
It all started to come back to me now. The flashing, brightly-colored lights of the dancefloor. The pounding bass beats of the music, infusing my eager muscles with rhythm. The hot guy with chestnut brown hair and piercing blue eyes, whose hips had moved with a slick, serpentine rhythm, whose casual confidence and subtle power on the dancefloor had just gotten me weak at the knees. His stubble-rough face in my hands, his lips on mine, my hands on his hard, muscular body....
And then, that body in my bed, his sculpted torso slick with sweat as he and I had made passionate, fiery love late into the night.
Wow. Just... wow.
And then this morning, I just forgotten about all of that.
Well, I sure as hell hadn't forgotten about it anymore. No, those images and memories in my head were becoming ever crisper and fresher.
That wasn't the only thing though. We had talked – we had actually talked a lot. And he told me some very interesting things. I remember him saying that he was a CEO, although I couldn't really remember what company he was CEO of. And he divulged things about his company, secrets I'm pretty sure he didn't mean to tell anyone. But, you know what they say about alcohol loosening one's tongue. Damn, I felt like I might have told him some secrets of my own as well. That wasn't good. That wasn't good at all. What had made me feel I could trust this guy so much I could just blab my secrets out to him? And, of course, on the other side of that coin, what had made me seem so trustworthy to him that he had just opened up to me about all his secrets. It was kinda weird for two people who had only known each other a couple hours. I wondered exactly what I had told him, and how much he remembered of what I had said to him.
So, now the big question was, of course... where was he? Had this mysterious, dashing stranger slipped silently out during the night, or was he still there, snoring quietly in the bed? And if he was still there, what on earth was I going to do or say? I mean, yeah, he was hot, and the sex had been amazing but a relationship was the last thing I wanted or needed right now. And even with the feelings of jealousy and, perhaps, loneliness that had arisen when I'd seen those photos of Connor and his girlfriend, it wasn't as if I had wanted to be with anyone again.
If this guy was still here... things were probably about to get awkward.
There was only one way to find out if he was, of course, and that was what I had to do.
I drew in a deep, calming breath and held it in my lungs for a while.
Come on, Mandy. You can do this. And he'll probably feel just as awkward and weird as you do, and then he'll mumble a hasty goodbye, and he'll quickly get his clothes back on and leave, and then you'll never see him again, and then you can just forget about this whole stupid thing. So that's what you're gonna do, isn't it?
I looked at my reflection and nodded, my jaw set with determinatio
n. And hey, maybe, just maybe, he had already left during the night, and then I was just getting myself all worked up for nothing.
There was no reason to hesitate any longer. I turned around and opened the door – and almost screamed as I saw a naked man standing right there in front of me.
Chapter 2
Kain
I was dreaming; I knew that much. But it was one of those dreams that felt so real, so intensely real, that I lost myself in it, and forgot that it was a dream. Jimmy was there, and we were kids again. Dad was watching us run around the yard.
“That's it, Jimmy!” he yelled, cheering on my older brother. “That's it! You're the fastest kid in the world; you're the fastest kid ever!”
I was running behind Jimmy, trying my best to catch him but he was just pulling farther and farther ahead. A two-year age gap made for a huge difference in ability when you're a little kid.
“You won't catch him, Kain,” yelled my dad. “You can't! He's faster than you, and he always will be!”
The yard seemed to be getting longer and longer, bigger and bigger, and the end of it disappeared into a thick wood at the bottom. I knew, suddenly, that something terrible was lying in wait for Jimmy and me in those trees, in the murky shadows between them. Jimmy, though, seemed totally oblivious, and carried on sprinting right for them.
“Wait, Jimmy!” I yelled, skidding to a halt and digging my heels into the soil. “Don't go!”
But he just carried on running. And my father, also seemingly oblivious to the waiting danger, was cheering him on.
“Jimmy, no! Jimmy, don't, don't go, stop!” I yelled, my voice hoarse with fear. The sky seemed to suddenly darken, and a thunderclap boomed from out of the blue. Jimmy plunged into the darkness, and then—
I sat up with a jolt, sweating and breathing heavily. The fright from the nightmare remained, amplified by the fact that I was in a strange place, in a stranger's bed.
“What the heck?” I muttered, looking around me, my senses on full alert. “Where... where am I? What is this place?”
I sat up in the bed, massaging my throbbing skull with my fingertips as I did. My mouth was dry as desert sand, and my stomach was twisted in knots. The taste of whiskey lingered on my dry tongue... whiskey and something else. Someone else.
