Table of Contents
Book Description
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
Chapter 30
Acknowledgement
About The Author
Chasing Perfection
Vol. 3
By M.S. Parker
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 Belmonte Publishing
Published by Belmonte Publishing.
Book Description
If DeVon Ricci thinks I'm going to apologize for what happened, he's sorely mistaken. I don't care how hot the sex was, or even if he sometimes seems like he's going to be a decent guy, I'm not asking for forgiveness. I don't need it. I've done nothing wrong. We were never anything to each other but two nights of great sex."
"Why, then, am I still drawn to him?"
When DeVon Ricci discovers that his perfect Krissy Jensen isn't so perfect after all, he retreats back behind the walls he's put up to keep himself from being hurt. As truths begin to reveal themselves, DeVon must decide if loving Krissy is worth the risk of a broken heart.
Can Krissy and DeVon finally put aside everything that's tried to come between them and admit what they've both felt from moment one? That, together… they're perfection.
~*~*~*~
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Chapter 1
KRISSY
I was still in the process of brushing out my hair when I heard someone knock on the front door. I tightened the belt of the robe around my waist and walked out of the bathroom and through the bedroom. I didn’t see Carter anywhere. I assumed he thought I was still in the shower, but since I was expecting a cab to pick me up, I figured I might as well answer the door. I gave myself a quick once-over to make sure the silk robe Carter had loaned me covered everything important, and then opened the door.
My mouth was opening to thank the person on the other side...and then I saw who was staring at me with dark, intense eyes.
“DeVon,” I said, not able to hide the surprise in the tone of my voice. My heart did a funny little skipping beat. Who’d called him about my accident? Had it been Carter? The fact that he’d come to make sure I was okay tempered my previous anger at him for pushing me on Carter. It didn’t make things good between us, but it was at least a step in the right direction.
“Nice to see you’re taking one for the team,” he snapped. “Hope he was a good lay.”
My jaw dropped as DeVon spun around and started to storm away. What the hell? All prior thoughts of forgiveness were chased away by the anger boiling inside me. I walked after him, not caring that I was only wearing a robe or that the man I was about to yell at was my boss.
“Where the hell do you get off acting like that wasn’t exactly what you wanted me to do?!” I cut in front of him, forcing him to stop. “You told me that Hollywood was all about tits and ass.” I pointed an accusing finger at him and had to resist the urge to poke him in the chest with it. “You told me to flirt with him and then when Carter said he wanted me to come by, we both knew he didn’t want me here to read for him. You wanted me to fuck him just so you could get him to let Mirage clients read, and then you have the balls to show up here and act like I did something wrong! I looked to you for an answer and you fucking nodded.”
He sneered at me, his eyes flat. “And that’s all it took to get you to spread your legs.”
I sucked in a breath and tried not to let him see how that stung.
He continued, “I didn’t expect anything less. After all, you fucked Taylor once you found out there wasn’t a rule against it.” He took a step towards me until our bodies were nearly touching. “Not that the rules seem to matter much to you when it comes to getting laid.”
“Look who’s talking.” I didn’t like him crowding my space, especially when the scent of him brought with it a rush of memories, but I refused to back down. I glared up at him, focusing on my anger. “You’ll fuck anything that stands still long enough.” I paused, then added, “Or anything you can tie down.”
His jaw clenched so tightly I could see the muscle twitching, and I knew he was working on keeping that control he prized so much.
“You know what?” I said. “You said the two of us were alike, and maybe you’re right in some ways, but at least I treat people with common courtesy. Just because we fucked doesn’t give you the right to treat me like shit, not matter who else I sleep with. I may be a slut, as you not-so-subtly implied, but at least I’m not an asshole.”
For a moment, I thought he was going to say something else, but instead, he just stepped around me and got into his car.
I didn’t give him the satisfaction of me watching him leave. I spun around and marched back into the house, tears stinging and burning my eyes as I refused to give in to them. I wasn’t going to cry. I was done crying over DeVon Ricci.
Chapter 2
DEVON
I’d heard the phrase ‘seeing red’ before, but I’d never truly understood what it meant until the moment I’d seen Krissy Jensen standing in Carter Bilson’s doorway wearing a clingy silk robe. I’d snapped and we’d argued, biting words that I hated myself for saying even though everything I saw told me they were true.
The haze didn’t start to clear until I was a good mile-and-a-half down the road, and I didn’t even remember pulling out of the driveway. Now, instead of anger, doubt was creeping in, telling me that I’d been the one who’d fucked up. I had told her to flirt with Carter, and I had nodded when she’d looked to me to answer Carter’s implied question. I was the one who’d put her in that house, in his bed, or wherever it had been they’d done it.
Knowing it was my fault didn’t make it any better. Or make me any less pissed. At Carter. At Krissy. I’d really deluded myself into thinking that our two nights together had actually meant something to her besides amazing sex. I was usually the one who left the women wanting more. I always got tired of them before they got tired of me. The fact that Krissy had been able to brush off the weekend and hop into bed with that sleaze-ball director told me that she’d had no problem moving on. I, on the other hand, still couldn’t get her out of my head.
There was a cure for that, I thought, as I stopped at a red light. I activated my bluetooth. If I didn’t work out all of this shit going on inside me, I was going to explode. I needed someone I could be rough with, someone who didn’t just take what I gave her, but enjoyed it. Even Angelica wouldn’t be able to handle what I wanted to do. I did have a couple women who were almost too extreme for me, and Olive was one of those.
She never used a safe word because she always begged for more, no matter what I did. I didn’t frequent th
e club scene, but one of the few times I’d gone, she’d invited me to see what her favorite Dom did. I was almost vanilla compared to him, and that’s what I needed right now. I needed someone I could whip, torment with toys and clamps. Someone I could put in any position and fuck until I forgot my own name.
“Call Olive,” I said into the Bluetooth microphone.
She answered on the second ring, her voice a purr. “DeVon. I’ve missed you.”
I opened my mouth to tell her to meet me at my apartment and to bring her favorite ball gag because I was going to make her scream. Instead, I found that I couldn’t say the words. The ball of ice in my stomach rolled at the thought of fucking Olive … gorgeous, petite Olive.
“Sorry, babe, just remembered I have something I have to do,” I said hurriedly. “I’ll catch you some other time.” I hung up before I could get a response.
There were ways besides sex to make myself forget. I had a nice bottle of scotch at my apartment, but then I remembered that I hadn’t yet cleaned up the guest bedroom since last night with Krissy and that was something I didn’t want to face. Not now.
I cut across two lanes of traffic, ignoring the blares of protest and obscene gestures. I had things better than scotch at the house. I’d never been a hard liquor person, but I’d done enough social drinking that I could hold my own. Right now, however, I didn’t want to hold my own. I wanted to get plastered and forget everything that had happened today.
I found the tequila easily enough. I usually never drank it, but every once in a while, I’d bring a girl home that wanted a shot or two. I didn’t bother with shot glasses as I flopped down in the closest comfy chair and began to drink. I grimaced at the first swallow but didn’t stop. I barely paused until the bottle was half gone.
My phone buzzed and I pulled it out of my pocket, unable to stop the crazy, wild hope that it was Krissy calling me. It was my assistant. I sent it to voicemail. I didn’t want to talk to anyone from work. Right now, I hated that place. It had ruined any chance of anything I could’ve had with Krissy. To be fair, I had to admit what I’d done hadn’t exactly helped matters.
Everything I’d said to her at Carter’s came flooding back and I winced at how harsh it all sounded. Had I really said all those things? I’d basically called her a whore. I couldn’t believe she hadn’t slapped me. I would’ve slapped me. Hell, I felt like hitting myself right now because of it.
I needed to apologize. I looked at my phone. I had to tell her that I hadn’t meant any of those things, that I’d just been angry. I knew it was the booze talking, but asking for her forgiveness seemed like the only thing I could do to make things right. I opened my contacts, ready to flip to her name, and that’s when I saw his.
Carter Bilson.
And suddenly I could see it all.
His head buried between her legs, making her come.
His cock in her mouth.
Her riding him, those beautiful breasts bouncing...
“Dammit!” I threw my phone against the wall, watching as it shattered into a thousands pieces. No drunk dialing. No apologizing for saying things that were true. No asking for forgiveness from someone who’d practically gone straight from my bed to another man’s. Forget the fact that bed-hopping was practically my MO. I’d never be able to get the images of Krissy and Carter fucking out of my head, and that meant I’d never be apologizing for what I’d said.
I took another pull from my bottle and felt the alcohol burn on its way down.
Fuck them both.
Chapter 3
KRISSY
Between two nights in a row of intense sex and then my car accident, my entire body was sore. I’d thought about calling off work and using the accident as an excuse, but then I knew it’d get back to DeVon and he’d think I was too ashamed to face him. I didn’t want to see him or talk to him, especially after the way he’d reacted yesterday, but I wasn’t a coward. Thinking about the things he’d said to me still made my blood boil. I’d thought I’d seen a different side of him over the weekend, but I knew now it had just been his way of making sure he got in my pants. If he had’ known how much I wanted to fuck him, he wouldn’t have tried so hard, and maybe I wouldn’t have made the mistake of thinking he was a semi-decent human being.
Despite all of that, I couldn’t deny the tiny part of me that wanted to see him and set things straight. I ignored that voice. It was the same one that had told me he wasn’t as much of a jackass as he seemed, and that had turned out to be a load of shit.
So, I focused on my work and tried not to keep looking up every couple minutes to see if DeVon was coming. By mid-afternoon, I’d been able to put it all aside and focus on my work. No matter how pissed I was at DeVon, I was still going to do my best for my clients.
“Tracy,” I called over the intercom. “The Bastille files, the ones I have to fill out for Cami and Lena, they’re missing a couple pages.”
Tracy held up a finger so I could see and then rifled through a stack of papers on her desk. She came into my office a minute later, her hands empty. “I’m sorry, Krissy. It looks like they weren’t sent down.”
My stomach sank even as I asked the question. “Down from where?”
“You’ll have to get the missing papers from DeVon,” she said. “Unless you want me to go get them?”
“No,” I said. “I’ll go.” I scowled as I walked towards the elevator, the half-completed papers in hand. DeVon didn’t forget things like this. Neither did Melissa, his assistant. He’d purposefully left the papers out so I’d have to come up and see him. He didn’t even have the guts to come down to talk to me. He had to come up with some transparent ruse to get me to his office.
Asshole.
Melissa wasn’t at her desk, which was good because I didn’t plan on knocking. If DeVon could be rude, then so could I.
I pushed opened the door and was halfway in the room before I registered what was happening.
A busty blond was bent over DeVon’s desk, her clothes on the floor by her feet. He was standing behind and to the side of her so I could clearly see the deep, red lines on her back, the welts on her ass. Even as I came to a stop, he brought his belt down again with a painful-sounding crack. The woman’s moan, however, was anything but pained. Even from where I was standing, I could see that she was dripping. He looked up at me, his eyes burning with something dark that I couldn’t name. Without looking away, he snapped the rich leather across her back and then her ass again.
“Say hello to our guest, Samantha.”
The blond turned. If she was surprised to see me, she didn’t let it show. Then again, I wasn’t sure she was registering much of anything that wasn’t happening to her body. Her breasts were marked just as much as her ass was and her nipples were swollen. DeVon had been working her over for a while.
I folded my arms and fixed my face into what I hoped looked like a mask of disdain. “Did you get all of it out of your system? Because if you’re through behaving like a spoiled child, I have work to do.” The disgust in my voice was clear. Not disgust because he liked things rough or that Samantha was enjoying herself, but disgust that he’d obviously set this up for me to walk in on.
“What do you want?” He took a step towards me, the belt in his hand swinging slowly from side to side.
“You forgot the middle two pages on the Bastille documents.” I kept my eyes on his face.
“Here.” He reached behind him and handed me a few pieces of paper. Any doubt I’d had that he’d done this on purpose vanished. He’d had the papers right there this whole time. “Now, get out.”
I raised an eyebrow even as a pang went through me at how cold his tone was.
“Unless you want to watch me fuck Samantha’s ass,” he said. “Then you can stay. She doesn’t mind an audience.”
I pressed my lips together to keep from saying something I’d regret – points to me for self-control – and stalked out of his office. I didn’t hurry away, not wanting him to think I was running, b
ut I didn’t go slow, either. My ears burned as I heard Samantha cry out, and then I was safely in the elevator.
As soon as the doors closed behind me, I put my hands over my face and screamed. All the weeks of pent-up frustration, anger and homesickness was just too much. I’d held it together longer than anyone else would’ve in my situation and I was proud of how well I’d done, but enough was enough. I couldn’t take this anymore. I wouldn’t take it.
I fucking quit.
As I walked to my office, I started running through the scenarios in my head of how I wanted to deliver the news. Part of me wanted to just walk out. Another part wanted me to go back upstairs and say it to DeVon’s face. The professional part of me said I should do a proper resignation, but I wasn’t feeling very proper at the moment.
“Krissy, Derrick Johnson called and wants you to call him back,” Tracy said as I passed her.
“I don’t give a shit,” I said bluntly. “I’m out of here. I quit.”