VAMPIRE:Vampire Guardian Series: Paranormal Mystery Vampire Alpha Male Romance (New Adult Contemporary Paranormal Royalty Fantasy Romance Collection))

by Rachel S. William

  THE BAD BOY BILLIONAIRE

  By Amanda Kevin

  www.amazingromancebooks.com

  Chapter One

  Kris liked to consider herself somewhat of an average girl. She grew up in a small town just outside Boise, Idaho and she had a good family. She ran through fields of freshly bloomed flowers, enjoying the smell of spring and the cold droplets of rain that splashed against her cheeks. It was the ideal childhood that most people dreamed of.

  It was storybook until the fighting started. Kris often wondered if she just believed her life was perfect. She wondered if she created this idealist childhood to hide the horrors of what truly happened. She was never quite sure what the truth was, but she liked to believe that she’d had a perfect childhood before the drinking started.

  The first incident that Kris remembered happened when she was about six years old. Her memory was a bit foggy but she remembered her mother kissing her forehead as she tucked Kris in. She told her she loved her and stroked her cheek as hot tears rolled down her mother's face and landed on her own cheeks.

  Kris remembered wanting to comfort her mother and tell her she loved her. She wanted to wipe away her mother's tears and promise her that everything would be okay. She wanted her mother to know that she was safe. Kris wanted to offer her mother the safety and love she'd given Kris over the year.

  When her mother walked away Kris felt her heart drop into her stomach. She wasn't quite sure why but she knew that something bad was going to happen. She couldn't have been more right.

  It was the first night she heard her mother's frail body thrown against a wall and it was the first night she heard her beg for mercy. They were sounds no child should ever have to hear, but that night they were the sounds that Kris fell asleep to.

  Kris prayed that the violence would stop and that their lives would go back to normal. Her father would go back to working long hours and she and her mother could have a happy life together.

  Richard, Kris’ father, was a strict man with an impossibly strong work ethic. He was one of the most well-known lawyers in her small town. He was a gruff man but we'll respected. He ran a tight ship at home, though as long as Kris' mother followed the 'rules' there was never any fighting. Kris wouldn't realize how terrible her father was until she was much older. She was just a child and to her, it was just the way things were.

  All of that changed with her father lost his job. Even before he was fired, Richard Conner was a notorious drunk and it was his alcoholic tendencies that cost him his job. It was entirely his own fault but Mr. Conner was not the type of person to allow blame to settle on his own shoulders. He was more the type to blame everyone around him for the things that went wrong in his life and that was exactly what he did to his wife.

  He was fired from his practice for stealing company assets and showing up to work intoxicated. He was tossed out of a court room for being drunk during a case and it marred his reputation. After the word spread through town (And it spread fast in little towns like Mt. Pleasant) Richard wasn’t able to find even the most menial of jobs.

  Eventually, Richard completely gave in to his vice and stopped looking for jobs all together. He spent his days in the recliner he loved so much, drinking himself into oblivion. If Kris’ mom, Sheryl, came into view, Richard would bark some needless order at her. There would be no reason for and whatever he requested would be somewhat pointless but it made him feel powerful to be able to boss someone around.

  Kris hated it and even as a child she knew that something wasn’t quite right but she was too young to really do anything about it. It left her helpless and most of all, angry. She was angry at her father for doing the things he was doing, angry at her mother for letting them happen, but most of all she was angry at herself for not being able to do anything.

  By the time Kris was entering high school, things were even worse. They’d lost nearly everything since her father couldn’t hold down a job. Kris’ mother tried to find part time jobs around town but she’d married Richard right out of high school and never went to college so she didn’t have many skills. She made barely enough to keep food on the table and even though she was doing her best, it was never enough.

  The constant struggle left her father even more angry. He constantly scolded, pushed and hit Sheryl. There was no fight left in the poor woman and when she was knocked down or hit she just got back up and continued doing whatever she’d been doing before her husband began his assault. Her soul was so beaten down that she didn’t even have the will to react to anything.

  Richard wanted a reaction. He wanted to see that he had power over his wife and his child. So when they finally stopped reacting something had to be done.

  The day that Kris found her mother and father on the kitchen floor, gun in range and blood pooling into the living room, was a blur. Most people assumed that traumatic events stuck in a person’s mind and slowly ate away at their sanity. They assumed that what drove trauma victim’s crazy was constantly reliving the event over and over again, but for Kris it was the exact opposite. So much of that day was a blur. They only thing she remembered clearly was the blood. There had been so much of it, splattered up the sides of the walls and pooling at her feet.

  Kris couldn’t even remember what her parent’s faces looked like. All she could remember was the blood…

  Chapter Two

  Kris’ eyes snapped open and she found herself staring up at the ceiling of her shitty efficiency apartment. Her eyes were immediately drawn to a swinging, round chandelier that hung from the ceiling. Dust had collected in the bottom of it and was thick enough for her to see through the slightly clouded glass.

  Had she fallen asleep with the light on again? It wouldn’t have surprised her. Kris suffered from intense insomnia that often left her awake for days. When she finally did pass out from pure exhaustion she normally left all her lights and TV on. Kris didn’t like the dark, especially after she’d found her parents dead.

  There was noise coming from the TV on the other side of the room but the noise hadn’t really meant anything to her. It was all a jumble of sounds with no discernable purpose. She was starting to focus in on the noises and realized that they were voices coming from her TV. It was the morning news talking about some horrendous murder that had happened down town.

  She closed her eyes tight and pulled the blanket over her head, trying to block out some of the sunlight that was pouring in from the window on the far wall. It was late morning or early afternoon and she didn’t feel like getting out of bed even though she had plenty to do. Depression did that to a person. It was a crippling, soul crushing feeling that made it damn near impossible to even shower and eat. It made even the most mundane things seem impossible.

  Kris finally allowed her eyes to crack open as she rolled over onto her side, curling up and closing her eyes, sniffling a little. She often wondered how she ended up here. She wept for her younger self and what she could have become. Maybe if things had been different she could have become a nurse or a doctor. She could have been someone with a future. Instead she was alone, hurting and just trying to make it through the day.

  After her parents died, Kris was taken away by the state. She was put in the system as an orphan since no family members were willing to take her. Everyone knew that with the trauma she suffered she would grow up to be a problem child. She was fifteen when they took her away and it was a well known fact that teenagers didn’t get adopted. No one wanted broken goods. People wanted babies who they could mold and shape into exactly what they wanted. It was a cruel fact and one that Kris would learn all too well. No one was interested in adopting her, though she’d had a few foster families that she blew her chances with every time.

  Kris had been an angry child her whole life. It wasn’t unheard of for her to pick fights with boys in order to lash out at them and get a few punches in. This tendency towards violence meant she was returned to the orphanage when her foster families had enough of her. Three years later she was released
as a ward of the state and encouraged to go to college. She could have had everything paid for but she dropped off the map. She stopped going to meetings with her case workers and she ignored pleas to get her life together.

  Instead of taking advantage of the opportunities granted to her, she only became angrier and self-loathing. Her last government stipend ran out quickly and she was left penniless and homeless. It was a terrible situation that some people managed to take advantage of.

  A handsome man named Ricky found her on the streets and offered her a warm bed, food and a job. She was going to be an exotic dancer. Kris wasn’t naïve. She knew exactly what he meant when he said exotic dancer, she just didn’t care. She had very little respect for herself and the idea of having a warm place to go every night was far more appealing that dignity, so she said yes.

  Two weeks later she found herself in a situation similar to her mother’s. She was beaten regularly and found herself in debt to the very man she thought was saving her life. She owed him more money that she’d ever be able to pay back stripping. He’d tried to force her into prostitution but it was one of the things he promised herself she’d never do and so far she’d managed to avoid it. She’d take all the beatings he had to offer but she wouldn’t allow herself to sink that low, but the more in debt she fell, the more appealing it seemed.

  This had all started over a year ago and she’d promised herself she’d be out by now. She promised herself that she would be okay and back on track by now, but she was far from okay. Kris was teetering on the edge of self-destruction and she didn’t know how to pull herself back over.

  She sat up and ran her hands through her thick black hair, brushing the long curls out of her grey eyes. Her mouth felt dry and she stared down at her bare feet, trying to decide if she had it in her to get up and start her day.

  When her feet touched the cold wood floor it sent a shiver through her and she gave a little grunt, closing her eyes and trying to ignore just how much she hated the feeling. She finally forced herself to stand and walked into the bathroom, ignoring the mirror completely. When she had to brush her hair and put on makeup she would look in the mirror but she avoided it as much as possible.

  She hated seeing the sad girl that looked back at her. She hated remembered the fact that the girl once had dreams and ambitions.

  Chapter Three

  The club was loud and music blared through the speakers, assaulting the attendees with the sound of eighties rock that had gone out of style long ago. The owner of the club let the girls pick their own songs and many of the women took their dancing persona’s right out of White Snake videos. The lack of creativity bothered Kris more than the music did. These women had the ability to change who they were. They were given the ability to create and entirely new person and the just ripped off some blonde bomb shell with no back story or identity.

  She voiced her frustration to a woman who had been in the business a long time. Her name was Mary and she was well into her forties, but thanks to modern medicine and the magic of Botox she was still making good money stripping.

  Mary was sticking on a pair of cockeyed false lashes and glanced over at Kris. She’d only been there a few days and a few of the other girls decided quickly that they didn’t like her. Mary had been working at the strip club long enough that she didn’t really let all the gossiping affect her. She was interested in Kris. She was a fresh young girl with a lot of spunk and Marie liked it. So when Kris told her about how he didn’t care for the unoriginality of the dancers she just sighed and set down the tweezers she was using to apply her false lashes.

  “Kid, you need to keep your head down in this world. The only thing a loud mouth is going to get you is an early grave. You understand?” She asked, pointing one shaking finger in Kris’ direction.

  Kris hadn’t understood in the moment. She didn’t understand what her life would be like once she started down this path. How could she know? Kris was the type of girl who put up a fight in situations like these. If she was going to be a stripper, she was at least going to be a different kind of stripper. She had been so hopeful and she’d had so much fight in her back then.

  Now she fell in the ranks of the average stripper, though she was far prettier than the average stripper. She’d somehow managed to resist the temptation of drugs and prostitution, so unlike her counterparts, her face wasn’t scared and her belly didn’t bear the scars of multiple pregnancies. Men loved her for her beauty and her softness.

  When she first arrived, many of the women said they doubted she would make the club any money. They tried their hardest to convince the owner to let her go, telling him that she was far too fat to be a good stripper. The word ‘fat’ didn’t cut her deep anymore. She’d always been a little soft around the middle, with thick thighs and an ample bosom.

  She would learn much later that the women didn’t want her around because she had the body type men craved; thick hips, round ass and a rack they could set their beers on. Kris found it demeaning at first, but the longer she worked at the club, the more thankful she was for her thick body. She made more than a few of the other strippers combined. It was the only reason Ricky hadn’t forced her out on the streets yet.

  Kris sighed as she shuffled passed a group of men who were already hooting and hollering at her, clearly not taking the hint that she wasn’t on the clock yet. She always figured her loose jogging suit would speak for her, but she was proven wrong every day.

  She made her way to the back where there were dressing rooms and pushed the heavy door that led to her private room open. The other girls were jealous of the fact her dressing room was private and she had no idea why. The ‘room’ was the size of a broom closet and when she tried to lay out her makeup and hair styling supplies they always fell because there just wasn’t enough counter space.

  Kris sighed and reached for a bottle of Windex beside her mirror and spritzed some on the cloudy, dirty glass. She closed her eyes and dropped her head, heart aching as she mentally prepared herself for another night of hell. Her stomach lurched at the thought of men’s grimy hands reaching out to touch her exposed skin. Their gawking faces haunted her dreams and even though she wanted nothing more than to go home and curl up in bed, she sat with her head held high and brushed some blush onto her cheeks and painted her lips.

  She shimmied into a thong that barely fit over her ass and the bra that went along with it. Neither of them were what she would have dared to call clothing, but they came off easily and that suited her purpose. Next came the heels that she never thought she’d be able to walk in. They easily added five or six inches to her height and probably could have been considered a deadly weapon. The first few months she’d worked at the Illusion Lounge, she insisted on dancing barefoot but one run-in with a client who managed to puke all over the stage convinced her that the heels weren’t the worst idea in the world.

  Once she was dressed she locked up her room and went out to the break area. A few girls were already pulling out tiny bags of white powder and laying out neat little lines on the table. Kris sighed and shook her head a little, falling into one of the chairs at the round card table. She snatched a bottle of water from the center of the table, ignoring the cold feeling of the metal chair against her bare skin.

  Kris kept to herself, for the most part but couldn’t help looking up when a few of the girls started whispering about a high profile client. The Illusion Lounge was about as classy as strip clubs got and they had their fair share of loaded clients come through the doors. Everyone from celebrities to politicians. Ricky had dirt on plenty of high ranking officials and public figures. Apparently this guy didn’t fall into either category. He was some billionaire who owned a chain of clubs. They didn’t specify what kind of clubs, but that information seemed irrelevant. She listened closely to catch his names, finally hearing one of the girls whisper it under her breath.

  Antoine Mercer

  Chapter Four

  Antoine was the type of guy who could walk into a roo
m and everyone would stop what they were doing to stare at him. It wasn't that he was a flashy man or particularly loud. In fact, he could often be seen wearing a simple Armani suit with an expensive tie and black dress shoes. Everyone stopped to stare because Antoine exuded power. His demeanor didn't change just because he was in a strip club.

  He strolled through the door with an impressive buff body guard flanking him. He flashed his ID to the doorman and he unlocked the chain that led into the club. There were VIP rooms, of course and Antoine was planning to take advantage of those later, but his first order of business was to scout the girls. He was looking for a very particular type of woman.

  Antoine never bothered with love. He considered it to be a useless emotion that complicated healthy sexual relationships. The second a man told a girl he loved her, he opened himself up to pain, heartbreak and a myriad of other unpleasant emotions. Now, if that same man turned off all that messy emotion, he would he left with something far safer and more fulfilling. That was the type of relationship he was looking for, and strippers made the perfect candidates.