Her Savior_A Dark Romance Page 11

  He’d chosen to kidnap me, to make me a slave, to sell me, and then not to sell me. He’d chosen where we ran to, and then chosen to track me down when his choices had landed me in hell. I didn’t blame him for that. He’d done everything he could to protect me, to keep me safe, and I wouldn’t have lasted as long as we did if I’d been on my own then. I knew that.

  But when did I get to decide? I could be forced to my knees, but I couldn’t go there willingly?

  No. It was my turn to decide. I knew what I needed, what would help me heal and become whole again. It made absolutely no sense, and yet it made perfect sense to my fractured mind. I needed to replace old images with new ones, so similar in many ways but with one glaring difference—choice. I was choosing this.

  Now, all I had to do was figure out how to explain it to Derek without risking him having me committed.

  He’d said he would do whatever was necessary to help me heal, and I knew exactly what was necessary.

  This is what was necessary.

  This is what I needed.

  And the man lying next to me was equipped with the unique skill set to give me exactly that.

  To be continued…

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  Her Dom

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you for taking the chance to read my book. I hope you have enjoyed reading this book as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it. If you’d like, please leave a review for the book. Your support really means a lot and keeps me going.

  I hope you will continue reading the series. You will see some very unexpected twists in the third book that I have in store for them.

  Let’s see how it all ends…

  Nicole

  More Information

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  About the Author

  Nicole Casey is a Contemporary Romance Author born and based in The City of Angels. She writes steamy contemporary romance with a happily ever after.

  When she isn’t penning sultry scenes, Nicole Casey loves getting lost in her daydreams, going for long nighttime walks, and fine dining. She is also a red wine aficionada and bookworm. Above all, she enjoys nothing more than spending quality time with her loved ones in both human and cat form.

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  Triple Trouble

  The Viera Triplets Series

  Dominating Vyolet: A Dad’s Best Friend Romance

  Protecting Maya: A Suspense Romance

  Pursuing Yvette: A Second Chance Romance

  Dominating Vyolet

  The Viera Triplets Series Book One - A Dad’s Best Friend Romance

  Book Description

  Dominating Vyolet

  How could it be wrong when it feels so right?

  Vyolet

  I’ve been a good girl all my life.

  As a schoolteacher and the oldest Viera triplet, I don’t ruffle feathers.

  When Dad’s best friend comes back to town, everything changes.

  Evan’s intense, dominant and off-limits. I ache to run my hands across his muscled chest.

  My sister says older men are better at everything.

  Well, guess I will find out what it means to be with a real man for myself.

  Evan

  I’m back, and little Vyolet is all grown up.

  Sweet. Gorgeous. Gentle.

  Everything my filthy desires crave.

  I’ll bind her wrists.

  Feel her curves under my body.

  Pull her hair while I take her rough from behind.

  I know it’s wrong.

  I know taking her could ruin everything.

  But I don’t care.

  I will make her mine.

  Whatever it takes.

  Prologue

  VYOLET

  I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t overwhelmed by the future ahead.

  My mind was in constant overdrive as I overthought everything but that was what I did best.

  Some days, like this one, when my alarm went off at the crack of dawn, I would curl up on my side, tucking my knees to my chest as if to protect my heart from cracking any further but it never worked.

  Instead, I would grow lost in memories or ensnared in scenarios that didn’t exist anywhere but in my mind.

  There was a lot to consider, after all.

  Could I do this? Did I want to?

  The answer was yes, of course. The choice was obvious.

  But the loneliness was devastating, especially on those cold winter mornings when I wanted to do little else but secure myself beneath the depth of the goose down duvet and forget about the rest of the world, at least for the short time I permitted myself.

  The alarm tinkled again and I reluctantly shoved aside the matte mauve comforter, reaching for my cell phone to silence the bells.

  Instinctively, I glanced to the right as if I expected someone to be there or at least to see a sunken imprint on the white pillowcase next to mine but it was only wishful thinking.

  The time for that had passed now.

  I stretched against the silk of my simple silk nightie and made my way to the ensuite bathroom, flicking on only the track lighting against the oval mirrors.

  Everything was in its place as it always was, not even a stray splatter of toothpaste against the gleaming glass.

  The order gave me a semblance of peace, as if my life had not been thrust into a whirlwind of chaos over the past five months.

  When all falls apart around you, there is always cleaning, I thought wryly but I was more sad than amused.

  My struggle to regain control was pathetic, not charming.

  I turned on the shower, allowing the steam to fill the bathroom as I stared at my reflection.

  Allowing my nightgown to fall to the floor, I studied my naked self carefully.

  Nothing much had changed, not from a physical standpoint.

  I still possessed the same fair prettiness I had before it had all begun.

  My hair was still worn in its long layers, falling in a light blonde waterfall to hide the tops of my breasts demurely.

  “You are like a painting of Eve in the garden of Eden. Pure and untouched by darkness,” Maya teased me once and in that instant, I could see her point.

  I wish my only sins were eating the forbidden fruit, I mused. Although that is kind of what I did, isn’t it?

  As the hot mist began to obstruct my personal scrutiny, I turned away but not before I caught the difference I felt in my soul so intensely.

  There it was, in the depth of my once guileless blue eyes. I could see a wisdom there, a knowledge which I never imagined I would have ever acquired.

  And with it, an unmistakable melancholy.

  I pushed the morose thoughts from my mind and focused on scrubbing my body, scouring myself with my loofah as if I was trying to shed my old skin.

  By the time I had finished, my flesh was fresh and smelling of vanilla and cocoa butter as if I had managed to become a new person in the twenty minutes I had spent crying in the shower.

  I wrapped a thick, black terrycloth towel around my curvy frame, using another to make a turban for my dripping locks.

  Making my way to the kitchen across my condo, I paused, cocking my head to the side.

  Was someone knocking on the door?

  I couldn’t ma
ke sense of it as it wasn’t even seven o’clock in the morning.

  Yet as I stood, frozen, the gentle tap came again.

  I sprinted into the bedroom to grab a velvet robe, draping it over myself as I hurried back toward the front door, tying the sash hastily.

  “Who is it?” I called, my heart racing slightly.

  “It’s me, Vyolet. Let me in.”

  I blinked at the sound of Maya’s voice, throwing open the door to stare at her in dismay.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, my face growing unnaturally pale.

  My sister peered at me from the threshold, her green eyes narrowing as she folded her arms across her ample chest.

  From behind her, Yvette emerged and I swallowed the lump of panic in my throat.

  “Is it Dad? Mom?” I croaked and my siblings shook their heads in unison.

  “No,” Yvette said flatly. “It’s you.”

  A new feeling of distress overcame me and I backed up slowly as they entered my condo without invitation.

  “I don’t understand,” I murmured but it was a lie of course.

  We were triplets. Our bond was stronger than the closest of sisters whether or not I liked it.

  In that moment, I did not like it one bit.

  “We know, Vy,” Maya sighed, flopping onto the suede sofa and tucking her dirty boots underneath her buttocks. “We need to hear it from you.”

  I tried to hide my annoyance and maintain a look of innocence upon my face but I failed on both accounts.

  “Maya, your shoes…” I murmured but they were having none of my subject change. They had come with a purpose and they were not leaving until they got what they came for: information.

  “Vyolet, you need to tell us everything,” Yvette told me sternly. “You can’t avoid us forever.”

  I gazed at the women in my living room, a small, sardonic smile crossing over my face.

  They want to know everything, I laughed to myself. I wouldn’t even know where to start.

  If I was to tell them everything, they would never believe it anyway.

  How could they? It would go against everything they knew about their lily-white puritan sister.

  The expression on their faces was identical and something told me that they knew it all anyway.

  Or at least they believed they did.

  I sighed heavily and collapsed into the armchair, burying my head in my hands.

  “I don’t know what to tell you,” I whispered, my voice catching in my throat. It was as if the reality had finally caught up with me. Despite my painstaking attempts to keep the fantasy hidden, it was staring me in the face and no amount of hovering beneath the covers or scrubbing with pumice would alleviate the trouble I was in.

  I slowly raised my head and sank back against the soft material of the chair, exhaling.

  “Vyolet, let us help you,” Maya begged, seeing the expression of defeat on my face.

  I shook my head and chuckled mirthlessly.

  “You can’t help me,” I replied. “It’s already gone too far. I have crossed a line and there is no going back, not ever.”

  They stared at me expectantly and I knew that I had to spit out the words.

  The story needed to be told, no matter what the consequences now.

  “Well,” I started, closing my eyes. “I guess you already know how it all started.”

  “We know,” Maya sighed. “But you don’t know the entire story either.”

  I looked at her sharply.

  “What do you mean?” I demanded. “What don’t I know?”

  Maya and Yvette exchanged a look and I felt a sweeping sense of dread float over me.

  “You’ve been lied to, Vyolet.”

  “I already know that!” I snapped, my face flushing red with anger. “I’ve been trying to come to terms with that for months.”

  But Maya shook her head sadly.

  “No, Vy,” she breathed. “It’s not what you think.”

  She paused and stared at me, naked pain in her eyes.

  “It was me who lied to you, not him.”

  The words whirled around me like a snowstorm and I looked at my sister without understanding.

  “What?” I whispered. “What are you saying?”

  Maya lowered her green eyes in shame.

  “Just what I said. Everything you think you know is a lie.”

  The world seemed to slow as I gazed at my sisters.

  My mind shifted to another time, a moment where betrayal was an abstract thought and I was confident in my every move.

  Had there ever been such an era in my life?

  Closing my eyes, I sank back into the chair and tried to let the memories overtake me far away from the living room where my life seemed to be falling apart once more.

  1

  Evan

  Five months ago

  I took another sip of cold coffee and choked it down my windpipe, despite my overwhelming urge to spit it all over the computer screen.

  When did I pour that? I wondered, my face puckered into a look of disgust as I glanced at the time on my Rolex.

  It was later than I had realized and I grimaced, my back tensing slightly.

  There were never enough hours in the day, even when I began my days in the office at seven and often didn’t return home until eight or nine o’clock at night.

  It doesn’t help that you are so easily preoccupied with issues not work related, I mused, chuckling to myself.

  I reasoned that it kept me from becoming the mass of stress which so many of my peers appeared to be.

  Not to say that I didn’t have my fair share of tension, but I prided myself on knowing how to counteract such anxieties better than most.

  These uptight suits think golf and scotch is the way to go but there is something much, much better for stress, I thought, rolling my tongue over my teeth as I thought about things which should not enter my mind at work.

  The intercom beeped on the desk, the receptionist’s voice calling out to me in her nasally, clipped tone.

  I started slightly as if she had read my dirty ideas telepathically.

  “Mr. Collier, Sandra Rimes is on line four. She says it’s urgent that she speak with you.”

  I glanced at the phone on my desk, my brow furrowing slightly.

  “Who?” I asked, my mind still consumed with the daunting task of organizing the taxes before Harry came looking for them later.

  Every quarter the accountant and I played the same game. Harry would ask me to have the receipts properly filed and ready for his perusal and I inevitably forgot until the last moment.

  This quarter was no different and I knew he would appear in my office anytime to stare at me reprovingly while I shrugged and smiled sheepishly, floundering to get the job done under his watchful eye.

  I rather enjoyed our routine but I got the sense that Harry was losing interest in our dance which is why the COO and CEO had posted an internal memo ordering everyone to get their papers together by the end of business that day.

  Harry was not known for his easy-going demeanor or sense of humor.

  “Sandra Rimes,” Kathleen repeated.

  “I have no idea who that is, Kathy. Take a message and I’ll call her back in a couple hours,” I replied exasperated, ending the conversation between us. I had already made it very clear that I did not wish to be interrupted that morning.

  In one ear and out the other with that woman, I thought with annoyance.

  I couldn’t afford any distractions under the best of circumstances. When I was on a deadline, diversions were costly.

  My hand hovered over the mouse as I scanned the computer, trying to recall what files I had allotted for what.

  I need a personal assistant, I thought, shaking my head at the mess I had made.

  Sometimes I marveled at the capacity I had to be such an excellent programmer when I had absolutely no sense of structure.

  I assumed that I merely had selective left and right brain tendencies. Dep
ending on my needs, either side would rear its head and get me through whichever pinch in I would find myself.

  “You’re a quintessential Gemini,” Jocelyn always said and I, in turn, would roll my eyes and laugh.

  “My left brain doesn’t believe in astrology,” I would quip in return and we would laugh as if I hadn’t made the same stupid joke a hundred times before.

  My cell phone rang and I was tempted to ignore it but my eyes automatically flittered to the iPhone 7 screen.

  I half expected it to be Jocelyn since she had abruptly popped into my mind for no reason but the screen did not identify my sister as the caller.

  I scowled when I saw it was a private number.

  In this day and age, who answers private calls?

  I dismissed the call and tried to focus on the task at hand but Kathy buzzed again.

  “Mr. Collier, Sandra Rimes insists that she speaks with you. She’s calling from the Department of Child Services in Minnesott Beach.”

  Suddenly I found it very difficult to breathe.

  “What?” I asked dumbly even though I had heard her with perfect clarity. “Why?”

  “I don’t know, Mr. Collier but I suggest you take the call.”

  Under normal circumstances, I would have told Kathleen what she could do with her helpful suggestions but it was not a time to combat the receptionist.

  On the table, my cell began to vibrate again.

  I registered that it was a private caller as I snatched up the receiver of the landline and punched in line four.

  Inexplicably, beads of sweat formed on my forehead and my mouth turned dry.

  “Evan Collier,” I said, my voice not betraying a note of the uneasiness seizing my gut.