Velvet Devil
It's the first look on my wedding day.
I turn... but my husband isn't there.
Instead, I see the stranger who ruined my life.
Here's the story:
Six years ago, I was on the worst first date in history.
A blind date with some jerk who wouldn't take no for an answer.
The handsome stranger swooped in.
Saved me.
And sat down to finish the date.
I thought it was crazy.
But we had insane chemistry.
We got to talking, one thing led to another, we ended up in the restaurant bathroom, and...
You know.
I got pregnant.
He disappeared.
Life: ruined.
I tried to move on.
For six years, I thought I succeeded.
But now, out of nowhere, he's back--on my wedding day, of all days.
Saying things that don't make any sense.
"Your fiancé isn't who you thought he was...
I'm not letting you marry him..."
And, worst of all...
"You're marrying me instead."
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Chapter 3
The man in the suit slides gracefully into Reggie's vacated seat. My stomach does a backflip as his gaze rakes over me.
It's so strange-when Reggie glanced at my cleavage, I felt creeped out. But when this man does the exact same thing, I clench up from head to toe like I just stuck a fork in a wall socket.
"He's gone," I sigh. "Thank you for that."
"My pleasure."
I shuffle my feet under the table, feeling extremely self-conscious. Everything about him screams "sex appeal." Even the way his lips form the word "pleasure" feels like foreplay.
"Were you eavesdropping on me?" I ask. The silence is too much to bear.
He nods solemnly. "Of course."
"Why?"
"Because you caught my attention, kiska."
"I can't imagine why."
He nods, his expression growing thoughtful. "That makes two of us."
After about five seconds of another very pregnant silence, I clear my throat. "Well, thank you again for rescuing me. But I should, you know, head back now..."
Of course, that exact moment is when the waiter arrives with the drinks Reggie had ordered for us. "Sorry for the delay, ma'am," she says, setting the drinks down on the table.
"Head back? It would be a shame to waste a good drink," the man in the suit remarks.
Brianna's words flash through my head again. You're not even giving him a chance. When was the last time you were attracted to any man?
One thing is very obvious: this man does it for me. And she's right-I've spent years hiding from everyone with a Y chromosome.
This guy is here. He's hot. And he's looking at me like he wants to swallow me whole.
"Okay," I concede guiltily. "One drink. But first, tell me your name."
He grins and leans forward. "My name is Isaak," he says. "Isaak Vorobev."
2
ISAAK
"Your turn," I say.
"Huh?" She wrinkles her nose in confusion. It's an adorable quirk, and so utterly unfamiliar to me that I almost laugh out loud.
The women I usually fuck don't wrinkle their noses. They purr, they smile, they stroke your arm seductively. They know their power and how to use it.
This girl? She doesn't have a fucking clue.
But maybe that's why I'm here with her, instead of in bed with any of the other dozens of playthings at my disposal.
"Tell me your name," I explain. "I heard 'Cami.' I want to know all of it."
"Oh." She blushes. Again, fucking adorable. "Right. Cami. Short for Camila. Camila Ferrara."
"You prefer Camila?"
The dress she's wearing is simple but it hugs her figure deliciously. Her cleavage is subtle, almost teasing. I'd already imagined ripping down the neckline numerous times during my business meeting. The one I bailed on to come over here and rescue her from her idiot date.
"My family and friends call me Cami," she mumbles.
"Cami it is. After all, we did grow up next to each other."
She smiles. That's when I notice the dimple on her right cheek. Such an innocent little kiska, I think to myself. Kiska-Russian for kitten. A tiny, helpless little creature begging to be devoured. The name suits her.
I lean back in my seat and adjust my pants-mostly because my throbbing erection is starting to get distracting.
"You really didn't have to do that," she says. "Save me, I mean."
"As I said, it was my pleasure."
She cocks her head to the side. A spray of glossy blonde hair falls across one shoulder. "Do you make a habit of saving every stranger who looks like they're having a miserable time?"
"Only the beautiful ones."
She blushes and looks down nervously in her lap.
"You must've known what you were getting into the second he asked you out," I chuckle. "Based on the way he slinked to the exit, I'm surprised he had the balls to ask in the first place."
"He didn't ask," she says. "Not exactly."
I arch my eyebrow. "Explain."
"Well, what I mean is, he's been interested for a while and he kept asking my brother-in-law if I'd go out with him-"
"He sent a messenger boy to ask you on a date?"
I can't hide my disgust.
"He didn't want to make things awkward in case I said no."
"That's a coward's way out."
"I thought it was thoughtful."
"Then you need to raise your standards."
She recoils. "You realize we only met five minutes ago, right?"
I shrug, unfazed. "Good advice is good advice."
"What a gentleman you are," she sneers.
I chuckle and take a sip of the wine her date ordered. All things considered, it's not the worst selection in the world. "I've been accused of many things, kiska. But never that."
Her laughter is nervous. "I get the feeling you're not kidding."
"You deserve a man. Not a fucking fool who can't even pick up the bill."
She bristles at that. "I can pay my own way perfectly fine. Not every damsel is in distress, you know."
"No," I murmur with a smirk. "Some are in denial."
Her lips move silently for a moment like she can't think of a retort. But the blush on her cheeks is persistent.
As is my throbbing cock.
"If I've insulted you, I can always have Reggie brought back here," I suggest after a moment has passed. "You can finish your drink with him instead. Maybe even get dessert. I hear the crème brûlée is to die for."
"You wouldn't dare."
"You're wrong about that, kiska," I laugh. "I'd dare to do things you've never even dreamed of."
"You're not kidding about that either, are you?"
"No. Not in the slightest." I lean forward instinctively. Her lips are pursed and full. I want them wrapped around my cock. "Does that frighten you, Cami?"
"Oh, gee, am I that easy to read?" she retorts sarcastically.
"I'll tell you at the end of the night."
"Do you always speak in riddles?" Cami snaps. "Or are you just really leaning in to the whole 'handsome, mysterious stranger' deal?"
I chuckle and swirl the wine in the glass. "Did you just say I'm handsome?"
She rolls her eyes. "Don't do that. Don't pretend like you don't know you're handsome."
"Fair enough. No woman has ever complained."
"She'd have to be blind."
The energy between us has grown prickly and dangerous now. I wonder if she can feel it the way I can. Based on the way she clears her throat and stiffens her posture, I'm guessing the answer is yes.
I lean back in my seat and study her. "What do you like to do, Cami?"
"You mean besides go tit-for-tat with arrogant men in expensive suits?"
I shrug. "Everyone has a hobby."
"Let me assure you that this is not mine," she says solemnly. "This is very much a first time thing for me, you know."
"You've never been on a date before?"
"I've never abandoned one bad date for another, wise guy," she says, though she can't help but giggle. The sound is enough to drive a man crazy with lust. I have to adjust my cock again where it's straining at the zipper of my pants.
"And here I was, thinking we were getting along well," I drawl.
"Sorry to burst your bubble."
"You can make it up to me," I say coolly.
She wrinkles her nose again. It's bizarre how much that tiny little motion affects me. Like hooking up jumper cables to my balls. It makes me want to see what other faces she makes.
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7.1
I was the Architect who built the digital fortress for the most feared Don in New York.
To the world, I was Brendan Wiggins’s silent, elegant Queen.
But then my burner phone buzzed under the dinner table.
It was a photo from his mistress: a positive pregnancy test.
"Your husband is celebrating right now," the caption read. "You are just the furniture."
I looked across the table at Brendan. He smiled and held my hand, lying to my face without blinking.
He thought he owned me because he saved my life ten years ago.
He told her I was just "functional." That I was a barren asset he kept around to look respectable, while she carried his legacy.
He thought I would accept the disrespect because I had nowhere else to go.
He was wrong.
I didn't want to divorce him—you don't divorce a Don.
And I didn't want to kill him. That was too easy.
I wanted to erase him.
I liquidated fifty million dollars from the offshore accounts only I could access. I destroyed the servers I had built.
Then, I contacted a black-market chemist for a procedure called "Tabula Rasa."
It doesn't kill the body. It wipes the mind clean. A total hard reset of the soul.
On his birthday, while he was out celebrating his bastard son, I drank the vial.
When he finally came home to find the empty house and the melted wedding ring, he realized the truth.
He could burn the world down looking for me, but he would never find his wife.
Because the woman who loved him no longer existed.
9.0
Ashlyn was supposed to be just a fragile college student, selling her rare blood to a vicious crime syndicate enforcer to keep his dying sister alive.
But the dynamic shattered when Alex returned from a two-month disappearance. He stepped into the penthouse covered in dirt and blood, sporting a horrific, jagged knife wound slashed completely across his face.
Knowing exactly how to exploit his insecurities, Ashlyn played the role of the terrified victim to perfection. She screamed, pushed against his chest, and called him a terrifying monster. Humiliated and enraged by her blatant disgust, Alex violently smashed a marble table and kicked her out. He forced her out into a freezing, torrential rainstorm without a coat, vowing to kill her if she ever showed her face again.
What the ruthless enforcer didn't know was that her pathetic, trembling tears were a flawless, calculated lie. She wasn't a helpless, greedy girl. She was a cold-blooded corporate mastermind hiding from a family of elite assassins. She desperately needed his impenetrable penthouse fortress to stay alive, and she knew the only way to secure her place wasn't to ask for it, but to make him beg for her return.
Three days later, his sister's organs began to fail, and the hospital's blood bank ran dry.
"I'll pay you whatever you want. Just get here."
Listening to the desperate, broken voice of the monster over her burner phone, Ashlyn smiled coldly in the dark. The trap had snapped shut, and he had just handed her all the power.
9.7
Blurb: She signed the divorce papers. He never signed away his obsession.
Veronica Stanford was the perfect wife-devoted, patient, and hopelessly in love. But when her billionaire husband, Jason Harper, trades her in for her treacherous best friend, Rhea, Veronica's world shatters. Broken and betrayed, she drowns her sorrows in a bar, only to be saved by a dangerously alluring stranger with emerald-green eyes and a lethal reputation: Monte "Four" Zagcanni, the ruthless heir to a mafia empire.
Four is everything Jason isn't-dark, dangerous, and devastatingly protective. When Veronica discovers she's pregnant with Jason's child, she strikes a deal with Four: a fake marriage to shield her from scandal. But what starts as a cold arrangement ignites into a passion neither can resist.
Jason, realizing his mistake too late, wants Veronica back-along with the son he never knew existed. But Four isn't a man who surrenders what's his. And Veronica? She's done being the meek wife.
Betrayal runs deep. Revenge burns hotter.
As secrets unravel-her father's bloody past, Rhea's twisted obsession, and Jason's deadly lies-Veronica must decide: trust the man who destroyed her once, or surrender to the devil who might destroy her forever.
One wants her back. The other wants her forever.
9.0
"You and your baby are mine whether you want it or not."
Renata Neroni's life was shattered the moment she discovered her boyfriend and stepsister's betrayal. In a rare lapse of judgment fueled by grief and alcohol, she spent a single, anonymous night with a stranger, unaware that she had just surrendered herself to Domenico Veronesi, the most formidable figure in the global underworld.
That night left Renata with more than just a memory; she was pregnant with the heir to a mafia empire.
As her father, desperate to free himself from the debts, prepares to marry her off to a man nearly his own age, Renata finds herself trapped. Her only escape arrives in the form of Domenico himself. Asserting his claim, he interrupts the arrangement and brings Renata to his secluded estate.
Within the fortified walls of the Veronesi estate, the man known for his cold, merciless exterior reveals a singular obsession: the protection of Renata and their unborn child.
However, Domenico's readiness to provide is met with a wall of ice.
Despite his efforts to provide for her, Renata's resentment initially hardens into a wall of silence.
To her, Domenico is simply another powerful man attempting to control her fate. However, as she is forced to navigate the inner workings of his life within the mafia world, she begins to see the man behind the fearsome reputation.
Renata discovers the deeper layers of Domenico, a loyalty and a hidden vulnerability regarding their child, and the fear that once defined her begins to dissolve.
7.3
While I was pregnant, my husband held a party downstairs for another woman's son.
Through a hidden mental link, I overheard my husband, Don Dante Rossi, tell his consigliere he was going to publicly reject me tomorrow. He planned to make his mistress, Serena, his new mate.
An act forbidden by ancient law while I carried his heir.
Later, Serena cornered me, her smile venomous. When Dante appeared, she shrieked, clawing her own arm and blaming me for the attack.
Dante didn't even look at me. He snarled a command that froze my body and stole my voice, ordering me from his sight as he cradled her.
He moved her and her son into our master suite. I was demoted to the guest room at the end of the hall.
Passing her open door, I saw him rocking her baby, humming the lullaby my own mother used to sing to me.
I heard him promise her, "Soon, my love. I'll sever the bond and give you the life you deserve."
The love I felt for him, the power I'd hidden for four years to protect his fragile ego, all turned to ice.
He thought I was a weak, powerless wife he could discard. He was about to find out that the woman he betrayed was Alessia De Luca, princess of the most powerful family on the continent.
And I was finally going home.
9.1
I woke up strapped to a freezing operating table, a gaping hole crudely sutured over my heart.
Joi Rocha, my supposed guardian, stood nearby holding a glowing vial that contained my freshly extracted Phoenix gene sequence.
"Don't blame me, sweetheart. Gayla's body is just too weak. She needs this sequence more than you do."
In my past life, I endured years of illegal biological harvests for this family. My fiancé Brennon watched with cold eyes as they ripped the gene from my chest, while the elite academy students filmed and mocked my bleeding, broken body. They stripped me of my status, drained every drop of my worth, and left me to die in a freezing tomb just so their precious fake daughter could thrive.
Until my dying breath, I didn't understand. I had given them my absolute loyalty, so why was I treated like disposable medical waste? Why did my life mean absolutely nothing to them?
But opening my eyes again, I realized I had returned to the exact day they stole my core.
This time, I didn't cry or beg. I stared dead into Joi's eyes and smiled.
I detonated the residual energy in my chest to incinerate Gayla's stolen sequence, faked my own flatline, and injected myself with a hidden dark matter drive to completely rewrite my DNA.
If they wanted to play God with my life, I was going to burn their entire world to ash.