Tangled: A New Adult Romance Boxed Set (12 Book Bundle of Billionaires, Bad Boys, and Royalty)

by Lakes, Krista

  Holy amazing fuck!

  In my dreams, I’m with Alex on the beach, and he is making love to me on the sands. Slowly. Languorously. Looking deep into my eyes like he’s savoring every thrust into me. He’s worshiping my body, if that’s possible . . . the temple that is me . . . and he is doing so adoringly, painstakingly, oh-so-sweetly –

  “Liz,” he whispers, “I lo—”

  Whatever he’s about to say is drowned out in a whirlwind that sweeps the sands onto our bodies. Or more precisely, into my bedroom.

  The bundle of kinetic energy jumps onto my bed.

  “Liz!” it shrieks. “You’ve got to see this.”

  I blearily open my eyes to see Deanna hovering in front of me.

  She pushes a newspaper page in front of me.

  “Read this,” she demands.

  “What is it?”

  “Just wake up and read it, OK? It’s important.”

  I drowsily get up from my pillow. My hair is tousled and I’m sure I look like a dog’s dinner. My eyes skim across the page, and then they widen.

  The headline says:

  MOLDOVIAN KING ANNOUNCES THE ENGAGEMENT OF HIS ELDEST SON, ALEXANDER, TO LADY TATIANA OF NUERNBERG TODAY.

  It’s like a brick wall has just been slammed onto my face.

  13

  I knew it was too good to be true. Such things just don’t happen to me. I mean – look at me. I’m not exactly Ms. Redheaded Goddess. Alex and I are like chalk and cheese, or limestone and marble, or whatever metaphor you want to call it.

  I don’t belong in his world and I never will.

  I knew something like this would happen, and there’s an awful ache in my chest that splinters everything inside it and nothing, and it goes on and on – like a dagger twisting into my soul for the longest time. So painful that it makes me want to throw back my head and keen in anger. I’m hollow and floating and anchored and despondent and a million other things I never want to feel.

  Oh, but I’ve been so foolish.

  Foolish!

  I was right about everything.

  Right about how a man like Alex would never want me for something more than a cheap evening of tawdry sex. (Even though there was nothing tawdry in what we did last night.) I have foolishly allowed myself to feel something for this man, and now I must pay the price.

  Oh yes. I acutely and deeply feel something for this man. There’s just something about him that is so magnetic and compelling that I have allowed myself to sink in deep – to believe that his beautiful shining eyes and his wonderfully parted lips (moaning my name in desire when he finally released himself into me) were more than mere lust.

  Of course, he has never once mentioned the word ‘love’.

  How can two people fall in love in three brief meetings? It’s impossible. At least to me.

  My cellphone rings. Listlessly, I glance at the flashing name.

  ALEX.

  No. I’m not getting that.

  At least he cares enough to call, my inner conscience tells me. But he obviously doesn’t care enough about me to tell me he was getting engaged.

  Fury ripples through me again.

  Damn him. Damn him to hell.

  The phone rings off. And then it starts up again – that stupid ringtone I have chosen.

  ALEX.

  In a fit of anger, I grab it and depress the OFF button on the side. There – the phone is now officially off. If I weren’t in such a cash-challenged state, I’d hurl it against the wall.

  I don’t know how long I must have lain on my bed, disheveled and miserable. Deanna has gone to art class, so there is no one to answer the door when the doorbell suddenly rings.

  Persistently. Insistently.

  When I don’t answer, a thumping starts up on the door, as if the person on the other side is trying to batter it down.

  “Liz, I know you’re in there. Let me in. I need to talk to you.”

  It’s ALEX.

  Great. The last person in the world I want to see.

  “Liz, please! Just talk to me.”

  I rouse myself from the bed. Go away, I will him.

  The thumping stops. There’s silence. A lump congeals in my throat. Has he gone away?

  (I don’t really want him to go away.) Then:

  “Liz.” His tone is simultaneously conciliatory and desperate. “I know you’re in there, and you can hear me. So please listen up.”

  I listen despite myself. I crouch at my bedroom door. I’m listening.

  “The engagement. It wasn’t my idea. It never was.”

  A cramp threatens to come into my legs, but I daren’t move just in case he hears me. I’m not ready to let him know I’m in here, though he probably does.

  “It’s some crazy complicated political shit and my father put me into it.” He takes a deep breath. “He’s probably not fully to blame, and my mother has a huge part of it. Like I said, it’s complicated and I won’t bore you right now with the details. But I never wanted any part of it. I don’t want to marry Tatiana, Liz. I never did. She’s nothing to me. Nothing.”

  The cramp comes full on in my toes. I have to bite my lip to keep from crying out. But I’m still listening. I’m desperately wanting everything he’s telling me to be true. He’s here, isn’t he? At my doorstep. At least he cares enough to tell me himself.

  That’s got to count for something, right?

  “I’m going to need to do something for myself.” He pauses. “I know you’re going to think it’s childish and fucked-up and irresponsible.”

  Yes, I probably will. But I’m piqued anyway.

  He goes on, “I’m going to be taking an extended trip. An anthropological trip to . . . well, some place far away. And I’d like you to come with me.”

  The silence that weighs in the apartment is deafening.

  “Liz?”

  No, seriously, I need time to digest this.

  This is huge.

  “I know you think I’m running away, Liz, but I want you to come with me. Please. I’m going to have to work this out . . . work out what I really want in my life. And I would really, really want you to come along because . . . ”

  Shakily, I get to my feet.

  I pad to the front door in my bare feet. I can feel him tensing behind it.

  “Liz?” He’s hopeful.

  I open the door.

  I must have looked a fright, with my tear-streaked face and my unruly hair. Oh yes, I had cried. I had shed tears over this man, and he’s standing before me – his hair disheveled and looking like he’s just tumbled out of bed himself, and he’s glorious and spectacularly beautiful. He wears a leather jacket over a tight T-shirt and jeans, and he resembles a bad biker boy from the other side of town. And he’s so carelessly marvelous that the flesh between my legs turns into a puddle and I’m a blabbering idiot again.

  He takes a step towards me and he’s very, very close. Close enough for me to imbibe his musky scent.

  “Liz,” he implores, his eyes bright and fevered, “would you come with me?”

  I swallow. This is huge. And grossly unfair. He can’t expect an answer straightway. This is a monumental decision and I would really need some time to think about it. I have responsibilities, damn it, even if he doesn’t!

  “You’re running away.” I state the obvious.

  “No. I’m leaving to work things out. Please.” He holds out his hand to me. In his eyes, there’s despair and . . . hope. “For once in your life, don’t overanalyze things. Just follow your gut.”

  Go with the wind. I have never been that sort of woman . . . until I met him. And now, I’m like a papyrus sheaf on the windswept delta of the Nile.

  He wants me.

  He wants me enough to ask me to go with him, and not Tatiana.

  Go with your gut.

  “Yes,” I find myself saying. And it’s true. Tears come into my eyes. I do really want to abandon caution and go with this beautiful, unpredictable, mercurial man. I may never get the chance to ag
ain.

  Oh help me.

  “Yes,” I say again.

  Yes. Goodbye to my college credits. Goodbye to my job. I can always come back to them anyway. I think.

  Yes.

  What am I doing?

  He smiles – a slow spreading grin that stretches his lips. Then he dips his head down and catches me hungrily on the lips.

  “Let’s go, baby. You won’t regret it.”

  I hope I’m not going to.

  Oh God.

  About the Author: Aphrodite Hunt

  Please visit her blog at http://aphroditehunt.blogspot.com/ for a full list of books and to sign up for her exciting mailing list. For a sign-up, you will get an erotic suspense novella completely FREE! Or go to this page for a direct sign up!

  Aphrodite Hunt is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author. Her stories have been in the Top 5 of the Amazon overall bestselling charts, the 10 of the Barnes and Nobles overall charts and the No. 1 spot in Amazon's Movers and Shakers. She is a Top 50 Amazon Most Popular author.

  She has had no less than 32 stories hit Amazon's Top 100 Erotica/New Adult/Paranormal Romance charts and two which have hit the Top 2. 17 of them have hit the Top 100 Barnes and Nobles bestseller charts.

  If you liked this story, you might also like:

  Forbidden Desire

  Now lovers in every sense, former hotel maid, Liz Turner, and billionaire crown prince, Alexander Vassar, are in Indonesia for a much needed break. Alex has to figure out how to tell his father that he doesn't to be trapped in a politically-arranged marriage with the beauteous Lady Tatiana.

  But when they receive an urgent call that says, "Come home now, your father has had a heart attack", Liz is hurled unprepared into a royal world where prejudices run high and the classes are clearly divided. Alex's mother, the Queen, and sister dislike her intensely. The European tabloids declare her a "gold-digger" and the cause for his father's ill health.

  Can Liz and Alex survive the sudden and unpleasant thrust into the limelight?

  STELLA & DANE by Deanna Roy

  1

  Water Tower Climb

  Fall 1984

  ––––––––

  STELLA should have known not to climb the water tower in plastic shoes.

  When her pink jelly slipped off the ladder, she managed to clutch one of the rungs. Her knee banged against the metal as she scrambled to hang on. Hell of a way to go, falling four stories to her death.

  Janine screamed below, and that really got Stella’s blood pumping. If she somehow managed not to die, her friend was going to get them both caught.

  Stella felt around with her foot and planted the flimsy shoe squarely on one of the bars. She hadn’t planned on scaling the tower in jellies, but the gorgeous fall day had inspired her to take a risk.

  “Please don’t yell,” she called down. “Old Lady Springer has been looking for a reason to call the sheriff on me for years.”

  From this height, Janine resembled a Rainbow Brite doll in a purple dress with yellow leg warmers. “Why are you so crazy?” she shouted.

  Stella twisted around to face out on the ladder, the soft shoes curling around the rung as she grasped the bar and leaned forward. The whole town could have looked up her miniskirt, if it hadn’t been so tight. “Only way to be in a town like this.”

  Janine covered her eyes. “Please don’t hang like that.”

  “I’ve done this drunk at midnight.”

  Her friend peeked between her fingers. “I know.”

  The sun blasted off the aluminum roof of the shed at the base of the tower. The morning fog had burned off, and she was late for work. But, walking along the block, Stella couldn’t resist the urge to climb the silver dome. After twenty-two years of living in its shadow, scaling it in the middle of the day was just about the only thing she’d never done. Seemed like something to check off her list before she left for good. Should’ve had Janine bring a camera. Get a shot of her underneath the giant black letters that read “Holly,” the town’s ridiculous name.

  Stella whipped back around on the ladder. Just one level to go until she reached the platform that encircled the massive water tank.

  “Hey! I’m going to get docked. My boss ain’t like yours.” Janine backed away from the base of the tower, crouching to duck through the section of the chain-link fence that had been cut decades ago by high school seniors seeking to spray-paint the side of the dome. Stella herself had added a blood-red “Seniors ’81” a few years back.

  Stella waved down at her and scurried up the last segment of the ladder. She reached the platform and pushed through the narrow opening, grasping the bar that served as an ineffectual rail. As far as she knew, nobody had ever fallen off the darn thing, and she wasn’t going to today. She wouldn’t get caught, either.

  Plenty of people had been up there before her. The entire circumference of the tower was defaced with “Mark loves Ellen” and hundreds of other couplings, many crossed out and amended. Stella had warned the boys never to put her name up there. That was a deal breaker, certain to seal the doom of her latest fling.

  But one had disobeyed, Carter something-or-other, a Montana boy who moved to Holly when his dad started working at the bank. He was full of himself and his shiny Camaro. He’d been after her, thinking he was doing something romantic by dragging an eight-foot ladder up the tower to inscribe “Carter & Stella” higher than any of the other graffiti.

  Stella followed the platform to the other side, facing downtown, where a huge black splotch covered his transgression. Being on the short side, she’d had to drag a TEN-foot ladder up the damn tower to get rid of it. And, after blotting out his mistake, she emptied the rest of the spray can on his little red hotrod. She had a temper, and she knew it. It caused her a world of grief.

  He’d known she had done it, but the small town was good at closing ranks to separate the born-and-bred from the newcomers. Carter’s dad didn’t want to make waves in the community, so her lawlessness had been ignored. They hadn’t stayed even a year in Holly.

  Standing on the tower in the daytime was a completely different experience from all the nighttime jaunts. Why hadn’t she done it before? She peeked down at Janine’s purple form hurrying along the block, heading to the grocery where she worked as a cashier. Janine stopped suddenly and pointed ahead of her without looking up. Stella followed her arm, puzzled, then saw the sheriff’s car cruising into view.

  A trespassing ticket would dip into the fund she’d put together to get the heck out of Holly. She needed that money, and she’d planned this escape for years.

  The sheriff’s car coasted along the broken pavement. Stella kept her back to the tower until the squad car passed, glad for the silver lamé shirt to help her blend in. Once he’d turned the corner onto Mulberry, she stepped away from the wall to look out on her soon-to-be ex-town.

  The school. The track. The athletic fields she’d never stepped foot on, not once.

  Houses filled a few blocks, then the highway snaked through town, the artery lined with what few shops attempted to make a profit. She’d worked at a few, even the convenience store for two weeks, until Old Man Jenkins took to showing up in an overcoat, barelegged in black socks and dress shoes. Her mama made her quit before her purity got stained. Ha.

  Stella could just make out the roof of her grandmother’s house, almost smack in the middle of town, a few streets off Main behind the courthouse. It had been empty for eight long months, other than those hours Stella visited, dusting Grandma Angie’s favorite things while Johnny Mathis crooned from the record player. She would call Grandma’s number at the nursing home from the pink rotary phone in the bedroom, although she rarely got an answer.

  Even though Stella didn’t like the facility, its smells and long corridors, Grandma was always out and about, painting sunflowers or making leather key chains. So it had to be good for her. No one would really explain to her why Grandma had made the move, especially since Branson was twenty miles a
way and Stella didn’t have a car.

  But Stella knew about the cancer, and sometimes she steamed open a hospital bill before her mother got to it, to see if she could glean any news from the payment information. She could tell that more chemo had been happening, but Grandma was a fighter.

  With Grandma Angie gone, Stella didn’t have much keeping her in Holly. Her sister, eight years older, had married off and split at the first opportunity. Her parents were no reason to stay and, in fact, her overbearing and always disapproving mother was every reason to go.

  The wind kicked up, and the temperature dropped a notch as clouds passed before the sun. The humidity was going to wilt her carefully sprayed bangs. Stella leaned way over the bar, spotting her shiny purse with its can of Aqua Net inside. She could repair later. Part of working at the perfume shop was your appearance. Beatrice always approved of makeup breaks.

  With her belly bent so far over the rail, she could do a somersault, just like on the monkey bars as a kid. And why not? She picked up her feet and rushed forward and down, her necklace hitting her nose, and the world whirled as she spun around the thin bar.

  She was a little too tall, so her calves smashed into the sheet metal. She lifted her feet to find the platform, lightheaded. Stella laughed out loud. Janine would have had a fit. The rush of it felt good, so she did it again, this time tucking her knees a little higher.

  The metal shifted against her stomach. Panic zipped through her as she realized the rail couldn’t quite hold her weight and had begun to bend. She lost momentum and hung with her head down. The town below was a blur of green and gray.

  God, she was going to die after all. Blood rushed to her face, her stomach hot and sick. Her hair brushed the platform, and anytime she moved, the bar bent even more.

  Stella hung on, eyes closed, trying to control her fear. She could hear her grandmother, when Stella had gotten stuck in a tree, saying, “Don’t let fear win, Stella. Beat it.”