by Kyra Davis
Praise for the sultry, suspenseful novels of New York Times bestselling author KYRA DAVIS
DECEPTIVE INNOCENCE
Book One of the Pure Sin series
“Deceptive Innocence was the experience I wanted to have watching Revenge. The setup is similar, but the heroine is far more relatable, and the eroticism drives the story.”
—Romance at Random
“The steam was so, so sexy I was literally melting. The buildup to the suspense, just right. And the ending—pure brilliance.”
—Jessy’s Book Club
“Kyra Davis is an inventive storyteller whose erotically written sex scenes are sure to set you on fire!”
—Ramblings from a Chaotic Mind
“One of the things I enjoy the most about Kyra Davis’s writing is how she is able to ratchet up the suspense without letting it overwhelm the romance.”
—Romancing Rakes for the Love of Romance
“I completely devoured this book in one sitting. . . . Compelling, addictive, and incredibly sexy!”
—Sinfully Sexy Book Reviews
“A fabulous read, exciting, seriously awesome writing, and a kick-ass heroine with a unique voice, and an alpha hero you’ll wanna lick all over. . . . You won’t wanna miss out!”
—Butterfly-o-Meter Books
“If you are a fan of secrets, intrigue, and strong female characters bent on revenge, then this series is definitely for you.”
—The Not-So-Literary Heiresses
“Addicting! . . . Kyra Davis writes a fast-paced, mysterious, and very sexy story.”
—The Blushing Reader
“Kyra’s ability to toy with her readers and her characters’ psyches is an unusual talent, I think. I also really love her love/sex scenes. . . . [They have] a voyeuristic feel.”
—Bookish Temptations
“Had me on the edge of my seat from start to finish.”
—Love to Read for Fun
“If you like a killer suspense romance story, this book is for you.”
—It’s Andrea’s Book Blog
“There are awesome sparks that ignite the sheets . . . Hot! It was the heavy atmosphere, the secrets and mysteries that made me turn the pages.”
—New Books on My Shelves
“Fast-paced and interesting. . . . Kudos to the author for showing her talent to write a vastly different genre than her usual mystery.”
—Literary Marie’s Precision Reviews
JUST ONE NIGHT
The runaway international bestseller!
“Frequent explicit erotic encounters and fantasies keep this page-turner crackling with intensity. Davis skillfully creates an uplifting story in which sex is presented both as freedom and as a metaphor for power, and where raw chemistry is the clear winner over bland complacency.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Davis’s prose is beautiful and her sex scenes both creative and hot.”
—RT Book Reviews
“Gives Fifty Shades of Grey a run for its money. . . . But this novel gives some depth, respect, and sexual tension to the genre.”
—New York Journal of Books
“Exceptionally well written, and I enjoyed every second I was with this book. It’s intensely sensual, and the sex scenes are incredibly HOT.”
—Sinfully Sexy Book Reviews
“A quick, fun, and sensual read that left me wanting much more!”
—Romance Book Junkies
“Tempting, seductive, and purely romantic.”
—Lovey Dovey Books
“A refreshing, seductive, and highly enjoyable erotic romance.”
—TotallyBookedBlog
“So compelling. I could not stop reading.”
—Up All Night Novels
“I couldn’t envision a better ending if I tried!”
—Jessy’s Book Club
“Filled with the salacious, saucy content you’d expect in Fifty Shades of Grey. . . . However, beyond the titillating words and visual sexual images, the underlying story is about the choices women make every day.”
—Miss Wordy
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To my husband
prologue
* * *
You don’t know me.
Did you think that you did? Maybe you looked at my long black hair and lightly tanned skin and mistook me for the pretty Latina caricatures you see in sitcoms or prime-time dramedys. It’s possible that I tricked you into believing that you understood my ambitions and motivations.
You may even think you know my name.
But you’re wrong.
Travis Gable thinks he knows me. Travis with his smooth smile and chilly blue eyes. He’s a creature carved out of greed and malice. And like any real demon, he’s very smart and very observant. And yet he doesn’t see me, not really. Even though he hired me to be the personal assistant to him and his wife. I’ve been in his home, his office, his limo; he’s let me see parts of his world that he likes to keep hidden in the shadows. That was his mistake.
Travis’s wife, Jessica Gable, thinks she knows me too. I like to think of her as a professional socialite. A woman of fashion and breeding. She gets her clothes from Bergdorf’s, her facials from the spa at the Mandarin, and her temperament from the pharmacy. She self-medicates in the hope that it will help her tolerate her husband. It also helps her tolerate herself. Just as Travis is comforted by the belief that he can manipulate me, Jessica is empowered by the idea that she can torment me without my ever fighting back.
Travis and Jessica call me Bell, which is short for Bellona.
But Bellona isn’t my name. It’s more of an idea. I chose that name for myself because I like its origins:
Bellona, the Roman goddess of war.
Travis and Jessica don’t know me at all.
And of course Micah Romenov thinks he knows me very well. His niece shared a prison cell with my mother, and like his niece, Micah is a criminal. Russian mafia to be precise. My mother, Julieta Jiménez, helped get his niece on a better path, and Micah has helped support me ever since. He thinks that I’m a little lost and that I can be controlled through threats and bribes. He calls me Sweet.
But I’ve never been lost. I know exactly where I am and where I’m going. As for the threats and the bribes? He might as well be threatening and bribing a storm. Like any hurricane, I’m simply going to do what I want. You might be able to prepare for me, but no one is going to stop me.
Oh, and in case you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m definitely not sweet.
So please, allow me to introduce myself. My name, my real name, is Adoncia. Doncia for short. I was only ten when my mother was arrested for murdering Nick Foley. My mother had been Nick’s maid. She had also been his lover . . . at least until Mrs. Foley found out, and my mother was both fired and dumped. So she had an obvious motive.
I didn’t know she was innocent.
But this is what I know now:
Fact: Nick was a VP at HGVB Bank. The G stands for Gable. Travis’s father, Edmund Gable, is the CEO, and Travis is a managing partner. And the Gables have shadowy connections and business associations that the world doesn’t know about. Micah is a good example of that. My mother thought Micah was on my side, but the truth is, he’s always been aligned with my enemies.
Fact: Nick had a secret. It had something to do with HGVB, and while I don’t know exactly what it was, Travis and Edmund
most definitely did. They saw Nick as a potential whistle-blower.
Fact: When I was ten, my mother found Nick’s body. That was planned. They wanted her on her knees, crying over her married lover’s body with blood on her hands. Jessica was in the neighborhood when it happened, staying at her parents’ house while they were vacationing in Belize. Jessica testified in court. She said she heard a gunshot shortly after the time my mother arrived at Nick Foley’s house.
Fact: Jessica lied. Less than a year after the trial was over, she was married to Travis. That was her reward, the Gable last name.
Even at ten, I should have been smart enough not to believe it when the police, the state, and the jury concluded that the woman who was the center of my world was actually evil. But pain and fear had dulled my intellect. I learned to hate the woman who had once read me all my favorite fairy tales. I learned to hate everything she loved.
And the thing she loved most was me.
So after ten years of being a good girl, I changed. Just like that. I charted a path of self-destruction. No one could handle me. I was moved from foster home to foster home until I eventually found myself in a facility for homeless teens.
It wasn’t until I was almost seventeen that I began to suspect that my mother was innocent. I tried to prove it. I tried to get the police to reopen the case. I tried to get the public defender to return my calls. But of course I wasn’t able to do any of that. No one wants to talk to a discipline case.
In retrospect, I should have driven to see my mother before I launched a campaign to reopen her case. I should have told her that I knew she was innocent. That’s what I should have done first.
Maybe if I had she wouldn’t have made that noose.
You see, Micah, Jessica, Travis, and his father, Edmund—they don’t know me at all, and yet in a weird way, they created me. They turned me into a weapon.
Do you think you know me now? Now, after I’ve confessed to all my rage and spewed my venom?
You do? That’s almost funny.
Because there’s much more to me than anger. I know, I know, I’m surprised by that too. I thought I was made of ice. But that must not be true, because recently someone has reached inside me and unleashed something . . . lighter. This person can actually make me laugh and want to dance. He makes me blush and tremble and lose control. This man, he . . . he warms me, and when he does I don’t melt. I become stronger.
In the end, there’s only one person who truly knows me, the most unlikely person in the world,
Lander Gable.
Edmund’s youngest son and Travis’s half brother. Lander, a man who I thought was my enemy all because of his last name.
But really, a rose by any other name.
Lander’s mother passed away not long after mine did. Like me, he blames Travis and Edmund. Like me, he wants revenge.
And with me, he’s gonna get it.
chapter one
* * *
When I step inside the restaurant, the first thing I notice is how warm it is, in both temperature and ambience. I pause a moment just inside the doors to take in the notes of gold and the arched ceilings. Everything in this place speaks of elegance and well-mannered sophistication. I wasn’t born for this, but then, neither was the man I’m meeting. That’s okay, though. We both know how to fake it.
“Hi,” I say as I approach the hostess. “I’m meeting someone, perhaps you could tell me if he’s already here? The reservation is under—”
I stop short as someone takes my arm from behind and addresses me in a perfectly distinctive Russian British accent: “Sweet, thank you so much for inviting me to dinner.”
I turn and smile into Micah’s dancing eyes. His bald head reflects the lights above him in an almost comical way. “Of course, Micah.” I glance back at the hostess before lowering my voice a bit. “I was just . . . I needed to talk to you.”
“Oh? What about?”
An elderly couple enters and glances nervously at Micah, noting the tattoos that are peeking out from beneath the collar of his perfectly pressed thousand-dollar dress shirt.
Biting my lip, I lower my gaze to the ground. “I just . . .” I hedge, before blurting out, “I have something to confess.”
“Ah.” He drapes his arm over my shoulders amiably as he turns his attention to the hostess. “Terri, take us to my table and tell the bartender to send over two double martinis immediately. He knows how I like them.” He turns back to me and says in a stage whisper, “Confessions should always be paired with Stoli.”
I laugh as I know I’m supposed to. Micah never takes himself too seriously, not even when he is condemning men to death.
When we reach “his” table, he usurps the hostess by insisting that he pull the chair out for me himself. “This place is exquisite, isn’t it?” he asks as he takes his seat. “Did you see the way the white floral arrangement picked up the gold lighting? Such attention to detail! The place is fit for a motherfucking czar.”
A pretty waitress with bright red hair and a nervous smile comes with two martinis. She hands Micah his first and waits for him to taste it. I suspect that she’s a fairly new hire, but someone has trained her on how Micah likes to be served. He sips it delicately as if he’s tasting champagne, and then flashes our server a satisfied grin. “My compliments to the bartender.”
The waitress’s shoulders visibly relax as she hands me my drink and mumbles a promise to be back soon before beating a fast retreat.
“So!” Micah raises his glass. “To confessions!”
I laugh nervously and clink his glass before bringing mine to my lips.
“So, whatcha do?” he asks as he scans the menu. “Tell Uncle Micah all about it.”
“You know what I did,” I say quietly.
“Do I?”
“Yes.” I take another gulp of my drink. “I’ve done everything you thought I was doing. I got the job with Travis because I wanted to destroy him.”
Micah’s eyes leap up from the menu, his face growing serious for the first time. “I hope you heeded my warning, Sweet,” he says in a tone that is as sinister as it is calm. “If you did anything to interfere with Travis’s ability to perform his professional duties at HGVB, you would also be interfering with my business. I don’t take kindly to people who fuck with my business.”
“I didn’t,” I say quickly before lowering my eyes to the table. “But I wanted to. I wanted to make him hurt.”
“And why’s that?”
I hold my tongue. He knows the answer.
“So.” He speaks slowly. “You’re admitting to everything now, are you? You’re telling me you think Travis is behind setting your mum up for offing her lover?”
“I did think that, yes.”
“You did? Past tense?”
“Yes, past tense,” I say, finally meeting his gaze. “I know the truth now. I know the whole story.”
Micah presses his lips together, his eyes never leaving mine. Around us I catch snippets of laughter and the clinking of forks against china. The whole room seems to be buzzing except for our table, where everything is disturbingly still.
“What,” he finally says, “do you think you know?”
“I know who the murderer is, Micah.”
“Do you now?” He reaches for his martini. “And who would that be?”
“Don’t make me say it.”
“Forgive me,” he says, breaking to take another long sip of his drink, “but I must insist that you do.”
Again I bite down on my lip as I crumple the cloth napkin in my hand. “The murderer,” I choke out, “was Julieta Jiménez.”
Micah’s quick inhaled breath serves as an exclamation mark. It’s the reaction I wanted. “I finally get it,” I say, with a little more certainty. “My mother was the one who killed Nick Foley.”
Micah doesn’t say a word. He barely moves. The waitress comes back to the table for our order, but it only takes one glare from Micah to get her to stammer an apology for the interrupt
ion and scamper off.
“Last we met,” Micah says, “you told me that your mother was innocent. You insisted on it.”
“I did. I was wrong.”
He raises his eyebrows questioningly. “What’s changed?”
I shift uneasily in my seat. “When my mother was arrested . . . well, she didn’t have much. Almost everything was sold or given to Goodwill, but of course I got to keep a few trinkets. A necklace with a little crystal heart pendant, a pair of leather gloves that were given to her by an employer, and . . . and she had a diary.”
“She did? I would have thought that would have been confiscated by the police for evidence.”
I shrug. “I think they missed it. It didn’t actually look like a diary, more like a notebook. It could have easily been something I was using for school. I did start to read it, but . . . well, I was ten and I was so angry at her. I put it aside before I got more than five pages in. And then later it was just . . . it was just too painful.”
“But you’ve read it now,” Micah says evenly.
“Cover to cover.”
I give Micah a moment to process this. “Are you trying to tell me that your mum confessed to murder in her diary?”
“No, that wouldn’t have been possible. She didn’t have the opportunity to write in it after the arrest, and she was arrested at the scene of the crime.”
“That’s true.” I can hear the confusion in his voice. I’ve never seen Micah show any uncertainty before, but it’s clear that I’ve thrown him for a loop. “If she didn’t confess to the murder, what makes you think—”
“She confessed to wanting to do it. It’s right there in the diary, Micah. She was so hurt, so . . . so angry. She imagined killing him. She actually says she wants to shoot him, that she wants his blood on her hands for breaking her heart. She wrote that, Micah!” I summon up tears that blur my vision and my hands tremble slightly as I lift my martini, making the vodka slosh over the edge of my glass.
I’m a very good actress.
“I didn’t think she was capable of this, but . . . but, Micah, not only was she capable, she followed through with it! She imagined it and then she did it! This doesn’t just mean she’s guilty, it means it was premeditated! She thought this out!” I put my glass down and cover my face with my hands.