by Bella Love
He didn’t look worried at all by this expansive list that wasn’t even close to done. He looked happy. At least, he was grinning.
“Want to take the river off your list?”
“Well, I mean, sure,” I said with all the certainty of a frightened person. ’Cause who wouldn’t want that?
Then, even though I was wearing a very expensive sundress, he reached up and yanked me right off that rock and into the river.
I almost shot back into the air, it was so shockingly cold.
He pulled me against his chest and laid his lips over mine. “Can we take the river off your list now?” he asked, and kissed me. And me, fool that I was, let him.
“Oh, that’s cold,” I said when we were done, my feet scissoring through the water.
“It’s not that cold.”
“No, sir, your actions are cold, very cold. And you will pay,” I vowed.
“Swim,” he suggested, pushing away from me, out into the middle of the river, into the sunshine. “It’ll keep you warm. And from being swept downriver.”
“Downriver?” I almost shrieked.
He laughed. “I’m kidding. I won’t let you get swept downstream.” He held out an arm. “Come here.”
I swam to him, partly to keep warm but also because of the exhilarating rush now coursing through my blood after the cold plunge. I followed him until we were both in the middle of the bright river, treading water.
“It’s not that strong of a current,” I said, feeling emboldened now that I knew I wasn’t going to be swept over some icy falls downstream.
“Nope.” He reached for my fingers and pulled me over to him. “Not this time of year.”
I spread my arms out in front of me, swirling them out and back, my feet kicking, getting used to the feel of it. The last time I’d been swimming was….
I inhaled a big, hard breath. The ocean. The last time I’d been in the water was that day in the blue, blue ocean, on the wave.
“What?” Finn said.
“I was just remembering the last time I went swimming. It was a long, long time ago.”
“Do you forget how?” he asked, his hand going at once to my hip.
I shook my head. Wet hair dragged over my shoulders. “No. I don’t forget anything. Don’t,” I said of his hand going to help hold me up in the water. “No. I’ve got it.”
He grinned and nodded, then kicked onto his back and started for the far shore.
The water was cold, but it glinted and sparkled like it was alive. My legs kicked, my arms moved, my skirt floated up around my waist, and I felt not scared but…amazing.
“This isn’t so bad,” I called out to him. “I think I’ve got it.”
“I know you’ve got it.” He’d scrambled up the cliff on the far shore and was hauling the rope to him. “Come try the rope.”
“You are out of your ever-loving mind,” I told him firmly. Enough was enough, after all. He laughed and grabbed the rope and swung out, then let go, the fool, and plunged into the river with a huge splash about thirty feet away from me. I clapped when his head popped above the surface.
“V-very b-big splash!” I chattered admiringly.
He swam over, slicing through the water. “Cold?”
“L-little.”
His body ranged up against mine as he cupped my bottom, his hand hot and slippery against my underwear as he pulled them aside. “I’ll warm you up,” he murmured into my wet hair.
“I’m freezing.” I draped my arms around his shoulders and hooked my knees around his hips.
He tipped forward and started swimming us to shore. His knees and my bottom bumped the earth as we neared the bank, and it was all over. My underwear was off in seconds, my dress a tangled heap on the dirt.
“We’ll get started on the rest of your list tomorrow,” he promised, his mouth moving down my neck.
I hung on to his shoulders and let my head hang back. The sunlit river buoyed me up and flowed around us, and I lifted my body into his, felt him push deep inside me.
That’s just where I wanted him, in every way.
I couldn’t believe how turned around I was from where I’d started.
I used to be a shooting star with only one thing in mind. Now I was down in the river, having sex with the pawnshop guy who my father used to rough up in his jail cells, barefoot, howling to the sun.
It almost looked like I’d done a three-sixty and was right back where I started from. But I was light years from where I used to be. I could cite a dozen reasons, from how I knew it hadn’t been ambition fueling me, but fear. How my up-and-at-’em spirit had been turning me into a steamroller. How I’d starting hating the people I was helping, and what did that make me?
But I didn’t need reasons. Because I didn’t care how it looked to anyone else.
And that was the biggest proof.
I was still going to be a human motor of getting shit done. But now, I was going to start driving my own car.
And if I needed him, Finn was going to help.
Because my list wasn’t even close to being done. I was going to find a way to spin every one of those fears, starting right here, with Finn’s eyes on me, his body deep inside me, on a riverbank, unleashing the genie that got stuffed back in its bottle all those years ago.
Because that was one hundred percent magic, and I totally believed.
The End
(Pretty much)
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Dare ©
Bella Love
JANE MACINNEE HAS been through the fire. She faced her worst fear and lost the career she spent her life building. But in the process, she found the man of her dreams and a second chance at happiness. Now all she has to do is reshape everything, absolutely everything, and carve a new path in the world.
How hard could it be?
Finn Dante has no intention of letting Janey take the easy way out. He knows what she’s capable of, the best and the worst, and he intends to help her face her mountain of fears by pushing her way past her comfort zone, and testing every limit she’s got, in bed and out of it.
What could possibly go wrong?
But when Jane’s biggest test becomes Finn’s worst nightmare, she has to decide what really matters, and how far she’s willing to go to get it.
And Finn isn’t interested in waiting around for a woman who’s not up to his dare.
Excerpt
Nothing But Trouble (tentative title) ©
Bella Love
THE MOMENT NICK Murphy heard his assistant’s voice on the phone that morning, he knew it was going to be a bad day.
“We don’t have the Renoir.”
“Sorry?” He driving through dense forest and reception wasn’t good. He couldn’t have heard that right.
“Beck never picked up the Renoir the other day. It’s not in our storage.”
Beck never picked up the Renoir the other day. The pick-up truck bounced over the rutted roads as Nick repeated it to himself a few times, to make it sink it. With each jarring rut, it sunk further.
He muttered a curse then moved into action. “Call Pete Sandler-Ross,” the ass “and tell him I’m coming for it. Today.”
“Texted him yesterday. He said that you could come for it anytime.” A pause. “How far away are you? Want us to go?”
Nick looked down at his hiking boots, which were sitting on the floor in front of the passenger seat, and shook his head. “No. I’ll go. I want to be looking in his face when he tries to explain why he never told us Beck didn’t show up the other day. And call Beck. Tell him he’s fired.”
As partner and co-co-owner of Swampyre, their high-end pawn business, his brother Beck couldn’t technically be fired, but that was beside the point. He could be killed, which would have the same effect.
No, actually, killing him would be better.
“He’s in the
Caymans, meeting about that investment,” Jason’s voice was garbled for a moment, then cleared. “He said he’s sorry.”
“Not yet he’s not,” Nick muttered as his truck shot out of the trees and into the blazing sun. At ten a.m. it was already hot. By noon, it would be brutal. By four, when he’d hit Destiny Falls, it would be smothering.
“I could ask Finn to go pick it up,” Jason ventured.
He didn’t bother replying. They both knew it was a bad idea to put Finn, his other co-owner, in the same room with Peter Sander, the ass. They had a history. It involved a woman. It wasn’t a good history. Nick spent a moment envying Finn, with this default way out. Then he moved on.
“Tell Johnny I’ll text him when I’m closer and he can meet me with the SUV.”
“Sounds good. Sorry buddy,” Jason said, his voice crackling under the strain of poor reception. “You took a day off, and now, this.”
“‘This’ is Beck, and it was my fault. I never should have let him go for it.”
“He said the investment meeting got switched and he had to fly out a day early.”
“A lot of things are going to get switched,” Nick said grimly. “I’m on my way now. Probably be out of range most of the day.”
His phone was already breaking up as the road dove back into forest. The mountains where he met a buddy to climb were beautiful and remote, just the way he liked it. No people, no reception. Which is why he was only now finding out that the security against the hundred thousand dollar loan he’d wired out two days ago—a small, precious Renoir—was not yet in his possession.
“I’ll be there by four,” he said and clicked off.
He wasn’t there by four. He wasn’t there by five. It was almost six o’clock by the time the delays of washed-out bridges and crumbling back roads released him to tear up the highway back to Destiny Falls, and it was almost seven by the time he pulled up in the circular drive.
That’s because Saturdays suck, Nick though as he stared up at the mansion of the Peter J. Sandler-Rosses. It sat silent, majestic, and baking in the summer heat. Birds chirped and slanted evening sun spilled over everything. Eyeing the house grimly, he grabbed a white button-down and dark grey suit coat he kept in his truck for pawn emergencies—because you never knew when someone was going to need money, fast, and he found people preferred to hand over their valuables when he didn’t look like he’d just come down off the mountain. Figuratively speaking.
He finished buttoning and slung the suit coat over his arm, then slid out of the truck, taking the hit of smothering heat as he started across the circular drive.
Lesson learned. No favors, no specials, no kindnesses, and never, ever send Beck to pick up security for a loan again.
“Come on, Johnny,” he said to his employee, who’d pulled up behind him with the official armoured company transport vehicle. Couriering his client’s valuables into their storage facilities was not usually a dangerous business, but everyone was paying for security—with their valuables, in their interest rates—so Nick provided it.
Although it was supposed to be Beck who’d provided it. Two days ago.
He started toward the mansion of the Sandler-Rosses, some of his most wealthy, regular, and irresponsible clients, telling himself that all his premonitions about the doom of Saturdays were wrong this time.
Collect the painting and go. No big deal.
What could go possibly wrong?
The front door swung open and a woman came out backwards, dragging a corrugated cardboard box in each hand. She was bent at the hip, which pressed the tight pencil skirt around the roundness of her bottom. Long legs stretched out below, ending in dark red heels. Her hair was trapped up on her head, giving him a great view of her neck and the curves beneath her pale grey, sleeveless silk shirt.
Okay. He was flexible. He could reassess his stance on Saturdays.
He moved toward the door.
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And here’s a little taste of three great, sexy reads from Rock*It Reads authors!
Excerpt from CURVEBALL by V.K. Sykes, book four in her USA Today Bestselling Philadelphia Patriots Series
….Ryan pushed open the glass doors of the bar and strode into the hallway. He glanced toward the elevators, frowned, and then quickly scanned the corridor. When his gaze lighted on her, he smiled. He came to her with a quick, long-legged stride that told Taylor how eager he was to be with her. That set off a lovely glow of warmth inside, and eased the tension that spiralled through her like a corkscrew.
“So, we’re doing our best to evade detection, I take it,” he said as he came up to her. He glanced at the high-tech security camera placed high on the wall on the opposite side of the stairwell. “Do you want me to disable the camera?”
She mentally winced even as she let out a reluctant laugh. “I know it’s stupid, but I think it makes sense, don’t you?”
He took her by the elbow and steered her through the heavy metal door into the stairwell. “Are you kidding? I love the idea of sneaking around with a beautiful woman.”
As the door clanged shut behind them, he surprised her by pushing her up against the concrete wall at the top of the landing. Deliberately, he covered every inch of the front of her body with his, pressing his already impressively hard erection into her belly as he captured her face between his big hands.
“Sneaking around makes everything so much dirtier, don’t you think?” he murmured as he feathered kisses along her cheekbone and down to the corner of her mouth. “And way hotter. Already I can’t wait to be inside you, baby.”
Smashwords
OFFISDE, by Julianna Stone
When hockey phenom Billie-Jo Barker returns home and decides to play in the local Friday night hockey league, all hell breaks loose. Not because Billie's talent is in question, but because Billie is a woman. And though these are modern times, some of the local guys still have a problem letting a girl into their 'men's club.'
Soon, Billie is at the center of a small town battle of the sexes, with everyone choosing sides. Her sisters. The townsfolk. Her friends. And yet, the only person whose opinion she cares about doesn't seem to care much at all. Logan Forest, the man who broke her heart when she was eighteen and the man she now shares the bench with every Friday night.
She's got a lot to prove and though Billie Jo Barker scores on the ice, will this girl ever score with the man of her dreams?
Smashwords
Excerpt from the scorching contemporary erotic romance, POSSESSION by Jennifer Lyon
(Note, Possession is the 2nd book in a series that needs to be read in order. The first is The Proposition.)
…Are you feeling now?”
His deep voice and searing focus heated her skin. “Yes.”
Challenge radiated from him. “I won’t let you pull back. You retreat, I’m coming after you. Hear me, Kitten?”
Her pulse jacked. He’d done it before, pinning her to a wall and taunting her until she’d fought back.
She’d loved it, thrilled in the powerful sensation. Yet she had the ultimate weapon. “I can tap out.” Her safe gesture.
He leaned in, brushing her mouth with his. “Always.”
Smashwords
Table of Contents
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Se
venteen
Eighteen
Nineteen
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