“Do you love me, Diana?”
Her mother lowered herself on her knees, head bowed. “I love you more than anything.”
A naked man came into view, and Jaike knew him. Jaike had heard people call him ‘Anthony’ or ‘Mr. Carras’. But to Jaike, he was simply “Uncle Tony”, someone who had been in their lives for as long as she could remember even though Diana had told Jaike he wasn’t her daddy. He was a nice man, someone who took the time to play with her and her dolls.
Uncle Tony caressed her mother’s bowed head in approval. “And you will do everything for me?”
“Yes, oh, yes.” Fervor made Diana trip all over her words .
“Anything?” He fondled Diana’s silk-covered breasts.
“Anything, Anthony.”
Jaike scurried to the edge of the cabinet when she heard the door squeak open. She pushed the dresses away to see who was coming in, and she cried silent tears when she saw another naked man walk in. Everything suddenly felt wrong and bad, like the time the doctor told her she had food poisoning. It was because she had eaten something rotten, and the scene before her felt like that. Ugly. Nasty. Rotten.
“Love us both, Diana.”
Diana swayed on her knees, but Uncle Tony didn’t reach out to help her. “W-what?”
“Love us both.” He grabbed Diana by the hair, and her mother cried out. “It’s a fucking order.”
Diana hadn’t a chance to answer. The two men were tearing her clothes away in seconds, and Jaike cried with her mother as Diana lied sandwiched between Anthony and the stranger, the rapturous expressions on their faces at odds with the agony in Diana’s eyes.
And when they were done, when they pulled out of their mother, their flesh flaccid, Anthony had asked Diana to crawl to them and kiss their feet. And she had.
Jaike leaned back, closing her eyes tiredly as the back of her head touched the wall. She only realized she had fallen asleep when she heard the metal doors of the rooftop opening.
A shirtless Derek came out, and his eyes found her before she could even think of moving. She waited for him to say hello, to smile teasingly like he always did, but Derek did none of those.
The morning light was behind him, and she had to shade her eyes just to see his face clearly. He was even more beautiful now, sexier too, with his tousled hair, blue-gray eyes still drowsy and stubble on his chin.
She wasn’t Diana Hepburn, and he wasn’t Anthony Carras, but oh God, what if they were worse?
“What’s wrong?” He didn’t even come close, and it made her want to cry. Why did Derek Christopoulos seem to know her better than she knew herself? How did he know when to give her space and when not to give her even a second to think?
“You’re scaring me, baby. What’s wrong?”
Everything, Jaike thought with an inner sob.
She was his now.
For better or for worse, she belonged to Derek, and she was so damn afraid of what that would mean for the rest of her life.
***
Dear Reader,
Thank you for reading Unwillingly Yours. This was previously titled Warning: Love Moderately (now the name of the series). The second half of Derek and Jaike’s story, Meant to Be Yours, will be out this month. If you don’t mind seeing Derek and Jaike in their happy-ever-after phase, you might want to read my other New Adult romance novel, Nick and Lilac (Top 250 bestseller on Amazon US and Top 200 bestseller on Amazon UK), which is set a few years after the timeline of this book.
As a bonus for those who have purchased this bundle, I’ve also included a never-been-read short story featuring Angelo Valencia.
I hope you enjoy it!
Temporarily His: A Short Story
Angelo Valencia knocked on the door thrice and waited for someone to respond. Rules of etiquette were as common to him as breathing, and only when more than a few seconds had passed did he try the knob.
“Jaike?” It was rare for his girlfriend not to be up and about at this time of the day. Unlike most women he knew, she was a delightfully early riser – more than that, the type to panic when she did not wake up at the exact second her alarm clock went off or when she was not at least ten minutes early for her classes.
Locking the main door behind him, he went straight for her bedroom door and knocked once again. As he waited for Jaike to respond, he let his eyes roam around her suite, noting how perfectly tidy it was. It said everything about the girl that everyone in their uni knew – the quiet bookish girl who was always smiling at his side, accepting his every word for truth, and never questioning him in any way.
Everything about the suite was universally appealing, like a room in a business hotel. There were no portraits or framed photographs on the walls or tables. The colors were all neutral – not one shade to indicate that the suite belonged to a beautiful girl who was so smart she could run mental circles around her professors – or at least she would if only she wasn’t so damn conscious about drawing attention to herself.
Nothing about the room – the nondescript leather sofa, the impersonal dining table set in the corner or the secondhand artworks hanging on the walls – none of them spoke about the real Jaike Hepburn – the one that even he himself didn’t know.
But that might change soon.
His time was up, and he had to make a decision now.
Knocking one last time on Jaike’s door, he waited a few more seconds before entering. It was unoccupied, but the bed was neatly made. Angelo heard water running inside Jaike’s bathroom. He did not have to close his eyes to easily imagine what she would look like naked, her skin glistening as water cascaded down on her. Jaike’s body was and wasn’t his, but today he would have—-
The sound of water was abruptly cut off but before Angelo could speak and let Jaike know he was inside her bedroom, she was already out of the bathroom, her slender body barely covered by the flimsiest of towels.
Her near-naked form rendered him speechless even as their equally stunned gazes met. She let out a little cry of dismay right after, spinning around. If it had been any other day but now, he would have let her leave, let her dress and hide her nakedness from him. But it was not any other day.
Today marked the third year of Angelo’s discovery of his uncle’s betrayal – the day he had found out that the man he had idolized for so long was not a man at all. It was the same day he realized he had a blood debt to pay – and he owed it to the beautiful girl standing before him now.
Before he knew what he was doing, Angelo had already caught hold of her, making Jaike turn around. “Sit,” he said in a soft but commanding tone that he knew Jaike would instinctively obey. It was how it was between them because it was how she liked it.
She was trembling as she let him guide her to the velvet stool. When his eyes took on her reflection on the dressing table’s oval-framed mirror, he saw her lovely cheeks on fire. In a second, Angelo knew it was because her towel was close to slipping free.
His gaze traveled down. He saw her hands clenched into fists – she would not do anything to stop it from falling unless he allowed her to do so. Again, that was how it always had been between them. Even without Jaike saying a word about it, one look into her eyes and Angelo knew she wanted him to take control of her life – within limits.
Limits that existed in her heart and which, no matter how hard he tried, he just couldn’t break.
Angelo’s gaze went back upwards, resting on the rise of fall of her breasts. The towel had inched down dangerously so, perhaps just an inch away from exposing her nipples. She had the most beautiful breasts, creamy and pert, not ridiculously large but not pathetically small either.
Arousal, sharp and painful, cut him to the quick and his own hand was shaking as he reached for the brush. He started brushing her hair, taking his damn sweet time with each stroke, luxuriating at the silky softness of her still-wet hair. The thick dark locks of her hair were unresisting, falling straight with every stroke of the brush, as obedient as its owner.
&nbs
p; If only her heart was just as obedient.
The thought had him freezing, his fingers tightening around her hair unconsciously, making her cry out.
Damn.
“I’m sorry,” he apologized hoarsely, releasing her hair immediately.
She looked up at him, her dark eyes questioning rather than accusing. “Is everything...okay?” Her voice was unsure – no longer confident and cheerful like it had been at the start, and he knew he was to blame for it.
He knelt down in front Jaike, his heart beating madly, his entirely body tense. Every living cell inside him throbbed, urging him to possess her and make Jaike his for eternity. If he asked for her virginity, he knew she would give it to him.
And dammit, he wanted to. For over fifteen damn months he had hungered for her body, had taken so many cold showers he had become numb to it. Didn’t matter if his dick was stuck in a tub of liquid ice now. If he was in Jaike’s presence, his dick would come alive, like a dog made mindless with starvation.
“Angelo?”
Damn it, he hated how pitiful she sounded now. He wanted to tell her that all the cruel things he had done in the past week – all of it had been for her. All of it had been meant to make it easier for her to forget and leave him...if she wanted to.
If...if...if after tonight she would forgive him, still want to be with him, then dammit he would never let her go after that.
But if she did leave him—-
Then that meant she had always been only temporarily his.
The word ‘temporary’ had Angelo sucking his breath. Just thinking about losing Jaike hurt and the magnitude of the pain the thought caused almost made him stop breathing. Why the hell had he fooled himself into thinking this would be forever?
Angelo felt her fingers touch his face, drifting over his cheek gently. “Angelo, you’ve been acting strange. Won’t you please tell me—-”
He did not let her finish, answering Jaike instead with a kiss. In all the time they had been together, his kisses had always been gentle and soft, Angelo doing his best to restrain his passion.
But now – dammit, just this once he wanted to let Jaike know that he was as hot-blooded...that his desire for her was just as fiery...
Dammit, he wanted Jaike to know that he could be her master the way she so secretly yearned another man to dominate her.
He didn’t give a damn if the whole world would think they had a twisted passion, didn’t give a shit if people would think they were too young to be this corrupt, didn’t give a fuck if people thought that what he wanted...what she wanted...what Derek Christopoulos wanted was taboo.
Dom. Sub. Master. Slave.
Those were just words.
People who didn’t feel the way they felt would never understand the burning need inside them to belong and own, to command and submit.
Jaike was frozen in his arms, her lips suddenly stilling under his. In a moment, he felt the reason why, the towel wrapped around her body slipping down completely, leaving her naked.
His hands moved and when he had cupped her breasts completely, she whimpered against his mouth. She wanted him now, her desire for him evident in the way her body softened and trembled against his.
He tweaked her nipples as he kissed her again, and she gasped against his mouth. It was his first time to touch this part of her body and his dick was getting stiffer and stiffer inside his pants. He broke the kiss, no longer able to resist the temptation of tasting her—-
“No.” It was the barest whisper, but he heard it just as he was about to taste her nipples.
Shit.
In a swift move, he had released Jaike, his back to her. “Get dressed,” he snapped just before stalking out of her bedroom. He managed not to slam the door behind him even though his control was near to breaking completely. He wanted to storm back in, wanted to let Jaike know that all the months they had been together he had been pretending to be a gentle lover when all along he was as fucking dominant as she could ever want him to be. He wanted to kiss her and let her know who he really was—-
Shit.
Who he really was...
Did he really want Jaike to know who he really was?
Wasn’t it better that she be left in the dark completely and that he just leave her to move on with the man she had always wanted to be with?
Angelo strolled to her study table at the corner. He knew exactly where everything was and in moments, he had been able to obtain a blank piece of paper and a pen.
My Jaike,
When you read this letter I have this feeling I am no longer the only man in your life. In fact, I am willing to bet that in your eyes I no longer exist. And that is the way it should be.
You see, there are things you do not know about me. I will tell you all of it now, and I know that there is a chance you will hate me after it. I will not blame you. I hate myself for it as well.
Let me start by telling you my real name. I am Angelo C. Valencia. My mother’s maiden name is Carras – the same family name of the man who has monstrously destroyed your mother’s life...and yours.
We share the same blood, but since I have learned of his unforgivable transgressions against your family I have done my best to prove to you that we do not have the same souls...
When he was done writing, he folded the letter carefully and slipped it between the pages of a thesaurus, its paperback covers worn with age and heavy use. He knew that sooner or later she would find it, with Jaike’s almost obsessive need for saying the right word. He smiled humorlessly at the thought, knowing that attitude of hers also stemmed from her desperate wish to hide the past from everyone.
He slipped out of her dorm room when he heard Jaike’s footsteps, and he stayed outside her front door as he heard her call his name.
Angelo?
Would he ever hear her again say his name so beautifully like that?
He heard her footsteps moving towards the front door and Angelo moved as well, disappearing into an elevator. Before the doors closed, Jaike was already out, managing to catch sight of him. Her eyes were confused, his were hooded.
She called him after that, but he didn’t answer it. And when she told him she would wait for him at the library, he stood her up. It was time to end their relationship – if it could ever be called that.
Day turned into night and his heart became heavier, his mood blacker. He typed a rudely short message to Jaike, telling her that he would not be able to call her even though he would give up his entire inheritance if it meant being able to soothe himself with his voice.
Money could be fucking earned again.
But Jaike’s affections—-
It was damn priceless, and if she didn’t love him back then there was a good chance she would not forgive him for it.
Angelo tried to lose himself in liquor, tried to forget the girl who had claimed him by moving on to another, one more beautiful and more generous with her body than Jaike ever was. Tomorrow, the news about his betrayal would spread. Tomorrow, Jaike would know—-
It took him a while to realize that someone was tapping him from behind, and another goddamn life-changing moment to realize that he was staring into the eyes of the girl he was destined to hurt...in order to set her free.
Her gaze asked him to explain, to make her stop hurting. Her gaze told him she would willingly swallow any excuse he gave her and God, he was so, so, so damn tempted to give her one.
But he did not.
She had only been temporarily his and it was time for both of them to accept that.
About the Author: Marian Tee
SIGN UP for my newsletter – goo.gl/bgD1vp - if you want to be the first to know about my newest releases AND get to enjoy FREE novellas as well as exclusive cover reveals and sneak peeks!
Marian Tee is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of steamy romantic comedies. She is Filipino-Chinese, has lived all her life in the Philippines, and is a frustrated mangaka. She is addicted to horror flicks, misses hip hop danci
ng, and loves all things Japanese.
Her holiday romance That One Time is now available.
Her next books, The Art of Loving a Greek Billionaire (Book 3) will be out December 2013 and Meant to Be Yours (Sequel to Unwillingly Yours, Book 1 in the Warning: Love Moderately series) in January 2014.
Website: mariantee.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/authormariantee
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