Title: Joint Venture
Series: Venture #4
Author: Kristen
Luciani
Release Date: Aug 29,
2016
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Notorious celebrity
playboy A.J. Morgan has more emotional baggage than notches on his well-used
bedpost, but bleached blonde, silicone-enhanced three-ways and excess of
whiskey are all the therapy he needs.
Live to indulge,
indulge to fill the voids.
Those are his rules….
until he meets cunning financial analyst-slash-sexy club singer Lisa Embry, a
woman whose heart is surrounded by more barbed wire than a high-security
prison.
Rules? What rules?
One lust-filled romp
with his female alter-ego turns A.J. into an addict in need of his next fix and
he’ll pay any price for another hit.
But he soon finds out
Lisa has her own rules… ones that can never be broken.
I’m a starving man.
Get your delicious ass over here so I can feast on you.
Mmm, yes. The come
hither text. Pun intended. Exactly what Lisa needed… a few steamy hours with
Danny’s hot body plastered on top of her writhing one. It was a necessary
diversion to close the book on this week. And after that? Vodka. Anything to
numb her mind. She’d tried to focus, holed up at the office, crunching numbers
until her eyes grew bleary and bloodshot, all with the hope she could ignore
the painful reality that reared its ugly head every time her mother established
contact.
Sex was about the
only thing she was willing to offer since her emotional state was about as
stable as a one-legged elephant walking a tightrope. Her story wasn’t unique –
deadbeat dad took off with a busty blond mistress, leaving his wife and
daughter to pick up the jagged pieces of their once-happy lives. Yep,
relationships equated to devastation, and carnal urges always trumped romance.
Ding!
The elevator door
creaked open and she almost choked on her next breath. Holy crap on a cracker.
The tiny enclosure was graced by the presence of a single passenger who could
only be described as Eros personified. She allowed her eyes to rake the length of
his muscular body with the ferocity of a tiger stalking its prey. Danny who?
Tall with thick, dark
hair, sinful lips, and an amazing ass – that last observation courtesy of the
mirrors flanking him on all sides. A tight, white T-shirt clung to his broad
chest and her fingers tightened around the handle of her laptop bag, itching to
trace every last ripple. Sweet Jesus, she needed to get laid.
His gaze never left
the phone in his hand as she stepped inside. And damn, it was a huge, powerful
hand. The other one was tucked into the front pocket of his low-rise,
hip-skimming black jeans but good Lord, it would feel so nice burrowed
somewhere else.
Her pulse throbbed as
the car sailed toward the lobby much too quickly for her liking. A few more
seconds and Adonis would wander out of her life forever, not that it mattered.
His face was a mask of indifference; it never once shifted, nor did his eyes
wander in her direction. Must be a model, and a gay one at that. She’d run into
more than her fair share on this very elevator since one of the top agencies on
the West Coast occupied a floor of the building. But she’d still give her right
arm for another few seconds to indulge in the X-rated fantasies looping through
her lust-tinged mind. Maybe her left arm, too.
A sudden and powerful
lurch rocketed her against the back wall. She gripped the handrail, heart
thundering in her chest. The lights flickered tauntingly until everything faded
to blackness. What the fu--?
She blinked a few
times, eyes struggling to focus. Shallow breaths escaped her lips. They were
stuck in a metal box that weighed hundreds of thousands of pounds, suspended by
cables that could snap at any second—Dammit! Why hadn’t she taken the stairs?
Another jerk made her stomach clench. “Oh my God, oh my God,” she whimpered,
clutching the rail. “I don’t want to die. Not tonight.”
“Big plans?”
“Don’t talk! You’ll
use up all the oxygen.” A lump formed in her throat, each gulp of air harder
and harder to pull into her lungs. Beads of perspiration formed on the back of
her neck, chest tight. What if they didn’t know there were people in the
elevator? And how would they get help? It was too dark to see the alarm button—
She let out a
bloodcurdling scream as the car dropped what felt like a hundred feet before it
yanked back upward. Elevator cables weren’t like bungee cords. There was no
slack. They just snapped.
A small bright light
revealed a lazy smile and deep-set eyes that could singe her insides under
normal circumstances, when she wasn’t a few feet away from meeting certain
fiery death at the bottom of an elevator shaft. “Relax. Just hit the alarm
button.”
Teeth chattering, she
shook her head. “I’m too scared to move.”
He jabbed the button
and nothing. No response, except the palpitations that assaulted her heart.
Tears formed in her
eyes, her breathing ragged. “It’s not working. We’re going to die in here.
They’ll be too late to save us. Nobody knows we’re even in here!” She clutched
her chest, squinting in the light emitted by his phone. “I’m having a fucking
heart attack. I’m going to die in an elevator. God only knows if they’ll be
able to recognize our mangled bodies after the crash.” The golf ball-sized lump
morphed into a grapefruit with the pass of each agonizing second. “Why aren’t
you talking?” she shouted.
“You told me not to.”
“So why did you
listen? I’m clearly hysterical!”
“Clearly.”
Her hands grew
clammy, sweat now drizzling down her back. This was it. No sex. No vodka. Just
impending death. “I need to get to a hospital,” she choked. “I’m too young to
survive a heart attack. I won’t make it!”
The phone light faded
and they were once again immersed in blackness.
Lisa let out a gasp.
“What happened to the—”
Soft, yet demanding
lips pressed against hers, extinguishing all coherent thought. Sweet, sugary,
bubble gum flavored lips. Strong hands caressed the sides of her face, stroking
the loose strands of hair now matted to her neck. Tiny shivers danced across
her damp skin as the coiling warmth of his tongue probed and plundered her
eager mouth. Oh Lord, they must already be dead because this was heaven… a
better one than she’d ever dreamed.
Minutes passed. Or
maybe hours. Overhead light illuminated the elevator car, the motor roaring
back to life. But his mouth was so insistent that she could do nothing other
than comply with its very wanton wishes. Her hands tangled in his hair, pulling
him close, longing to feel his—
Ding! It was the
one sound that could break the intoxicating spell. He ran a hand through his
tousled hair and strode through the elevator doors as they opened without so
much as a backward glance. No effing way. Lisa Embry was not one to be ignored.
“Hey!” she sputtered
as she followed, still breathless. “What the hell was that? You can’t just go
around assaulting random helpless women!”
“You’re far from
helpless. Besides, I didn’t hear any complaints when I had you pinned against
the wall. Maybe you need to have a chat with that tongue of yours… and some of
the other body parts that were edging in on the action.” He turned, a wicked
gleam reflected in his alluringly deviant eyes.
“Whaat?” Her
stilettos clicked on the marble floor as she stomped toward him. “You’re a
disgusting pig. I panicked, you saw an opportunity and took it.” Two could play
that insidious little game. Standing down, her lips curled into a smirk. “Poor
thing. Are you really that desperate?”
“That’s supposed to
be a rhetorical question, right?”
Her fists clenched at
her sides, twitching, aching to knock that smug look off his beautiful face.
“You’re a real asshole. Who the hell do you think you are?”
A cocky smile
appeared, revealing a dimple in his left cheek. “I just prevented a heart
attack. Call me God.”
Kristen Luciani is a
self-proclaimed momtrepreneur, beauty product junkie, and romance author with a
penchant for Christian Louboutins, Silicon Valley, plunging necklines and
grapefruit martinis. As a deep-rooted romantic who prefers juicy drama
to fill the lives of anyone other than her, she tried her hand at creating a
world of enchantment, sensuality, and intrigue, finally uncovering her true
passion. No pun intended…
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