Series: The Revenge Series
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Love is the strongest emotion in the world…next to hate.
I knew hate. Had known it since I was seventeen. For me, it was love turned on its head, a product of hurt and fear—twisted, tied up…and placed on the sculpted shoulders of Ethan Riske.
***
Dayton, Tennessee.
Home to the best cow-tipping in the world, the biggest hot dogs, and the lousiest sex.
Or so I'd heard...
They were right about the first two. Ethan Riske proved them wrong about the third and at seventeen, he and I spent a summer under the stars, squeezing our way out of trouble, sweating and panting among the haystacks.
Until he left.
Nine years later, when a huge publishing housetries to buy my small press, I storm into the office of the CEO to find him.
Same cocky grin. Different name.
And suddenly all I can think about is exacting revenge on Ethan Riske for breaking his contract...and my heart.
But there's someone who wants revenge even more than I do. As I begin to fall for the new Ethan, will the sins of the old one come back to haunt us?
~Book Review~
DNF
I couldn’t connect with these characters or the romance. Top
reasons why:
1. H gets a blowjob by a stripper in the opening scene. (See except below)
2. Pages and pages in multiple chapters of flashbacks in italic.
A simple ‘Fill-in-the-blank Years Ago’ heading would suffice. Italic is something
to be used sparely. i.e. It’s annoying to read for any length of time!
3. At 29%, Part 2, the H monologues that “I’d spent at least
part of half the week with beach blonde bunnies in my bed, redheads in the
Rolls, a caramel-haired cutie to bide the time.”
99c for a limited time
AMAZON US / UK / CA / AU
Free in Kindle Unlimited
~Excerpt~
Prologue
“I hope you taste as good as you smell.”
The sound drifted through the air. A slow, sensuous melody
floated with it, and as both made their way through the room, the beat of the
song and the quiet statement I just heard rattled the bourbon in my hand,
making the ice cubes shake.
Or maybe I was the one shaking.
I couldn’t help it.
Griff was poking a hole in my ribs with his elbow, and as
the lips that had just whispered in my ear withdrew, I could see the look on my
“best man’s” face. He was essentially salivating, his tongue practically
swinging as he took in the vision of the woman who was speaking in my ear… and
laying a seductive path in my open lap.
She stood, her long legs stretching, her bare torso twisting
as she rolled the shape of an “S” in the air with her body, swaying seductively
to the music. She was toned… that was obvious. A tight package with tits too
big to be real, the buxom blonde in front of me was the object of every man’s
wet-dream, star of every cock-swinger’s fantasy…
Except mine.
But she was doing her best. Clad in a piece of cloth that
barely covered her clearly cleanly-waxed pussy, she ground her
pretty ass two inches from my face while every other man in the room fought the
urge to put their fingers all over her. My best friend, included. He nudged my
side for the ninetieth time.
“Fuck me, man,” he slurred. “If she was doing that to me,
I’d be two seconds from putting my finger in her ass.” He smirked widely and
wildly.
“Good thing you aren’t me,” I shot back quietly, leaning
over to look into his face. “That’d be a felony, you crazy ass.” I finally
smiled. “And the last time I checked you didn’t fuck strippers because ‘and I
quote… ‘Who knows how many other items have been in those goddamned
holes?'"
I threw Griff’s own words back at him with a silent grin.
“Doesn’t matter,” he declared, staring at the stripper in
front of me for the thousandth time. “For her?” He swallowed another mouthful
of scotch. “I’d make an exception.”
I glared at the beautiful blonde again. Because Griff was
right. The exotic dancer… She might have been one of the best looking I’d ever
seen. Maybe the best. She was tall, long-legged. Gorgeous… in
the porn star sense, of course, with a wide, luscious mouth made for licking
and sucking in only the most erotic of ways.
She licked her lips at me as if she wanted to make good on
the promise she’d just whispered, and I had no doubt when she looked at me, her
brown doe-like eyes wide, that—if she could, she would devour me until nothing
was left. Until she drained every drop.
Unfortunately, for her, I wasn’t interested.
She tried to drag me to my feet, her tiny fingers wrapping
around my own, pulling as she walked backwards in the direction of the edge of
the room. The overhead maroon lights illuminating the space in our black-curtain
closed boudoir made her look as naughty as every word dripping from her
blood-red mouth, and Bambi the Bimbo was putting on her best pout to entice me
into joining her towards whatever dirty fun lay in the dark room beyond this
one.
All of the men—friend and foe—whooped as I slowly dragged
myself to my feet, stumbling and fumbling over the discarded decorations that
littered the floor. Streamers and “Congratulations” ribbons ran the length of
the room, taking up space between the cloth-covered tables, and I staggered
past them, barely holding onto my Bourbon as I followed stolidly behind the
too-excited dancer who nearly bounced on her platform-covered toes.
With the push of another curtain, we fell into another room,
and I let my body flounce on the dark-colored couches beyond it, slumping into
the padded cushions. I took a healthy swig of my drink and sank my fingers into
the seat beneath, wondering how many stains these comfortable sofas had really seen.
The drunker I got, the more it didn’t matter. Ignorance
truly was bliss.
And so was the sensation making its way down my crotch—a
gentle rubbing that circled the length of my cock through the fabric of my suit
pants. From the tip to the very base. I groaned, closing my eyes as I saw a
vision in my mind. A vision too good to be true.
A vision almost ten years old.
Waves of dark hair fell to a waist too tiny to be anything
but touched. Shiny and soft, the beautiful brown mane swept across my chest,
against my shirt, as two eyes, a crystal-clear blue, peeked from beneath the
strands, as round and as large as saucers. In my mind, they met mine, saying
things that couldn’t be vocalized, voicing words that need not be said.
They seduced in the most innocent of ways, waylaying me,
pulling at a possessiveness in me I didn’t know existed. The blue eyes smiled.
The smile beneath them was even better—wicked, as it dipped to my abdomen and
pressed there, making me ache, causing my cock to strain against the
inconvenient zipper located there.
How many times had I imagined those lips doing exactly that?
That tongue licking out beneath those straight white teeth to lap at my skin,
the edge of her mouth nipping at the most sensitive parts of me? It was
torture—letting her tease me, taking me to the brink and back again as she
swept that sheet of auburn locks over my body as she bent to her knees. I
sucked in a breath soaked in desire as I waited for her to place her mouth
where it mattered most.
And then it stopped. The teasing. She stopped.
And before I knew it, she was pulling—no, ripping—at my
pants. The top button popped, and suddenly my cock was between her hands, her
lips. She sank her mouth around it with a sigh, sucking with delight. The
sexiest slurp ever made to man escaped from between her teeth, and I nearly
lost it, grinding my own teeth as I gripped the back of her head, my eyelids
squeezing tight enough to ache.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck…” I muttered. Over and over and over
again.
It was fucking amazing. Something so simple—someone so
simple, sweet and secretly naughty could bring a stubborn fucker like me—CEO
and all—to his Giorgio Armani-covered knees.
I came… with my cock in her mouth and her name on my mind. I
leaned back even further, letting my head fall into the cushions.
“Fuck, Kat…” I mumbled, feeling way too fucked up to move,
the liquor coursing through my veins as I came down from my high, my fingers
reaching out to touch her once more.
But she backed away.
“Kat?” she said, rising to her feet. “Who the fuck is Kat?”
I opened my eyes, staring at the figure fumbling around in
front of me. It was the blonde vixen—the stripper. Standing on shaky legs, she
wobbled between my legs, locking me with a stare, her eyes hard and unblinking.
She placed her hands on her tiny hips.
“Who the hell is Kat?”
As if she was outraged. As if she had any right to question
whatever the fuck I was doing anyway. I ignored her with a shrug, stowing my
dick back in my pants with a loud zip! I finished my drink and
sat it down.
“Ohhhh… I get it,” the blonde blower hissed. “She must be
your fiancé. Well… I guarantee you that she’s never made you come like that.
That was epic, baby,” she sighed, trying to straddle me. Her pussy was peeking
completely out of her barely-there panties this time, and she tried to rub it
across me, sliding her pink slit across the front of my pants with a slow
grind.
I almost pushed her off. I stood.
“There is no fiancee,” I rumbled.
“But I thought…”
“My friends,” I interrupted, “thought it’d be funny to
celebrate my new position. They said it was fitting… seeing as how I’m now
married to my job. This isn’t a real bachelor party. And that
wasn’t a real blow-job…”
She raised an eyebrow. “Certainly felt real
to me.”
I pulled out my wallet, taking out a couple hundred dollar
bills and putting them in the palm of her hand. I folded her fingers around
them, looking into her eyes.
“Can’t be real… Not when you’re thinking about someone else
the entire time.”
I turned just as the fair-haired, breathing blow-up doll
gaped. I pulled the black curtain aside, exiting, attempting to avoid the
curious gaze of every onlooking employee that came to the party to usher me
into my new executive role.
My smile was weak, as I tried to shake off what just
happened to me in the other room… and who I was imagining it happening with. Somehow,
it was the brunette in my head, and not the blonde on my lap, that felt as if
she were still on my skin.
I was in so much fucking trouble.
Natalie Wrye is a tequila connoisseur, Game of Thrones addict and author best known for writing page-turning Contemporary Romance and Romantic Suspense.
A fan of the beautifully polarizing anti-hero, she crafts sexy stories about hard-bodied, complex men and the strong-willed women who crave them.
Mary Billiter is a weekly newspaper columnist and fiction author. She also has novels published under the pen name, “Pumpkin Spice.”
