Taking Beauty (Taking Beauty Trilogy Book 1)

by Wild, Nikki

  “Me? Well, for starters, I regret not coming after you on prom night. I saw your note to your dad. I knew where you went. I could have driven down to the bus station and found you… But I didn’t. I let myself get angry. I let you go, and I’ve regretted it ever since. Now I know why.”

  “I should have told you the truth,” I said. “I was scared, so I ran.”

  “I guess all three of us are good at running,” he winked.

  “I can’t believe you’re joking about all of this,” I said. He reached over and grabbed my hand, his warmth comforting me like a blanket.

  “What else can I do? All we’ve got is now, Maisey. We can’t change the past, so why spend time being angry about it? And, I don’t know if you noticed, but it needs to be said - you’ve given me the greatest gift of my life, the most important gift I could ever receive. I’m proud to be Maddy’s father, she’s a wonderful kid. You’ve done a great job of raising her, Maisey,” he said, my heart melting in my chest at his words. “You should be proud of that. And you did it all alone, Maise. That’s amazing.”

  “You’re amazing,” I said, smiling up at him. “I’m so lucky to have you in our lives, Jesse.”

  “I’m the lucky one,” he said, leaning over to kiss me. His lips were so gentle, so warm, so loving, so fucking perfect that tears began streaming down my face.

  “Why are you crying? You aren’t going to run away again, are you?”

  Laughter bubbled up from under my tears, and I shook my head.

  “No, Jesse, never again.”

  “Good. Cause if you try it again, I’m gonna have to tackle you.”

  Epilogue

  MAISEY - SEVEN MONTHS LATER

  “Oh, my God, I’m so excited, I’m gonna piss my pants!” Eddie cried, throwing his scarf over his shoulders.

  “Eddie!” I tried to scold him, but I couldn’t stop laughing. Maddy jumped up and down at my side, and the three of us stood huddled on the sidelines in what was easily the most exciting moment of all of our lives.

  Jesse had made it to the Superbowl and for the last several hours we’d been cheering them on as they played against Arizona in the Superdome in New Orleans. Jesse chartered a jet for the three of us and we’d been living it up in the Big Easy all weekend. The only sad part is that I didn’t get to spend much time with him over the last few days. He had to travel with the team and they were practicing and training every minute leading up to the game!

  We’d all spent the last two weeks counting the days till we stepped on that plane, and we’d had the time of our lives. I couldn’t remember ever being this happy, and it amazed me that my crazy life could lead to this even crazier moment.

  Jesse had been right about Maddy’s illness. The doctors had performed a bonafide miracle. Once she was properly diagnosed, they were able to schedule a surgery almost immediately. A month in the hospital and one little pill to take every day and her symptoms had disappeared completely. As she recovered, Maddy spent more and more time walking the hospital floors and getting to know the other girls who had come here for treatment under Jesse’s charitable program. She had a gentle grace about her, and it wasn’t long before she was friends with every patient and nurse in the building.

  Maybe she would go into medicine someday… Just like me… The world was her oyster and it was all thanks to Jesse.

  I’d spent years imagining what would happen if the truth came out, and I’d never imagined it turning out this wonderful. I counted my blessings every day of my life, and I did everything I could to make it up to both of them. Maddy had finally come around after a week or so, and once she realized that Jesse was here to stay, she saw it for the blessing that it was. We’d finally bonded together like a real family.

  And here we were as if we’d always been like this.

  I held my breath as the last play of the game unfolded before our eyes.

  We were down by three points but well out of field goal range, and there were just seconds left in the game. Jesse had just called their last time out with time for one final play.

  As Jesse ran over and conferred with the coach, Maddy reached up and squeezed my hand.

  “Make a wish, baby,” I whispered in her ear.

  “I already did!” she said. I laughed and pulled her and Eddie close as we all held hands and watched Jesse run back to the huddle for a few seconds before the teams went into formation.

  Jesse took the ball from the center and rolled out right. I could feel the energy coming off his body. I knew his arm would find its target, that was where his true talent lay. He found his wide receiver and the pass was the most perfect spiral I’d ever seen. The crowd fell silent as the ball danced through the air, pirouetting gracefully until it landed square in the wide receiver’s chest. He secured it with his huge hands and turned and ran for the end zone.

  The defenders launched their bodies at him in complete desperation, but he eluded their attempts like a skilled escape artist. He slid through the human barricades like a snake, sidestepping and dancing around them, leaving them fumbling through the air in his wake.

  “Oh lord! Oh lord! Oh oh oh!” Eddie cried, jumping up and down beside me.

  “Go go go!” Maddy yelled. My eyes traveled over to Jesse and my heart swelled when I saw the complete joy on his face as he watched the wide receiver travel safely into the end zone, throwing the ball down as the crowd erupted in joy and confetti and balloons began raining down around us. Jesse pumped his arms in the air in victory and tears sprang to my eyes. I reached down and pulled Maddy up into my arms, spinning her around as we laughed together.

  “Let’s go!” I said, setting her on her feet and running onto the field. Eddie followed us and we pushed our way through the ecstatic crowd and colorful streamers. Hundreds of people surrounded the raised platform that Jesse and his teammates now stood on. We ran up on it and he threw his arms around us, kissing me hard on the lips and then turned to Maddy, picking her up and spinning her in the air. Laughter peeled from them as they beamed at each other.

  “Look at that trophy!” Maddy said. He handed it to her and she held it up with both hands.

  A reporter stepped forward and put a microphone in his face.

  “Congratulations on your win! What are you going to do now, Colorado?” the reporter asked.

  “I’m going to marry the woman of my dreams,” he said, catching my eye and winking. I gasped as he pulled me close and grabbed my hand. I heard Eddie squeal beside me as he pulled a small black box from his pants and handed it to Jesse.

  My eyes widened as I watched Jesse kneel on one knee in front of me.

  He opened the box and my mouth dropped open when I saw the sparkling ring that lay inside. The diamond was the size of a small mountain.

  “Maisey, will you make me the happiest man in the world? Will you please marry me?” Jesse asked, his voice booming through the loud speakers, echoing through the arena, love beaming from his eyes. Love for me.

  “Oh my God,” I said, the forty thousand people in the arena with us disappearing, the roar of the crowd turning to a whisper as I looked into the eyes of the love of my life. My heart swelled in my chest as my body began buzzing from the sweetest joy I’d ever known.

  I’d spent my whole life running from him. Running from the fear of the unknown.

  And all along, I’d been running the entirely wrong direction.

  It was time I changed course.

  “Yes,” I cried, “yes!”

  He slid the ring on my finger and swept me off my feet, kissing me with breathless passion. Slowly, the reality that we were being watched by thousands of adoring, cheering fans dawned on us and he set me down.

  “What are you going to do after you get married?” another reporter asked.

  “Maddy?” he said, pulling her up into his arms. “What are we going to do, babe?”

  They smiled at each other and yelled into the microphone together.

  “We’re going to Disneyland!”

 
The end, but don’t stop now, keep turning pages because I have more surprise bonus novels in store for you! Check the Table of Contents for a full list of books included in this ebook!!!

  You are the reason I write.

  -Nikki xoxoxo

  Join the WILD LIST!

  For a limited time, EVERYONE who signs up to the WILD LIST will receive a free exclusive romance novel from Nikki Wild that you can’t find anywhere else!

  The Wild List will send you exclusive updates from Nikki Wild and you can be among the very first to receive part 3 of the Taking Beauty series!

  Click here to subscribe now!

  CLAIMING BEAUTY IS AVAILABLE NOW!

  Are you excited to find out what happens next in the Taking Beauty Series? Claiming Beauty has arrived!

  Click right here to read Claiming Beauty (Part 2 of the Taking Beauty Series) for just 99 cents or FREE with Kindle Unlimited!

  Novels by Nikki Wild

  Bad Boy Sports

  Play Dirty (A Bad Boy Football Romance)

  Running Game (A Bad Boy Football Romance)

  Bad Boy Fighters:

  Knockout (A Bad Boy MMA Romance)

  Bad Boy Bikers:

  Saving Landon (A Bad Boy Biker Romance)

  Saved by the Bad Boy (A Devil’s Dragons Biker Romance)

  Pride and Pregnancy (A Devil’s Dragons Motorcycle Club Romance)

  Roughneck (A Bad Boy Motorcycle Club Romance)

  Rough Rider (Outlaw Kings Motorcycle Club)

  British Bad Boys:

  Royal Prick (A Bad Boy British Romance)

  Arrogant Brit (A Bad Boy British Sports Romance)

  Rock Hard (A Bad Boy British Rockstar Romance)

  Played (A Bad Boy British Romance)

  Bad Boy Rockstars:

  Illicit Behavior (A Bad Boy Rockstar Romance)

  Rock Hard (A Bad Boy British Rockstar Romance)

  Bad Boy Stepbrothers:

  Lust (A Bad Boy Stepbrother Romance)

  Richard (A Bad Boy Stepbrother Romance)

  Bad Boy Billionaires:

  Protect And Serve (A Bad Boy Billionaire Romance)

  Pretend Married (A Sexy Billionaire Romance)

  ROYAL PRICK

  By Nikki Wild

  Copyright 2016 Nikki Wild

  All Rights Reserved

  Find me at my website:

  WWW.WILDNIKKI.COM

  Or friend me on Facebook!

  http://www.facebook.com/wildnikki

  Copyright © 2016 by Nikki Wild

  All rights reserved.

  Prologue

  “Tristan… oh, my God. If we’re caught…”

  Gwendolyn Pierce was staring up at me with her wide, soulful eyes and her pretty pink lips all agape, her heart beating so hard if I listened closely, I swore I could hear it. I was close enough to feel it, too, pounding through the thin fabric of her camisole, making her pert nipples quiver against my chest.

  I’d caught her in her nightclothes, a modest ensemble of flannel pajama pants and a lacy top with no bra underneath. The latter clung to her small frame, the full, tender globes of her breasts outlined in delicious shadow.

  I slid my fingers up along her ribs, returning her gaze, the bare skin of my chest grazing her trembling arms. “Nobody needs to know, Gwennie. It’s just you and me.”

  Gwen took in a sharp breath, and for a moment, her eyes narrowed. “Don’t call me that,” she whispered, but trailed off when I began inching her cami up her stomach, revealing more of her pale skin than was appropriate, given who we were to one another.

  Gwendolyn was my stepsister. And I was her stepbrother, and heir to a duchy. We were both hot and barely past eighteen and pumped full of hormones. We were dangerous. A scandal waiting to happen.

  And I wanted it to happen. I was sure Gwennie did, too. No matter how hard she’d dug her heels in about adapting to British culture—something her mother had insisted upon, accent and all—my stepsister couldn’t shake that rebellious nature of hers. She wasn’t meant for the aristocracy. Then again, neither was I.

  “We can’t,” she breathed. God, I could taste her on my lips. She tasted like desire, betraying her words, which came out almost like a squeak. It made my cock hard to no end. She was such a little mouse, but I got the feeling she would turn into a wildcat in bed, once somebody popped that sweet cherry of hers.

  Somebody who would, hopefully, be me.

  “We can,” I insisted. “See?” And I ever-so-lightly brushed the pad of my thumb over one of her nipples.

  “God!” she hissed a little too loudly, and I leaned down to cover her mouth with my own, to stifle the seductive sounds dripping from her mouth. Gwendolyn turned her face away at the last second, panting hard as I teased the nub of puffy, sensitive flesh beneath the fabric of her shirt.

  “Let me do this for you,” I whispered in her ear. Her back arched, forcing her hips against my hard-on. “I want you so badly, Gwennie. And I know you want me.” I took one of her hands and placed it on my cock; in response, it lurched toward her, desperate for more contact, so full of want and need that it physically hurt. “Do you feel what you do to me?”

  “Tristan,” Gwendolyn said, her doe-like eyes somehow growing even wider. “You’re… pierced? Down there?” She touched the surgical steel embedded in the head of my cock.

  “Do you want to see it?” I asked her, shivering as she stroked it. Oh, God, I wanted her to keep going, and to never stop.

  “I…” She looked up at me through her lashes, her gaze so curious, so full of wonder. “Um…”

  “Come on, Gwennie. Live a little.”

  “I can’t,” she said, pushing me away by my chest. My dick slipped from her hand and I groaned. “Not like this, Tristan. Not… here. When you’re only doing it to make your father… our father… mad.”

  I leaned against the pantry shelves and rubbed my face, trying to scrub away the frustration boiling in my nuts. When I looked at Gwen again, there was such sadness on her face. I thought that, even in the darkness, I could see the glint of tears in her eyes.

  I realized then that, for her, this was so much more than youthful desires. I realized that she might even have feelings for me—genuine feelings, ones that transcended a mere compulsion to be naughty. For me, this was just a passing interest, one of many I’d had since I realized girls didn’t actually have cooties—well, most of them, anyway.

  I wanted to fuck Gwen and get her out of my system. She wanted to fuck me, too, but then she wanted to live happily ever after. I was not the man to do that with. She needed to lower her expectations.

  And why not? Everyone else had.

  “I see,” I sighed, shaking my head. “Bloody hell, Gwennie. I thought you were an adult now. That you’d grown up a bit. But you’re still clinging to that Mickey Mouse, lovey-dovey horseshit, aren’t you?”

  Gwendolyn blushed. “I just want it to… mean something. Is that so wrong?”

  I rolled my eyes. “This isn’t a Disney movie, Gwennie. You’re not a princess, Gwennie, regardless of who your mother married. And I’m not your Prince Charming, your knight in shining armor, or whatever the hell else you expect me to be. But I am hot, and I am good in bed, and I am willing to teach you a few things you can use to snag a husband later on in life. It’s a good deal, love. You should take it.”

  I waited, my cock thrumming to the beat of my heart as Gwendolyn stared at me. Only this time, there wasn’t a war waging behind those pretty eyes. She wasn’t struggling between propriety and desire. This time, she was hurt. Pissed. Shocked that I’d ever speak to her that way.

  Good. Somebody had to bring her head down out of the clouds.

  “You’re an asshole, Tristan,” she whispered. “A real prick.”

  “Royal prick,” I corrected her. Then I shrugged. “Anyway, the offer stands. You know where to find me.”

  I opened the pantry door and stepped out, leaving Gwen huffing and puffing behind me. This was exactly why I didn’t go f
or the innocent types. They always wanted something they couldn’t have, something I couldn’t give. They watched too much TV and read too many books. Real life wasn’t The Princess Diaries. Real life was more like The Bachelor, where you ended up with someone based on prior arrangements and how good they were in the sack—after you’d test-driven all your options, of course.

  This was the reality check Gwendolyn needed, and I was confident she’d come after me. After all, I was leaving for Afghanistan tomorrow, a newly enlisted member of Her Majesty’s Royal Army. She wouldn’t let me go off to war without something to remember her by—she was, as I’d said before, a romantic.

  I chuckled and shook my head. Virgins…

  Chapter 65

  Four years later…

  It was a well-known fact that driving your own car in London was, above all things, a very poor decision. Even among the aristocracy—who seldom touched the wheel of their own vehicles, save for an odd sense of personal enjoyment—you never drove yourself through the streets of London town. In fact, such a thing was widely accepted as the key to a stress-induced heart attack—or at least, a minor brain aneurysm.

  I, thankfully, had never needed to worry much about the perils and stresses of London traffic aside from a slight sense of inconvenience, what with the readily available use of my own driver on hand.

  That might have sounded snobbish, but to say that I ever took dear Franklin for granted would have been a gross injustice—I prized that man almost as much as my own family, sometimes even more. In fact, if it were to be put in order of people I could count on more, it would be my beloved Franklin who would have to sit squarely on top, my own parents residing somewhere abysmally lower. It wasn’t uncommon for women such as myself to have a—shall we say—distant affection for their parents, but my feelings about my family often bordered between apathy and sheer disdain—and that was on a good day. I grew up with all of the perks of a wealthy upbringing, as well as the minimal parental appreciation.