The Thrill of It
Authors: Lauren Blakely
THE THRILL OF IT
Lauren Blakely
Copyright 2013 by Lauren Blakely
Cover Design by (c)Sarah Hansen, Okay Creations
PHOTO COPYRIGHT © Glimpse Photography
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. This contemporary new adult romance is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners. This ebook is licensed for your personal use only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with, especially if you enjoy angsty, sexy, emotional, new adult novels. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Sneak Peek of Quintessentially Q by Pepper Winters
Releasing December 2013
About
The Thrill of It
Intended for 17+ due to sexual content and mature themes.
A new adult story of Love. Sex. Addiction. Blackmail. And Power...
Some say love can be an addiction. Others say it’s the thing that makes life worth living. Let me tell you everything I know about love...Love isn’t patient, love isn’t kind. Love is a game, a chase. A thrill. Love is wild and war-like, and every man and woman must fight for themselves. At least that’s how it was for me. A high-priced virgin call girl by the time I started college, I was addicted to love and to sex. Even though I’ve never had either. I controlled love, played it, and held the world in the palm of my hands. Then I fell down from those highs, and I’m being blackmailed for all my mistakes, forced to keep secrets from everyone, except the only guy I don’t regret.
Trey...
With all the other women, I knew what they were. They were temporary. They were pills, they were bottles, they took away all the pain, and numbed the awful memories that wore down my ragged, wasted heart. Until I met
Harley
. She’s the only girl I ever missed when she walked away. But now she’s back in my life, every day, and there are no guarantees for us, especially since I don’t know how to tell her my secrets. What happened to my family. All I know is she’s the closest I’ve ever come to something real, and I want to feel every second of it.
How can you love with no regrets when regret is all you know?
Dedication
This book is dedicated to Monica Murphy.
She is the bomb. I love her like a pimp.
ALSO BY LAUREN BLAKELY
Available at all fine e-tailers
Caught Up In Us
Pretending He’s Mine
Trophy Husband
Playing With Her Heart
Far Too Tempting
Prologue
Six Months Ago
Harley
I’m a sex addict and a virgin.
I know everything about sex and I’ve never done it, though I came close last night.
I know nothing about love.
I know men.
I can size up a guy in seconds. If he wants my sweet and innocent side, or my sophisticated persona, or if he just wants me to shut up and nod while he talks about his day, because some just want to talk. I know how he’ll like it, how he’ll want it, and I know by the end of the hour or two if he’ll request me again.
But those days are behind me.
The past is the past.
This is now.
That’s what I have to believe as I walk into a church in Chelsea off Ninth Avenue to repent. It’s a fading white church, rather plain looking, unmarked by flying buttresses or soaring angels. The white brick is streaked with gray from soot and dirt and New York itself breezing by over the years. There’s a requisite steeple on top, unassuming, but still there pointing to the sky, and a small plaque outside the doors that declares its non-denominational-ness. Every flavor of fucked-up is welcome.
On Mondays, you can find the alcoholics. On Tuesdays the former drug abusers. On Wednesdays this place is home to those trying to kick the gambling habit. And tonight? I will spend the next hour with people like me, who are addicted to love and sex, sex and love.
Some to both. Some to only one.
I know both in ways I never wanted to. But in ways I still long for too.
That’s the problem.
I am nineteen years old and I have kissed twenty-four guys, which amounts to four guys per year since my first kiss at age thirteen. I kept a running list of their first names and how they rated. They were all ones or zeroes. Those names on the list are all the reasons why I’m pushing open these wooden doors, the brown paint cracked and peeling.
Fitting. I am cracked and brittle too, hardened by all the things I saw, and mostly all the things I heard over the years.
I spot the first sign and I stop in my tracks. The blocky letters wallop me with the reality that I now belong to a club I never wanted to be in.
On a sheet of white paper the words
SLAA-College
have been written in all caps with a big blue marker.
How embarrassing. As if anyone can’t figure out what the acronym means. But still, I follow the arrows on the sign pointing to the stairwell, then down the musty wooden steps that creak at every footfall as they announce my descent to the basement. More signs are plastered to the flimsy brown plywall, more arrows directing me through the dark hallway, around the corner, then past another bend, deep into the bowels of the church.
My insides are comprised of knots tightening in and wrenching around themselves, pinching all my internal organs.
I wish, I wish, I wish that I weren’t going here.
But yet, I have to.
I took the fall and that brought me here.
I run my fingers across the fabric of my red shirt that’s touching my shoulder, tender today after my new tattoo. My reminder of who I was. But even so, the reminder on my skin is not enough to quell the nerves. They snake through me, setting up camp in every cell of my body, as I enter a standard-issue Sunday School room with thinning brown industrial carpet. Earlier in the week this room was probably crammed with cutesy blue wooden chairs adorned with drawn angels, clouds and fluffy bunnies. Now it’s filled with cold, hard, folding metal chairs for addicts. The walls are bare, except for a few inspirational posters — “Hang in There” with the kitten dangling from a branch, “Perseverance” with a man climbing a snow-capped mountain, and “Patience” with a lone woman standing at the edge of a cold beach in the winter.