Her breath faltered, and she held it, silently begging me to get her there. She ran her hands up my back, around my neck to my face. I felt the cool press of her engagement ring, thinking holy shit, this woman is going to be my wife, have my children, share my home and my life. She’ll see me grow old and most likely insane. She’ll promise to love me through all of it.
I lifted myself above her, arms straight so I could watch what I was feeling, moving inside her. But her hands cupped my face, brought my attention back to her eyes.
“Hey.”
I tried to catch my breath, felt sweat drop from my forehead onto her chest. “Yeah?”
She licked her lips, swallowed. “I am so in love with you.” Her thumb slipped into my mouth and I bit down sharply, causing her to let out a tight moan. “And whatever happens outside of this, of us like this . . .”
“I know.”
We shared a desperate look, a mutual, silent agreement that we would never get enough, that maybe the ideal life was us here like this, alone and touching, but it would never be our reality to exist here exclusively. It was why she crashed my bachelor party but would leave tomorrow. It was why I couldn’t stay away, knowing she was in the same city.
And here she was, limbs heavy and fevered beneath me, hips rising urgently up to mine to get what she needed. She would always belong to me—at home, at work, in bed—and that thought sent me barreling down the road to my release.
She was close, but unfortunately I was closer. “Get there, sweet thing. I . . . I can’t . . .”
Her hands gripped my hips, head pushing back into the pillow. “Please.”
My body tensed, hips thrusting wildly, my orgasm held back by barely a thread. “Fucking get there, Mills.”
It was the voice I used sparingly because I never wanted it to lose its effect on her. With a flush down her chest, she arched off the bed, pulling her thighs high up against her body to send me deep into her. With her lips parting in a sharp cry, she dissolved into her orgasm beneath me.
I’d never tire of the view of Chloe coming. The blush on her skin, the nearly drugged darkness of her eyes as she watched me, and the way her lips shaped my name . . . Every fucking time it reminded me that I was the only man to ever give her pleasure like this. Her arms fell away, heavy with exhaustion, and her tongue peeked out to wet her lips.
“Fuck,” she whispered, shaking.
Relief washed through me, opening the floodgates and permitting my own body to tumble forward, blind to everything but the sensation of her around me. The sweetness of her, the wetness of her . . . My back bowed back as I came, shouting out into the quiet, sterile room.
The sound of my yell echoed from the ceiling when I collapsed onto her, sweaty and heavy. I wanted to nestle my face into the smooth curve of her neck and sleep for at least three days.
She laughed, groaning under my weight. “Get off me, Hulk.”
I rolled away, practically crashing into the mattress beside her. “Damn, Chlo. That was . . .”
She curled into me, purring, “Very, very good.” Stretching to nibble at my jaw, she whispered, “I’m going to need at least ten minutes before we do that again.”
I laughed, and then it turned into a hoarse cough as the idea hit me fully. “Jesus, woman. I may need a bit longer than that. Just fucking cuddle me for a few.”
With a small kiss to my neck, she whispered, “I can’t wait for you to become Mr. Bennett Mills.”
My eyes flew open. “What?”
Her laugh was low and husky against my skin. “You heard me.”
Acknowledgments
Thanks to our agent, Holly Root, to our partners in crime (husbands and kiddos), to our fantastic readers, and to our friends and family who put up with our glassy-eyed stares when we’re mentally plotting another chapter during a lunch date.
Thanks to every single wonderful person at Gallery. Thank you, Jen and Lauren.
And thank you most of all to our editor, Adam Wilson, who appreciates that knickers are best in a bunch.
Hot on the heels of Beautiful Bombshell comes Will’s story.
Will this chronic Casanova finally meet his match in a bookish bombshell?
Take a sneak peek here at the opening chapter of Beautiful Player . . .
Prologue
Hanna
We were in the ugliest apartment in all of Manhattan, and it wasn’t just that my brain was especially programmed away from art appreciation: objectively these paintings were all hideous. A hairy leg growing from a flower stem. A mouth with spaghetti pouring out. Beside me, my oldest brother and my father hummed thoughtfully, nodding as if they understood what they were seeing. I was the one who kept us moving forward; it seemed to be the unspoken protocol that party guests should make the circuit, admire the art, and only then feel free to enjoy the appetizers being carried on trays around the room.
But at the very end, above the massive fireplace and between two garish candelabras, was a painting of a double helix—the structure of the DNA molecule—and printed across the entire canvas was a quote by Tim Burton: We all know interspecies romance is weird.
Thrilled, I laughed, turning to Jensen and Dad. “Okay. That one is good.”
Jensen sighed. “You would like that.”
I glanced to the painting and back to my brother. “Why? Because it’s the only thing in this entire place that makes any sense?”
He looked at Dad and something passed between them, some permission granted from father to son. “We need to talk to you about your relationship to your job.”
It took a minute before his words, his tone, and his determined expression triggered my understanding. “Jensen,” I said. “Are we really going to have this conversation here?”
“Yes, here.” His green eyes narrowed. “It’s the first time I’ve seen you out of the lab in the past two days when you weren’t sleeping or scarfing down a meal.”
I’d often noted how it seemed the most prominent personality traits of my parents—vigilance, drive, impulse, charm, and caution—had been divided cleanly and without contamination among their five offspring.
Vigilance and Drive were headed into battle in the middle of a Manhattan soiree.
“We’re at a party, Jens. We’re supposed to be talking about how wonderful the art is,” I countered, waving vaguely to the walls of the opulently furnished living room. “And how scandalous the . . . something . . . is.” I had no idea what the latest gossip was, and this little white flag of ignorance just proved my brother’s point.
I watched as Jensen tamped down the urge to roll his eyes.
Dad handed me an appetizer that looked something like a snail on a cracker and I discreetly slid it onto a cocktail napkin as a caterer passed. My new dress itched and I wished I’d taken the time to ask around the lab about these Spanx things I had on. From this first experience with them, I decided they were created by Satan, or a man who was too thin for skinny jeans.
“You’re not just smart,” Jensen was telling me. “You’re fun. You’re social. You’re a pretty girl.”
“Woman,” I corrected in a mumble.
He leaned closer, keeping our conversation hidden from passing partygoers. Heaven forbid one of New York’s high society should hear him giving me a lecture on how to be more socially slutty. “So I don’t understand why we’ve been visiting you here for three days and the only people we’ve hung out with are my friends.”
I smiled at my oldest brother, and let my gratitude for his over-protective-hyper vigilance wash over me before the slower, heated flush of irritation rose along my skin; it was like touching a hot iron, the sharp reflex followed by the prolonged, throbbing burn. “I’m almost done with school, Jens. There’s plenty of time for life after this.”
“This is life,” he said, eyes wide and urgent. “Right now. When I was your age I was barely hanging on to my GPA, just hoping I would wake up on Monday and not be hung-over.”
Dad stood silently beside him, ignoring
that last remark but nodding at the general gist that I was a loser with no friends. I gave him a look that was meant to communicate, “I get this coming from the workaholic scientist who spent more time in the lab than he did in his own house?” But he remained impassive, wearing the same expression he had when a compound he expected to be soluble ended up a goopy suspension in a vial: confused, maybe a little offended on principle.
Dad had given me drive, but he always assumed Mom had given me even a little charm, too. Maybe because I was female, or maybe because he thought each generation should improve upon the actions of the one before, I was meant to do the whole career-life balance better than he had. The day Dad turned fifty, he’d pulled me into his office and said, simply, “The people are as important as the science. Learn from my mistakes.” And then he’d straightened some papers on his desk and stared at his hands until I got bored enough to get up and go back into the lab.
Clearly, I hadn’t succeeded.
“I know I’m overbearing,” Jensen whispered.
“A bit,” I agreed.
“And I know I meddle.”
I gave him a knowing look, whispering, “You’re my own personal Athena Poliás.”
“Except I’m not Greek and I have a penis.”
“I try to forget about that.”
Jensen sighed and, finally, Dad seemed to get that this was meant to be a two-man job. They’d both come down to visit me, and although it had seemed a strange combination for a random visit in February, I hadn’t given it much thought until now. Dad put his arm around me, squeezing. His arms were long and thin, but he’d always had the vise-like grip of a man much stronger than he looked. “Ziggs, you’re a good kid.”
I smiled at Dad’s version of an elaborate pep talk. “Thanks.”
Jensen added, “You know we love you.”
“I love you, too. Mostly.”
“But . . . consider this an intervention. You’re addicted to work. You’re addicted to whatever fast track you think you need your career to follow. Maybe I always take over and micromanage your life—”
“Maybe?” I cut in. “You dictated everything from when Mom and Dad took the training wheels off my bike to when my curfew could be extended past sunset. And you didn’t even live at home anymore, Jens. I was sixteen.”
He stilled me with a look. “I swear I’m not going to tell you what to do just . . .” he trailed off, looking around as if someone nearby might be holding up a sign prompting the end of his sentence. Asking Jensen to keep from micromanaging was like asking anyone else to stop breathing for ten short minutes. “Just call someone.”
“‘Someone?’ Jensen, your point is that I have no friends. It’s not exactly true, but who do you imagine I should call to initiate this whole get-out-and-live thing? Another grad student who’s just as buried in research as I am? We’re graduate students in biomedical engineering. It’s not exactly a thriving mass of socialites.”
He closed his eyes, staring up at the ceiling before something seemed to occur to him. His eyebrows rose when he looked back to me, hope filling his eyes with an irresistible brotherly tenderness. “What about Will?”
I snatched the untouched champagne flute from Dad’s hand and downed it.
I didn’t need Jensen to repeat himself. Will Sumner was Jensen’s college best friend, Dad’s former intern, and the object of every one of my teenage fantasies. Whereas I had always been the friendly, nerdy kid sister, Will was the bad boy genius with the crooked smile, pierced ears, and blue eyes that seemed to hypnotize every girl he met.
When I was twelve, Will was nineteen, and he came home with Jensen for a few days around Christmas. He was dirty, and—even then—delicious, jamming on his bass in the garage with Jensen and playfully flirting away the holidays with my older sister, Liv. When I was sixteen, he was a fresh college graduate and worked for my father over the summer. He exuded such raw, sexual charisma that I gave my virginity to a fumbling, forgettable boy in my class, trying to relieve the ache I felt just being near Will.
I was pretty sure my sister had kissed him—and Will was too old for me anyway—but behind closed doors, and in the secret space of my own heart, I could admit that Will Sumner was the first boy I’d ever wanted to kiss, and the first boy who eventually drove me to slip my hand under the sheets, thinking of him in the darkness of my own room.
Of his devilish playful smile and the hair that seemed intent on falling over his right eye.
Of his smooth, muscled forearms and tan skin.
Of his long fingers and even the little scar on his chin.
When the boys my age all sounded the same, Will’s voice was deep, and quiet. His eyes were patient and knowing. His hands weren’t ever restless and fidgety, they were usually resting deep in his pockets. He licked his lips when he looked at girls, and he made quiet, confident comments about breasts and legs and tongues.
I blinked, looking up at Jensen. I wasn’t sixteen anymore. I was twenty-four, and Will was thirty-one. I’d seen him four years before at Jensen’s ill-fated wedding, and his quiet, charismatic smile had only grown more intense, more maddening. I’d watched, fascinated, as Will slipped away into a coatroom with two of my sister-in-law’s bridesmaids.
“Call him,” Jensen urged, pulling me from my memories. “He has a good balance of work and life. He’s local, he’s a good guy. Just . . . get out some, okay? He’ll take care of you.”
I tried to quell the hum vibrating all along my skin when my oldest brother said this. I wasn’t sure how I wanted Will to take care of me: did I want him to just be my brother’s friend, helping me find more balance? Or did I want to get a grown-up look at the object of my filthiest fantasies?
“Hanna,” Dad pressed. “Did you hear your brother?”
A waiter passed with a tray of full champagne flutes and I swapped out the empty one for a full, bubbly glass. “I heard him. I’ll call Will.”
© ALYSSA MICHELLE 2013
Christina and Lauren, a writing duo who have been swooning over romance novels for as long as they can remember, are the authors of Beautiful Bastard, Beautiful Stranger, Beautiful Bitch, and several upcoming titles in their popular series from Gallery Books. Separated by the pesky state of Nevada, these co-author besties speak several times a day, agree that Ruby Pumps is the best nail polish color ever, and would, if given the choice, spend all day staring at the ocean from the San Clemente pier. You can find them online at ChristinaLaurenBooks.com or at @seeCwrite & @lolashoes on Twitter.
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Gallery Books
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2013 by Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings
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is book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Gallery Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.
First Gallery Books trade paperback edition September 2013
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Cover photograph by Mayer George/Shutterstock
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lauren, Christina.
Beautiful Bombshell / Christina Lauren. — First Gallery Books trade paperback edition.
pages cm
1. Erotic fiction. I. Title.
PS3612.A9442273B46 2013
813’.6—dc23
2013022872
ISBN 978-1-4767-5509-0
ISBN 978-1-4767-5173-3 (ebook)
Contents
Chapter One: Bennett Ryan
Chapter Two: Max Stella
Chapter Three: Bennett Ryan
Chapter Four: Max Stella
Chapter Five: Bennett Ryan
Chapter Six: Max Stella
Chapter Sever: Bennett Ryan
Acknowledgments
Beautiful Player Excerpt
About Christina Lauren
Christina Lauren, Beautiful Bombshell
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