by Alexis Anne
6 Dirty Secrets
A Tease Novel
Alexis Anne
Spinning Compass Publishing
Contents
Praise for Alexis Anne
Welcome To The World Of Tease
More from Alexis Anne
Copyright
Dedication
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
Epilogue
More from Alexis Anne
Acknowledgments
Welcome To The World Of Tease
An Excerpt from The Storm Inside
About the Author
-Be A Frisky Friend-
Praise for Alexis Anne
PRAISE FOR THE STORM INSIDE
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“It was one of the best love stories I have read to date. The writing at times was so descriptive you could feel the love, pain, confusion and desperation between the characters.”
-Books Unhinged
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“This book starts off with a BANG! Literally!! Their scenes together were so intense and the sex scenes were so hot, my whole body felt on fire.”
-Lustful Literature
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“The sex was HOT! Jake melted me with his words.”
-Miscellaneous Thoughts of a Bookaholic
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“I loved the writer’s portrayal of what life can throw at young love.”
-Brenda’s Book Beat
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PRAISE FOR TEMPT
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“Very erotic.”
-Cosmopolitan.com
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“This has truly been an awesome book and an amazing series.”
-Books of Past, Present, and Future
Welcome To The World Of Tease
When two protected hearts find safety and undeniable chemistry in a fling with a hard expiration date, sparks fly.
Tease
Welcome to Calhoun Beach, a sleepy beach town on the shores of South Carolina, filled with history…and secrets. Dr. Elizabeth Filler has carefully built a quiet life away from prying eyes. She doesn’t trust anyone and the last thing she’s looking for is love. Adam Callaway is Calhoun Beach’s prodigal son home for a two week vacation. He’s spent his life keeping his boundaries up and avoiding two family legacies…and he just might be the only person who can understand Elizabeth’s complicated past.
Start reading now: Tease
Tempt
When Elizabeth’s best friend Allison Riley heads to London in search of a leg up in her career, the last thing she expects is to stumble into the city’s most mysterious and eligible bachelor. Theo Sutherland has spent his life trying to make up for the sins of his past, but when the beautiful American dances into his arms and sees right past his walls, he is forced to decide whether he wants to continue paying for his mistakes, or finally find a way to move forward…and fall in love.
Start reading now: Tempt
Burn
Theo’s brother Michael ran away from the Sutherland family legacy and never looked back. Ava Hanson has spent her life building a secure career so that she never has to relive the chaos of her childhood, but when one night of passion turns into two weeks with Michael in Calhoun Beach, he forces her to realize there is more to life: like love, passion, and family.
Start reading now: Burn
Stripped
Travis Brantley, Adam’s best friend, simply wants to make a living doing what he knows best: making music. When he’s sucked into opening for yet another “pop princess” he can’t help but wonder if she’s all makeup and costumes or if there is actually a singer underneath the electronic sound. Kristen Holt is tired of being used by the label. All she wants is to make real music and prove she has what it takes to succeed beyond her looks. When a challenge on stage is caught on camera, their fame skyrockets, and so does their undeniable chemistry.
Start reading now: Stripped
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*Adam Callaway is Jake Spencer’s cousin. If you love the world of The Storm Inside, check out Tease!
Keep up to date by joining my mailing list and the Frisky Friends group on Facebook!
More from Alexis Anne
THE STORM INSIDE
Reflected in the Rain
When Lightning Strikes
Never Let Go
Tease
Tempt
Burn
Stripped
5 Dirty Sins
6 Dirty Secrets
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The Storm Inside Box Set
The Tease Series Box Set (Books 1-4)
* * *
The Complete List of Alexis Anne Books
6 Dirty Secrets
by Alexis Anne
http://AlexisAnneBooks.com/
* * *
Copyright 2016 by Alexis Sykes
All rights reserved.
Cover art by Alexis Anne.
* * *
This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without expressed written permission from the author. All characters and events appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real events or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
N-
To the future we built together
1
“Nicki, please.”
I yanked my hand out of his. “I heard you the first time, Darcy. I get it.”
“No. You don’t.” He surged forward, grabbing me with both hands this time. “There’s more going on here. I…I can’t explain,” he pleaded.
“Oh really?” I laughed. I sounded insane. The hurt and anger had taken over to the point that I felt nothing else. “You were pretty clear. You told me to get out so I got out.”
“I was scared. I didn’t mean it.” His hands held me firm while his eyes roamed wildly over my face.
Luckily things were starting to get fuzzy. I was floating instead of standing in front of a man who had kicked me out of his bed two weeks earlier. All those feelings? I didn’t want to feel them. Rejection’s a bitch on a good day, but I’d been in love with Darcy for six years and I’d held fiercely onto that dream. No matter what Father put me through there was always the potential that there might be hope at the end of the tunnel.
That hope disappeared the moment our orgasms ended and he demanded I leave his bed like all his other whores.
As I stared up at his frantic eyes I had just enough focus left to wonder why the hell he looked so desperate, so destroyed, when I’d done exactly what he asked. This was what he wanted, wasn’t it? He’d mounted and conquered the untouchable princess. What else could he need from me?
“What, pray tell, could possibly scare the great Darcy Higgins?” Were my words slurring? Yes. Thank God. I was so ready to slip away.
“I love you.”
I love you?
The words stretched and echoed.
Then he took my chin in his hand and brought us nose to nose. I could barely see straight.
“Nicki, I love you. I a
lways have.” His words sounded strangled—like it hurt to say them. Was loving me that bad? Yes, it probably was. “God damn. What are you on?”
I smiled and attempted to slip out of his grasp. I wanted away from the words and the looks that sounded like what I wanted to hear, but weren’t. “I’m high on my fucking charmed life.”
His fingers dug into my arms but I barely felt a thing. “What are you on?” he demanded again.
“Everything…” I articulated every letter because it was the only way I could form words anymore. I was too high and I just wanted to drift away from all this f-e-e-l-i-n-g.
“Dammit, Nicki.” I vaguely noticed him picking me up and taking me…somewhere.
Where were we?
“I’m okay now,” I slurred. The drugs made everything okay.
“Are you fucking kidding me? You’re never okay.” There was a grunt that I was pretty sure sounded like pain, not that I could concentrate long enough to care. “I should have done this a long time ago.”
That caught my attention. “’scuse me?” I pushed and he set me down. Maybe he thought I was too high to get very far. He was probably right.
“I waited,” he explained, hands up. “You were too young. And Theo and me?” he laughed. “In what universe could I ever bring you into that shit?”
The world tilted and I stumbled around. I needed one minute of focus to finish this god-awful conversation and move on. “You have no fucking clue, Darcy. Your world? It’s nothing compared to mine.” I bit out those last words because the pain in my chest was rising again. Bitter, sour pain straight from my own soul.
He paused, hands up. “I know that now.”
“Oh, you know that now, do you?” I laughed, mocking him.
“Nicki. Please let me take you home.”
“I am home.” This piece of shit corner of hell was exactly where I belonged. It was mine. I was the Queen of Hell. The Princess of Pain. And this was my kingdom, whether I wanted it or not.
Then the colors around me started to swirl and stretch, then disappear altogether as the world turned grey and black. My focus was gone, the drugs had taken over completely.
And it was bliss.
“No, Nicki. Not anymore. I won’t let it.”
And then, I realized, I was in his arms again. And he was kissing me. Deeply. Passionately. As if I was the only thing he’d ever need or want.
It cut through the fog just enough to register in my brain.
Darcy loves me.
Darcy. Loves. Me.
This kiss was the one thing I’d always wanted. I loved Darcy Higgins and he loved me too?
The Sutherland legacy, the organization, the gang—none of it mattered if Darcy loved me. Father had taken everything that had ever mattered and kept a firm hand on every inch of my life until all I had was nothing.
But now I had this.
“I love you, Nicki,” he whispered again. “Stay with me baby.”
“I’m right here,” I said, but nothing came out.
“We’ll figure this out. We’ll make it work, love. Just…” I felt his hands all over my body then heard the sobs from his chest. “Just stay with me.”
I will. I love you, too.
I wanted to touch him, to kiss him, to say the words back, but nothing happened and for the first time in six years I regretted choosing the high over living my life. Because this? This moment was everything and I was missing it. I didn’t think there’d ever be a high higher than hearing Darcy say he loved me.
“No! God no!” he yelled, shaking me. “Please don’t do this.”
That’s when I finally realized why I couldn’t talk.
I’d finally found my limit. I’d found the highest high my body could take…and then I’d taken some more. The timing of my self-destruction could not have possibly been worse.
I had everything in my hands and I’d never get to enjoy it. I’d never get the chance to see him smile when I told him I loved him, too.
2
Two years later
When the voices of the demons in your head speak louder than the real people beside you…
Well, that’s when you know you’re truly fucked.
“But what does the painting mean?” Mrs. Brighton huffed in all her bright blue regalia.
The demons speak words.
Hate. Fear.
Ugly. Pathetic.
Always pathetic.
I took a deep breath and just barely suppressed a sigh of defeat. “The painting represents the chaos of the mind, Mrs. Brighton.”
A strange laugh escaped her lips. “Perhaps you have something a bit…lighter?”
“Of course.” I held out my hand and guided her to the opposite end of my bright flat where my commercial art pieces were displayed—the ones people would actually want to hang in their homes…unlike the macabre paintings of demon voices that actually drove my creativity. There was a vast ocean living between creativity and viability, unfortunately.
“Perhaps these two?” she waved her hand at the abstract pastel paintings of flowers.
“They would look lovely in your library.” Mrs. Brighton’s library was all pastel shades of blue. It gave me the creeps.
“Yes, I agree. I’ll take both of them.” She smiled triumphantly. “And you’ll have them sent over in time for the tea?”
She always hosted a small afternoon fundraiser for the art league. “Of course.”
“Perhaps we can get you some exposure. Wouldn’t that be lovely? To have a successful young artist in our circle?”
As opposed to what I was currently? Apparently an unsuccessful artist?
I let her arrogance roll off my back just like the therapists all taught me to. Focus. She bought the paintings and she knows absolutely nothing about art. Her comments do not matter.
“Yes, I’m sure it will thrill my father to no end.” Perhaps if I started walking toward the door she’d follow.
I was not so lucky.
“Your dear father has done so much for the art league. We simply cannot thank him enough.” She continued to flutter about the paintings lined up under the massive industrial floor-to-ceiling windows, oblivious to the fact I wanted her gone.
My father had set me up with this beautiful flat in Knightsbridge. It had an old industrial feel with brick walls and massive windows. It was perfect for painting and I’d instantly fallen in love with the bright open space. I ignored the fact he’d bought the flat before I could do anything on my own and I refused to acknowledge that it kept his fist tightly wound around me despite the fact I’d finally managed to move from the family home in Kensington.
Kind of like how Mrs. Brighton was oblivious about my father. He didn’t care about the art league. He did, however, care about the opinion of all the men and women in the art league. They saw him as the benevolent benefactor of the arts instead of the monster he really was.
To London society the Sutherland family were leaders of business. Sutherland Industries, the legal half of my father’s company, housed dozens of different businesses and holdings from investment firms to mining operations. He looked like a busy, wealthy man with a work obsession. What they didn’t see—or, rather, chose not to see—was that he also headed the largest criminal organization in the city. The Duncan Boys had existed for nearly three hundred years, but it was my father who took them to the next level, absorbing drug trafficking, black market technology, and illegal small arms, until no one could touch him.
He was the Boogey Man who haunted their shadows in the night. Extortion, torture, and murder were all in a days work. Mrs. Brighton didn’t see it because she chose to live in a fantasy world, but I lived it, grew up with it filling my days. It shaped me into the person I was—for better or worse.
Luckily I was saved from my thoughts by a knock at the door a split second before it flew open.
“Nik!” my big brother, Theo, bellowed, throwing out his arms. “I’m here to retrieve you for the reception.”
He w
as such a sight for sore eyes. I’d missed the towering six-foot-two teddy bear fiercely over his years away. I was so happy we were both finally in London at the same time. Without his support I would have crumbled back down into the abyss.
What I didn’t miss was the man who stepped up into the hallway behind him. I immediately looked away. “Theo, you’re early. And I have a client.” I completely ignored Darcy as much out of desperation as irritation. It was always a toss-up when he was around.
“Mrs. Brighton,” Theo drawled, walking right up to her and taking her hand. “You look younger every time I see you.”
She giggled, blushing under the compliments. “Oh stop. You silly boy. I see you’re still up to no good.” She arched an eyebrow at Darcy Higgins as he took up my doorway.
Darcy was not part of our circle and the rumors that had followed my brother home from Edinburgh had not helped Darcy’s reception in any way.
“You could always leave Mr. Brighton,” Theo murmured seductively. “We could have an epic affair. One for the ages.” He shot her one of his panty-melting smiles.
The woman swooned.
I rolled my eyes. Damn my brother and his moves. I really thought after everything that had happened he’d mellow out, slow down. No such luck. He was as out of control and arrogant as ever.
As was his womanizing best friend.
I pushed Theo away from Mrs. Brighton. “You’ll do no such thing. I apologize for my brother.”
She giggled. “Oh don’t be silly. It’s just nice to have him home. We missed you, Theo.”