Dangerous Desires

by Tia Siren

  But the ruthless, sexy killer has a few tricks up his sleeves, pulling Kendra into a game she simply can't figure out. Is he the only one to protect her? Is this just a game of cat and mouse, or is there more to Marco than meets the eye?

  Forbidden Games by JB Duvane

  When the games you play involve lies and manipulation, the consequences can be more horrifying that you can imagine. Sometimes the only way out is to give in to your forbidden desires.

  Evan

  Zoe is like family to me.

  I've practically raised her ever since her dad checked out with his gambling addiction.

  Now he's dead, but still owes millions to some gangsters,

  and they want to take Zoe as a payoff.

  Then they plan on selling her off to recoup their losses.

  She doesn't know anything about this deal.

  I can't bear to tell her what her dad has done.

  I've tried everything to pay them what they say they're owed.

  But they're still after both of us and time is running out.

  I'm terrified these men will catch up with her and I'll never see her again.

  But more than that, I'm terrified of the feelings I have for her.

  Of what might happen between the two us if she stays with me.

  Zoe

  I hate Evan.

  He's always trying to run my life.

  He humiliated me, practically dragging me off the street in front of my friends.

  And now he's telling me I have to get on a plane and go with him.

  But he won't tell me where.

  He won't even tell me why.

  I'm an adult now and I'm not going to let him treat me like this.

  The only problem is …

  If I hate him so much, why can't I stop thinking about him?

  As I'm crawling out a window, making my escape from him …

  Why am I so sad?

  And why do I want so badly to feel his arms around me and his lips on mine?

  Evan and Zoe both know there are rules about falling in love.

  Unfortunately, their hearts don't want to play by the rules.

  Illicit Temptation by Alexis Angel

  She came to take down a notorious billionaire.

  She ended up stealing something much more precious.

  My heart.

  She was bought. Or so she lets everyone think.

  But I know better.

  I know behind those beautiful eyes is a plan.

  I know that she’s looking. Searching.

  Hoping to find something that can be used for scandal.

  Well, let her look.

  I’ll even help her.

  She’ll be enamored with what she gets her hands on.

  Me.

  Tempted by Violet Paige

  That bastard will pay.

  Abi was always the one.

  But life pulled us apart and I was ever the same.

  I made my billions from a distance, putting the past behind me.

  Until someone tried to kill her.

  The memories came rushing back.

  Distance didn’t matter anymore.

  I swore I’d always protect her.

  So I will.

  This is my second chance.

  Because Abi will be mine.

  Whirlwind by Alyse Zaftig

  I didn’t ask to witness my truck being stolen, but somehow I got tangled up in some kind of territory feud between drug cartels. Then I was stolen by one of the drug lords…

  Copyright © 2017 by the respective authors.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Paperback ISBN: 978-1-63481-069-2

  Created with Vellum

  Sleeping with the Enemy

  Tia Siren

  1

  Leo

  “One shot or two?”

  “Let’s go three. I’ve never been a two-pump kinda man.”

  The coffee shop I frequented before work had a great staff. Their coffee was always incredible, and the employees seemed genuinely happy, but this girl with the amazing rack was new. Maybe she was picking up a shift or maybe she had just been hired, but she had these thick lips I’d love to see wrapped around my cock.

  “So, three pumps it is.” She winked.

  God, she was shamelessly flirting, too. She turned around, and I couldn’t help but stare at the luscious ass she had stacked behind her body. Tits to die for, an ass that would easy spill out of my hands, and lips that would swallow my cock whole. She was perfect in all the ways I wanted a woman to be, but I didn’t wanna fuck with my coffee shop. I mean, in the grand scheme of things, I usually had models and shit on my arm. She was nowhere near that type of status, but I had a feeling she’d be a hell of a romp in the sack just once.

  Only once, though. I didn’t wanna ruin my morning commute by having to find another decent coffee shop around Miami.

  “So, what do you do for work?”

  “I’m the CEO of a tech company,” I said.

  “Oh, wow! So you, like, make all the decisions and stuff.”

  “I do. I see what I want, and I take it.”

  Her eyes flickered up to mine, and I held her gaze so long, she burned herself on the espresso she was brewing. She yanked her hand back and brought the wound to her lips to suck, and dear god, the sound she made twitched my dick beneath my pants.

  “Want me to kiss it and make it better?” I smirked.

  “Oh, no, no. I’m all right,” she breathed. Someone else stepped in and finished making my coffee, ruining my little flirtation with the thick-breasted woman whose number I wanted, but when I got my coffee cup, a name that wasn’t mine and a number were scrawled onto it.

  “Madison?!” I called out.

  “Yes?”

  “Your service was wonderful. Definitely worthy of three pumps.” I winked.

  I hopped into my car and raced to work. It was a crucial day with the company, and I needed to show up with confidence strapped to my shoulders. We were testing a product on some company employees who had volunteered. If it worked and we could tweak it the way we needed to, it would single-handedly change the face of personal security.

  And make me a very rich man.

  My top-floor office was empty, and my assistant was away from her desk, probably already on the testing floor working her coordination magic. Where was everyone else? The sleek, modern design of my glass-top desk, sculpted furniture, and floor-to-ceiling windows seemed stark without the normal flurry of activity. I stepped back into the waiting area.

  “Obi!”

  “Leo!” The shout answered mine before Obi stepped out from his office across the lobby. “It’s about damn time. The fuck have you been?”

  “I’m only a few minutes late, right?” I glanced at the time on my smart watch. Half an hour late. “Yikes. All right, well, I’m here, aren’t I?”

  “I was about to come lookin’ for ya.”

  “No need for all that brute muscle. Just got into a conversation with a sexy, vibrant barista.” I smirked.

  “Big tits?”

  “And a nice ass.”

  “Ooooo-wee! You lucky dog.” Obi whistled.

  “Yep. And I scored, too.” I showed him the side of my cup, and he elbowed me in my ribs. Obi was my right-hand man. He was also a hell of a protector. Ex-military, paranoid as fuck, and always seemed to know when something was going wrong. A fucking child could sneeze and get his mother sick halfway across the world, and he’d know about it. The guy was a freak of nature and my best friend. I was lucky to have him as my go-to while I built this company. He was a stern-looking bastard, with a high fade haircut that pronounced the appearance of his scarred face, but I wasn’t sure how I’d ever function here without him.

&n
bsp; “Long as it wasn’t Mandy, I don’t give a shit who you mack on. Just try to get here on time for big days like this, all right?”

  “You don’t ever have to worry about any bullshit with Mandy.” I said.

  “Good. In that case, go for it. Jesus knows you need to get laid.”

  “I get laid just about every night.”

  “By a thick woman with hot curves whose pussy’s probably tighter than the suction of her lips on your dick?” he asked.

  “Good point.”

  We made our way to the tech floor of the company’s headquarters, and already there was a line of willing employees rounding every corner the floor had to offer. Our test product was a new chip implant microprogrammed to the individual who was wearing it, providing information like name, home address, emergency contacts, medical conditions, and prior medical history. My vision was to use it to help find missing people, but Obi was the one who suggested the medical side of it. He said it could be helpful for incapacitated accident victims needing treatment or for elderly or disabled people found wandering, disoriented, and confused.

  I told him I’d think about it, and the next day, I’d revamped the chip myself.

  “As you can see, today’s implantation day,” Obi began.

  “Wait, I thought today was test run day?”

  “No, Leo. Today’s implantation day. We’ll monitor them over the weekend, and then, they get officially put in the system on Monday and recorded for our first test run.”

  “Shit. Then why the fuck did I have to be here on time?”

  “Because it looks good when the head of the company is here to support the people he employs,” Obi said. “It’s your company, your product, and your idea to test it on employees and keep it all secret and shit. I still think we should use all the employees.”

  “No. It’s important the employees willingly participate,” I said.

  “If we gave them a good incentive, all of them would wanna participate,” he argued.

  “Well, today’s implantation day, right? Too late now.”

  Obi’s sighs always made me laugh. He stressed way too much about shit like this.

  “Seriously, I’m booking you a spa week for your birthday present. You’re wound way too tight.”

  “Leo, can you just slow the fuck down for a second?”

  “Come into my office, oh wise and muscly one.”

  We headed to the smaller working office I kept on the tech floor. I’d thought Obi and I were having a good morning, but when he slammed my office door behind him, I rolled my shoulders back and braced for the fight.

  “If you want people to buy into this, you need as many people doing the testing as you can. The more ethnicities and background types we can get, the more stable we can prove it to be.”

  “It’s a piece of technology, not a medical marvel,” I said, “and it’s important the employees be willing, Obi. I’m not forcing people who work in my company to insert some foreign piece of metal into their arm to be tracked for an entire week.”

  “But can’t you at least see where I’m coming from? If you can’t get a wide enough pool of people, others won’t take you seriously.”

  “There’s, what, sixty people lined up out there? How many more do we need?”

  “The last test run with anything remotely like this used four hundred people!” Obi roared.

  “Well, it’s too late now. Maybe we can convince them to do the trial for two months instead of one to offset the low number of peop—why the fuck didn’t you tell me this sooner?”

  “Because I thought you knew!”

  His frustration was rubbing off on me, and my blood pressure climbed a few notches. “Why the hell do you assume I know this stuff?”

  “Because you’re the fucking head of the company.”

  “Okay, okay, okay. Let’s just calm down, take a few deeps breaths,” I said. Obi’s face grew ruddier by the second, and I had the urge to laugh again. “You wanna sip of my coffee? It’s a hell of a good coffee.”

  “You know I don’t drink coffee, Leo,” Obi breathed.

  “Well, you should. Might help with your hypertension.”

  “I don’t have hypertension!”

  “Well, you sure are tense.” I said.

  “That’s not what hypertension is!”

  I brought my coffee to my lips and took a few deep swallows. This morning was not going at all how I planned, and it was clear—even through the frosted glass of my office door—employees were staring in, trying to figure out what the fuck was going on. Time to quit fooling around and solve shit.

  “Look, we have willing employees who are all right with testing the microchip without any incentive. Let’s go out there and see if they’re willing to test run the chip for two months instead of one, and we can give them an incentive to do so. The study you’re thinking of, how long did they test their software?”

  “Two weeks,” Obi murmured.

  “All right. We only have sixty people, but we have a hell of a diverse crowd out there, and we’ll be doing it for two months. Tell them the wellness checks and the doctor’s appointments will be billed to the company, and if they’re all right with extending it a week, they’ll get a fat Christmas bonus this year.”

  “Whatever, dude.”

  “I get it that you’re pissed because I’m not blindly doing what you think I should, but this is the best we’ve got, and it’s all we’ve got. I’m not fucking this up because you’re yelling this information at me last minute.”

  “You should’ve done this research on your own, dude.”

  “Well, we can’t do anything about it now.” Damn. I was tired of hearing him count the ways he thought I’d fallen short. Covering every base was impossible when I had product development on my plate along with running the company administration. “Can you just—?”

  I took a deep breath to settle my nerves.

  “Can you just go out there and tell them and gauge the reaction. If it’s positive, we’ll push for two months. If it’s negative, it’ll be one month, and maybe we can get another part of the company’s population to do another week-long run. I can delay the launch and the meetings if necessary.”

  “Fine.” Obi headed for the door.

  “Oh, and Obi?” I called after him.

  “Yeah?”

  “Talk them through the procedure and let me know when it starts. We know it’s painless, but they don’t know that yet. They’re gonna want someone standing there while it’s happening.”

  “Sure thing, boss.”

  This was supposed to be my breakout technology, the product to launch the company’s biggest success and make a positive impact on society. The last thing I needed was tripping at the gates because of piss-poor planning. It didn’t matter whether it was Obi or me with head up ass. This could make or break the financials this year, and I prayed—to heaven or hell—that Obi could get everyone on board.

  2

  Claire

  When my brother slammed the door, I knew something had gone wrong at work today. He’d told me about a special procedure some of the employees were undergoing for a product test, and I told him I wasn’t comfortable with him participating. It sounded like a glaring invasion of privacy. He’d agreed not to go through with it, but he wasn’t always the best at sticking up for himself.

  “Patrick?”

  “Yep.”

  I got up from my chair and walked into the kitchen, where he was slamming things around. Mugs banged onto the counter and cabinets flew open, and then, something in my gut sank to my toes when I saw the wide bandage on the side of his throat.

  “Patrick.” I leaned against the counter next to him. “What the hell is on your neck?”

  I’m not sure why I bothered asking when the answer was obvious. He dragged his hands through his hair, tousling the midnight strands and leaving a few sticking up in the back, and then, he faced me, mirroring my stance. If he hadn’t been male and born two years before me, we could hav
e been fraternal twins and had been approached more than once about modeling as a team.

  “Remember that damn procedure I told you about?” He didn’t wait for a response. “Well, apparently the company made the decision last-minute that all the employees were going to have the implants.”

  As if his anger were viral, I soaked it in—he was all the family I had, so it was kind of our thing. “They can’t do that! They can’t force you to participate in some bogus study.”

  “Yeah, well, they weren’t really forcing it, I guess. I mean, no one came up and pointed a gun at me and told me I had to do it. But, the owner’s right-hand guy—Obi—yeah, he made it seem like if we didn’t get the procedure done, we wouldn’t be working there much longer.”

  “That’s bullshit. They can’t threaten your job like that just because you won’t participate in a voluntary study.”

  “Well, they did. And now I’m stuck with this thing tracking my every fucking move for the next two months.”

  “Two months?”

  “Yeah, and apparently, some bonus check at Christmas is supposed to make up for it.” His mood had calmed a few notches. Maybe he felt like he could relax now that he’d gotten me good and pissed off about it.

  “That’s bullshit. You should leave the company. Tell them to kiss your ass and get that thing out of your arm. Can’t you call the Better Business Bureau or something?”

  “Jesus. Slow down. The truth is, I’ve kissed too much ass and worked too hard to get where I am in that company. I can’t just throw it away because of an implant.”

  “Well, is this Obi character and the owner of the company getting the implant, too?” I asked.

  “Probably not,” my brother murmured.

  “Then, what the fuck?”

  “Claire, take a breath. I just needed to let off some steam about it. It’s shitty and it sucks, but it’s only for two months. I get to keep my job and my benefits, and it sounds like we’ll have a nice Christmas this year.”