Lover

by Marni Mann

  “I am tasting your lips, Piper.”

  I swipe my tongue up her clit and slip a finger inside her. Damn, she’s already so wet, and she tastes so good. And, by the sounds she’s making, I know how close she is to coming.

  Since she’s been pregnant, my wife takes only seconds to get off. But I don’t just want to spend seconds between her legs. I want to spend hours, savoring her pussy with my mouth first and then burying my cock inside her.

  “And, when I’m done,” I continue, “I’m going to carry you to our bedroom, and I’m going to fuck you.”

  “Weeest!” she screams as the orgasm rips through her.

  Damn it, I love it when she yells my name.

  Don’t miss the excerpt of Drowning, a contemporary romance by Marni Mann & Gia Riley, at the end of this book.

  Jovana Shirley, you’ve done it again. With you, there’s never a doubt that our words will be the strongest they can be. Thank you for taking on those additional chapters and for making this book so beautiful. We just adore you.

  Letitia Hasser, you worked so hard for us, even when you had so much going on. Thank you for capturing West and for that killer font. We love working with you.

  Judy Zweifel, as always, you’ve polished our words before we set them free. Thank you for making our work shine. ♥

  Nina Grinstead, this book wouldn’t be the same without you—not even close. You helped us find our voice, you encouraged us so hard, and you believed in this story. Thank you will never be enough. We are so, so grateful to have you on our team. XO

  Carol Nevarez and Crystal Radaker, thank you for all of your wonderful feedback along the way. Because of you, this story is stronger, and there’s no double-dipping. HA. Love you both.

  So much love and extra special shout-outs go to Marni, Tina Bell, Megan Decker, Mandi Beck, and Shari Ryan. Thank you ladies for all of your support and pick-me-ups. While writing this book, life threw some major curveballs, and you were my support system times a million. I’m so grateful for you.

  Helene Cuji, Katie Monson, Melissa Erickson, Halle Rogers, Brittany DeMederios, and Kaitie Reister, thank you for being my biggest cheerleaders and for keeping me laughing. You make this journey so much fun!

  —Gia

  Mega, mega love goes to Gia, Brian, Kimmi Street, Julie Healey-Vaden, Ricky G, Elizabeth Kelley, my group of Florida bloggers and readers who I love more than anything, Jesse James, Jennifer Porpora, Kathi Goldwyn, Melissa Mann, Stacey Jacovina, Heather Hawley, and my COPA ladies. I’m so grateful for all of you.

  —Marni

  A huge thank you to our reader groups—Marni’s Midnighters and Gia Riley’s Books. You guys are rock stars, cheerleaders, virtual tissues, hugs, and we’re so grateful for you. XOXO

  Bloggers, we appreciate all of your support. Your promotion, likes, tweets, posts—it means everything to us. We couldn’t do this without you. No matter how big or small you are, your voice matters! Always remember that.

  Lastly, a massive thanks goes to our readers. Thank you for buying our books, for reading our words, and for sharing this journey with us. You make our dreams come true.

  Marni Mann

  Best-selling author Marni Mann knew she was going to be a writer since middle school. While other girls her age were daydreaming about teenage pop stars, Marni was fantasizing about penning her first novel.

  She crafts sexy, titillating stories that weave together her love of darkness, mystery, passion, and human emotions.

  A New Englander at heart, she now lives in Sarasota, Florida, with her husband and their two dogs. When she’s not nose deep in her laptop, working on her next novel, she’s scouring for chocolate, sipping wine, traveling, or devouring fabulous books.

  Want to get in touch? Visit Marni at…

  Facebook

  Twitter

  Instagram

  Website

  MarniMannBooks@gmail.com

  Click HERE to sign up for her newsletter.

  Would you like to join Marni’s Facebook group, Marni’s Midnighters? Team members qualify for exclusive giveaways and are the first to receive sneak peeks of the projects she’s currently working on. Click HERE to join.

  OTHER BOOKS BY MARNI

  STAND-ALONE NOVELS

  Prisoned (Dark Erotic Thriller)

  Animal (Dark Erotic Thriller)

  Wild Aces (Erotic Romance)

  The Unblocked Collection (Erotica)

  Pulled Beneath (New Adult)

  Pulled Within (New Adult)

  SERIES

  The Shadows Series (Erotica)

  Memoirs Aren’t Fairytales (Dark Fiction)

  Scars from a Memoir (Dark Fiction)

  COWRITTEN NOVEL WITH GIA RILEY

  Drowning

  Gia Riley

  Gia Riley has been in love with writing romance since high school when she took her very first creative writing class. From the small but mighty state of Delaware, she’s a country girl at heart, traveling back to her roots in Pennsylvania as often as she can.

  She’d rather pick truth than dare, bake than cook, and she will always choose coffee over tea.

  Just like life, her stories always have a mixture of heart and humor.

  Want to get in touch? Visit Gia at…

  Facebook

  Twitter

  Instagram

  Website

  giarileybooks@gmail.com

  Click HERE to sign up for her newsletter.

  Would you like to join Gia’s Facebook group, Gia Riley’s Books? Team members qualify for exclusive giveaways and are the first to receive sneak peeks of the projects she’s currently working on. Click HERE to join.

  OTHER BOOKS BY GIA

  STAND-ALONE NOVELS

  Stay Awhile (Contemporary Romance)

  In Pieces (Young Adult)

  INTERCONNECTED STAND-ALONE NOVELS

  Rock the Boat (Contemporary Romance)

  Rock the City (Contemporary Romance)

  SERIES

  Lighter (New Adult)

  Weightless (New Adult)

  COWRITTEN NOVEL WITH MARNI MANN

  Drowning

  Read the FIRST TWO CHAPTERS of Drowning, a contemporary romance by Marni Mann & Gia Riley.

  Copyright © 2016 by Marni Mann and Gia Riley

  All rights reserved.

  Visit our websites at www.MarniSMann.com and www.AuthorGiaRiley.com

  Cover Designer: Letitia Hasser, R.B.A Designs

  Editor and Interior Designer: Jovana Shirley, Unforeseen Editing, www.unforeseenediting.com

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN-13: 978-1541275324

  For those who are still running.

  For those who have found home.

  Clay

  I kick my feet onto the coffee table, crossing them right next to the hat that I threw on there when I got home. I can’t really call it a hat. It’s a fuzzy red Christmas stocking with a fucking bell on the end. And, as for the table it rests on, I can’t really call it one of those either. It’s a piece of plywood one of my neighbors tossed in the dumpster, and I stuck it over a milk crate. My couch is a beanbag, and my decorations are the three boxes I still haven’t unpacked since my move from Colorado. It’s been two months, and I still don’t have furniture. I still don’t have anything but plastic in my cupboards.

  I still haven’t made New York City my home.

  “I’m not messing around, Clay. I want you to wear the hat for your whole shift. You hear me?” my manager said when she gave it t
o me. “It’ll get everyone in the spirit…even you.”

  Fuck that.

  And fuck her holiday spirit.

  I want to tell her to take the hat and shove it up her ass. But I can’t. I need this job, and I need our arrangement.

  When she hired me, the deal we agreed on was no paperwork, no identification. I would work for cash tips only.

  No one at the bar would ever know my real name.

  The people who drink there don’t give a shit about the hat or the holiday spirit. They want stiff pours and tart twists. The women want a guy like me who listens, someone to flirt with, someone who gives them attention. I’m sure they don’t get much of that at home. The guys, they want quick service and silence.

  I can handle that. All of it.

  But I can’t handle wearing that goddamn hat.

  I can lie about who I am and what I’ve done, but I can’t lie about being in the holiday spirit. Hell, I can’t even fake it.

  There is no spirit in me.

  That was gone the second I left Colorado after I dumped a few of my belongings into a clunker I’d paid for in cash and took off for the East Coast.

  A coast I hadn’t lived on since I started training.

  A coast I never thought I’d ever live on again.

  As I shift my feet on the table, the hat bouncing from the movement, my cell vibrates on the beanbag. Mom appears on the screen.

  “Hey,” I say, getting up to grab a beer.

  The fridge is bare besides a case of IPA, a half-empty bottle of ketchup, and some cans of Endurance—the liquid protein that moved with me all the way to Manhattan. They’re cans I should have thrown out. All they do is remind me of why I am in New York and why I should be in Colorado.

  “Hi, Adri—”

  “No, Mom. We don’t say that name anymore. Especially not over a cell phone.”

  She sighs. “I’m sorry, baby. I’m still getting used to this.”

  I am, too.

  My new name, Clay, is as foreign as this fucking city.

  “Are you still coming tomorrow?” she asks.

  “That’s the plan.” I bang the beer cap against the edge of the counter, the metal lifting off the top and falling to the floor. There are at least twenty others next to it and no reason to pick any of them up. “My manager gave me the next two days off.”

  “That’s nice of her.”

  I take several sips. “I’ve worked the last thirty-six days straight.”

  “Did you tell her you need the money?”

  “I’m not complaining, Mom.”

  I’m not upset that my manager has worked me for thirty-six days straight. I’m grateful. I don’t want to be in my apartment any more than I have to. Without a TV and a computer, my place is quiet. Lonely. And the silence makes me think.

  Thinking leads to memories and regret, and that hurts too fucking much.

  “I booked us two rooms at that hotel you picked,” she says. “The room is under my maiden name…like you requested, just in case.”

  Just in case.

  That’s how I live my life now.

  Just in case they try to look for me. Just in case they decide they want to kill me.

  “The train gets me in around noon,” I say, “so I’ll be there shortly after.”

  “I’m looking forward to it, honey. I’ve missed you.”

  I take the final chug of my beer and set the empty bottle on the coffee table. “Yeah, Mom, me, too.” I slide on my jacket, zipping it all the way to my chin, and tie my sneakers. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  After I hang up, I snap the burner phone closed and stick it in my pocket. Then, I grab my keys and shut the door behind me.

  Andi

  “You have to do this, Andi. It’s now or never,” Camille tells me as she hoists my empty suitcase on top of the bed.

  She’s right. If I want my life to change, I have to pack up my shit and get out of town before it’s too late. Before he has a chance to stop me.

  “I’m scared,” I tell her with shaky hands. “What if he finds me? It’ll only make things worse.”

  She wraps me in her arms, the way a sister would. “And what if he doesn’t, Andi? You’ll finally have a chance to get your life back. You’ll be happy again. You can write.”

  Writing has always been my dream, but once Brooks’s happiness became my top priority, I began to lose my passion. Not only did my job suffer, but the newspaper I was working for also fired me when I called off for the third time in a month.

  It’s not that I didn’t want to be there. I craved digging for new stories, but the news doesn’t wait for bruises to fade or cuts to heal. There’s no time to dry your eyes and wait it out. Life happens every single day, and from the moment it started to pass me by, I realized I had merely been existing and that I’d stopped living altogether.

  After more and more run-ins with Brooks, I knew I was running out of time.

  His moments of rage have been outweighing his peacefulness. And I’m tired of looking over my shoulder, waiting for his fist to find my face again.

  Come tomorrow morning, I’m leaving Manhattan for a fresh start someplace small and quiet. Someplace Brooks will never think to look for me and, hopefully, will never find me. Because, if he does, he’ll kill me for running away from him.

  “He made me hate him, Camille. I don’t think he ever wanted me to love him,” I tell her as I throw one more shirt into my bag.

  For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been buying new ones and hiding them in the back of my closet, so when the time came to pack up and leave, none of my clothes would look out of place.

  “He’s made you hate a lot more than that, Andi.”

  He’s made me hate myself.

  I thought, once I made it to Manhattan, the rest of my dreams would fall into place. Especially after I met Brooks and saw how much he cared about me. Not only did he take away my homesickness, but he also made me a priority in his life. And that was something a man had never done for me before.

  But looks can be deceiving, and all those promises he made were nothing more than a rope around my neck, pulling me down a destructive path I had no control over. Whether I realized it or not, from day one, Brooks has held all the power. He’s controlled every single move I made, and I’ve never let anyone have that kind of hold on me before.

  “Why is it so hard for you to do anything right?”

  I stood at the end of the hallway, confused about why Brooks had my purse in one hand and my shoes in another. I’d only been home from work for ten minutes, and he was home earlier than usual.

  “What did I do?” I asked him, wishing I hadn’t as soon as his eyes flared.

  Eerily calm, he dropped my purse and shoes on the hardwood floor. When he was inches away from my face, he placed a hand on either side of my head until I was braced against the wall. “Why don’t you tell me what you did?”

  “Brooks, you’re scaring me.”

  “You haven’t seen scary yet, princess.”

  I swallowed, not recognizing the man who stood in front of me or why he was so upset. The Brooks who kept me warm at night had never threatened me. He’d never raised his voice.

  Though petrified of the way he was acting, I lifted my hand and placed it against his five o’clock shadow. For a split second, he leaned into my touch, and his eyes began to look apologetic. But, just as he started to morph back into the man I loved, the rage returned the moment I tried to kiss him.

  His hand wrapped around my neck so tightly, I gasped for air, clueless about why he was doing this to me. Especially when I hadn’t done anything to deserve it.

  Like my struggle only made this better for him, he smiled when I clawed at his hand, trying my best to loosen his grip before I passed out.

  “Are you scared now, princess?”

  I nodded, which only made him laugh, and then he threw my head backward like a ball. My skull screamed the moment I bounced off the drywall. As I clenched my jaw to absorb some of th
e shock, the first of my tears began to fall.

  Silently begging him to let go of me, I pleaded with my eyes in any way I could. I thought he felt sorry for hurting me, sorry enough that he would let go. But he kissed me so hard on the mouth, it wouldn’t surprise me if blood was on my lips.

  I pushed against his chest, desperate for my next breath. He only let me have it when he’d had his fill.

  “Why are you doing this?” I asked him.

  “Don’t you ever question me, Andi. This is my house, and I can do whatever I want.”

  I stood, staring at Brooks, unsure of what had changed, how he could go from loving me last night to practically hating me today. If I disgusted him that bad, why did he still want me?

  “Brooks, I’m sorry,” I told him even though I had no idea what I was apologizing for.

  And then it became clear.

  “If you ever talk to him or let him touch you again, you’ll regret it, Andi.”

  “Who?” I asked him. I could tell it was the wrong thing to ask as soon as the question passed between my lips.

  He lunged for me again, coming up with a fistful of my hair, and he yanked me into the bedroom. When he slammed me against the dresser, my scalp hurt so bad, I could feel each hair follicle trying to release me from his grasp.

  “Don’t fuck with me, Andi. I saw you out front with him.”

  The only man I had been with today was my boss. We had been working on a story outside the city, and he had given me a ride home on the way back in.

  We hadn’t touched.

  We’d only spoken about work.

  And we most definitely weren’t compatible.

  But Brooks had been watching me today, and who knew how many days before this one. It sent a chill up my spine.

  “I’m sorry you got the wrong impression. It wasn’t like that at all. I promise.”