Showing results by narrator "Shirl Rae" in All Categories

Forced to join a secret intelligence agency at a young age, Russian interpreter/spy Yulia Tzakova is no stranger to dangerous men. But she's never known one as ruthless and compelling as Lucas Kent. The hard-edged mercenary frightens her, yet she's drawn to him - a man she has no choice but to betray.

My biological clock just exploded. Eighteen months. That's how long I have to make a baby happen before it becomes one more broken dream. Fate has a sick sense of humor, though. Its name is Hayden Shaw. Yes, the Hayden Shaw. Billionaire developer, scandalously gorgeous, his hard-headed ego only eclipsed by his enormous...reputation. He needs a bride to fool the world. I need a baby. It's simple business. Strictly professional.

He was just a hookup. I wasn't supposed to see him again. He wasn't supposed to be my boss. Or Dad's new business partner. We weren't supposed to keep doing this, night after sheet-clenching, heart-pounding, lip-biting night.   

On the eve of her 18th birthday, Nora Leston meets Julian Esguerra, and her life changes forever. Stolen away to a private island, she finds herself at the mercy of a powerful, dangerous man whose touch makes her burn...a man whose obsession with her knows no bounds.

Once, when I was young and stupid, I had that boy. The charmer, the Adonis, the one who torched every woman's panties in our small town. He was my brother's best friend, practically part of the family. When he proposed, he promised me forever. Then the bastard disappeared without a word. It's taken five years to get over Ryan. I drowned myself crying a thousand times over. I moved on. I'm finally remembering what it's like to smile, when guess who shows up? Everything about him is different. For one, he's become a freakin' billionaire

Once, Lucus Shaw was my everything. First kiss. First surrender. First man to promise me a ring, children, a life together. I remember his rogue smirk, his soul stinging kiss, the blistering words that always made him a little dangerous. I gave him my body for one insatiable night. He gave me secrets, heartbreak, and hatred. Friends to lovers to mortal enemies. Our tragic destiny. But I survived. Adapted. Moved on. Fate doesn't care. Luke's back, and I have to pretend we still have a Cinderella romance to save my career.

BLAIRE: Part 1 in The Dark Romance Series - Bought. Conditioned. My name is Blaire. I'm head of security to a man who controls the Russian underworld in Europe. His name is Maksim and he's my master. He bought me 10 years ago and conditioned me with brutality to worship and protect him. And I have protected him. BLAI2E: Part 2 in The Dark Romance Series - Don’t take what isn’t yours. Unless you’re willing to fight for it. I survived my depraved master, Maksim. Now, I belong to Charlie Decena, by nature and by nurture.

Layton Morris and his brother Mike grew up not knowing what it would be like to live in a normal home. With no running water or electricity in their home and no parents around to protect them, they quickly learned how to survive and depend only on each other. When a tragic accident took Mike away from Layton and the only other person that he ever let into his heart walked away from him, leaving his heart shattered, Layton focused all of his time and energy into the ranch he and his brother dreamed of.

I loved once. I gave everything that I had to that love, blindly believing that nothing could ever take that feeling away from me. Away from us. And when my little world of happiness was ripped from my fingers, I felt a loss that still haunts me to this day. Now I use that lingering grief as a shield to keep my heart from loving again. It's that fear that keeps me from letting anyone, except my daughter, get close enough to make it hurt. To make my heart bleed when I inevitably lose again.

It's at a cocktail party in her honour that she first meets him - and the attraction is immediate for graduate student Francesca Arno. It's also bewildering. She's not used to such a wholesale sexual response to a stranger. Enigmatic, darkly intense, with a commanding presence, billionaire Ian Noble completely unnerves her. And she likes it. For Ian, Francesca is the kind of woman he can't resist - one that comes all too rarely: a true innocent. But he can sense in her a desire to open up, to experiment, to give herself to the fantasies of a man in control.

I never thought this could happen to me. I never imagined one chance meeting on the eve of my eighteenth birthday could change my life so completely. Now I belong to him. To Julian. To a man who is as ruthless as he is beautiful - a man whose touch makes me burn. A man whose tenderness I find more devastating than his cruelty.

Bought. Conditioned. Sold to the enemy. My name is Blaire. I'm head of security to a man who controls the Russian underworld in Europe. His name is Maksim and he's my master. He bought me ten years ago and conditioned me with brutality to worship and protect him. And I have protected him. I've slain everyone who has tried to do him harm. Everyone but a man he loans me to; a man who threatens to break me and everything in which I believe. 

Mirror, mirror, who's the fairest of them all? I still cringe when I hear that line. A fairy tale that had girls pretending they were the fairest, the most beautiful, and the most entitled. A fairy tale most couldn't grow out of turned my haunted childhood memories into a living nightmare. Girls who grew up believing that pile of garbage became the meanest of all mean girls. And those mean girls were right. It was a line meant for all the beautiful people in the world, and I knew the answer would never be me.

I survived my depraved master, Maksim. Now, I belong to Charlie Decena, by nature and by nurture. He broke everything I believed in. My life still lingers in the gray zone - dark and light, love and hate, betrayal and murder. I’m battling Maksim’s brutal conditioning to uncover who Blaire is, for Charlie. I adhere to his counsel, indulge in his debauched desires, and pacify his dominance - until he pushes me too far.

Jessica Channing's big-city life should be more exciting than 60-hour work weeks and popcorn nights with her girlfriends. She has worked hard fulfilling her role as a child prodigy and graduating college years before her peers. She's the good girl, the brilliant girl. She is also dateless. Jess's rigid, predictable life upends when she visits a small town to deal with a relative's death. Long-lost memories come crashing down on Jess's world when two men, the Blackard brothers, seem to lure her in.

They say that it takes 21 days to form a habit. They lie. For 21 days, she held on. But on day 22, she would have given anything for the sweet slumber of death. Because on day 22, she realized that her only way out meant certain death for one of the two men she loved.

Have you ever felt like you were living your life for a future that was predetermined? Like there was some bigger picture you just prayed you would someday see clearly? That picture has been crystal clear to me since I was old enough to recognize it for just what it was. Or, I should say, recognize him for who he was.

One drunken night turned a joke into a life-changing moment. He warned me not to fall for him, and I should've listened. He intoxicated me. He made me crave him. He ruined me. In the end, I'll never be the same.

A new dark romance series from the New York Times bestselling author of Twist Me. She fears him from the first moment she sees him. Yulia Tzakova is no stranger to dangerous men. She grew up with them. She survived them. But when she meets Lucas Kent, she knows the hard ex-soldier may be the most dangerous of them all. One night—that's all it should be. A chance to make up for a failed assignment and get information on Kent's arms dealer boss. When his plane goes down, it should be the end. Instead, it's just the beginning.

Nate: It's nearly impossible to be surrounded by love but not understand it. My parents, my sister, and just about everyone around us has no trouble accepting that love. To give your trust to someone else and believe they would die before hurting you. I've witnessed it - I've seen the power of it - but I've also seen the pain. Because for me, I've only loved someone I could never have, and my biggest fear is that by giving her my love, all I would do is ruin her.