by JA Huss
“So say yes.”
“Yes.”
“No,” he says frowning a little. “I mean, really say yes.”
“Yes, Mr. Asher, I will marry you. That is what you meant, right?”
“That’s what I meant. I’m in more than like with you, Grace. I’m in love. I’m so fucking in love with you. I want you more than anything. I want to keep you forever and never let you go. I might want to make you have my babies and be my best friend, too.”
My shoulders relax. Like every bit of stress in my life evaporates in that instant as I listen to him. The fountains are still putting on their show behind him. The horns are honking on the Strip. And the wind is gently blowing my hair so it drags across my face.
He gently swipes a finger and catches my blowing hair and tucks it behind my ear. “Please mean it. Do you mean it?”
His shirt is open in the front, his bow tie, just a hanging bit of cloth around his collar now. I touch his stomach. His perfect stomach. “You’re built like a god, do you know that”
He cups my face with his hands. “Grace, I’m fucking dying here, sweets. Be my wife. I can’t leave here without you. I can’t. I’ve never wanted a woman so much in all my life. And I don’t want you just for sex, Grace. I want you for that and more. I want you for lying in bed naked on a Sunday afternoon. I want to cook dinners with you. I want to buy a puppy together and give him a ridiculous name, like Boris or Dave. Please, be mine, Grace.”
“Jesus Christ, Kinsella, you’re gonna give me a heart attack. I asked you if you’d marry me. Are you gonna say yes?”
I watch his eyes as they search mine, so filled with anxiety over my decision. “No,” I say softly.
His smile fades. “What?”
I shake my head. “I won’t marry you again, Vaughn. Because… because we don’t need a do-over.”
He drops his head to his chest and waits me out.
“I don’t want to marry you again, Vaughn. I remember that night now.”
He looks up quickly. “You do?”
“You said…”
“Grace, I know you’ve had a hard life. I know some of your secrets—” My panic must be evident, because he lays both palms flat against my cheeks and kisses me softly. “Not everything, princess. Not everything. But some.”
“I don’t want to talk about it. Not now. I only want to talk about happy things. But tomorrow, maybe. Just give me one happy night and I’ll tell you tomorrow. Be my prince, Vaughn. Be my prince and make me your princess and then I can deal with reality. But tonight, I just want the fairytale.”
“And then I called in Carl,” Vaughn says as he opens the Tiffany’s box and presents me with the rings. There’s three in there. One giant engagement ring, platinum. Easily a three-carat diamond, big, but not too big. And two platinum wedding bands. “They have inscriptions,” he says as he takes his out of the velvet cushion. “Read mine.”
He holds it out and I take it from him, tilting it in the light just so, until the writing becomes clear. “The Prince.” I laugh. And then I look him in the eye and slip it on his finger.
“Read yours now,” he sighs.
I take it and hold it under the light. “The Princess.” And then he holds up the engagement ring so we can read it together.
“The Fairytale.”
He slips the band on my finger, then adds the rock.
He kisses me, whispering in my mouth, “You’re mine.”
“I’m yours,” I say back.
“No do-overs for us?”
“Never. It was perfect the first time.”
END OF BOOK SHIT
I decided to write this novella series a little over three years ago. It started out as just a fun series – Filthy Tweeting Twitter Queen meets the Movie Star Object of her Dirty Desires while on vacation. It was just gonna be a sexy summer read and that’s it. But you guys know me by now, right? You know I don’t really do simple and while I do have some fun moments in most of the books, a whole book with nothing but funny? I don’t know if I have it in me. So over the course of the novellas the story started to evolve and take on a life of its own.
This is one of my favorite stories and it has a very slow build because it’s so long. Just a hair shy of 200,000 words for the entire set. I like the fact that I could take my time with it. I could build something long, and complicated, and real with these two characters. 200,000 words is a lot, as you can see by the locations/page numbers in this book you’re holding right now. It gave me an opportunity to concentrate on these two people, their pasts, their fears and dreams, and take it to a whole new level. I haven’t done another serial series since. Mostly because it’s so much work to release them at two-week intervals like I did with Social Media. And two weeks for me is the sweet spot to get people excited about the story, yet still willing to wait a little bit to get the next installment.
Writing a serial series means making a pact between the author and the reader. Me, the author, agrees to give you something worthwhile over a set period of time. Something that will hold your interest for the first two books, build your desire to keep going in books three and four, and then deliver the most amazing ending I can think up for books five and six.
And if I do that right, then you the reader reward me by continuing to read the story.
I kinda like this arrangement so I think I’m going to do another serial series in 2017. I’ll have a lot more to say about that in the coming months, but for now I want to touch on something else that is unique to Social Media.
The #Dick called Vaughn Asher.
I admit, I like to write dark characters. I don’t think Vaughn is all that dark, to be honest. He’s nothing like that guy Merc in Meet Me In The Dark. And he’s nothing like Bric in the Turning Series, either. Merc is a psycho. Very dark guy. But his story isn’t about submission. It’s about psychological conditioning—and not in the way you think, because what would be the fun in that? And while Bric’s story was about submission, it was nothing like Vaugh’s version, either. Bric is a dark motherfucker, for sure. And it was my job in that book to show you why he was dark and how he could get past it.
So even though Vaughn Asher isn’t a dark guy in this story, he is a #GenuineAsshole in the first two installments. I made him that way on purpose. You see, this is called a Character Arc in the book world. It’s the way in which you build your character as they progress through the story. Both Grace and Vaughn go through enormous changes as their relationship deepens. So even though Vaughn started out a self-absorbed dick and Grace started out more comfortable with her virtual self than her real self, they both end up dealing with their problems and emerging as completely new individuals.
That’s about all I can ask for in story when I finally write the end. Intense, logical character development.
So I hope you enjoyed this story. At one time, I had plans to write more in this world, and I still might. Never say never. But for now, I’m concentrating on continuing the Taking Turns world with a new spin-off series starting in January 2018—and the serial mentioned above, which should start releasing in late February or early March 2018.
The next book releasing is actually the Anarchy Found Audiobook. You can find that link on my website here.
And on September 19 the long-awaited FIVE book is releasing. It’s up for pre-order now, so if you’d like to have it automatically delivered to your device the minute it goes live, just click here to be taken to my website to choose your preferred store.
If you’d like to chat about this story I have a private spoiler group just for all the Filthy Blue Birds on Facebook. Just click the link to ask to join and one of us will add you when we see the request.
Thank you for reading, thank you for reviewing, and I’ll see you in the next book!
Julie
JA Huss
About the Author
JA Huss is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of more than thirty romances. She likes stories about family, loyalty, an
d extraordinary characters who struggle with basic human emotions while dealing with bigger than life problems. JA loves writing heroes who make you swoon, heroines who makes you jealous, and the perfect Happily Ever After ending.
You can read her writing craft and marketing articles at her website and chat with her on Facebook, and Twitter. If you're interested in getting your hands on an advanced release copy of her upcoming books, sneak peek teasers, or information on her upcoming personal appearances, you can join her newsletter list and get those details delivered right to your inbox.
JA Huss lives on a dirt road in Colorado thirty minutes from the nearest post office. So if she owes you a package from a giveaway, expect it to take forever. She has a small farm with two donkeys named Paris & Nicole, a ringneck parakeet named Bird, and a pack of dogs. She also has two grown children who have never read any of her books and do not plan on ever doing so. They do, however, plan on using her credit cards forever.
JA collects guns and likes to read science fiction and books that make her think. JA Huss used to write homeschool science textbooks under the name Simple Schooling and after publishing more than 200 of those, she ran out of shit to say. She started writing the I Am Just Junco science fiction series in 2012, but has since found the meaning of life writing erotic stories about antihero men that readers love to love.
JA has an undergraduate degree in equine science and fully planned on becoming a veterinarian until she heard what kind of hours they keep, so she decided to go to grad school and got a master’s degree in Forensic Toxicology. Before she was a full-time writer she was smelling hog farms for the state of Colorado.
Even though JA is known to be testy and somewhat of a bitch, she loves her #fans dearly and if you want to talk to her, join her Facebook fan group where she posts daily bullshit about bullshit.
If you think she’s kidding about this crazy autobiography, you don’t know her very well.
SEE ALL HER BOOKS HERE