by M. K. Hale
Disobeying Him
M. K. Hale
Copyright © 2020 by M. K. Hale
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.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Publication date : November 28, 2020
Font design by Maya Johnston
Cover Design by Meredith Hale
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M. K. Hale
http://www.mkhale.com
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Ebook ASIN : B08LKGR8HF
Ebook ISBN: 9781393610304
First Edition
Created with Vellum
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
Epilogue
About the Author
More By M. K. Hale
Also by M. K. Hale
For my perfect and amazing mother, who wanted to clarify she never inspired the horrible mom characters in my stories.
Blurb
He craves control. She craves chaos. The only thing they might crave more is each other…
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Nate
* * *
Allie Parser is driving me crazy on purpose and waiting for the moment I snap.
To say we are fire and ice would be misleading. We are mint toothpaste followed by a big gulp of orange juice. Pulp included.
I want to strangle her, and she wants to straddle me.
She says I need to stop living life by rules.
She doesn’t want to know what I’ll do to her if I break mine.
* * *
Allie
* * *
Nate Reddington, heir to his daddy’s fortune and my RA, is cold, closed off, and a little obsessed with control (hello, pair of handcuffs under his bed. How are you?). But I can fix him.
He is used to women on their knees for him, but I’m more likely to kneecap him than obey.
As a psychology student, it is basically my job to “My Fair Lady” him and turn this icy man into a warm human being.
Maybe “warm” is the wrong word. Because Nate Reddington, red-faced and about to crack?
Scorching hot.
Rules
Nate’s Rules For Life:
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1. Follow The Rules
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2. Keep Your Enemies Far Away And Your Friends Even Farther
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3. Avoid Vulnerable People As They Are Contagious
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4. Fun Is For People With Nothing Better To Do
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5. Sleep With Two Eyes Open Or Never Sleep At All
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6. Have The Last Laugh, Never The Last Word
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7. Never Be Someone’s Favorite Or Least Favorite Person
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8. Forget But Never Forgive
Allie’s #1 Rule For Life: There Are No Rules
Prologue
Nate:
* * *
My favorite second-grade teacher once said on a zoo field trip, “Most animals are more afraid of you than you are of them.”
I never forgot because, the next day, I stumbled upon a hornets’ nest and told the hornets, “Don’t worry. I won’t hurt you.”
The hornet stingers and venom landed me in the hospital for a full day.
It was the day I realized it was correct to be afraid of things that could hurt me. Because even if they didn’t mean to, even if they didn’t dress in a devil’s tail and sport a long mustache meant for twirling while tying someone down to a railroad track, even if they did not wear name tags reading, “Hello, my name is The Villain of Your Story,” those people—who might appear utterly normal—could still sting you and infect you with enough venom to stick you in bed for days.
Unlike honeybees, humans had the unique ability to wish to harm someone and come back for more. People should have taken a lesson from the flower-loving, mild, and yellow form of hornets, and thought to themselves, “Hmm, I am about to hurt this person either through my actions or words. Would I give up my life to harm them like this? Would I use this as my last stinger for the rest of my days if I had but one?”
Humans hurt humans. Humans hurt bees. And hornets fucking hurt in general. Like, damn, the stings still ached over twelve years later.
And when she walked into my life—when this girl wrapped in a bright-red dress sparked some immediate, primal need in my body—deep down, I knew she would have the largest stinger of all. This was someone who could hurt me and come back for more.
This was the girl who could destroy me and everything I had worked so hard to become.
Chapter 1
Allie:
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“Are these…special brownies?” the girl asked me as I handed her one of the chocolate squares.
If by special she meant were they made to help me make new friends in my new dorm at my new university where I knew no one and was a six-hour flight and a two-hour taxicab ride away from my hometown, then yes, they were very special. My aunt had taught me from a young age that sugary baked goods were the quickest way to clog up a rich husband’s heart or warm a stranger into becoming a close friend. I had no use for the rich-husband part as I was as single as a twenty-year-old girl could be: no crushes, no hang-ups, no nothing.
“The secret ingredient is love,” I replied with a smile.
“And?” she prompted.
Did she want weed to be in my brownies? “And more love,” I said.
“Isn’t my roomie so sweet?” Marissa cooed.
After moving into the university dorm an hour earlier, I had met my roommate, Marissa—correction, the freakishly strong Marissa had strangled me in a death hug as she proclaimed we would become best friends who told each other our best-kept secrets.
This short, black-haired girl with an addiction to gossip could not fathom my secrets.
All she knew about me was that I came from a small town located somewhere in the South and I had spent a gap year after high school graduation to explore Europe. She didn’t know why I had left my town and moved as far away as possible, working random waitressing jobs and learning new languages to survive abroad. She might have thought I was a tourist, but my experience better fit the label “runaway.”
“Allie is sooo sweet,” Marissa continued. “When I first saw her, I was like, wow, this girl is going to be so sweet, and then she said she made everyone in our hall brownies, and I was all, yup, I was so right. Allie is the sweetest.”
“Eh.” A noise came from me. “I’m not that sweet.” After all, the brownies were bribery for friendship. “I just thought this would be the best way to make friends.”
“Soooooo sweet
.”
As I went from door to door, knocking, meeting people, and giving them the chocolate dessert, everyone seemed to be discussing the same issue: a rule book had floated around to every room.
“Have you seen this?” a girl with bright blond hair, who introduced herself as Jennifer, asked Marissa and me in the hallway, her roommates behind her. Jennifer held up some sort of manual. “It’s ridiculous!”
One of the girls added, “No other dorm got a rule book. Just us.”
Marissa sighed, full of knowledge over the situation. As a freshman, it came in handy to have a sophomore roommate. “You know it’s Nate,” she told them.
The mention of this unknown name brought new questions flying through my brain. “Who’s Nate?”
“He’s the RA. Resident assistant. The guy in charge of making sure we don’t burn this place to the ground or throw a party.” Jennifer flipped through the multi-page handbook. “This is crazy. Rule nine is no making popcorn in the hallway microwave.”
I laughed, because how could I not? “What?”
Marissa took the booklet from her and read aloud, “No drinking alcohol in the dorms. No animals permitted. No groups of over five in a room. No smoking. No loud music. No posters. Jesus, how long is this list?”
“Fifteen pages. It’s not even double-spaced.”
“What kind of person writes a fifteen-page rule book and hands them out before the first day of classes?” This guy needed to check into a spa and spend some quality time with a mud bath and some hot rocks.
“Nate. That’s who. No other RA does this.” Jennifer crossed her arms. “He’s got a power trip.”
A brunette giggled and elbowed her. “You’re just mad cause he rejected you.”
She blushed. “I am not. He’s crazy. This rule book is crazy. Some support here would be nice.”
I saw an opening for friendship and jumped in. “She’s right. I mean, this guy must have some serious issues. Whoever wrote this thing has not just a stick but a whole tree up his ass.”
Instead of laughing, the girls’ eyes widened. What? Was cussing no longer cool in college?
The hair on my neck rose at the sound of a male throat being cleared behind me.
“He’s right behind me,” I said, not needing to ask.
“I can promise you, nothing is up my ass,” a dark-and-deep masculine growl sounded. “Unless you’d care to look?”
I laughed nervously, turning around and wanting the hallway to swallow me whole.
Holy mama mia.
He was… Wow.
Tall. So tall my gaze swung to his chest first before scanning up his neck to the rest of him.
A strong, tense jaw. Unforgiving cheekbones. His chiseled face resembled an old Greek statue, frozen in the same handsome expression of painful longing all the sculptures of that era emanated. The yearning to jump out of his stone skin and breathe as flesh.
Fiery bright-blue eyes mirroring the clear turquoise waters of the Perhentian Islands I had visited during my year abroad stared at me. My favorite color.
Under my gaze, he licked his lips, perusing me, and stared back. “Tell me, what are these issues you think I have, girl I’ve never seen or talked to before?” he asked angrily. My fingers itched to massage his tense shoulders. Or to tangle in his short, dark hair. Or touch him anywhere or in any way.
Don’t back down. Your entire life, you backed down; don’t fucking back down.
This was college. A new start. A new life. A new Allie. Being shamed or demeaned was no longer allowed. This was not the place I had grown up in and been ostracized into leaving.
No more being the bud for me. I was going to goddamn blossom.
Fighting the urge to look away from him and toward the ground, I stared him down and shot back in a matching angry tone, “Well, for one, it seems you have some serious control issues. Let me guess, something is spiraling in your life, so you’ve chosen to embrace rules and control the people around you?”
“Ohhhhhhh,” came from the shocked girls behind me.
His jaw dropped for a split second, as he did not expect me to fight back or tell him just what issues I thought he had. Well, he had unknowingly stumbled across a psychology major who loved diagnosing people, so the joke was on him. He wanted to open up a can of worms? Fine. Let’s do it.
“From your dark clothing, I can assume you’re more of an introvert than an extrovert. And by the way you look like your skin is crawling during this interaction, I would assume you’re also more of a loner,” I said. “You prefer to be by yourself, and instead of giving new things a try, you stick to a strict schedule because you’d rather be bored than disappointed or hurt by something you weren’t expecting.”
He blinked, his anger fading for a mere second as the shock ate away at the annoyance in his expression. “You can tell all that from me wearing dark clothes?” he sneered, but it came out disarmed rather than deadly.
“I can tell a lot about you from what you’re wearing. Like your shoes.”
I bent down on my knees in front of him to survey his footwear. He sucked in a surprised breath and asked, “What are you doing?” He stepped back, but I held on to his shoe. “Are you crazy? Let go.”
There was a second where I absorbed the weight of my actions and how my face was now crotch level to sneak a peek at his groin. I tried not to, but I was only human. His pants seemed a bit tighter than before. Deliciously snug. No, focus. As blood rushed to my cheeks, I lifted his foot so I could see the bottom of the sole. He gripped my shoulder to stay vertical, risking his balance if he did not touch me. I struggled to concentrate with his hand on my skin.
“Looks new,” I said. “That indicates you have a conscientious personality, which fits with the whole stick-up-your-ass thing.”
“They are new,” he said, tightening his grip on me. “Please stand up.”
“Nervous to have a girl on her knees for you?” I asked, but instead of smiling, he locked his jaw. Hmm, maybe my position affected him the same way his fingers curling around my shoulder sent my heart into juvenile pitter-patter territory.
“They’re just black shoes. There is nothing for you to read.”
“Brand-new shoes can often be a sign of attachment anxiety.”
“Excuse me?”
“Attachment anxiety,” I repeated, babbling and revealing my obsession with psychology. “It often relates to separation and abandonment. Do you have trouble building and maintaining relationships? Were you abandoned at some point in your childhood—?”
“Allie,” someone—Marissa—gasped from several feet away from us, and I slammed back into reality. I had forgotten anyone else was listening to me other than Nate.
Embarrassed and angrier than ever, Nate pulled his foot from my grip. I stood on shaky legs, ashamed at how far I had gone in my analysis in front of the girls.
“Um,” I started to apologize.
Nate moved forward so quickly he caused a small gust of wind to play with the tendrils of auburn hair hanging in front of my face. He leaned over, the strong scent of crisp apples and sweet soap flooding my nostrils, and he whispered threateningly in my ear, “You have no idea who the fuck I am.” His warm breath bathed the side of my neck, each puffed exhale caressing the skin. “And you never will.”
He spun around and strode down the hallway, away from me.
However, he piqued curiosity. “Well, now I’m interested.”
Chapter 2
Nate:
* * *
Fuck me. It had to be her, didn’t it? The girl I had watched wheel her four large suitcases into the dorm’s lobby while moving in this morning—the girl who’d caused me a mini heart attack and a shocking, untimely erection in public—she had to be my next-door neighbor and the woman who had spewed out facts about me like she studied my journal and was completing an oral exam.
Shit, the image of her and the words “oral exam” turned dirty in my mind, and suddenly, I was sporting that same erection again. God
, what was going on with me?
Keeping myself in check was my favorite hobby and best talent. Now, the back of my neck sweat, and shallow breaths moved my chest up and down. My body was freaking out about her. So was I.
She had no filter, considering she had listed out my every deep issue and insecurity in the public hallway while on her knees in front of me, holding my shoe. I mean, who did that? Who was she? Some secret stalker or reporter hell-bent on finding out what the wealthy Reddingtons were up to?
Whoever she was, she was dangerous, and I needed to stay away from her.
A knock pounded hard on the opposite side of my door. I sighed and approached it. A Resident Assistant’s job is never done. The knocker seemed to rethink the heavy force put behind it and added a soft and delicate knock, knock.
I opened the door, about to introduce myself as the RA when I met her gaze. Red-dress girl.
Damn it, she was frustratingly gorgeous.