Easy Virtue

by Mia Asher

  He fornicates … like an animal.

  It’s dirty.

  Wild. Unrepentant. Possessive.

  It’s pleasure and pain all at once.

  And me? I’ve seen him twice since our first night together and I can’t help but want him more after each time. I crave the way he numbs everything with his hard, gorgeous cock. I crave the way his hands worship me after they’ve punished me. And his tongue …

  God have mercy on my vagina.

  My cheeks burn just thinking about him. I should be ashamed by how much I like being used by him, but I’m no hypocrite. I love it. And the fact that our feelings aren’t involved makes it that much sweeter. Who doesn’t like a fast, angry fuck without the obligatory niceties? And let’s not forget about the expensive and frivolous gifts he leaves on the nightstand table waiting for me after a night spent on my back.

  Or knees.

  “I’m almost done!” I shout, hoping that Lawrence hears me. I was supposed to meet him in his Park Avenue townhouse an hour ago, but he got stuck in a meeting that ran longer than expected, making him late. Since he was already in Midtown for business, he decided to pick me up on his way home.

  When he first walked in, I wanted to laugh out loud. It was quite difficult to watch such a masculine and rugged looking man being surrounded by all my frilly things. He looked like a fish out of water. I smile, shaking my head and dismissing the memory.

  Where the hell are my shoes?

  After I locate my crystal-encrusted pumps under an old Louie bag I haven’t used in ages, I put them on. I grab a clutch that matches my shoes, and fill it with cash, I.D., lip-gloss and keys.

  “I’m ready,” I say, walking out of my bedroom. I hope he likes the simple, but very sexy little black dress I’m wearing. It clings to my curves seductively, showing off my legs and hourglass figure without being too slutty or screaming that I’m looking to get laid.

  His head is down and I watch him as he types away on his—

  “Oh my God. Is that a Blackberry? I had no idea people still used those ancient things,” I say, incredulity ringing in my voice.

  He stops typing and looks up at the same time. “Yes, Blaire. People still use the—”

  He stops talking, an arrested expression on his face, the moment his eyes land on me. “Them.” I walk toward him, pleased by how affected he seems. A small smile plays on my lips as I watch the way his eyes darken with desire. I watch him hungrily roam my face, breasts, hips, every single part of my body without any shame. The obvious admiration written in his every feature makes me feel wicked. Daring. Playful. Makes me feel like teasing the man who looks like an orgasm on legs.

  By the time I make it to the couch, he’s already standing. “What do you think? Do you like it?” I ask as I begin to twirl painfully slow. I want him to admire and crave every slope and curve of my body.

  He surprises me when he forcefully grabs me by the waist and pulls me close to him until our chests are touching. Even in my six-inch heels he towers over me, and I have to tilt my head back to be able to look him in the eye. Lust instantly thickens the air around us, making it harder to breathe. I run a hand through my hair, feeling nervous for the first time tonight. Lawrence leans down, grabs my face roughly between his hands and says, “Insolent girl. I’ll show you how much I like it when you’re in my bed.”

  The images of him filling my body in every possible way swim in my head, my every thought drowning in desire. “Sounds like that could be dangerous, Lawrence,” I tease.

  He laughs, and the sound is rich and throaty and so very delicious. “The best things in life always are. But I get the feeling that you like dangerous.”

  I’m about to answer when he speaks once more.

  “Do you really want to keep talking?”

  I shake my head.

  “Good because I’ve wanted to do this since I first walked in.”

  “What’s that?” I murmur against his mouth, our breaths mingling together.

  “This,” he says before his lips land on mine.

  His kiss is like dark chocolate, bitter and laced with sweetness—an aphrodisiac. It’s darkness and light all at once. His kiss doesn’t ask. It takes. It demands total surrender, and I give it to him. I give him everything, whatever he wants. And I’m lost to it all. I’m lost to his tongue, to his lips, to his teeth that bite and feel like they draw blood. It hurts. It’s paradise. It makes my knees go weak. And it erases the memory of every kiss before him …

  Except one.

  When he pulls away, looking satisfied, I whisper breathlessly against his mouth, “You’re right.”

  “Sweetheart, I’m always right. But what do you mean?”

  “I like dangerous.” I grab the back of his head and pull him in for another kiss.

  When we step out of my building, cool air caresses our skin. I turn to look at Lawrence, only to find him watching me with those striking green eyes of his. “What are you thinking about?” I smile.

  Without breaking eye contact, he leans down, kisses the tip of my shoulder, and whispers in my ear, “Fucking you.”

  My pulse picks up and my body buzzes with excitement as a hot blush covers my cheeks. I can still feel the smile on my lips when I spot the familiar black Rolls Royce parked outside my building. Expecting to see Tony, my gaze immediately goes to the man wearing an old-looking black suit I’ve seen before standing by the open passenger door, waiting for us.

  When our eyes connect, shock hits me hard in the face, robbing me of the power to move. For a moment, I’m stunned. Speechless. I blink a couple of times to make sure that my eyes are not mistaken and that I’m not imagining things.

  Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuckity fuck fuck.

  Watching me with eyes that could potentially destroy me is the last man I hoped to ever see—the only man who ever made me want more.

  Ronan.

  To be continued …

  I WANT TO THANK MY HUSBAND and family for loving me and supporting me through it all. I love you more than words can ever describe.

  Next I would like to thank each and every single person that helped me in creating Easy Virtue—my very special group of BETA readers. Without your help and feedback this book would have never been completed. Amy, Mint, Luna, Bridget, Ana Rita, Rosalinda, Melissa S., Megan, Chelsea, Katherine, Melissa E, Jennifer, Deana, Trisha—EV wouldn’t be what it is without you! I love you, girls.

  Luna, I want to thank you so much for helping me out with all the teasers. You’re truly talented and such a giving, beautiful person. Thank you! <3

  Jennifer, my beautiful and talented editor, thank you so much for being there for me and for dealing with my crazy. I wrote Easy Virtue, but it was your work and magic that made it readable and enjoyable. THANK YOU.

  Ryn, I want to thank you for perfecting EV with your proofreading services. It was a pleasure working with you! I hope we can do it again.

  Kassi, thank you so much for making EV pretty and for answering all my questions. You were always there for me when I had a question with regards to the formatting, and, as always, your work is exceptional and reliable.

  Regina, the cover you created for EV took my breath away—It’s perfect. Your unbelievable talent humbles me and I can’t wait to see what you come up next with my next cover. Also, thank you so much for working tirelessly on this cover. I know it took us a while to get there, but it’s perfection.

  Kelley and Ashley, thank YOU!!!

  BIG, BIG SHOUT OUT to my girls in the ARSEN Discussion and Spoiler group. You guys have made that place something really special. Here is to hoping EV gives us as many hours of discussion as Arsen did. MAD LOVE TO YOU ALL!

  I want to give a special shout out to all the bloggers and individuals that helped spread the word. No one would know about my novel if it weren’t for your help. I would be nothing without your help. Thank you for believing in me (again) and in EASY VIRTUE.

  Also, special thanks to The Rock Stars of Romance for organizing
a kick-ass cover reveal and blog tour. Lisa and Milasy, you lovely ladies are so wonderful to work with. Also, thank you to Natasha from Natasha is a Book Junkie for answering all my questions and for your help! Amy, Trish, Jennifer, and Jesey from Schmexy Girl Book Blog, thank you so much for your support! Big thank you to Angie from Angie’s Dreamy Reads, Christine from Shh Mom’s Reading, Sharon, Jenny and Gitte from Totally Booked, Yamara, Bethany from HEA Bookshelf, Dawn from Up all Night, Kathy from Love Words and Books, and Sophie from Bridger Bitches Book Blog.

  To FYW, thank you for all your help! Liquidate that! ;)

  Thank you to all my family and friends for putting up with me and for always being there for me. I know I’m forgetting someone and if I do know that I’m truly sorry. I love all the encouraging words, the lovely words from every single person that has stopped by my page and said hello. I love every single one of you.

  This book would not be anything without the support and love from all of you. Thank you so, so much.

  Kaleidoscope Hearts

  by Claire Contreras

  Prologue

  The first boy I fell in love with used to regale me with stories about kings and queens and war and peace, and how he hoped to one day be somebody’s knight in shining armor. I lived vicariously through his late night adventures, watching the way he swung his hands animatedly as he told his stories and loving the way his green eyes twinkled when I laughed at his jokes.

  He taught me what it feels like to be touched and thoroughly kissed. Later, he taught me the level of pain one feels at the loss of someone you’ve grown attached to. The one thing he forgot to teach me was how to deal with the pain that squeezed my chest after he broke the ghost of what heart I had left. I’d always wondered if it had been a missed lesson. Now I wonder if maybe he’d been trying to figure it out for himself, or if he just never felt anything at all.

  Chapter One

  They say the best way to move on is to let go. As if letting go is the easy part. As if trying to dim or erase three years of memories, good and bad, is something you can do in one day. For me, it’ll be one year in a couple of weeks, and the memory of him is as potent as if he was still here. His San Francisco Giants sandals are still in front of the sink, right where he left them. The smell of him still lingers on some of his shirts—the ones I still haven’t gotten around to wearing to bed. His presence is powerful even in his absence. I leave the sandals where they are because I can’t bear to put them away, I continue to walk around the house making sure everything else is in its place. I’m in the kitchen taping up the last of the boxes, when I hear the jingle of keys followed by heels on the hardwood. Another sound I’ll miss, I’m sure, once I leave this place.

  “Estelle?” she calls out in her soft melodic voice.

  “The kitchen,” I shout out, wiping my hands over my jeans as I make my way to her.

  “Hey. You got a lot done last night,” she says, smiling sadly, her eyes glistening as she looks around the nearly empty space. She has the same wild curly hair and expressive caramel eyes her son had. Seeing her makes my heart hurt all over again.

  I shrug, bite the inside of my cheek, and blink quickly so that I won’t cry. Anything not to cry. When Felicia pulls me into her arms, I let out a slow breath and try not to completely lose it. I try to be strong for her and Phillip. Wyatt was their only child and, as hard as his loss is on me, I can only imagine the emptiness they must feel. We usually don’t cry when we get together—not even when she comes over like this—but selling this place is more than just saying goodbye to a house. It’s leaving Christmas mornings and Thanksgiving dinners behind. It’s saying, “Wyatt, we love you, but life goes on.” And it does, which is one of the reasons I feel guilty. Life goes on, but why does it have to go on without him?

  “It’s going to be fine,” I say pulling away from her and wiping my wet cheeks.

  “It is. It is. Wyatt wouldn’t want us to break down over a house.”

  “No, he would definitely think we’re dumb for mourning a structure,” I say with a small laugh. If it were up to Wyatt, people would live in tents and bathe in rainwater. I loved that about him.

  “Yeah, and he would have cut the electricity on this place two months ago since you’ve been eating takeout anyway,” she adds.

  We shake our heads, new tears forming as our laughter dies and the silence weighs down on us.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to stay with us?” she asks, as we walk from room to room, making sure nothing is left behind.

  “No, Victor would be highly offended if I didn’t take him up on his offer. He would probably start bringing up my not wanting to go to the same college as him, not liking the same football team, and the fact that I never paid up and did his laundry for a year that time in high school. I think that’s why he’s so eager to have me move in with him, actually.”

  Felicia’s shoulders shake as she laughs. “Well, tell him I said hello and invite him to dinner with us on Sunday! We’d love to have him over.”

  “Sure,” I say, my smile disappearing as my eyes meet the sandals on the floor.

  “You want me to take those or do you want to keep them?”

  “I…” I take a breath. “Can I keep them?”

  I feel kind of bad because I’m already keeping all of Wyatt’s T-shirts, and it’s not like the sandals fit me—they’re like five sizes too big for my feet—but they’re his favorite. Were. They were his favorite. That’s something my therapist is having me work on, speaking of Wyatt in the past tense. I still cringe when I do it, but I’m getting better. For a while, I was living this false reality where Wyatt was away on a business trip or something. He loved to travel alone and let the different cultures inspire his paintings. After a month I started accepting that he wasn’t coming back. After three, at the request of my therapist, I started putting his things in boxes so that I wouldn’t have the constant reminder.

  Putting them away didn’t do much. The house was a reminder, and our art studio couldn’t be packed up either. It was something I had to learn to live with… being without him. After six months, I was able to walk in and out of both places without having my heart squeeze in my chest every time. And now, well now, a year later, I think I’m ready to move on from it. If Wyatt’s sudden death taught me something, it was that life is short, and we need to live it to the fullest. It’s something I understand now, but still struggle to follow through with.

  “Honey, everything he left behind is yours, you know that,” Felicia says. Her words bring a new wave of tears that I don’t even realize are cascading down my face until I taste the salt on my lips. I try to thank her, but the words are stuck in my mouth.

  We hug, and I promise to see her on Sunday before looking around one last time. I call my friend Mia and fill her in on everything as I drive to my brother’s house.

  “Are we still going out tomorrow night?” she asks before we hang up.

  “As long as we stick to one bar, I’ll go. I’m not in the mood for bar hopping and doing the college girl thing you like to do.”

  Mia never shed her wild side persona when we graduated and started living our “grown up lives.” As much as I love to hang out with her, the whole replenishing my liver with an insane amount of water after drowning it in alcohol the night before isn’t something I can do every week, like she does.

  “Okay, no bar hopping. I have a brunch date on Saturday morning anyway and can’t afford to look like crap, so we’ll take it easy.”

  “A date with whom?” I ask with a frown, as I push the little button on the control for the garage to my brother’s apartment building.

  “Blind date. His name is Todd; he’s a curator at The Pelican. Maria seems to think we’d be perrrfect together,” she says, rolling her R’s exaggeratedly to imitate her Italian author friend.

  “Hmm… I don’t think I’ve heard of a Todd,” I say.

  Mia and I have known each other for as long as I can remember. Our mothers were best friends
growing up, and married men who were also best friends. Much to our mothers’ dismay, we realized early on that history wouldn’t repeat itself when Mia kept going for the bad boys, while I stuck to the quiet types. We both went to USC. Mia wanted to become a curator, and I wanted to be a psychologist. Early on, we both switched our majors to art. She found her love for photography, and I found mine for painting. Mia has a popular photography studio, and I went on to open Paint it Back, a studio slash gallery. It was Wyatt’s dream, sprinkled with some of my visions.

  “Damn. I was hoping you had. Todd Stern?” she says, a hopeful note on her voice.

  “Nope. Rob doesn’t know him?”

  “I’m not going to ask Rob!”

  “Well, I’ve never heard of the guy.”

  “Anyway, Maria says he just moved here from San Francisco, so I guess that’s why. Shit. Stefano is here for his shoot. Let me know if you need me to come by Vic’s later. Love you!”

  She hangs up in the midst of my goodbye, so I put my phone away and pick up my keys from the cup holder. Taking a long breath, I run my hands over my face and pull down the mirror to make sure my mascara isn’t running. I run my hands through my wavy brown hair and decide not to bother trying to tame it, so I pick it up into a ponytail instead. Finally, I grab the carry-on bag from the backseat and walk up the path to the house. The only sound is that of the gravel crunching below my flats and the waves from the beach just steps away. Even though it’s my brother’s house, anticipation buzzes through me. Being three years apart, we’ve always been pretty close, but we haven’t lived together since we were at home with our parents, so this is new.

  I crouch down and flip the welcome mat to get the spare key out and open the door. As I walk through the large living room, I call out his name, but get no response. I walk past it, through the kitchen, and head up the stairs toward one of the spare bedrooms. It’s a three-bedroom house, and the two spare rooms are on the second floor. Vic says he uses the master bedroom on the first floor because it’s the biggest one, but I have a feeling his laziness and the fact that the kitchen is adjacent has a lot to do with it. When I step into the room, I’m taken aback by what I see. Not only did he make my bed with the new sheets I bought, but he painted my room a soft shade of gray. Dorian Gray, I think to myself, smiling.