by Anyta Sunday
Daring Duke
Love Letters #4
Anyta Sunday
Contents
Content Warning
Love Letters from Greenville
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
Epilogue
Coming soon: Entrapping Erik (Love Letters #5)
Also available: Signs of Love
Also available: Enemies to Lovers
Acknowledgments
Anyta Sunday
Other books similar to the “Love Letters” series by Anyta Sunday
First published in 2019 by Anyta Sunday,
Contact at Bürogemeinschaft ATP24, Am Treptower Park 24, 12435 Berlin, Germany
An Anyta Sunday publication
http://www.anytasunday.com
Copyright 2019 Anyta Sunday
Cover Design: Natasha Snow
Content Editor: Hot Tree Editing
Line Editor: HJ’s Editing
All rights reserved. This publication may not be reproduced without prior permission of the copyright owner of this book.
All the characters in this book are fictional and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
Content Warning
Adult Content.
This book contains themes of forbidden love between two second cousins, as well as explicit sexual content.
Reader discretion advised.
Feisty. Nerdy. Sexy. Secretive.
Greenville has them all.
A small town with big hearts, Greenville awakens at the mercy of Millionaire Row, the wealthy neighborhood across the tracks from Poplar Low.
Bad-tempered boys meet cheeky lovers.
Colliding worlds spark a fire of emotion. Heat rages. Hearts mend. Love is lost. And found.
Love Letters are playful, sexy, contemporary M/M stories that can be read as standalones.
Welcome to Greenville. Come for the sexy boys. Stay for the HEA.
Balls-deep in his hookup, Rohan Lawrence-Decker chased—not after orgasm—but the need to escape thoughts of Duke.
Thoughts he should not be having.
Rohan pounded in time to Jack’s heavy grunts, angling on his bedroom rug to give his hookup the most pleasure.
He palmed Jack’s back and gripped sandy hair the same torturous shade as Duke’s. Duke, who lived with him, had said he was spending the night out with “friends.” But Rohan knew that he was looking for a hookup of his own.
Rohan’s throat tightened, and he clasped Jack’s hips and rode him with wild urgency, grinding out the frustration that had been like a vice grip in his chest the last year. Rode him like he imagined riding Duke.
Rohan cursed under his breath, and hurried the act. This fuck was a mistake. Instead of relieving him of thoughts about Duke, this fuck was intensifying those thoughts.
Good thing he was leaving for a six-week business trip to London on an early flight. He needed to flee this manor. Run like the professional escape artist he’d become in the last twelve months.
He slammed his eyes shut.
Christ. Rohan needed to stop feeling like this. Stop the awkwardness growing between them every time Rohan returned home. Stop loving the bratty, flirty way Duke behaved toward him. Stop the unhealthy desire to jump Duke, kiss him, hold him.
Rohan titled his head back, and quickened his pace. To hold him . . .
That was the hardest desire to ignore.
Rohan folded over Jack’s back and brought him to orgasm. The warmth of their damp skin and imagining Duke beneath him sent Rohan over the edge. He came after Jack, wishing Jack’s satisfied tremble and sigh sounded more like—
A hitched breath and the subtle creak of floorboards behind Rohan snatched all of his senses. He snapped his head around.
Duke stood in the doorway between their rooms.
Duke’s eyes darkened in the shadows. His lips parted slightly in shock. They stared at each other, only a moment, but it seemed to stretch. Like Duke didn’t want to look away. Like he couldn’t.
Rohan fought the hope rising in his stomach and his gaze fell to the phone in Duke’s hand, positioned as if Duke had been taking a picture.
Rohan’s stomach knotted. “What are you doing?”
Heart hammering, he pulled out of Jack and scrambled to toss the condom and jump into briefs. Jack muttered anxiously, and Rohan promised to take care of anything incriminating. He thanked Jack for a wonderful night, ordered a car to drive him anywhere he pleased, and waited with him in the foyer until the driver arrived.
When Jack left, calmed, Rohan found Duke in his bedroom, slung on his bed. Rohan tugged the phone Duke fiddled out of his hand. A few swipes and he found what he was looking for. Not a picture. A recording. Duke had been recording them. Anger, frustration, confusion, and worst of all, hope punched through him. Had Duke taken the video because he . . .
Rohan swallowed hard.
He wouldn’t let himself make assumptions. Wouldn’t read into the slight bulge in Duke’s jeans. Wouldn’t drag himself deeper into thoughts that had held him hostage for a long time now.
Duke was forbidden.
To mask his frustration, Rohan jumped at the first believable excuse he could find for Duke recording him. He shook the phone in Duke’s face. “Are you blackmailing me? Is this because your dad is handing over SmallQ to me and not you?”
Duke’s expression flickered with surprise and his gaze hardened. “Maybe.”
Maybe? Duke’s I don’t give a damn attitude had been tossed about too often recently. Their communication—which had once been so easy—had stagnated, and Rohan wasn’t sure anymore how to fix it.
Rohan cuffed Duke’s warm arm and steered him into his own room. He knew he should work on repairing what was broken between them, but every time he tried, Duke turned up the brattyness.
“What did you want to do?” Rohan asked, voice straining. “Send the footage to the tabloids? Crush my career?”
Duke muttered.
“Don’t you have a conscience?”
Duke smiled and flicked him the middle finger. “Probably not. So you’re bisexual?”
Rohan hesitated, partly wanting to apologize, partly shook up at the word bisexual. He was closer to gay, but he’d never said it aloud to anyone other than Bianca.
Rohan deleted the footage and pressed the phone against Duke’s hard chest. Their eyes met again, but this time, Rohan couldn’t handle the eye contact. He pivoted and strode toward his room.
Duke called after him. “You know I’m gay. Coulda told me, you know.”
No, Rohan couldn’t have told the one guy that he struggled to get out of his mind. The one guy who made his chest flutter.
He couldn’t tell Duke anything he really felt. Duke wasn’t just a guy.
He was his cousin.
Six Weeks Later
Only a minute inside the terminal after an eleven-hour trip and Rohan was already fielding work calls. “Email me a full report.”
“Will do, boss.”
Boss. A title he’d worked so hard for. A title he thought he’d derive more pleasure from than he had. Maybe the next step up the ladder would satisfy him?
With an uneasy weight in his stomach, he dragged his suitcase past the scents of coffee and baked croissants, down a frozen escala
tor, and away from the crowds waiting in lines.
Every step brought him closer to his Greenville manor. Closer to a pit of exhaustion that had little to do with his seventy-hour work week and everything to do with his younger cousin, Duke.
As a rule, he wasn’t a man who procrastinated, who ran away from conflict. But Duke tested all his rules.
“. . . Mr. Lawrence-Decker?”
Rohan returned to his call. Honestly, he wanted to head home. Deal with nothing until the morning. “What was that?”
“Our Japan office called twice—”
“I’ll deal with them first thing.”
They ended the call.
“Rohan!” a soft female voice cried, reversing his fatigue.
He grinned, searching the crowd for his sister. Casey charged through clusters of travelers, footsteps clapping over the shiny porcelain-tiled floors.
Her voice pitched with glee. “You’re back.”
Under the bright airport lights, her almond-shaped eyes dazzled, big and beautiful.
She smacked into him. His suitcase clunked to the floor as he wrapped her in a tight hug. “You came to pick me up?” Rohan asked, touched.
“You were away too long.”
It had been six weeks. This time. He usually divided his time equally between London and Greenville, but this past year he’d spent more time out of the country. Not that London had been far enough to escape his mind.
He cast Duke from his thoughts and breathed in Casey’s apple-scented hair.
She snuggled nearer. He blinked back a sting in his eye and kissed her forehead.
“Missed you, Casey.” He missed everything about his younger sister. Especially her unwavering love.
“I got all your packages,” Casey said slowly. “I loved the green hat best. Maybe a scarf to go with it?”
“I’ll find you the perfect one,” he promised.
“Mom’s at Starbucks,” she said. “Come.”
Rohan picked up his suitcase and followed her back to Mom. His mom’s bright smile pushed through his jetlag. He kissed her cheek. “This is a lovely surprise.”
She patted the seat next to her and Rohan gladly fell into it. Casey sat across from them.
A couple of guys greeted each other joyously nearby. The way their eyes met stilled Rohan. He knew the look of two men lusting after each other—knew it intimately—but this look combined a soft, secret smile that made Rohan’s chest sore.
He excelled at being a boss. He loved control. He had worked his entire twenties to dominate the SmallQ tech empire. In one month, his mom’s cousin—Duke’s dad—would hand the reins to him.
But sometimes the relentless begging in his chest for more was impossible to ignore.
He forced himself to avert his eyes. To smile at his sister. His mom.
Three chai lattes sat on the table. Casey scooped his up and handed it to him.
“Thanks,” Rohan said, taking it. “How was your interview at Patricia’s Beans?”
Casey’s shoulders slumped and Mom shifted stiffly.
“What’s going on?” he asked, stiffening.
“I d-didn’t get the job,” Casey said.
Mom drew out ten dollars from her wallet and passed it to Casey. “Would you buy me a piece of carrot cake, love?”
Casey diligently moved toward the long line, and Mom turned to him. “Your dad and I are just as upset,” she said.
Upset? No, that didn’t begin to describe how he felt. “Patricia is our damn neighbor. If anyone could pull strings . . . .”
It wasn’t a matter of money. They had that. Casey needed a part-time job to improve her self-esteem. She was sick of her peers pitying her and thinking she was incapable. Sure, a third chromosome had given her a few challenges growing up, but she’d overcome them. She was clever and beautiful, not to mention an excellent candidate for a waiting tables after lectures and at weekends.
“I talked to Patricia,” Mom said. “She said she simply wasn’t hiring and that the café was her hobby, a labor of love, and she was keeping a small staff.”
There was more to it, judging by her frown. “What is it?”
She pinched her lips, looked toward Casey, and sighed. “I walked past Patricia’s after my haircut and saw a new waitress. I asked, and she thought I was interested in a job for myself. Said they’re still searching for more part-time employees.”
Rohan swallowed the ball in his throat. He wanted to believe it was a misunderstanding, but he knew better.
“She doesn’t think Casey can do it?”
Mom considered it. “I think this was a slight at the whole family.”
Still?
He sighed. He was sick of their “social peers” looking down on them.
Yes, his parents hadn’t earned their millions themselves. Mom had inherited from her father, who had been the black sheep of the family. He’d been cut-off from his fortunes from his father—Rohan’s great-grandfather—for bringing shame upon the family name. Then he infuriated everyone by winning millions gambling.
Rohan’s entire childhood, he and his family had been snubbed. Behind polite smiles, high society didn’t believe they deserved the fortune they had.
He’d heard the whispers throughout high school accusing them of being lazy.
Incompetent but lucky. Their insults fueled him to prove them all wrong. Now, at thirty, he was weeks away from becoming the face of the SmallQ empire.
Rohan would remember anyone who had slighted them—especially his sister.
“I’ll help land her a job,” Rohan said. Hell, if he had to, he’d start his own café and hire her and her true friends to run it.
He should investigate that possibility.
His phone rang. He glanced at the screen and ignored it. He’d deal with that tomorrow, too.
“My big boy,” his mom said with a wide smile. “Gosh, I’m so proud of you.” She rubbed the top of his head like she had when he was a kid. He ducked out of it with a teasing chuckle. “So glad to have you back.”
“Sorry I didn’t make it to Thanksgiving,” he said. “An avalanche of work pummeled me.”
“How is it my cousin manages to take Thanksgiving off, hmm?”
“Henry pawned the work off on me.”
“We missed you.”
“How was everyone?”
“Natalie and Henry spent most of it discussing business, which makes me wonder why he bothered pawning off work on you. They’re good.”
Don’t ask her about Duke. Don’t ask.
He gripped the arms of the chair. “And Duke?” Dammit.
“He wasn’t there. Hasn’t visited his family in a while. I figured he messed up big this time. What happened to that sweet boy?”
The very question that plagued Rohan.
Duke had been an easy-going teenager. They’d had such great camaraderie. Duke had looked up to him with those awe-filled hazel eyes of his, and Rohan had helped lead him toward adulthood.
They’d talked about their core moral principles and how they could live their best lives to be good for others and the world. They’d listened to all the music hits and immortalized their horrid tastes by buying the bands’ T-shirts. Rohan had taught Duke to ice skate and cook bolognaise and pancakes—because a guy should know how to cook for his dates.
They’d had a simpler relationship then.
Mom said it right: he’d been sweet.
Now, he’d grown up. Grown up . . . a lot. Rohan shifted uncomfortably and tapped his foot. “I don’t know what happened.”
“Well, we haven’t completely lost him,” Mom said. “He’s very good with Casey.”
Of course they hadn’t lost him, things were simply . . . strained. Rohan didn’t know how to help him anymore. Especially not when Duke flaunted himself about the way he had been in the last year.
Especially not after what Duke had done the last time he came home to the Greenville manor.
He shoved the memory deep in his mind. Not that it wo
uld stay there long; he’d spent countless nights dwelling on that invasion of his privacy. Frustrated hope twisted in his belly, because of course Duke was just being Duke. He would flirt with water and make it hard. Would smile at ice and make it melt.
“How’s Bianca?” Mom asked, and Rohan loathed life.
Loathed the block inside him that stopped him expressing his true self. Loathed the lies he’d told others. Loathed the lies he continued telling himself.
He swallowed. “She’s fine. She’ll be here in a couple of weeks.”
“Who are we talking about?” Casey asked, returning with a chunky slice of carrot cake.
She put it neatly on the table and smiled, as if showing she’d be a great barista.
Rohan smiled back, but it was sore. “Bianca.”
“And Duke,” Mom added.
Casey resumed her seat. “Duke! My favorite person.”
“What?” Rohan teased, ignoring the flutter in his chest that always accompanied Duke’s name. “I’m not your favorite?”
She poked a tongue at him. “You’re also my favorite.”
He laughed. “If I find you the perfect scarf, then will I be your most favorite?”
“We’ll see.”
His phone rang again. He checked. This one he couldn’t ignore. “Hey, Henry,” he said, popping in his earplugs.
“You wouldn’t happen to be back, would you?” Henry asked.
“Just arrived.”
“Good. Look, in about an hour, Sam from the Greenville Chronicle is interviewing us about our upcoming merger —I’m tied up at the farm office still negotiating final details. Would you answer his questions? I’ll have Sonya send the guy to your Greenville office.”