by Tijan
That girl will make Marcus fall. I know she will.
Seth will find her. He must.
“What’s wrong?” Bethany’s voice carries through the warmth of the April sunshine as her heels click on the sidewalk. Slipping her hand into the pocket of her jacket, she looks up at me and I can’t resist brushing the hair from her face to cup her chin in my hand.
Before I can lean down to kiss her, she grips my dress shirt at the buttons, fisting the fabric in her hands and bringing her lips to mine. Desire ignites and the burn from it diminishes any other thought, any other need.
That’s how it happens. It’s how love conquers. Boldly, without fear, and with a ruling flame that nothing can tame.
Her lips soften the second they meet mine. Her body presses against my own as well. With a hand on the small dip at her waist I pull her closer to me, leaving nothing between us.
It’s only when she pulls back that I even dare to breathe.
“I want to kiss you like that forever,” she whispers against my lips with her eyes still closed. When they open, she peeks up at me through her lashes and adds, “I want to take my kisses from you every damn day.”
A low groan of approval rumbles up my chest as she twines her fingers through mine.
“Now tell me what’s wrong.”
“A little demanding, aren’t you, cailín tine?” A pang of nervousness worms its way between us. Before it can do any damage, I tell her, “I’m considering Marcus’s next move.” I resist telling her the second piece, but only for a split second. With her lips parted to answer me, I cut her off with, “And ours.”
She doesn’t let go of my hands, but she takes a half step back, letting her head nod. Intensity, curiosity, even fear swirl in her gaze. All the while, I wait for what she’ll say, what she’ll do.
“If you need me I’m here,” she finally answers.
“All I need is for you to follow me,” I tell her and lower my lips to hers. Nipping her bottom lip, the small bit of tension wanes. She may not be involved in what I do, but she’ll stay with me.
I know she will. Because she loves me and she knows how deeply I love her.
Moving my hand around her waist, I’ll make sure she never forgets, never questions what I feel for her.
She won’t go a day without knowing. Her head rests against my arm as we walk, her one hand holding mine, the other on top of our clasped hands.
“It’s all going to be all right,” she tells me, although she stares ahead, noting the Rare Books sign in the window which causes her brow to furrow.
The smell of old books is unique, and it engulfs us as we walk deeper into the aisle. The full shelves of worn and previously read books make rows, but the one shelf at the very back is the one she needs to see.
“What are we doing here?” she questions and lifts her gaze to mine, but I only squeeze her hand in response.
“Jase,” Bethany pushes for more, practically hissing my name although her steps have picked up with a giddiness she can’t hide, making me chuckle at her impatience.
When I come to a stop in front of the shelves, she brushes against me and steps forward. I watch her reaction to seeing the wall of thin cream pages.
“They don’t have covers?” she whispers and reaches out, her fingers trailing down the fronts of them.
I watch as she swallows, her throat tensing and her lips turning down.
“These are the books with no covers. No titles. They’re only stories.”
Her eyes glaze over, as I’m sure the Coverless Book comes back to her, a gift from her mother and so much more. We may forget words or details, but the way we feel never leaves our memories. I know that book scarred her in a way I can’t imagine although I’m not sure why.
“I wanted to get you another one. A different story to take its place.”
“We drove hours and hours to get a book?” she questions silently, her eyes beseeching me to explain why.
“This is the only place I found on the East Coast that carried unknown books-”
“I don’t want to read another tragedy,” she says and cuts me off. “I don’t want to risk it.”
“You’re going to want to though, cailín tine.”
A second passes and I swear I can hear her heart beating, waiting in limbo for more.
“These books all came from one person’s home years ago. She collected stories that made her feel loved.”
Bethany turns her attention back to the books, back to the stories I want her to read.
“I brought you here because they call this the aisle of hope.”
Seth
With her legs crossed like that, her red skirt rides up higher. It draws my eye and as she clears her throat, noticing my wandering gaze, I let the smirk appear on my lips before carelessly covering it with my hand.
It’s been too long since I’ve been this close to her, face to face. Too many years since she’s sought me out.
My stubble is rough beneath my fingertips; it’ll leave small scratches against her soft skin when I ravage her with the hunger I’ve had for so long.
“Did you hear what I said?” Laura asks. When she got into my car with Bethany, I could feel the waves of apprehension hidden in the silence, the lust that roared back to life when Bethany left us. And we made a deal.
“You said you wanted an exchange. You want to change the details of our deal.”
Her doe eyes beg me to consider, and they hold a vulnerability that her tense curves fail to deliver. She grips both arms of the chair across from me as her chest rises and falls with a quickened pace. She can’t hide the fear of coming back to this life. Of coming back to me.
As her bottom lip slips between her teeth, I note that she can’t hide the desire either.
“I’ve wanted this for too long to consider your proposal,” I tell her, spreading my legs wider and leaning forward in my office chair in the back room of the bar. My elbows rest on my knees as I lean closer to her, only inches away as I whisper, “You know what I want.”
“I can give you something you want more,” she speaks clearly, although her last words waver when her gaze drifts to my lips.
Lies. There’s nothing I want more.
I would have told her that and meant it with every bone in my body, but then she tells me, “I can give you Marcus.”
Seth and Laura’s story starts in Hard to Love! CLICK HERE to start reading this addictive romance!
Also by W Winters
Merciless World
A Kiss to Tell
Possessive
Seductive
Merciless
Heartless
Breathless
Endless
All He’ll Ever Be
A Kiss To Keep
A Single Glance
A Single Kiss
A Single Touch
Hard to Love
Desperate to Touch
Tempted to Kiss
Easy to Fall
This Love Hurts
Merciless World Spin Off
It’s Our Secret
Standalone Novels:
Broken
Forget Me Not
Sins and Secrets Duets:
Imperfect (Imperfect Duet book 1)
Unforgiven (Imperfect Duet book 2)
Damaged (Damaged Duet book 1)
Scarred (Damaged Duet book 2)
Willow Winters
Standalone Novels:
All I Want is a Kiss
Tell Me To Stay
Second Chance
Knocking Boots
Promise Me
Burned Promises
Forsaken, cowritten with B. B. Hamel
Collections
Don’t Let Go
Deepen The Kiss
Kisses and Wishes
Valetti Crime Family Series:
Dirty Dom
His Hostage
Rough Touch
Cuffed Kiss
Bad Boy
Highest Bidder Se
ries,
cowritten with Lauren Landish:
Bought
Sold
Owned
Given
Bad Boy Standalones,
cowritten with Lauren Landish:
Inked
Tempted
Mr. CEO
Happy reading and best wishes,
W Winters xx
About Willow Winters
Thank you so much for reading my romances. I’m just a stay at home mom and avid reader turned author and I couldn’t be happier.
I hope you love my books as much as I do!
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King of Wall Street
King of Wall Street
By: Louise Bay
Chapter 1
Harper
Ten. Whole. Minutes. It didn’t sound like a long time, but as I sat across from Max King, the so-called King of Wall Street, while he silently read through the first draft of a report I’d produced on the textile industry in Bangladesh, it felt like a lifetime.
Resisting the urge to revert to my fourteen-year-old self and ask him what he was thinking, I glanced around, trying to find something else to fixate on.
Max’s office suited him perfectly—the A/C was set to the average temperature of an igloo; the walls, ceilings, and floors were all blinding white, adding to the arctic ambience. His desk was glass and chrome, and the New York sun bled through the opaque blinds, trying without success to thaw the frost that penetrated the room. I hated it. Every time I entered the place I had the urge to flash my bra or graffiti the walls in bright red lipstick. It was the place fun came to die.
Max’s sigh pulled my attention back to his long index finger that he trailed down the page of my research. He shook his head. My stomach somersaulted. I knew impressing him would be an impossible task but that didn’t mean I hadn’t secretly hoped I’d nailed it. I’d worked so hard on this report, my first research for the Max King. I’d barely slept, working double so I didn’t neglect my other duties in the office. I’d printed off and examined everything that had been written on the industry in the last decade. I’d pored over the statistics, trying to find patterns and draw conclusions. And I’d scoured the King & Associates archives trying to find any historical research that we’d produced so we could explain any inconsistencies. I’d covered every base, hadn’t I? When I’d printed it out earlier that morning, long before anyone else had arrived, I’d been happy—proud even. I’d done a good job.
“You spoke to Marvin about the latest data?” he asked.
I nodded, though he didn’t look up, so I said, “Yes. All the graphs are based on the latest figures.” Did they look wrong? Had he expected something else?
I just wanted him to say, “Good job.”
I’d been desperate to work for Max King since before I enrolled at business school. He was the power behind the throne of many of the Wall Street success stories in the last few years. King & Associates provided investment banks with critical research that helped their investment decisions. I liked the idea that there were a ton of flashy suits from investment banks shouting about how rich they were and the man who had made it happen was happy to go quietly about his business, just being amazing at what he did. Understated, determined, supremely successful—he was everything I wanted to be. When I got the offer during my final semester to be a junior researcher at King & Associates, I was thrilled, but I also felt an odd sense that the universe was simply unravelling how it should, as though it was simply the next step in my destiny.
Destiny could kiss my ass. My first six weeks in my new position had been nothing I’d expected. I’d assumed I’d be surrounded by ambitious, intelligent, well-dressed twenty and thirty somethings and I’d been right about that. And the clients we worked for—almost every investment bank in Manhattan—were phenomenal and lived up to every expectation I’d had. Max King, however, had turned out to be a huge letdown. The fact was, despite being crazy smart, respected by everyone on Wall Street, and looking as if he should have been on a poster on teenage me’s bedroom wall, he was . . .
Cold.
Blunt.
Uncompromising.
A total asshole.
He was as handsome in real life as he was in his picture on the cover of Forbes or any of the other publicity shots I’d clicked through as I stalked him during my MBA at Berkeley. One morning, I’d arrived super early, seen him in his running gear—sweaty, panting, Lycra clad. Thighs so strong they looked as if they might be made of marble. Broad shoulders; a strong Roman nose; dark-brown, glossy hair—the kind wasted on a man—and a year-round tan that screamed, I vacation four times a year. In the office he wore custom suits. Handmade suits fell a particular way on the shoulders that I recognized from the few meetings I’d had with my father. His face and body lived up to every expectation I’d had. Working with him, not so much.
I hadn’t expected him to be such a tyrant.
Each morning, as he swooped through the throng of open-plan desks to his office, he never so much as greeted any of us with a good morning. He regularly yelled into his phone so loud he could be heard from the elevator lobby. And last Tuesday? When I’d passed him in the office and smiled at him, the veins in his neck began to bulge and he looked as if he was going to reach out and choke me.
I smoothed my palms down the fabric of my Zara skirt. Perhaps I irritated him because I wasn’t as sleek as the other women in the office. I didn’t dress in the regulation Prada. Did I look as though I didn’t care? I just couldn’t afford anything better at the moment.
As the most junior member of the team, I was at the bottom of the pecking order. Which meant I knew Mr. King’s sandwich order, how to untangle the photocopier, and I had every courier company on speed dial. But that was to be expected and I was just happy because I got to work with the guy I’d looked up to and admired for years.
And here he was, shaking his head and wielding a pen with the reddest ink I’d ever seen. With each circle, crisscross, and exaggerated question mark he made, I seemed to shrink.
“Where are your references?” he asked without looking up.
References? When I looked at the other reports we produced, they never had the sources in the report. “I have them back at my desk—”
“Did you speak to Donny?”
“I’m waiting to hear back from him.” He looked up and I tried not to wince. I’d put in two calls to Max’s contact at the World Trade Organization, but I couldn’t make the guy talk to me.
He shook his head and grabbed his phone and dialed. “Hey, hotshot,” he said. “I need to understand the position on Everything But Arms. I heard your guys are putting pressure on the EU?” Max didn’t put the phone on speaker, so I watched as he scribbled notes over my paper. “It would really help for this thing I’m doing about Bangladesh.” Max grinned, looked up briefly, caught my eye, and looked away as if just the sight of me irritated him. Great.
Max hung up.
“I put in two calls—”
“Results, not effort, get rewarded,” he said in a clipped tone.
So he gave no credit for trying? What could I have done other than turn up at the guy’s place of business? I wasn’t Max King. Why would someone at the WTO take a call from a barely paid researcher?
Jesus, couldn’t he give a girl a break?
Before I had a chance to respond, his cell vibrated on his desk.
“Amanda?” he barked into the phone. Jesus. This was a small office, so I knew Amanda didn’t work at King & Associates. I got an odd sense of satisfaction he wasn’t just sharp with me. I didn’
t see him interact much with others, but somehow his attitude toward me felt personal. But it sounded as if Amanda got the same brusque treatment I did. “We’re not having this discussion again. I said no.” Girlfriend? Page Six had never had any reports of Max dating. But he had to be. A man built like that, asshole or not, wasn’t going without. It sounded as though Amanda had the honor of putting up with him outside office hours.
Hanging up, he slung his phone against the desk, watching as it skidded across the glass and came to rest against his laptop. Continuing to read, he rubbed his long, tan fingers over his forehead as if Amanda had given him a headache. I didn’t think my report was helping much.
“Typos are not acceptable, Ms. Jayne. There’s no excuse for being anything less than exceptional when it comes to something that only requires effort.” He closed my report, sat back in his chair, and fixed his stare on me. “Attention to detail doesn’t require ingenuity, creativity, or lateral thinking. If you can’t get the basics right, why should I trust you with anything more complicated?”
Typos? I’d read through that report a thousand times.
He steepled his fingers in front of him. “Revise in accordance with my notes and don’t bring it back to me until it’s typo free. I’ll fine you for every mistake I find.”
Fine me? I wanted to fire back that if I could fine him every time he was a penis, I’d retire inside of three months. Asshole.
