"Don't do this."
"Don't do what? Be happy?"
"I can make you happy." I walk up closer to her. "I will spend my life making sure of it."
"I'm leaving. It's done."
I vigorously rub my hand up and down my face. This being a better man shit is hard. I'm desperately looking for the right words. Words that will make her see.
"Nothing is done. You are right here. Standing in front of me, and I'm telling you that I love you. That I will keep loving you. That I will become the better man that you deserve. The man your father became for your mother. We will have that kind of love."
Heavy tears start to fall from Ariana's eyes.
I walk just a bit closer to her.
I wipe one of her tears with my thumb then lick it off.
"I will swallow all of your tears if you let me, baby."
"You've never talked this much in your entire life."
"I'm an eloquent motherfucker when I want to be."
I move in closer.
Dwarfing her sweet curves with my body.
"Don't leave me, Ariana."
I slide one of my hands against the side of her face and into her hair. Pulling it gently, so her head can naturally tilt back and her eyes can fall into mine.
"Stone."
"I love you."
"I don't love you," she whispers.
"You're lying."
“You told me that you’d never hurt me. You lied. I hate you."
"I can fuck all that hate right out of you."
She starts to pull away. Maybe I should talk about fucking later. Too soon, dummy.
"I will die for you!" I blurt out. Desperate for her to understand that this shit serious. That I’m serious as a heart attack.
Her arms slowly encircle my waist.
"I don't want you to die."
“So you want me to live?"
"Yes."
"Then never talk about leaving me again."
I'm not sure when they left, but I notice that Nate and Bucky have disappeared. That can't be good, but it doesn't matter right now. I have to talk some sense into my girl. I think I'm breaking through.
"Everything is a mess."
She falls into my arms.
"Life is complicated," I say in her ear. "But I've learned a big lesson since I've met you. Someone once told me that things are not always black and white. That life is full of grays. Your father is not the villain and neither is Bucky. Well not totally anyway. We will work it out."
"But Silas–"
"Is not going to kill me. I know that finally for the first time today. If he was going to do it, he would have done it by now."
She squeezes me tighter.
It feels like home.
"I missed you, Stone."
"Not as much as I missed you. I've been lost without you. You're my north star, baby. Without you I'm totally adrift."
She reaches up and pulls my head down to hers.
Our foreheads meet.
Then I move in for a kiss.
Sliding my tongue home where it belongs. Home. Inside of her masterful mouth. When we break for a breath, she giggles.
"You've been reading some of my books, haven't you?"
"Uh-uh," I lie. "I don't read."
"The hell you don't. When I threw you out of the house, I think you stole some of my books. That line is from a novel I read about three months ago."
"Could be." I feign ignorance.
"You don't have to borrow other people's words, Stone. You talk to me in all the ways that matter. Better than any character in my romances ever could."
"Then let me take you somewhere where I can talk to you in every way that fucking matters. I've got a lot to say to you, baby.”
* * *
Thirty-Six
TINY
AUGUST
We stumble into Stone's small hotel room on 13th Street. The place we've been making love, and that place that he's been living in over the last few weeks.
I'll never understand it, but thanks to his new relationship with crazy ass Jake and The Chosen Riders, he's been able to earn money repairing and restoring many of their bikes. In fact, they've worked out a deal where he is on the club payroll and can use one of their safe house addresses to show his parole officer.
He said that he will never return to the shop, even though I told him how my father ended up giving Silas the money to settle Stone’s debt. It wasn't close to seven million dollars, but it was a substantial amount. Enough to send him on his way and leave us alone. But like Stone said, maybe it was never about the money. Maybe he just wanted to rattle my father's cage. If that’s the case, he certainly succeeded.
I laugh when I trip and fall over a pair of Stone's size thirteen work boots. He hikes up my skirt and lifts me up on the slick wooden desk in the room.
"Guess what I got," I say as he pretty much yanks off my top and rips open my bra.
"A good pussy."
"No...guess again."
"Spread your legs," he growls.
"The City of Philadelphia sent me a check for five thousand dollars."
"For what?"
He slides my butt forward and slides one of his beefy fingers inside of me.
"The partial strip search the police officers did when they arrested me was illegal. I was automatically included in a class action suit someone filed and that was the payout!"
"Nice."
He slides another finger inside of me, probably because he thinks I'm talking too much. That one does the trick. I shut up and start clawing at his shoulders.
"Did they search you like this, baby?"
"No," I groan in ecstasy.
He lifts me off the desk, turns me over, and hikes up my skirt even farther.
"Hold onto the desk."
"The lamp is in–"
He slides everything that was on the desk onto the floor. It all falls to the carpeted floor with a muted thud. Then he smacks one of my ass cheeks.
"Spread your legs wider."
He lines himself up at my entrance and begins to push his way inside. This position is still very new for me, so I'm tight and tense, but the feeling of him hitting me from the back is starting to feel like my new favorite position.
Once we fall into a rhythm, he fucks me fast and hard.
We both come quickly.
Panting from the intensity of our orgasms.
He pulls out of me and carries me to the bed. He sits on the edge and pulls me on top, so that I am straddling him.
"I love you," he says matter of factly.
"I love you too."
I kiss his eyelids, then massage his freshly shorn head. This man makes me so happy.
"What are you going to do with all your extra cash?" he asks practically purring from the massage I'm giving him.
"It's gone."
"What did you spend it on already, greedy girl."
"Our new apartment."
"Our what?"
"I realize that I was suffocating myself. Making myself miserable. All I had to do was leave, so that's what I'm doing. I'll miss taking care of my father, and I'll miss Bottle too, but they will be fine. They have each other. Just like you and I have each other. I want us to live together. I mean...if that's what you want."
"You're going to need to get your money back, Ariana."
My stomach drops.
"What?"
I thought we were on the same page, but I guess we aren't. I try wiggling off of his lap, but he holds me in place by wrapping his thick, tattooed arms around me.
"Everything I'd been told about my birth family was a lie. Jack paid off workers at the agency to make sure that the truth stay buried.”
"Why?"
"I guess Jack didn't want me to go looking for my real family. He wanted me to think it was a lost cause. Like many adoptive parents, I think he was frightened.
“I was born out of inconvenience, not addiction and hopelessness. I have living, breathing family members,
and some of them have been looking for me."
"That's fantastic, Stone!"
"I didn't want to tell you until I met with them. Made sure that it was real. My father is dead, and I'm not sure who my mother is, but I know that I have two brothers. I like them, babe. And you should see them. I look just like them."
"Wow."
"They said that all the things that I'm good at are all the very attributes that will work well in the family business."
"They want you to work with them?"
"Yeah and I think I'm going to do it."
"So that's why you don't want to live with me?"
"Babe, they're fucking loaded. I'm going to be making three times what you do. I'm not trying to rain on your independent woman parade, but we're going to need a bigger place."
"Ohhhh."
"I can't wait for you to meet them."
"I can't believe that there's actually two other men in the world who look like you. What are their names? Are they big like you?”
"Camden and Cutter."
"King?" I almost sputter.
"Yeah, how'd you know that?"
"Oh, holy shit. I know them. Well I sort of know them. We have mutual friends. My friend Sloan is seeing your brother, Cutter. And yes...I can see the resemblance now.”
"Damn, what are the chances. Of course, I'm the better looking brother, right? I am the oldest."
He nuzzles his face in the crook of my neck.
"When they made you, honey, they broke the mold. Those boys are only cheap imitations."
"That, Ariana Carter, is the right answer and deserves a reward from your teacher. I'm going to fuck you right and proper in the shower, and then we'll pick up where we left off with Supernatural.
Season five, episode one.
♡♡♡
Have you read the other two novels in the King Brothers series? Check out Claimed By A King and Indebted To A King now to read about Stone’s new found brothers.
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Continue reading on for your bonus book: Gunslinger>>>
GUNSLINGER
Introduction
From international bestselling author, Lisa Lang Blakeney, comes a flirty and sexy STANDALONE sports romance.
I hate sports, and he is football royalty. I like quiet and predictable, but he's sex and swagger personified. I didn't particularly care for Saint Stevenson the first moment I laid eyes on him, but his warped brain seemed to process our initial meeting as foreplay.
I have a meticulous five year plan in place for myself and my career, but now this huge, cocky, self-absorbed quarterback who I've been assigned to at work is seriously f*cking it up.
He's the ultimate player on and off the field, and it doesn't make any sense that I'm falling hard and fast for the arrogant baller; but there doesn't seem to be anything about our love story that makes any sense at all.
Author's note: Gunslinger is a flirty, full-length, standalone novel. Due to strong language and some sexual content, this book is not intended for readers under the age of 18.
Gunslinger Defined
Gunslinger |ˈɡənˌsliNGər|
noun informal
Term for a quarterback who plays in an aggressive and decisive manner by throwing deep, risky passes. These quarterbacks usually possess the strong arm needed to throw deep effectively.
One
SABRINA
A foolish person doesn't always recognize when she's crossed paths with someone she is destined to meet...
I slide myself back into my seat at the dinner table and begin nervously playing around with my order of shrimp scampi, which was left for me while I was in the restroom. I'm fidgeting around, because I'm a little uncomfortable in such a romantic setting like this with my coworker Jason. The man who I've been pining over pathetically for years, yet there's nothing even remotely romantic going on between us.
He looks up briefly to acknowledge my return, but then mouths the word "sorry" and continues a very spirited conversation on his cell phone. One that he's been having, for I swear, the last fifteen minutes, and frankly I'm bored out of my mind.
While everything about this restaurant screams date night: the lighting is low, the tables are meticulously decorated with fine, modern details, and there are affectionate couples all around me. This has ended up being more of a working dinner (for him) rather than anything resembling a date. When am I ever going to learn to stop fantasizing that one day the two of us will fall in love and become the company's power couple? We work, and he definitely flirts, but nothing romantic happens past that. Like him asking me out on an actual date.
To pass the time I return a few emails on my phone, and soon become distracted when I notice a sudden shift in the energy of the restaurant. An energy which rises high above the low frequency buzz of casual dining in the room.
The faces of the waitstaff become more animated.
Their eyes enlarged.
Their whispers growing to the level of dense chatter.
I look around and notice what or rather who the cause is. A man has entered the restaurant, and he walks into the place with distinct purpose.
To be seen.
I try to look away and mind my own business, but like others around me, I can't help myself as I continue to track the man's movements.
I'm inexplicably drawn to him.
With confident strides he follows the hostess with complete bravado towards the bar in a pair of well-fitting jeans, a black tee, and a pair of aviator shades on. His outfit perfectly complimenting his muscular frame.
There are two other behemoths flanking both sides of him as if he's someone important. Someone in need of security. Although I'm not totally sure why he'd need them, because the man looks like he could probably knock them both out or anyone else who got in his path for that matter.
Being in the business that I am, and living in New York City, my first inclination is to assume that he's some sort of celebrity, but then I second-guess that theory. With my experience, I think I would recognize him if he was one, even though he's hiding himself behind his sunglasses.
The colossal stranger stops just short of a couple of feet from our table and speaks with the two men who are with him. All three of them start laughing, but the rumble of his laugh specifically echoes through my chest.
I quickly turn and stare back into my scampi. His proximity makes me feel uneasy. So uneasy that my heart begins rapidly beating inside of my chest, like a skittish small animal that recognizes when a predator is nearby.
I continue searching my bowl of scampi for shrimp, as if I'm digging for gold, but can still see the man's legs out of my peripheral vision. Denim clad, muscular, powerful legs.
I'm not sure how I know, but I can sense him watching me. Maybe because he's stood completely still for the last few seconds. Almost as if he's watching and waiting for me to look up at him. I know I shouldn't, but I go ahead and raise my eyes anyway. Just for a moment.
I don't know exactly what's going on behind those shades of his, but a slow almost disquieting grin spreads across his face, when he catches me looking. Then he starts walking.
He walks behind me with heavy, considerable strides and as he passes by, I swear that I can feel one of his fingers briefly skimming the back of my neck, close to my hair. The brazen nature of his act startles me, and my spine is on fire. It's as if he's branded me with just one slight touch.
My fork drops from my hand with a clank on the table in surprise as my heart continues to thump powerfully. I gingerly place my hand on my chest to calm myself. For a split second, I wonder if I'm having a panic attack until I realize how ridiculous that is. How ridiculous this whole thing is. I don't even know this man.
I look across the table at Jason wondering if he notices what's going on. Thinking that may
be I've screwed up the possibility of this whole evening by taking such obvious notice of another man. I mean the whole point of me being here is to hopefully have Jason see me as more than just the "girl at work," but as usual, he's still in the middle of a heated discussion on his phone, completely unaware of anything going on around us. So that's why I decide that it might be okay if I turn my head for a moment to catch a glimpse of the intoxicating stranger one more time, and I'm amazed at the sight of him when I do.
He's magnificent. Even from the back.
And everyone in here knows it.
Including him.
Women who are sitting with each other or are with their significant others are all gawking at him. Repositioning themselves. Poking out their chests and sucking in their stomachs. Men who evidently seem to recognize his face are giving him respectful head nods. Even the hostess seems to have an extra hitch in her step knowing that this majestic beast is watching her walk from behind.
Who the heck is this guy?
"How's your scampi?"
Yikes. I didn't even notice that Jason's call was finally over.
"Oh," I fumble over my words. "Umm, it's okay."
"Just okay? You don't like it?"
"Well they were a little skimpy on the shrimp."
"I can order you something else," he offers apologetically.
"No, I better get going. I have some work to finish at home."
"Crap, I'm sorry, Sabrina. I wasn't much company tonight was I? I've been a little distracted for the past few days with a new account, which is already a pain in my ass. That's what that call was about."
Jason is always distracted with work. It's really nothing new, but it's also why he's such a great business manager. The best one at the company in my opinion. He's always going above and beyond for his clients.
"Anyone I know?"
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