Be Mine: A Valentine’s Collection of Sexy Short Stories by Six NYT Bestselling Authors

by A Collection of Valentine Themed Sexy Short Stories (epub)

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  The Redemption Chronicles

  A sexy apocalyptic urban fantasy trilogy!

  Born in Darkness

  Lost in Shadows

  Surrender to Dawn

  The Redemption Chronicles Collection (All 3 books!)

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  Demon Hunting Soccer Mom

  Like Buffy … grown up!

  Carpe Demon

  California Demon

  Demons Are Forever

  Deja Demon

  The Demon You Know (short story)

  Demon Ex Machina

  Pax Demonica

  Day of the Demon

  The Trouble With Demons (Books 1-5 Box Set)

  Because books are constantly being added to KU (and sometimes leave KU for a period of time) you can always find an updated list of JK’s Kindle Unlimited books here!

  About the Author

  J. Kenner (aka Julie Kenner) is the New York Times, USA Today, Publishers Weekly, Wall Street Journal and #1 International bestselling author of over one hundred novels, novellas and short stories in a variety of genres.

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  JK has been praised by Publishers Weekly as an author with a “flair for dialogue and eccentric characterizations” and by RT Bookclub for having “cornered the market on sinfully attractive, dominant antiheroes and the women who swoon for them.” A six-time finalist for Romance Writers of America’s prestigious RITA award, JK took home the first RITA trophy awarded in the category of erotic romance in 2014 for her novel, Claim Me (book 2 of her Stark Saga) and another RITA trophy for Wicked Dirty in the same category in 2017.

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  In her previous career as an attorney, JK worked as a lawyer in Southern California and Texas. She currently lives in Central Texas, with her husband, two daughters, and two rather spastic cats.

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  Stay in touch! Text JKenner to 21000 to subscribe to JK’s text alerts.

  J. Kenner Facebook Page

  Facebook Fan Group

  Newsletter

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  www.jkenner.com

  Dirty Sweet Valentine

  by Laurelin Paige

  About Dirty Sweet Valentine

  Amy’s not much for holidays invented to celebrate an emotion she hasn’t felt for years. Not since Harrison Steele left. But on February 14th, he’s back. And it seems that Cupid’s arrow is still lodged firmly in her heart.

  Dirty Sweet Valentine

  I’d imagined Harrington Steele on my doorstep countless times.

  How he looked varied in my fantasies over the years, changing based on trends and the current whims of my heart. Sometimes the stubbled jaw that I’d loved so much became a full beard. Sometimes the lines by his mouth had deepened. Sometimes he wore a fitted suit like he’d donned that night we saw Carmen at the opera. Most times he wore a pair of jeans and a Henley, the look I remember on him most. Sometimes he’d changed so much I barely recognized him, and I had to squint and ask in an unsteady voice, “Harrington?”

  Sometimes I knew him immediately, but pretended I didn’t. I fancied it gave me somewhat of an upper hand to play ignorant. To play detached and unaffected.

  And sometimes there were no games, no pretenses, only jubilation. Only pure bliss. Those times I fell into his arms and kissed him with all the emotions I’d kept pent up since he’d said goodbye that winter evening one and a half decades ago.

  Nothing I’d imagined, however, compares to the reality. Nothing I’d imagined prepared me in the least, and after opening the door and finding him here in the flesh—on Valentine’s Day, no less—the most prevalent emotion inside me is relief.

  Relief because—I always knew he’d come back. Relief because I can finally stop waiting, stop questioning, stop wondering when. Relief because I can set down this weight of longing I’ve carried for so long, roll my shoulders back, and stand tall like the strong woman I’ve been pretending I am.

  I did know him immediately. Of course I did. There wasn’t even a second of pause before recognition. Even with the new creases by his eyes. Even with the receding hairline. He’s still ruggedly handsome and devastatingly perfect. My knees have lost their steadiness. My breathing stutters as my chest rises and falls. My heart gallops away from me, and if he keeps studying me the way I’m studying him, like I’m a precious jewel that he’s spent his lifetime searching for, then I’m going to collapse in a heap at his feet.

  “Amelia,” he says roughly, and I’m practically undone. I’d thought I’d remembered exactly how sweet the word sounds on his tongue, but I was wrong. I’d forgotten it was this delicious. Forgotten how he can make four simple syllables sound like a prayer. How he can make me feel not just loved but revered. As though it were the name of a saint instead of plain old boring me.

  Plain old boring me has yet to speak. Years of fantasizing this, and I don’t have a single word at the ready. All I know is that when I do find the way to articulate the things I want to say, I don’t want to speak them on my threshold with the cold blustering in around us.

  I reach out and wrap my hand in his plaid wool coat and tug him inside my flat.

  Face-to-face in my entry isn’t necessarily any better. Here I catch his oak scent, as familiar as if he’d just walked out yesterday. It triggers my muscle memory, and before I can think, my fingers are floating toward his face to scratch along the scruff of his jaw the way I did so many times back then.

  I stop myself just in time and let my hand fall to my side, even though I’m dying to touch him. Dying to be sure he’s real. There’s too much I need to know before I let myself get carried away, and if I touch him, I’m sure that’s exactly what will happen. I’ll be swept up in his current and lose sight of the shore before I realize I don’t have a life jacket.

  “Are you here for good?” It’s the most important question, and somehow my mouth forms the words perfectly, shaping them into respectable dialogue.

  His answer comes just as steady. “I’m here for tonight.”

  With that, the perimeter has been set, and I immediately feel confined. I spin on my heel and head to my kitchen. A plate with two slices of seven-grain bread sits on the worktop next to a plastic container of chicken salad, the sandwich deserted with the knock at the door. I ignore it now, and, standing on tiptoes, I reach into the top of the cupboard where I keep the liquor. The hard liquor. I pull down the bottle of bourbon and a shot glass. When I turn around again, I see that Harrington has followed.

  “Would you like one as well?” I offer. I’m already loosening the cap and filling my shot.

  “I’m good, thank you.”

  I’m not. Not good. Not even close to good.

  I throw the liquor back and savor the burn as it pours down my throat. Then I fill the shot again.

  “You need another?”

  Harrington was never judgmental when I knew him. Not of me, anyway, and his appraisal now gives me pause. Irritated pause.

  I raise one eyebrow. “I’ve just seen a ghost. Forgive me for needing to steady my nerves.”

  Before I can bring the glass to my lips, he grabs my wrist. The bourbon sloshes over the rim and onto my hand. His too, perhaps, but I can’t bring myself to look anywhere other than at his face, at his cool blue irises. They’re still as clear as they were the last time I stared into them. Still pools of tranquility, no matter what he may be feeling—or not feeling—inside.

  “I didn’t come back to fight you off of me, and I’m not fumbling around with you half-pissed, either.” With his free hand, he takes the shot from me and sets it on the worktop.

  I want to argue with the myriad of assumptions in his statement, but I can’t. He and I both know that I turn randy when inebriated.

  He’s brought us to an important question though. “Why are you here?”

  “I had a meeting in London.”

  A meeting with them? I’m not allowed to ask because he’s not allowed to answer. I already know more than I’m supposed to, and it’s
practically nothing. Harry was born in Wales, but, since he lived most of his life in the U.S., I don’t even know if the them he works for is here or there. I don’t know if he’s CIA or MI6. I don’t know if he’s James Bond or Ethan Hunt. Perhaps he’s someone else entirely.

  I scowl, hating the boundaries around me. I’m someone who likes to break through boundaries, through glass ceilings, through red tape and bureaucracy.

  So fuck the rules. Fuck what I’m allowed. “You have a meeting? For…’work’?” I press in the same way I pressed back then, when I first found out about them to begin with.

  “I had to see someone, yes,” he clarifies without clearing anything up at all, but before I can push back, he says, “And I couldn’t not see you, too.”

  His grip on me relaxes, but he doesn’t let go. Instead, he turns my hand so my palm is face up. His thumb draws small circles on the inside of my wrist, and I dissolve into someone I haven’t been in a long time—a woman happy in love.

  Goosebumps sprout across my skin, and my pulse quickens.

  “I can’t stop looking at you now,” he says, and I can barely breathe. “Can’t stop touching you. I want to touch more of you.”

  My hand reaches up to brush a finger along his scruff like before, but this time I don’t stop myself. My touch is tentative at first, then more confident as I bend my knuckles to stroke along his jaw.

  He leans into my hand.

  “Amy,” he says, his voice taut with restraint. It’s one word. Two simple syllables, but the underscore is clear—I’m the one who decides what happens next. The steering wheel is firmly in my hands.

  One thing that hasn’t changed in fifteen years—I still fail at self-preservation. Sure, I’m a single, self-made woman in the advertising world. A saleswoman that no man can rival. My colleagues respect me. I’m at the top of my game. I’ve risen above racial prejudices against my mixed Iranian/African/British heritage. I have an active sex life with no emotional attachments. Nothing hurts me. No one breaks my heart because I don’t give anyone access to it.

  But when it comes to Harrison—Harry—I’m defenseless.

  It happens so fast, the coming together. Like it’s automatic. I raise my chin and lean in, and that’s all it takes before we meet, and his mouth is on mine, crushing me with his kiss. My lips move against his with an urgent desperation I’ve never known. It feels like grasping at sand. Like there’s no way I can hold him, and even though my tongue is gliding against his and my hands are tangled in his hair, he’s already slipping from my grip.

  I’m frantic to clutch on, to seize as much of him as I can in the moment I have. Never breaking the kiss, I slide my palms down his oh-my-God-still-so-firm chest to land at his belt. I fumble with the buckle as he pushes me back into the corner where the bar meets the worktop. My leg is already hitched up around his thigh when he lifts me onto the counter. He pushes my skirt up and shifts my panties aside so he can find the sensitive bud buried in the dark curls.

  He smiles against my lips when he realizes how wet I already am. I’m not even sure when that happened, if I started drowning when he touched my wrist or when I first saw him on my doorstep, but I’m slick and slippery and he takes full advantage of it, rubbing my clit with his thumb while sliding his fingers along my drenched seam.

  His touch is instantly familiar. These are his moves. If I were naked and blindfolded in a room of strangers, I’d still know this pressure, this pattern of swirls. My body remembers, and the knot of tension is quickly pulling taut, spiking pleasure across my core.

  Despite the distraction, I’m determined to feel the silk of his cock under my palm. I manage to get his trousers open, and I slip my hand under the elastic band of his boxers and wrap it around the thick steel I find underneath. It’s an old friend, warm and solid in my grip. I slide my thumb across his head before tugging his length furiously. Punishingly. As though it’s his cock that has me angry.

  And I am angry. Maddeningly angry. I tell him with my kiss as well as my hands, biting at his lips, growling low in the back of my throat when he nips back. He stands his ground against me, bracing a firm palm behind my head to keep me in place while he continues to devour me with his mouth, while his other hand continues to wreak havoc on my nervous system.

  His assault strengthens my strike against him. I increase the tempo of my handjob, determined to make him come first, or at least at the same time. I refuse to be weak and vulnerable alone. I’ve been weak and vulnerable alone for far too long.

  I manage to hold my own in this war until he enters me with one long finger.

  I gasp at the invasion, breaking away from his mouth to suck in the air I so desperately need.

  Harrington takes advantage of my lapse of control and brings out the big weapons—his filthy mouth. “Look how you swallow up my finger with your cunt,” he says, his wicked eyes gleaming with pride. He presses his forehead to mine and crooks his equally wicked finger to massage against that spot—that fucking spot that only he has ever owned so precisely—and I immediately gush wetter.

  “Yes, drench me, Amelia. Just like that. Show me what that pretty pussy is holding back. It belongs to me.”

  I’m still jerking his cock, but my hand stumbles noticeably in its stroke.

  Harrison chuckles. “You know you can’t win this battle, baby. Fall apart on me. Lose control.”

  The term of endearment does me in—after all this time, after all these years, I’m still his baby. It doesn’t matter that he might have said it without thinking or that he might have said it to countless women. I hear the naked honesty underscoring the simple word, and I shatter.

  My body quivers and spots form in front of my eyes. When they clear, he greets me with a smirk that tells me how much he enjoyed watching me come apart on his hand.

  “Better now?” he asks as though his sexual charms are potent enough to fix everything. Emphasizing his confidence, he sucks my juices off his finger.

  Fifteen years older and Harrison Steele is still a cocky bastard. It’s reassuring to know that there are some things in life that are constant.

  Despite the renewed simmer of arousal in my belly, I roll my eyes and stare down at his abandoned cock, still hard and throbbing. My fingers close again around him, but he stops me. “Let that wait.”

  If we aren’t going to fuck, then what does he want instead? He’s still standing close, still caging me in. His gaze catches on my lips, and I suspect he’d be content to stay just like this—his hand stroking my arm, his lungs sharing the same air as mine.

  It’s extremely intimate. The kind of intimate that falls thick and heavy like the snow in the Alps. If I stay standing in its path, I’m likely to be crushed underneath the weight. Fucking would be easier. Fucking would be less intrusive.

  But he’s putting himself away, and I’m not in the mood to seduce him.

  I push at him to move then hop to the ground when he does. I head toward the bowl of chicken salad and the waiting slices of bread.

  “I was just making supper. I suppose you’re staying.” I pull out the loaf and reach for another plate from the cupboard even before he answers.

  “I’m yours all night.”

  The comment smarts for complicated reasons. Because I’ve longed to be his for so long. Because, when I finally reclaim the title, it has a time limit attached to it.

  I swipe at the sting like it’s a pesky mosquito instead of the tightening of shackles that it is.

  I concentrate on my task, spooning the filling onto the bread, smooshing the slices together.

  “Chicken salad on the menu. Sorry. I know it’s not your favorite.” I hand him a plate, recognizing how pathetic it likely seems that this was how I’d planned to spend my Valentine’s Day evening. Frankly, I hate the holiday and choose to ignore it. It’s perfectly normal to be alone on a Wednesday night after work. A sandwich is perfectly suitable for a weekday dinner.

  Still, I’m compelled to snatch a bottle of chardonnay from the wine f
ridge to fancy the meal up.

  A few minutes later, we’re settled on the sofa in front of the fire. On the surface, it seems terribly romantic, but it’s a gas-lit thing, only turned on with the flick of a switch, and I’d already had it going before my visitor arrived. The wine has been poured, though, and Harrison is sitting too close, his body turned in toward me. There’s nowhere for me to move—I’m already seated at the arm. I consider asking him to back up and give me space, but, in the end, I like him this close as much as I don’t.

  We eat in thick silence, a kind of silence that’s alive. It crawls along my skin and breathes heavily in my face, and everything, everything I want and need to say to this man hides in its shadow, gathering courage to step into the light. It’s possible that I’m not that brave. Not that open to vulnerability.

  “This is rather good,” he says, halfway through his sandwich.

  I chortle. “Please. You don’t have to patronize me. I know you’d prefer corned beef or pastrami.” He’d always liked his food “manly”. Anything mixed with mayonnaise was immediately qualified as feminine.

  “I’m as surprised as you are, but I’m quite serious.” His brow knits as he considers the remaining half in his hand. “Perhaps it’s the pecans. I find the crunchy texture appealing.”

  I study his forehead as he talks, noting the lines that have marred the once smooth plane. I find these appealing. I long to trace them with my fingertips.

  I also find them infuriating. Each groove is part of the story of his life, a life that has been lived longer without me than with.

  My eyes sting suddenly, and I turn my head away. I feel him scrutinizing my profile, and I lose my appetite. I stack my plate with his and set it on the side table before concentrating on my wine, praying that the numbing effects of the alcohol take effect as soon as fucking possible.