And last, but not least, join my Facebook group! I’m in there with exclusive giveaways, chatting about things I don’t normally share on my main page, and just general fun and up-to-no-good stuff! Join here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/LRJbooks/
***
MY UPCOMING RELEASES!
HER SUBMISSION—April 23, 2019
Dirtier Duet book two (turn the page to read chapter one of book one, HIS DEMAND)
https://dirtierduet.weebly.com/
A PERFECT LIE—May 14, 2019
A brand-new psychological thriller perfect for readers of Gone Girl
https://aperfectliebook.weebly.com
THE NAKED TRILOGY—June 11, 2019
An intensely dark, and wildly sexy trilogy!
Sign-up here to be notified when it’s available for pre-order
https://www.subscribepage.com/nakedtrilogy
LOVE ME DEAD—July 16, 2019
The next standalone book in my Lilah Love series
http://lilahseries.weebly.com
THE TRUTH ABOUT COWBOYS—August 27, 2019
A brand-new standalone cowboy romance releasing in mass market paperback in stores everywhere and ebook
https://truthaboutcowboys.weebly.com
THE SAVAGE TRILOGY—coming soon
That’s right, the infamous SAVAGE is getting his own three-book story!
Sign-up here to be notified when it’s available for pre-order:
https://www.subscribepage.com/savagetrilogy
***
KEEP READING FOR CHAPTER ONE OF HIS DEMAND (BOOK ONE IN MY SUPER SEXY DIRTIER DUET) AND A PERFECT LIE (MY UPCOMING PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER) !
THE DIRTIER DUET
GABE & ABBIE’S STORY
HIS DEMAND—AVAILABLE NOW
HER SUBMISSION—COMING APRIL 23, 2019
Gabe Maxwell is a powerhouse in the boardroom, a man with a dark past he's buried under success and power. He's not a white picket fence and forever kind of guy and he's definitely not into redheads. That is until one corners him, kisses him and thanks him for waking her up. Right before she walks away and leaves him. She's gone and he's obsessed.
Then she walks into his office and back into his life, and he has to have her. It doesn't matter that she's the kind of woman you marry. It doesn't matter that she's everything he avoids because she's everything he wants.
Only Abbie isn't the good girl she seems. She has secrets and a past and soon, she'll pull Gabe into her bed, her life, and that spells more than obsession. It spells danger.
Chapter One OF
HIS DEMAND
Gabe
My brother is now officially married.
He’s also gone, headed off to his honeymoon, while I remain in the apartment that he now shares with his new wife, Carrie, and not by intent. It just sort of happened. They left for the airport and I never left their apartment. Even the dog and cat they recently adopted and now call their children have gone home with my sister and her husband.
Children.
My brother.
Fuck.
I tear away the tie at my neck, the jacket of my tux long ago gone, and walk to the liquor cabinet, perusing the selection of fine whiskey. “Don’t mind if I do,” I murmur, pouring myself a twenty-year whiskey, a luxury drink that we can all afford these days thanks to how damn well the merger between companies went—ours and that of Reid’s new wife. When my brother gets married, he does it forever. He even pulled their two companies into one.
Forever.
That will never be me. I thought it would be once, but that was a long damn time ago. Now, I just fuck and move on, but I do like that dog my brother adopted. Maybe I’ll have a kid of my own, aka a dog, forever and ever. My mind goes painfully back to our old family dogs, and I ax that idea. Dogs die. I don’t need to fall in love with anyone that could die on me. On that note, I need out of this happily-ever-after apartment. I down my whiskey, pull on the jacket to my tuxedo again and head for the door, grabbing my trench coat as I leave. I flip the light out and for a moment, I stare into the darkness, feeling the emptiness open an ancient wound. I shut the damn door.
A few minutes later, I exit their building into a cold December New York City night, and rather than walking to my apartment on the other side of Battery Park, I call a car. I don’t need more empty space to fill up with thoughts better left long buried, better left in the quicksand of my past. I’m at my office building in ten minutes, and I plan to go upstairs and work, but instead, I find myself in the bar of one of the popular restaurants next to our building. A high-end joint that sports the kind of high-end bar offerings my mood requires right now.
I enter the dimly lit spot and wave to the pretty brunette hostess, who’s about ten years too young to get my attention. At thirty-seven, I like my women confident and preferably worldly, not trying to figure out what essay to write for a college paper. Not that it should matter. I fuck and move on and yet somehow—it does. I absolutely need to know that the woman I just got naked with can hold an intelligent conversation, layered with life and experience, even if I don’t want to actually have that conversation. It’s just a thing to me I can’t seem to shake.
I cut right into the bar, lights flickering on small round tables, and for two days after Christmas, the crowd is heavier than I expect. Almost every seat in the place is taken, but the bar is bare and calling my name. I head that direction, order my favorite whiskey and bullshit with Kevin, the bartender who’s been here every day of the last five years. I, on the other hand, have practically lived at the building next door since I was a kid, actually since I was five. That’s when my father moved the law firm he founded here. “That brother of yours really got married, then,” Kevin says after I shed my coat and give him an eyeful of my tuxedo.
“He took the plunge,” I say, accepting my whiskey and making small talk I really don’t feel like making, but he lures me in with football and the Super Bowl coming up in a few short weeks that might actually be a month.
When he finally heads away to attend to another customer, I give the bar my back, my elbows resting on the wooden surface, when my gaze catches on a woman in the corner by the window, and something about her stirs the man in me. An unexpected reaction to a redhead with long, wild curls, when I don’t normally like redheads.
She’s thirtyish, I’d guess, maybe a tad younger, her features delicate and beautiful. She’s also alone on a Thursday night, a MacBook in front of her, and she’s intensely studying whatever is on the screen. That says commitment to her career. That says single, and that works for me. I don’t do married women. In fact, any married woman that wants to do me pisses me the fuck off. My pretty redhead must feel my attention because her gaze lifts and her eyes meet mine. She doesn’t blush and look away. She looks right back at me. She studies me. Bold. Confident. My cock is officially hard. I want this woman, but she cuts her gaze abruptly, as if she’s decided to end the connection with finality.
She stands and walks toward the back of the bar where the bathrooms are located. She’s in a belted black dress, her tiny waist cinched, her hips full, her steps graceful. I have two moves I can make now. Order her a drink and meet her at her table with it or follow her.
I follow her. I’m impatient that way. I need an outlet tonight. I need her to be that outlet.
I don’t need time to second guess myself. I make a decision. I live with that decision. I own it like I want to own this woman, at least for the night. I start walking and I’m at the hallway leading to the bathroom in about thirty seconds. I step in front of the ladies’ room door, the rush of adrenaline and anticipation pumping through me. Seconds turn into a full two minutes and then the door opens. She steps into the archway and she doesn’t look shocked. Her eyes meet mine, again with that boldness that thickens my cock that is already pretty damn hard.
Holy fuck, she’s gorgeous, and even in this dim lighting, her skin pale perfection, her eyes striking, though I can’t fully make out the color. “Yo
u lost?” she asks, and her voice is this sweet, raspy feminine sound.
“Most definitely not lost,” I say. “I followed you, but you know that.”
“I got that impression, yes.”
“I’m Gabe.”
“Gabe,” she says. “You don’t look like a Gabe.”
“What do I look like?”
“A Ken doll,” she says and it’s not the first time I’ve heard this comparison, usually with irritation that I don’t feel now as she adds, “Tall, blond, and from what I can tell, well-defined beneath that tuxedo. Why are you wearing a tuxedo, Gabe?”
“My brother got married today.”
“Are you married?”
“No,” I say. “I’m not married.” Which makes me ask, “Are you?”
“Not anymore.” And then suddenly, she closes the space between me and her, a sweet floral scent teasing my nostrils as she presses herself to me, pushes to her toes and touches her lips to mine.
I take it from there, tangling my fingers in all those red curls with one hand, molding her closer with the other, and licking into her mouth. She doesn’t hold back. This woman, whose name I don’t even know, kisses the hell out of me, like I’m the last kiss she will ever experience, and then suddenly, our lips part and linger. Neither of us moves or speaks until she suddenly pulls back and looks at me with eyes I now know to be a stunning grass green. “I’m Abigail,” she says, and then she’s putting a step between us.
I let her simply because I want to know what she will do next. I want to see her, to drink her in, and feel her close again. “Thanks for waking me up, Gabe,” she says, and then she’s walking away.
What the hell?
“That’s it?” I call out.
She glances back at me. “Afraid so.” And then she rounds the corner.
Oh no. This is not over.
I start to pursue, but my damn phone rings, and with the small chance it’s my brother on his wedding night, I yank it from my pocket even as I keep walking and damn it, it’s Reid. I stop walking and hit “answer” to hear a crazy amount of static. “I can’t hear you,” I say, and then hear, “Taking off. Call you back. Not important.”
Fuck.
I shove my phone back in my pocket and start moving again because Abigail is fucking important. I’m back in the bar in thirty seconds, heading toward her table, and the minute I bring it into view, I curse. Abigail is gone. I cross the bar and exit to the street, looking left and right, but she’s nowhere. She’s really gone and I have no idea why, but it feels like I just lost someone I wasn’t supposed to lose. That woman wasn’t supposed to leave. I wasn’t supposed to let her go.
LEARN MORE HERE:
https://dirtierduet.weebly.com/
A PERFECT LIE
A brand-new psychological thriller coming May 15, 2019!
They say that you are not a product of the environment that you’ve grown up in, that you create your own story, tell it your way. That you get to pick your own future. They lied. If you’re honest with yourself, you believed that lie, too, like I used to, because I wanted to, and even needed to believe that I had some semblance of control over my own self. The truth is that control is part of the lie. The ability to become a person of our own making is the perfect lie. I concede that it might appear that some people control their destiny, but I assure you, if you gave me fifteen minutes, I could pull apart that façade. We are born into a destiny that we never have the chance to escape. That’s why I must tell my story. For those of you out there like me who were told that you have choices, when you never had one single choice that was your own. For those of you out there who were, who are, judged for decisions you’ve made that were directed by your destiny, not by the façade of choices. The irony of the story within this story is how one person’s predisposed destiny can impact, influence, and even change the lives of those around him or her. How one destiny ties to another destiny.
I am Hailey Anne Monroe. I’m twenty-eight years old. An artist, who found her muse on the canvas because I wasn’t allowed to have friends or even keep a journal. And yes, if you haven’t guessed by now, I’m that Hailey Anne Monroe, daughter to Thomas Frank Monroe, the man who was a half-percentage point from becoming President of the United States. If you were able to ask him, he’d probably tell you that I was the half point. But you can’t ask him, and he can’t tell you. He’s dead. They’re all dead and now I can speak.
Chapter One OF
A PERFECT LIE
Hailey Anne Monroe
You already know that I’m one of those perfect lies we’ve discussed, a façade of choices that were never my own. But that one perfect lie is too simplistic to describe who, and what, I am. I am perhaps a dozen perfect lies, the creation of at least one of those lies beginning the day I was born. That’s when the clock started ticking. That’s when decisions started being made for me. That’s when every step that could be taken was to ensure I was “perfect.” My mother, a brilliant doctor, ensured I was one hundred percent healthy, in all ways a test, pin prick, and inspection could ensure. I was, of course, vaccinated on a strict schedule, because in my household we must be so squeaky clean that we cannot possibly give anything to anyone.
Meanwhile, my father, the consummate politician, began planning my college years while my diapers were still being changed. I would be an attorney. I would go to an Ivy League college. I would be a part of the elite. Therefore, I was with tutors before I could spell. I was in dance at five years old. Of course, there was also piano, and French, Spanish, and Chinese language classes. The one joy I found was in an art class, which my mother suggested when I was twelve. It became my obsession, my one salvation, my one escape. Outside of her. She was not like my father. She was my friend, not my dictator. She was the bridge between us. The one we both adored. She listened to me. She listened to him. She tried to find compromise between us. She gave me choices, within the limits I was allowed. She tried to make me happy. She did make me as happy as anyone who was a puppet to a political machine could be, but the bigger the machine, the more developed, the harder that became. And still she fought for me.
I loved my mother with all of my heart and soul.
That’s why it’s hard to tell this part of my story. If there was one moment, beyond my birth, that established my destiny, and my influence on the destiny of those around me, it would be one evening during my senior year in high school, the night I killed my mother.
***
The past—twelve years ago…
The steps leading to the Michaels’ home seem to stretch eternally, but then so do most on this particular strip of houses in McLean, Virginia, where the rich, and sometimes famous, reside. Music radiates from the walls of the massive white mansion that is our destination, the stretch of land owned by the family wide enough that the nearest neighbor sees nothing and hears nothing. They most certainly don’t know that while the Michaels are out of town, their son, Jesse, is throwing a party.
“I can’t believe we’re at Jesse’s house,” Danielle says, linking her arm through mine, something she’s been doing for the past six years, since we met in private school at age eleven. Only then I was the tall one, and now I’m five-foot-four to her five-foot-eight, and that’s when I’m wearing heels and she’s not.
“Considering his father bloodies my father on his news program nightly, I can’t either,” I say. “I shouldn’t be here, Danielle.”
She stops walking and turns to me, her beautiful chestnut hair, which goes with her beautiful, perfect face and body, blowing right smack into my average face. She shoves said beautiful hair behind her ears, and glowers at me. “Hailey—”
“Don’t start,” I say, folding my arms in front of my chest, which is at least respectable, considering my dirty blonde hair and blue eyes are what I call average and others call cute. Like I’m not smart enough to know that means average. “I’m here. You already got me here.”
“Jesse doesn’t care about your father’s run for President
,” she argues. “Or that his father doesn’t support your father.”
“Why did you just say that?” I demand.
“Say what?”
“Now you’ve just reminded me that I’m at the house of a man who doesn’t support my father, whom I happen to love. I need to leave.” I start down the stairs.
Danielle hops in front of me. “Wait. Please. I think I might be in love with Jesse. You can’t just leave.”
“My God, woman, you’re a drama queen. You have never even kissed him. And I have to study for the SAT and so do you.”
“Please. His father isn’t here. His father will never know about the party or us.”
“Danielle, if my father finds out—”
“He’s out of town, too. How is he going to find out?”
“What about your father? He’s an advisor to my father. You can’t date Jesse.”
She draws in a deep breath, her expression tightening before she gushes out, “Hailey,” making my name a plea. “I’m trying so hard to be normal. I know that you deal with things by studying. I do, but I need this. I need to feel normal.”
Normal.
That word punches me with a fist of emotions I reject every time I hear it and feel them. “We will never be normal again and you know it. We weren’t normal to start with. Not when—”
“After that night,” she says. “We were normal enough until then. But since—after what happened, after we—”
“Stop,” I hiss. “We don’t talk about it. We don’t talk about it ever.”
“Ouch,” she says, grabbing my hand that is on her arm, my grip anything but gentle. “You’re hurting me.”
I have to count to three and force myself to breathe again before my fingers ease from her arm. “We agreed that ‘the incident’ was buried.”
“Right,” she says, and now she’s hugging herself. “Because we’re so good at burying things.”
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