Sloane: A Bad Boy Billionaire Romance Novel

SLOANE

By Zoe Davis

Copyright 2015 Zoe Davis.
All rights reserved. 
This is a work of fiction.  Names, characters, and places are products of the author's imagination.  Any resemblance to people or events, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

He's sexy. He's powerful. His identity is a secret...

Innocent fun.
That’s all it was supposed to be.
One night of dirty, reckless fun that we’d both forget about in the morning.
My husband and I couldn’t help ourselves. We were curious.
Who wouldn’t want to peek inside the most powerful, secretive swingers club in existence?
We did, and now nothing will ever be the same.
Because he showed up.
A mystery known only as “Bull.”
The mere gaze of his eyes ignited every inch of my being.
And now, something inside me is changing.
I can’t stop it, and he knows it. I should run, but I can’t.
Because Bull is always near me.
And when I find out who he is, and what dark secret he’s been hiding…
I can’t ever go back.
(This is a standalone novel with a HEA and absolutely NO cliffhanger)

Prologue

I was jolted from my trance by a pair of strong hands lifting my wrists above my head and against the wall.  A pair of silver pools, drained of their emerald sparkle, stared into me.

“
You
,” was all I could say.  I would have recognized those eyes anywhere.  Standing there with my hands tied, chest pushed out, I could feel his body heat swimming over me.  My skin was electrified at his touch.

He didn’t respond, but moved his mouth into mine and let it linger softly.  I barely felt him and yet was consumed by his intensity. 

My head was spinning. 
Was this really him?  Was this the bull?
 

His hand was on my waist and when he sensed I wouldn’t run, he lowered the other to my thigh, travelling slowly from my knee to the hem of fabric hiding the rest.

I felt him pause and place his whole palm on the top of my leg, gripping it tightly.  He was communicating to me.  He wanted inside.  He needed me...

Contents

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
BONUS: Stepbrother Surrender

1

My fingers formed creases where I squeezed them too tightly.  Wringing my hands was a nervous habit I developed as a child.  I remember Mom trying to teach me tricks to remain calm, but I was always oblivious to how bad it was.  The tricks were never any good if my mind wasn’t aware of it half the time.

Our car bumped over a pothole in the road and made my heart jump through my throat.  Jared sat next to me calm as ever.  Or that’s all he showed me at least.  Jared was a pro at keeping his cool.  He was almost too good at it making him difficult to read. 

It was Saturday and I wore an emerald green strappy dress with a plunging neckline.  I had trouble stuffing my breasts in it, but the extra push it gave them was an added bonus.  We were going to our first swinger’s party, at Jared’s suggestion, and I couldn’t remember a time in my life where my body trembled this much.

“So what do you think?” Jared had asked after about 5 shots of whiskey.  We drank a lot last Tuesday in celebration of my new job.

I was never hurting for work as a programmer, but this gig I landed would make me substantially more money than I’d ever seen.  I had dreams of working for a company of this magnitude all through college and I wasn’t sure I’d ever get the chance.  My nerves almost cost me the interview, but I squeezed by just enough I guess.

I still had yet to meet the company’s CEO, considering we were working in the same building, but I didn’t question it.  CEO’s have their hands tied most of the time, and our new project had mine tied too.

“A swinger’s club?” I chuckled, “like from the movies?”

“Well where do you think the movies got the idea?”  Even drunk, Jared didn’t find my joke very amusing. 

I wasn’t sure what inspired his suggestion, the alcohol or the fact that it was already 3 a.m.  Regardless, I expected it to disappear in the morning after a good laugh.

Now, sitting in the car wringing my hands, I was forced to realize he was serious.  Maybe the whiskey helped him choke it out, but the desire must have been deep rooted for a while.

Don’t get me wrong.  Jared would never have asked me to do anything I was uncomfortable with.  He was a loving husband who quickly put his needs aside if they clashed with mine.  Despite this, I’m still not sure why I said “yes.” 

It may have been the smell of whiskey that permeated the air, or the novelty of Jared suggesting such a wild and risky fantasy.

But the thing is, I could have always told him “no,” the next day without so much as a rebuttal.  Jared let me have my way to a nauseating degree, so why would I have agreed to such a nerve wracking idea?  I could understand agreeing when I was drunk, but even sober?   

Could I have possibly wanted this too?  The chills that took shape in tiny bumps all over my skin gave me an answer I wasn’t ready to face.

No
, I thought. 
This is for Jared.  Because he’s done so much for me
.

“How far out is this place?” I asked him, my voice cutting through the thick silence that had built between us.

“Not much farther, I don’t think,” he replied in his usual curt manner.

I let my fingers take a break from their torture to find the button for the window.  I pushed hard and let a burst of cold air and the scent of pine hit me all at once.  It had been a while since I’d left the city, and the woods made me nostalgic for my childhood.

The night was pitch black, and I could only faintly make out tree branches in the light of our headlamps.  Jared was a good driver.  He was safe in all areas of our life.  That’s what made him such a good husband.  I never usually had to worry about anything with him around.

In fact, this was the first time I’d squeezed my hands this tightly in years.

I closed my eyes and inhaled while I listened to the hum of the engine and branches breaking under our weight.  I imagined I was flying and powerful enough to handle anything the woods might be harboring. 

This sort of visualization was a technique Mom taught me, and it worked until Jared flew over another damned pothole and I gasped.

“Jesus, Vanessa, are you alright?” 

He reached down for my left hand and used his thumb to rub the creases out.  His hands were warm and damp, and they soothed me instantly.

“If you don’t want to go, Vanessa, just let me know.  I had no idea you were this nervous.”  I knew he didn’t, I was good at hiding things too when I wanted to.

“It’s not a big deal.  I mean, aren’t you even a little nervous?” I pleaded for empathy.

“Of course I am.”  Inside I chuckled because you would never be able to tell.  Jared was like a rock and his emotions a drop of rain.  At least if I was going to be nervous, I had a steady man like Jared sitting next to me.

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and leaned my head back against the seat.  Jared had already stopped massaging my hand and placed both of his back on the wheel, predictable as ever.  In the distance I could hear frogs and crickets chirping.  The window was still down and the air was getting colder by the second.

I wondered about the people we would meet.  Would they be friendly? Aggressive?  Would I be forced into fucking some strange man before I was ready?  Or would we simple spew our greetings over cocktails and then all get naked?

I tried to let the questions wash over me instead of consume me.  It seemed to be working.  I was preparing myself for anything.

“Shit.”  Jared tried to muffle his curse under his breath so I wouldn’t jump.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“We should have been there by now,” he replied.  “I wonder if I passed the turn off.”

He continued coasting us down the road, deeper into the dark thick of the woods.  We stayed silent for a few moments before pulling the car onto the dirt that lined the side of the road.

He pulled out his phone to try the gps but there wasn’t a good signal. 

“Do we have a map?” he asked.

“A map?” I laughed.  Nobody uses a map anymore.  “How did you find out about this place anyway?”

“There’s a forum I’m a part of that’s full of things like this, places to meet, etc.”

This was the first time I heard Jared mention a sex forum, or even thinking about sex when I wasn’t around for that matter.  It aroused a curiosity in me that I wasn’t quite comfortable with.  What else did Jared keep to himself? 

Part of me hoped that we would never find the right house, but then part of me knew I’d always wonder about what was inside, waiting for us.

“Why don’t you just keep driving?  Do you know for sure it’s on this road?” I suggested.

“I thought I knew for sure, but now…” Jared sighed.  He hated when things didn’t go as planned.  I could tell it was really starting to get to him that we were sitting idle in the woods hoping for a solution.

While I waited for Jared to make a decision on what to do next, I dangled my wrist through the window, over the edge of the door.  The tips of my fingers absorbed the moist air that hugged our parked car.  My hands dampened and chilled, sending a sensual wave through my veins.

“Aha!” shouted Jared, and I snapped out of my affair with nature.

“What’s that?” I asked.  He was waving his phone around above his head like an idiot.

“Got a signal!  Finally!  Ok, yeah we just need to drive a little further down.  See, I wasn’t lost at all.”  Jared sounded like he was trying to convince himself more than me.

“I knew you’d find it, hun,” I cheered him on, but I felt the pit in my stomach start to grow.  We would face these people after all.

He put the car in drive and continued down the empty country road, further into darkness.  I imagined we were being sucked through a black hole, never to return.  In a funny way, I suppose I was right.

In the distance there grew a light, from a small flicker to a growing flame, until it split in two and formed lamps on either side of an iron gate.  Parked cars lined the street and the gate stood open and welcoming.  It seemed too easy for anyone to attend and made me nervous.

The house was huge.  I’m not sure when a home becomes a mansion, but this was bigger than any house I’d ever seen.  It resembled a castle with its stone façade and small spires on the roof.  This definitely wasn’t what I had in mind for a swinger’s party.  It seemed too regal for my expectations.

We found a place to park between two cars on the side of the road.  It seemed obvious a car had been there before us and I wondered what reason they had for leaving.

I heard faint music coming from the oversized house and listened to it fade as I rolled my window up to close.  The air in our car comforted me one last time before I stepped into the chilly night.

“Wow,” said Jared, already standing outside.  He stood with his door open, gazing over the top of our car at the castle before him, grinning.  “That’s insane!”

We shut our doors and watched the ground as we walked so as not to trip over rocks or anything else we might find.  Jared put a hand on my back to help guide me through the jungle of parked cars and gravel.  If I did trip over something, he’d never let me fall, I knew that for certain.

Ambient music seeped through cracked windows, and set the tone for the night.  The melody seemed eerily reflective of the darkness that surrounded us, and the bitter cold air.

I rubbed my hands over my arms, creating a heat between them to keep warm.  Jared noticed and gave me his coat.  We approached the giant front doors and stood for a moment.