by Adrian, Lara
“I don’t know. Other women—”
“Never compare yourself to other women.” His reply is clipped, firm. “I’ve never compared you to anyone. This is about us. There’s no room for anyone else.”
I nod, swallowing thickly. “Then where do we go from here? Tell me what I can do to make this right between us again.”
I watch him contemplate, a tendon pulsing in the side of his cheek. When he looks at me, his blue gaze is steady, unyielding. “One hundred nights.”
“What?”
“One hundred nights in my bed.” He leans toward me, those arresting eyes refusing to let me go. “You’ve had a hundred days on your terms, Ms. Ross, now I want the same on mine.”
My breath catches, and while part of me fears the kind of control he’s about to demand, there’s another part of me that can think of nothing I want more. “What are your terms, Mr. Baine?”
“For the next one hundred nights, I want you open to me—anywhere I want, whatever I ask of you. No limits, no barriers, no hiding any part of yourself from me. And, Avery, I will demand more from you than I ever have.”
“That’s it?” I shake my head, hope and elation streaking through me like licks of fire. “That’s all you’ll require of me?”
He leans forward and cups my face in his strong hands. “That’s a good beginning.”
“Yes,” I agree, as he pulls me into a sensual kiss. “That is a good beginning.”
~ ~ ~
Nick arranges to have my rental car picked up from the prison lot and we decide to stay overnight in Pennsylvania rather than make the long drive back to the city. Besides, I’ve just entered into an agreement with a formidable negotiator, and both of us are eager to get started hammering out the fine points as quickly as possible.
The nearest hotel is a cheap chain a few miles away, and Nick runs to check us in while I wait in the car. I can’t take my eyes off him as he strolls into the hotel and walks up to the desk. Will I ever tire of looking at him? Will he always make my pulse quicken and my body melt with desire?
I suspect so, and I intend to spend the next three and a half months testing the theory.
I’m enjoying watching the young reception clerk flirt with my man when my cell phone rings with a local call.
Thinking it’s Stadler or the prison calling with an update on my mom, I swipe the screen and answer. “Hello?”
“Hello, Avery.”
The male voice is thin, but sharp as the edge of a blade. I can’t place it immediately, yet my body’s reaction is visceral, as if I’ve just taken a face full of frigid water.
“Shame about your mother, huh? ‘Course, all things considered, that fall coulda been worse. A helluva lot worse.”
“Who is this?”
An airless chuckle grates across my ear. “Oh, come on, now. I think you know. But I’m guessing your rich boyfriend in there doesn’t.”
Dread forms a cold knot in my gut at the mention of Nick. And, yes, I do recognize this voice now. The fact that I do makes the dread I felt a moment ago corrode into something vile. Something poisonous and deadly.
How did he find me after all this time? The question no sooner burns through my thoughts than I recall the photo that was snapped of Nick and me at the mayor’s gala. The photo that went viral online. Dammit.
Anxious, I chance a look back at Nick now. He’s still at the reception desk, having just signed for our room. The young clerk smiles at him as he takes the key from her, then starts to turn in my direction.
“We need to talk,” says the voice on the other end of the line. “I’ll be in touch.”
The connection is cut, and I’m left holding my phone in trembling hands. I drop it into my purse before Nick returns to the car.
He’s grinning as he climbs in and hands me the room keys in their little paper sleeve. “Honeymoon suite was all they had left. Hope you don’t mind.”
“No.” I force a smile that feels tight on my lips. “I don’t mind.”
He cocks his head at me, frowning. “Something wrong?”
“No.” I try for another smile, a stronger one that draws on years of practice in pretending nothing is wrong when, in reality, my life is coming apart at the seams. “Everything’s fine.”
* * * * *
Thank you for reading For 100 Days. I hope you enjoyed it!
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Acknowledgments
Avery and Nick have been living in my head for a few years now, waiting (not so patiently) for their turn on the page.
I have to thank my husband, first and foremost, for listening when I first told him about these characters and their story over lunch in a Paris café while we were on book tour there in 2014. What we’d planned to be a day of museum-hopping instead turned into a full-on plotting session that was even more fun. This book, and the rest of the trilogy, would not be what they are now without John’s input and ideas all along the way.
My deep appreciation, also, to my copyeditor, Judi Fennel, and my dear friends who read the manuscript in draft form and offered thoughtful critique and encouragement. Thank you, Patricia Rasey and Liz Berry! I’m so grateful for your support and insight.
No list of acknowledgments would be completed without a note of thanks to my readers. Thank you for embracing my characters and story worlds—from medieval knights to modern-day vampires to alpha billionaires. Because of your amazing support, I have the privilege of following my muse wherever she leads. I hope you continue to enjoy the journey along with me!
Please turn the page to begin reading Book 2
FOR 100 NIGHTS
FOR 100 NIGHTS
Passion knows no bounds . . .
Avery Ross is living a dream. After struggling all of her life to make ends meet, a chance meeting with a powerful, darkly handsome man has catapulted her into a dazzling new world of penthouse luxury, elegant parties, and a wild, consuming passion with her billionaire lover, Dominic Baine. Nothing is out of his reach in business or in pleasure, yet the only woman he wants is her. Nick sweeps her to sensual heights she has never dared explore, commanding her body the same way he commands her heart. Yet Avery knows the fantasy she’s living cannot last.
With dark secrets and a dangerous enemy haunting her past, Avery must find a way to trust Nick with the truth before it destroys everything they share. But Nick is harboring secrets of his own as well. And when they come to light, Avery will be forced to decide if the love she feels for Nick is strong enough to endure a betrayal she may never be able to forgive.
~ ~ ~
“For 100 Nights will have you on the edge of your seat! An instant addiction and a complete escape, with an intriguing storyline and an ending that will leave you gasping for air. This series has quickly become one of my favorites.”
—Shayna Renee’s Spicy Reads
“Lara Adrian is back with the second book in the 100 Series and there is only one word that can adequately describe this book: Phenomenal. I’m not kidding. I wish I could give this book so many more stars than a measly five because it’s flipping amazing. For 100 Days was one of my favourite books of last year and this book has topped that.”
—The Sub Club Books
* * * * *
Chapter 1
Sunrise glistens on the meandering curves of the East River, the golden light of the August morning gilding the elegant hotels, mansions, and other prime real estate that surrounds verdant Central Park ninety-three stories below me. Lifting my head from my pillow, I sweep my bed-tossed tangle of blond hair away from my eyes, awed and breathless as I watch daybreak gently play over the city from my privileged vantage point far above it all.
So are the nights.
As tempting as it may be to slip out from the silky sheets and savor the splendor of New York City’s waking skyline, my body is languid and flushed, my limbs too weak to move. All of my senses are still thrumming from an incredible predawn orgasm that’s only beginning to ebb.
I sigh in pleasure, and the firm, muscled arm that’s wrapped around me from behind flexes to pull me closer. Warm lips and a beard-roughened face nuzzles my nape with a kiss that sends wet heat licking through me, straight to my core.
The view from the penthouse of the tallest building in Manhattan is a jaw-dropper to be sure, but it’s the man holding my naked body against his who never fails to leave me amazed and breathless.
Dominic Baine.
He’s still inside me, his cock still erect even after the climax that had him shouting my name like a curse only moments ago. His hips move against my ass and I arch into his lazy thrust on a moan I don’t even attempt to bite back.
“So greedy, Ms. Ross. Such a sweet, demanding pussy you have.” He withdraws slowly as he speaks, each retreating inch a torment, a threat of loss that makes my walls clench around him in protest. I feel the vibration of his amused chuckle against my spine, his mouth teasing the sensitive skin behind my ear. “I’ve made you come twice since you woke up and you’re ready for me to fuck you all over again.”
Not a question. No pretense of propriety, despite the urbane polish of his deep voice or the fact that he’s one of the most respected, successful—wealthiest—men in the country.
We’re long past all of that now.
“Tell me, Avery,” he demands quietly, yet firmly, against the shell of my ear.
“I want you to fuck me, Nick. Right now. Again. I don’t ever want you to stop fucking me.”
“Good girl.” He rewards me with a tweak of my nipple as he pushes inside me all the way to the hilt.
I suck in my breath at the enormity of him, of how primal our need for each other is. It’s burned white-hot for nearly four months now, since the moment we first met—a chance encounter in this very building, then another, more provocative exchange at Dominion, the art gallery Nick owns on Fifth Avenue.
The same gallery where several of my paintings had hung unsold for more than a year before they were culled at Nick’s direction to make way for more promising artists.
I hadn’t realized Nick was Dominion’s owner that first night I ended up in his bed. As angered as I’d been to learn who he was a few days later, it hadn’t kept me from wanting him, or from falling headlong into the kind of carnal, consuming—infinitely intense—relationship I’d never had with any man before him.
Nothing had.
But then, to be fair, there were things Nick hadn’t known about me either. I’d been playing what I thought was a harmless game—pretending I was someone I wasn’t, letting him think I was someone better, someone without my ugly past and the onerous baggage that came with it.
I’d been acting like I belonged in Nick’s world when in reality I was a failed artist and struggling bartender living a temporary fairy tale existence as a house-sitter in his building.
For the first hundred days we were together, I let Nick believe all of my lies.
Even the worst ones.
When everything finally crashed down around me, I thought for sure he would be gone. Instead, he came after me. He found me. He forgave me.
And then he named his price for letting me back in.
One hundred nights.
For each day I deceived him, he demanded a night in return. He wanted all of me. In his bed. On his terms. At his total mercy.
I can’t imagine a more exquisite punishment.
He drives into me again, another long, hard thrust that wrings a broken cry from my throat. My body is spent, my sex swollen and sore from the fury of Nick’s passion last night and again this morning. But I crave this ache. I crave this man with a depth of need that probably should terrify me. Instead it only makes me hunger for more.
Half in pleasure, half in pain, I tilt my body to take all of him as his next thrust goes even deeper—to the razor’s edge of what I think I can bear. I want everything he’ll give me, the pleasure and the pain. The raw possession.
The complete dominance that demands nothing less than my full surrender.
He grinds out a tight curse and I groan when I feel him withdraw too far, too fast for my liking. He shifts behind me, the flat of his palm coming down on my ass in a sharp smack. “On your hands and knees, baby.”
As I hurry to comply, I register that he’s disposing of the spent condom from our last bout of the morning and rolling on a fresh one. He returns a moment later, the heat of his body radiating over my bare backside, which is on full display for him in the thin light of morning.
“God, you’re beautiful,” he murmurs, skimming his hands up the outsides of my parted thighs, then onto the rounded curve of my ass.
Facing the floor-to-ceiling window, I watch the faint ghosts of our reflection in the glass as he looms behind me naked on his knees, his strong hands roaming all over my body. I arch and shudder as his fingers leave no inch of me untouched. The warm coil of need that held me a moment ago now twists tighter, hotter, aching with anticipation of the pleasure still to come.
“All of this belongs to me,” he says, while his fingers skate back down to splay atop my bare cheeks, then squeeze, opening me wider to him. Then he releases my ass only so he can slide one palm along the length of my bowed spine while the other one delves into the drenched and pulsing cleft of my sex. “All of you, Avery. Mine.”
“Yes.” The word rushes out of me, both an admission and a plea.
I am his, even if I’m not quite certain what his possession will mean for me in the end. Although I’m falling in love with him—and I’ve confessed as much to him—we’ve made no promises to each other beyond these hundred nights.
Right now, all I need is the next moment. I need to feel him inside me.
“Nick, please.” My voice is little more than a whimper, my breath panting and shallow.
He leans over me, pushing my shoulders down onto the mattress so that my backside is angled high. Lust floods me, animalistic and urgent. He is naturally dominant, and, in spite of my history, nothing turns me on faster or harder than submitting to Nick’s carnal control.
He reaches down to caress my face with the back of his hand—the one that’s riddled with angry scars, horrific wounds he’s dismissed as the result of a foolish brawl when he was eighteen. They are the only flaws on his otherwise perfect body.
At times in these past few months we’ve been together, I’ve wondered if there are other scars he doesn’t allow me to see. I know there must be, because the broken parts of me recognize the fractures in him, even if he hasn’t permitted me close enough to touch them yet.
When his thumb brushes my lips, I stroke my tongue against it, then draw him into my mouth the way I want to—need to—draw him into my body.
His groan sounds ragged as I suck him deep. His pelvis bucks against my ass, his erection wedged between the slickness of my cleft.
“Ah, fuck,” he snarls, rubbing the pad of his thumb against the cushion of my tongue as he guides his cock to my entrance. “Hang on, baby.”
The low command is a warning. I feel his ferocity building even before he pushes inside me on a sharp roar. There is no gentleness in him as he pulls his hand away from my mouth and gathers my loose hair in his grasp. He winds the blond tresses tautly around his fist, until I feel the sting all over my scalp.
I am instantly lost to the violence of his passion—and my own.
He powers into me like a tempest, furious and unrelenting. His words rasp low and dark above me, praise and profanity, my name uttered like a prayer as he takes me over body, heart and soul.
Braced on my hands, with my head pulled back and my shoulders pinned to the mattress, I stare through pleasured tears at the carnality of our lovemaking reflected with fading clarity in the window glass and the warming colors of the summer morning now bursting to life on the other side.
My chest aches with emotion as my orgasm swiftly builds. This is when I feel most alive—held fast against this man, naked and surrendered to him completely. Feeling the full measure of his power and fury, yet knowing there is nowhere safer that I can be.
The sensations overwhelm me. The beauty and the pain and the pleasure.
I want to hold all of it close. I want to memorize every moment.
I want to paint everything I’m feeling, even though it’s been weeks since I’ve worked on anything new.
“Oh, God . . . Nick.” My grasp on lucid thought slips away as my climax chases up on me. Eyes closed, I bite down on my lip as Nick’s merciless tempo pushes me right over the edge. The scream that rips from my throat is jagged, uncontrolled.
Nick’s guttural shout a moment later is no less primal. With the fingers of one hand digging into my hip, the other still wound tightly in my hair, he rams deep, a hard shudder raking him as he comes.
Although I’m spent and trembling from my release, he continues to rock inside me, losing little of his hardness, despite the ferocity of his own orgasm. He moves slowly, patiently, gentling me now. Tender kisses light on my shoulder, then along my spine. He lets go of my hair, carefully unwinding it, then combing his fingers through the loosened strands.
As turbulent as our sex often is, his aftercare is impossibly sweet.
Gathering me to him, he takes us both down onto our sides on the mattress. His arms encircle me, strong and warm, a shelter I’d like to remain in all day if I could. Forever, if I’m being honest.