by Vivian Ward
Risky Pleasures
The Risky Series Book 2 of 3
Vivian Ward
Copyright © 2018 by Vivian Ward
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.
To all the readers who enjoyed Risky Gamble, this one is for you. This is all the naughty parts that the first book didn’t have even though that book was pretty dark. Thanks for sticking with the story!
Contents
Vivian Ward Newsletter
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
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About the Author
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Chapter 1
Ally
Ever since I walked away from Colton and his dark, crazy world, it’s left me a lot of time to think.
And to write.
To think that I was torn on signing his stupid NDA’s makes me laugh. The thought is ridiculous.
If there’s one trait I’ve inherited from my bloodlines, it’s stubbornness. I’ve never been one to roll over and do as others say, so I’m not sure why I actually considered it with Colton.
But I do miss him.
I miss talking to him, smelling his rich cologne, hearing his laughter, and I miss the way he looked at me. Like a hungry wolf waiting for its next meal. There was always a look of starvation in his eyes when I looked into his dark, charcoal eyes.
There’s no doubt about it that his eyes matched his soul. Heavy, thick darkness enveloped his aura like a dusty, dank cloud. Not a single streak of light beamed off him. Everything about him is so dark.
The club.
The night life.
His eyes.
His aura.
His soul.
When you step into Colton Kaswell’s world, there’s nothing but pure barometric pressure. An energy so commanding that it could summon the strongest storms known to mankind. Storms that I’m afraid of. Colton’s are the darkest kind. The kind that shut out all the light, except for a few streaks of callous lightning to match the loud, booming thunder that bellows long after the lightning has struck. The winds from Colton’s storms are so powerful that they threaten to blow you away as they sweep past your presence.
These are the kind of storms that you hide from because the damage from them is unknown until after its already left its mark on everything in its path. The most forceful type of storm one could only dream of conjuring up.
And that’s what Colton has done to me. In the short time that I was in his path of destruction, I minimized it the best I could. Yet, he still left his mark on me.
I can’t see it, but I know it’s there. Somewhere deep inside me, there’s a tiny CK that matches the plastic card he uses to swipe himself into the club. His initials are engrained in me.
Like I said, I can’t see it but I can sure as hell feel it.
But my biggest fear? My biggest fear is how much I want to be in his storm; how badly I want to stand right in the center of that storm to see if I’ve got what it takes to weather it.
Walking away from him was hard and easy at the same time. It was hard because I wanted to stay. I wanted to see what Colton Kaswell was really like behind closed doors—even if it did terrify me.
And it was easy because I was terrified. That dark aura of his could suck any soul right into it, and I was so close to it. Dangerously close. His words still haunt and thrill me at the same time. I’ll never forget when he said, “I like to choke girls like you, Ally. I like to do it until you pass out, and then fuck your limp little body until I’m finished. And when I’m not choking you, I like to tie little girls like you up and do unspeakable acts to them. Bruise them. Punish them.”
Those words still chill my bones to the core. Who does that? Who says that? Men like Colton Kaswell.
I was also furious. How could he ask me to sign such a personal NDA with him and do unspeakable things behind closed doors, and then have a girl practically plastered to his lap? I’ve not been able to get that image out of my mind: the two of them sitting on the couch together, her coiled around him like a snake as she laughed and giggled. And he did nothing to push her off of him.
Nothing.
Until I was leaving.
And even though I was the one to walk out, it was so damn hard. His black hole was sucking me in and I didn’t want to leave. I was attracted to his darkness. It pulled me in and I wasn’t quite ready to let go. Aside from his expensive suits and Rolex watch, I craved his dominance and assertiveness.
The one sexual encounter that we had on his desk has been on constant replay in my mind since the night that it happened. My sexual experience is limited, especially when you compare it to someone like Colton, but it was so damn hot. The way he just took me on his desk, the way his length and girth filled me, and the way he growled.
Shivers run down my spine just thinking about his strong hands holding onto my hips for leverage as he thrust inside me.
If not for that one night, I would never have given those NDA’s a second thought but I wanted more of him. I wanted so much more of him.
But it’s better this way. I was losing sight of what I set out to do and that was write his story which was hard to do.
Sure, I stockpiled every piece of information that I could about him and his club, but he made it hard to write. In the past six weeks since I walked out of the club, he’s called or texted almost every day. For the most part, I’ve done very well at ignoring him in that aspect. I send the calls to voicemail and try not to read his texts, but it’s hard not to.
Every week, he’s had something delivered to my apartment. I shouldn’t be surprised, my address was on the paperwork that I turned in. What does surprise me is how tailored every gift has been. It’s not typical flowers or candy.
It seems as though Colton has hand-picked every single gift and they are all things that I love; my favorite things. When the first package arrived, it was a box of truffles. I thought, “Okay, no big deal. He must have just happened to pick these out.” I mean, it’s not like chocolate covered nuts aren’t common.
But then he sent a package that had a copy of my favorite book, Gone Girl, but it wasn’t just any copy. It was autographed by Gillian Flynn, and it was made out to me. Yes, I now have a signed copy that reads:
To Ally,
May you be the best journalist. I wish you lots of success in your career.
-Gillian Flynn
I’m not going to lie. My Spidey senses kind of went up when I opened that box. How would he know my favorite book? And what kind of connections does a St. Louis busine
ss man have that he could just get a personalized, autographed copy of my favorite book?
I almost wanted to throw it away but how do you get rid of something like that?
The last package is what worries me the most. It’s like a ticking time bomb. Two days ago, a slim yellow envelope was stuffed inside my mailbox. I knew it was from him because of the writing on it. It matched all of the other packages that have had his hand writing on them.
I was almost afraid to open it but curiosity got the best of me, so I finally tore it open as I ate my Chinese takeout while I watched re-runs of Friends. It contained dinner reservations to The Butterfly. I didn’t recognize the name of it at first, but after a quick online search, I realized that it’s an exclusive restaurant open to only the wealthiest in the area.
I don’t understand why he’d invite me to have dinner with him. I’ve ignored all of his attempts to reach me and have shown zero interest. In fact, I’ve been so busy writing about him that I’ve had little time to do anything else.
For the last week, I’ve been editing it so that I can pitch the perfect story idea to my editor and have something ready to show her when she, hopefully, says yes.
“Are you almost finished with that thing yet?” Darcy asks as she stalks over my shoulder.
“Yep, I’m so close,” I tell her. She’s been so jealous of my story ever since she discovered that I was writing about Colton. I’m not sure if she’s more envious of the fact that I’m writing about him, or the fact that I was able to get in his world. She’s been completely obsessed about the club and asks a ton of questions. Not wanting to be rude, I vaguely answer her—giving her just enough to satisfy her hunger for knowledge without divulging too much information. “Do you think Gretta will like it?” I ask.
“If she doesn’t chomp at this story, then The Gateway Times needs to get rid of her and find a new editor. Do you realize how much you could sell that piece for?”
I know that I could take this story to any one of the tabloids and have a very nice payday, but that’s not my goal. Doing that would not further my career. They’d have one of their cheesy writers take everything that I’ve already written and slap their name on it.
“Yeah, but that wouldn’t get my name out there. I’m just worried that Gretta won’t like it since it’s completely different from the normal bullshit pieces that she has me write.”
“You’ll be just fine,” she smirks. “If not, I could try running it by Greg.”
Greg is Gretta’s boss, and Darcy’s been banging him since the beginning of her internship so she gets ‘special’ privileges that the rest of us could never dream of—especially other interns, like me. And I also know that by running it past Greg, Darcy would try to take credit for my work.
Not happening.
I’d sell it to a tabloid before I ever let her do that, but like I said, that’s not my game plan so I’m going to do everything I can to present this story to Gretta on a silver platter.
“We’ll see,” I lie. It sounds better than what I’d like to say to her.
“Just let me know,” she says, walking away from my desk.
Glancing up at the clock on my computer, I see that it’s almost quitting time.
On my way home, I stop by Fazoli’s and pick up a baked ziti with an Italian Ice. Before I can kick off my shoes and open my food, there’s a knock at the door. Annoyed, I answer it and am shocked at what I see.
A courier is holding up a brand new formal gown and hands me his clipboard. “Sign here, please.”
“What? I think you have the wrong address,” I say, closing the door.
“No, I don’t,” he says, using his foot to prevent the door from closing. “Mr. Kaswell said you’d say that and that I am not to leave until you have this dress.”
“What?” I ask, shocked at his words. “Colton Kaswell sent you here?”
“Yes, ma’am. He said under no circumstance are we to leave until you take this dress. Can you please sign here as proof that it was delivered?”
Unbelievable. I can’t imagine why he’d send me this. As I take the clipboard from the courier, it dawns on me that I have dinner reservations sitting on my kitchen counter for this Friday. They arrived in the mail yesterday, but I’d tossed them on my counter and forgot all about them. What a pompous ass to assume that I’d go.
“Here,” I scribble my signature and hand him the clipboard, taking the dress from his hand. “Anything else?”
“Yes ma’am. These are yours, too. You have a great night,” he says as he hands me a box of shoes and disappears down the hallway.
Shutting the door, I lean against the wall and suck in a deep breath as I study the dress. It’s beautiful. Pulling back the plastic, I examine it up close and exhale, blowing out a big puff of air.
He must’ve spent a fortune on this dress. The details are so intricate. The black velvet dress is bound by a delicate sheet of lace featuring the tiniest details you can imagine. I would say that the top is lined with rhinestones but knowing Colton, they’re probably real diamonds. Opening the box that came with it, I’m taken back by the velvet shoes that perfectly match the black dress. Tiny black bows of lace are fastened to the front of each shoe with a gorgeous diamond.
Hanging the dress in the back of my closet, I vow to myself to forget about the dress. I’m not going on that dinner date with him. It would be detrimental to my career and it has bad news written all over it.
Heating up my cold dinner, I plop down on the couch and mindlessly watch TV before I make myself a couple of margaritas. I need something to make me not care that there’s a dress worth more than my car hanging in my closet and that Colton is expecting me to go on a date with him this week. Hopefully, the tequila will do the trick.
Chapter 2
Colton
The past six weeks without Ally in my life has been pure torment. I’ve been trapped in hell and would give anything to redo the near two weeks that I had with her before she walked out of my life.
I must say, Ally’s a bold woman. Nobody—and I mean nobody—has ever walked away from me. But Ally? She did it without a second thought, and she’s stuck to her guns. It drives me completely insane that she’s so stubborn and strong-willed, but I find it sexually addicting at the same time.
A girl like Ally needs to be broken and put in her place. She just doesn’t know it. Snobby, stuck-up, goody-two-shoe bitches like her need to learn a lesson or two. Lucky for her, I love to discipline little girls like her.
A little too much.
Since she’s not the typical girl that I find myself with, I’ve tried dealing with her in non-traditional ways that are foreign to me. I’m used to women chasing me, not the other way around. Whores, horny wives at the club, and hot, young girls who will do anything to have a night with me, and before Ally, I was always eager to oblige.
She’s nothing like any of them. Ally has morals and standards. She has self-discipline and a spine—not the kind that she lies on all the time, either.
I’ve tried the nice guy approach with phone calls and texts, but she’s done everything in her power to ignore them. I thought I’d try to reach her by sending unique gifts to her apartment—things that are her favorites, which was not an easy task. She’s a very private person in her every day life and on social media. One of the first things that I noticed about her before I hired Mark, my private investigator, is that all of her social media was locked down.
It has cost me a small fortune to find out what her favorite things are, but she’s well worth the price. She’ll be mine before she knows it, whether she likes it or not. I will have her one way or another. If she’s playing a game of chase, she’s very good at it, but I will catch her.
She surprises me in how well she’s able to assert self-control. I’ve been keeping tabs on her and I know that she threw out the candy that I sent her. She didn’t touch one piece. It was discarded in the dumpster outside of her apartment, completely uneaten. I sent her a bottle of her fav
orite wine, which she didn’t even bother drinking. Instead, she dumped the contents down the sink and tossed out the empty bottle. I only know this because when I broke into her apartment, there were no dirty wine glasses and the strong scent of white wine hovered above the sink.
She did, however, keep the personalized copy of Gone Girl that I sent her; though, it wasn’t proudly displayed on her bookshelf with her other favorite titles. She hid it in the nightstand beside her bed. I shook my head when I found it as I searched her apartment.
Ally worries me with staying in such a low-end apartment building. It took nothing to get inside. The lock on her door was easy to pop open and I did it completely unnoticed. Not one neighbor questioned who I was or what I was doing there which speaks volumes about her neighbors and the type of people she lives amongst.
Once I was inside, I knew I had plenty of time to go through her things. She’s been working long hours at The Gateway Times; about ten to twelve hours per day. I know this because Mark assigned one of his men to watch her. My original intention wasn’t to spy on her so that I could break into her apartment. I just wanted to know more about her and learn what she liked.
Okay, maybe part of it was to watch her, but only because I knew how easily accessible her apartment is. I noticed it the night that I sat out on the street as I stared up at her window.
The tall, brick building is in major need of repair—especially the windows. They’re probably the originals, or close to it. It’s easy to see that the old, wooden frames have been painted over many times. Hell, they’re in need of a fresh coat of paint now as their current condition is awful. The old paint, most likely lead paint, is chipping off and the wood is splintering.