by Aubrey Irons
Table of Contents
Prologue
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
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Epilogue
Extended Epilogue
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Beautiful Beast
Aubrey Irons
Contents
Beautiful Beast
Soundtrack
Mailing List
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
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Thief
Thief: A Second Chance Romance
Mailing List
Prologue
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
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Epilogue
Extended Epilogue
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Also by Aubrey Irons
Mailing List
About the Author
I’m no princess. He’s the anti-prince-charming.
Welcome to the happy ever disaster.
Anastasia:
Here’s the first thing you should know: this is not a fairytale. Happily-ever-afters are fables, and Prince Charming is a sweet little lie.
I know all this because HE taught me.
Once upon a lifetime ago, the rich, arrogant, sinfully gorgeous, and tragically broken dark prince of the Hamptons was my tormentor. My darkness, my shameful attraction, my all-consuming, forbidden temptation.
I hate Sebastian Crown because nine years ago, for one night, I was stupid enough to think I loved him. And I’ve been paying for it ever since.
Except now, he needs me to help him save his empire.
…And he’s not taking no for answer.
Bastian:
She’s my nemesis. My addiction. My weakness.
My obsession.
I used to tell myself I hated Anastasia Bell - for being poor, for not worshipping the ground I walked on, for looking at me like she pitied me for being me.
When the rest of my world always told me yes, she was the ever-provoking no. She thinks I’m a monster - a tragic, fucked-up, broken beast.
She doesn’t know the half of it.
Because she can’t begin to know the crimes of my past, or imagine the things I’ve done to her behind the scenes since she left this place.
Years ago, I thought breaking her would fix me.
I was wrong.
Now I’ve got her in my sights again, and this time, I won’t be letting her go. Even if it means we both go down in flames...
Copyright © 2017 Aubrey Irons
Cover Design: Coverlüv
Interior Formatting and Design: Aubrey Irons
Photographer: Snooty Fox Images
Cover Model: Stuart Reardon
Editing: Ellie McLove
Proofreading: Cassie Dean
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are solely the product of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, organizations, actual events or locales is entirely coincidental. The author acknowledges the trademark status of products referred to in this book and acknowledges that trademarks have been used without permission.
All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations used for review purposes.
This book is intended for mature, adult audiences only. It contains sexually explicit and graphic scenes and language which may be considered offensive by some readers. Please do not continue reading this book of you are under the age of 18 or are offended by content of this nature.
All sexually active characters in this work are 18 years of age or older and are in no way blood relations. All acts of a sexual nature are completely consensual.
Created with Vellum
To you. Wherever you are.
Soundtrack
This story - like all good stories, and life, and long car rides, and breakups, and triumphs - has a playlist.
You can listen to it here on Spotify.
Sober II (Melodrama) - Lorde
Cold Little Heart - Michael Kiwanuka
Slow Dancer - Noah Gundersen
Love Is Hell - Ryan Adams
Anthem For A Seventeen Year Old Girl - Broken Social Scene
Time After Time - Cyndi Lauper
Every Breath You Take - Chase Holfelder
This Feeling - Alabama Shakes
I’m Gonna Do My Thing - Royal Deluxe
Trouble Ahead - WØLFFE
River - Leon Bridges
Holocene - Bon Iver
God Of Wine - Third Eye Blind
Shape Shifter - Lera Lynn
Give it Up - 8mm
Cigarettes - Noah Gundersen
> Desert - Emilie Simon
Ghost Rider - Madi Diaz
A Case Of You - Joni Mitchell
Hide and Seek - Imogen Heap
Heroes - David Bowie
Born to Run - Bruce Springsteen
Mailing List
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http://eepurl.com/bu3-3P
I sat upon the ocean
But the motion brought me down.
Salted lips and whiskey kiss
Left me there to drown.
The darkness hangs heavy in the room, like the air of a tomb. My eyes dart over the sheets covering most of the furniture, squinting in the shrouded gloom from the heavy drapes across the enormous old windows.
“Mr. Crown will be with you in a moment.”
Carl smiles that small, tight, practiced smile I remember - his polished voice brushing through the stillness of the study. His aged eyes are warm, even if the rest of his face is drawn and lined. He frowns quietly, his bushy gray brows furrowing as he opens his mouth for a moment before he slowly shakes his head as if chasing away the thought.
“It’s good to see you here again, Ms. Bell. I believe this old house missed you.”
I could laugh, except for the bitter irony that creeps up the back of my throat like bile.
This house did not miss me because this house never knew me to begin with. For eight years, my father and I lived one hundred feet from this house, and in nine years, I’ve been inside of it twice.
The day I arrived here, and the day I left.
Sebastian Crown made sure of that.
I dig deep for some sincerity of what I should say back to Carl. I come up short, so I lie instead.
“It’s great to be back here, Carl.”
He flashes that tight, drawn smile again as if he knows I’m lying through my teeth even if he’s far too polite to say anything. Career butlers have a way of not calling you out on your bullshit.
“Your father is doing well with his recovery?”
My eyes drop to the floor. I say nothing.
“Terrible,” Carl’s bushy brow knits as he sighs heavily. “Just a terrible accident.”
I nod tightly, still saying nothing.
“Well then,” he nods, all business again. He steps towards one of the two sets of double doors to the study, pausing with his hands on the large iron knobs.
“As I said, Mr. Crown will be with you shortly.”
Mr. Crown.
The devil. My devil. My tormentor, my darkness, my past. The knife that once sliced me in two.
I hate him.
I can feel my pulse tick a beat faster as Carl shuts the double doors, leaving me alone in the gloom of the old study. Across the room, the second set of doors are open, though there’s nothing but darkness and shadows past them. I shiver like I’m a kid alone in a basement as my eyes scan that shadowy doorway.
Three-thousand miles, two suitcases, one guitar, and a huge debt later, I’m back. Nine years later, I’m breaking the biggest promise I ever made to myself. The one I made the night he wrecked me.
Never come back here.
I shiver again as I turn my gaze to the recessed shelves on the wall behind the sheet-draped desk. Pictures used to line those shelves - at least a hundred of them. Happy faces, holidays, birthdays, exotic locations. A family. A life.
A boy who still knew how to smile without malice.
They’re gone now. I supposed the cliché would be to find them face-down or shattered on the floor. But if they ever were cast aside or smashed, they’ve long since been cleaned up or put away.
Crick.
Crick.
The sharp sound of something striking against the old wood floors sends a chill through me, and I whirl. I swallow, my eyes narrowing as I stare down the dimness through the open set of doors. The sound comes again, and I can feel my chest tightening as a figure begins to appear - a shadow emerging from the darkness.
“Texas.”
His voice is like whiskey and gravel - a roughness rasping at the back end of his deep baritone. It’s changed slightly, but it’s a voice I’d know anywhere. It’s a voice I’ve heard in my dreams for years now. A voice I’ve thought I’ve recognized in strangers, heart pounding as I’ve twisted my head around to scan a restaurant for the ghost of my past who’s somehow followed me to dinner.
Of course, it’s never actually been him. Why would it be? Worse, why would I ever want it to be?
Bastian steps forward out of the shadows, and I can feel the twist in my gut that used to be familiar. Because years ago, Sebastian Crown was my terror.
In the richest town, on the most expensive stretch of coastal real estate on the Eastern seaboard, the Crowns were royalty, which made Bastian the crown prince. And in a school full of the phenomenally wealthy - a school where chauffeured limos or imported European sports cars brought kids in the morning, not yellow buses, and where the latest Italian fashions were being flaunted before they even hit the catwalks of Milan - Bastian always stood a head above the rest.
Wealthier than wealthy, more pedigreed than the British Monarchy, and more popular than any boy-band at the time. All of which came together to make Sebastian Crown the most insufferable spoiled trust fund kid in the long, storied history of spoiled trust fund kids.
…And my father worked for his.
In the land of off-shore accounts, and third and fourth vacation houses, and yachts, and imported cars, I grew up the daughter of a man who cut the Crowns’ lawn and trimmed their hedges.
Bastian never let me forget that, and for that and so many other reasons, I hate him.
He was a bastard back then, and I’d never heard of anything improving since. But since his accident six months ago? Well, since then, he’s become a monster.
Or so I hear.
I swallow thickly as my eyes dart over him. He’s in pajama pants and a T-shirt - the pants slung low on his hips and the shirt tight across his broad, muscled chest. I’ve never seen Bastian this underdressed. Not even that night.
The night he ruined.
The night he stripped everything I was away and broke me.
The night I pledged never to come back here.
When we were kids, and in high school, he was always the best, most expensively dressed. Always in perfect fashion. Always with impeccable, perfect hair, with that perpetual half-glare, half-cruel smirk on his chiseled, aristocratic face. Custom tailored pants and shirts, silk vests, Japanese cotton, Italian leather shoes - all of it somehow cool even if high school kids should be in jeans and hoodies.
The man standing before me though, leaning on his cane with those dark eyes sharp as daggers as they dig into me, is anything but that boy I used to know.
And it’s not just the pajama pants.
He’s huge, for one. Sure, Bastian was always in great shape back then. He played lacrosse, he swam, and there’s a gym on his property that rivals most professional sports teams’. But he was always in shape, nothing more. The man in front of me is ripped. Muscles bulge at the shoulders of his T-shirt, pulling it across a powerful looking chest and stretching it tight around chiseled biceps. He straightens, his hand gripping the silver handle of that cane in a white-knuckle grip as his eyes slice over me. The shirt pulls up just enough to catch a glimpse of grooved hips, a flat stomach, and a trail of hair…
I look away.
Bastian Crown is not “eye candy.”
He’s the devil.
The changes don’t stop there. The boy with the cocky smirk and cool gaze out of an Abercrombie and Fitch catalog, with the chiseled jaw and the close-cropped hair flipped at the front that I remember? Well, he’s gone. Or at least, he’s hiding behind the mask of a thick, dark beard covering that pedigree jawline and cheekbones. Shaggy hair falls across his brow and shadows his dark eyes, giving him a primal, feral look.
Texas. It was always his little pet name for me, though it was never a term of a
ffection. It was a reminder - that I wasn’t from or of here. That I was from a place that could just be boiled down into one sneered, spat out word, like it was a slur.
Texas.
I draw in my breath, standing tall as I face him, unblinking.
This will not be my tormentor anymore. He will not be my nightmare and my forbidden daydream, like before. He’s just a broken, sad, rich prick. Hell, if anything, I should feel bad for him, after the accident.
But I don’t, and I won’t.
I take another breath, making damn sure I don’t shudder or shake as I meet his dark, withering gaze.
“Bastian.”
The corners of his lips curl for only a second before a shadow crosses his face.
“Only my friends call me Bastian, Texas.”
“I could always call you Bastard, like I used to if you’d prefer,” I spit back.
“And I could always fire you, void your father’s employment contract, kick you both off my property, and tell you to get fucked and good luck.”
He does smile this time, wickedly.
Bastard.
“I’m sure your father will have no problem paying for his medical bills without the insurance I provide. As I’m sure you’ll have no problem paying for those college tuition bills without family income - again, which I provide.”
He reaches up, his bicep curling as his fingers rake across his chest, toying with a small itch maybe. His eyes never leave me.
“And I’m sure your father will also have no trouble paying back the damages from his royal fuck up after I let him go. Right?”
My lips pull back in a sneer, and even if I know he’s baiting me - like he always did - I spring the trap anyways.
Like I always did.
“It was an accident,” I spit, my lips pulling back from my bared teeth.
“An accident it should have been Hank’s job to prevent,” he growls. “Some might call that negligence.”
I blink, my head slowly shaking back and forth as Bastian puts his weight on his cane and looks right back at me. Somehow, that cocky smirk comes through the beard.
“Relax, Texas. That’s why you’re here, to save the day, right?”
He smiles wickedly as he straightens and turns away from me.