Total pages in book: 29
Estimated words: 26645 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 133(@200wpm)___ 107(@250wpm)___ 89(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 26645 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 133(@200wpm)___ 107(@250wpm)___ 89(@300wpm)
Erik Leonard is the brute of a man set to tear down my world and demolish my childhood memories. He’s a muscle-bound Viking god in a handmade suit, and the only thing I have to barter for his help is my body.
But he wants far more. He’ll take my purity, but he wants my heart and soul to come along for the ride.
He’s made it clear our agreement leaves no room for negotiation. When I told him I would do anything, he took me at my word. Now, he says I belong to him and I can never leave.
And once I see behind the dark curtain of his eyes, I’m not sure I want to get away. In the end, will the man that never believed in love be the one that demolishes my heart?
This is Andrea and Erik's story. It can be read as a standalone but the characters appear in Angel, Book 1 in the Daddies Know Best series.
Author’s Andrea Miller has dreams of using her body for financial gain, but not in the way you’d expect. If she can just get to New York, she could earn enough to save her sick aunt’s house and maybe, just maybe, give her own life a course correction. From the moment these two meet, it’s destiny and hot Daddy dreams that keep things smokin’. Safe, no cheating, some yummy Daddy play and an HEA that brings down the house.
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1
Andrea
“Being here makes me so happy and so sad.”
My aunt’s almost skeletal fingers drift over the edge of the carved mahogany arm of the dining chair where she sits.
It was just five years ago she took me skydiving. She’s aged twenty years since then.
She’s the same age as my mom, her sister-in-law, but that is where the similarities end.
She was the fun aunt. The one that took you on adventures and taught you the things your parents didn’t want you to know.
She gave me my first vibrator when I was sixteen. It wasn’t weird. She knew I had a bit of an obsession with barely-veiled smutty romance, and on my birthday, she gave me the full series of my favorite author’s filthiest books.
Then, under my pillow that night, I found another gift. A sleek white box, and inside, a black silicone treat which I proceeded to wear out over the next year trying to get to that magical, mysterious place, but honestly it eluded me. After a couple of years of thinking something must be wrong with me because my body just sort of shuts everything down before I get to take flight so to speak, I quit trying. I’ve got enough things in my life to feel inadequate about. Failing at orgasm 101 is not going to be one of them.
“Andrea.” My aunt turns, choking on a wheezing cough, pointing toward her bottle of water just out of reach. The former glory of her onyx-black hair has turned wiry gray. Her once-flawless skin is now lanced with deep wrinkles, her ocean-blue eyes sunken and fading, just like her spirit.
I step toward the table and sweep the bottle off the top, pressing it into her outstretched hand.
“Slow down. Breathe,” I say, as I place my hand between her shoulder blades, feeling the protruding vertebrae against my palm.
She takes a long drink, choking back more coughing that’s been lingering since her last bout of pneumonia.
Her eyes fall to the floor, one hand coming up to rest on my forearm with a soft squeeze.
“Why don’t you go check on the garage?” she says, her voice barely above a whisper. “Make sure that padlock hasn’t been cut off again.”
I start to tell her it doesn’t matter. There’s no padlock that can keep someone out that’s intent on getting in, but pointing out the futility of the situation is surely not going to ease her stress.
“I’ll go look. You stay there. No getting up until I get back inside, deal?”
She scoffs but gives me a soft nod, as I give one in return and turn toward the kitchen, headed out the back door.
The hundred-year-old Craftsman house has been in our family since my great, great-grandfather built it here, in the middle of what used to be a farm field just outside of Detroit. The area went from cornfields, to a friendly working-class neighborhood, to blight in the span of three generations.
But my aunt inherited the house from her parents when they passed. It’s where she grew up. She’s as stubborn as they come, and when a slick developer came around offering her market value plus some to sell, so a new casino could move forward, she dug in. Hard.
She hasn’t lived here for over a year. I insisted on moving her out when one of the outlets started a fire, and the electrician we hired to fix the problem told us that the rats and mice that had taken up residence in the walls had turned the cloth wrapping of the old wires into strings of wire just waiting to burn the place to the ground.
Scratching comes from inside one of the base cupboards as I pass through the massive, stale smelling kitchen, my vintage Red Wing boots crunching on the dust and grit that’s gathered on the wood floors, but I don’t care to investigate what sort of four-legged rodent has moved in.
I may be a take no shit sort of gal, but I can’t kill anything. Not even spiders.
It’s Sunday evening after Thanksgiving, and even the cool air that whooshes by me as I open the back door does nothing to dampen the prickly heat that’s been nipping at my skin ever since I shook the hand of my best friend’s new brother-in-law on Thanksgiving.
Erik Leonard.
Sounds like a Viking.
He looks like one too.
A Norseman in a perfectly-tailored handstitched suit.
Sexier than should be allowed.
I hop from the back porch onto the weedy grass, landing with a huff as a zing of pain shoots up my leg from my ankle. It’s another reminder of the Viking distractions that’s had me surviving on three hours of sleep and left me with an odd, unfamiliar feeling in my belly.
What does any of that have to do with my ankle? Well, leaving Cassie’s house after the holiday meal, I was less than steady, and it wasn’t from the two glasses of wine I had. No, I wasn’t drunk on alcohol, I was Viking drunk.