Prime: A Bad Boy Romance Read online

  Table of Contents

  PRIME | A Bad Boy Romance

  About This Book:

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Epilogue

  Donkey Doubled | A Twin Stepbrother Menage Romance

  About This Book:

  Part One. | Making The Impossible Happen | Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Part Two. | Wishful Thinking | Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Part Three. | The Notebook | Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Part Four. | Surviving The Fall | Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Part Five. | Making the play | Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Part Six. | Surprise! | Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Part Seven. | Until Death Do Us Part | Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Epilogue. | Dreams do come true if you wait long enough

  Donkey | A Stepbrother Sports Romance

  About This Book:

  Prologue

  One.

  Two.

  Three.

  Four.

  Five.

  Six.

  Seven.

  Epilogue.

  THE END

  PRIME

  A Bad Boy Romance

  Stephanie Brother

  © 2017 Stephanie Brother

  All Rights Reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locations is purely coincidental. The characters are all productions of the author's imagination.

  Please note that this work is intended only for adults over the age of 18 and all characters represented as 18 or over.

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  About This Book:

  Jaxon

  There’s the best of the best, and then there’s me, the best of the best of the best.

  I’m a soldier, a special forces operative with over a hundred successful missions behind me, or at least I was, until a mother and child died on my watch, and I forced myself into retirement, promising I’d never put innocent people’s lives at risk again.

  There is nothing that can get me back into the field again, except the one thing I never expected to lose in the first place: Ruby Anderson.

  She walked out on me five years ago, and I haven’t heard from her since.

  Now she’s in serious trouble and I’m the only one in a position to help her.

  I won’t be able to live with myself if I lose her again, but the only chance I’ve got of saving her is doing what I promised I wouldn’t do, by getting back into the field.

  It’s an impossible choice, but when it comes down to extremes, there isn’t anyone better qualified than me.

  At the very least, she owes me a goodbye kiss.

  Ruby

  The last person I want to be thinking about right now is Jaxon.

  There is a very good chance I’m not going to make it out of here alive, so the last thing I want to be doing is wasting my time on him.

  His perfect abs, his cocky arrogance, his swollen ego.

  I’ve survived perfectly well for the last five years without him, and there’s no way I’m going to give in now.

  They might have me bound and gagged, there might be twenty heavily armed fighters between me and freedom, this might be the very situation he’s trained his entire life for, and there might be a secret I haven’t been able to bring myself to tell him, but even so, he’s out of my life for good now, he has no idea where I am anyway, and there are much better things for me to focus on.

  I left Jaxon for a perfectly good reason, and there’s not a single one that would make me look back now.

  Not even if I need him, more than anything else on this earth.

  This is a steamy, full-length, bad boy romance with a happy ever after and absolutely no cheating. For your reading pleasure, I have included two additional novels: Donkey and Donkey Doubled. Prime is 50,000 words and ends approximately a third of the way through the book.

  ***

  Prologue

  Jaxon

  “Ten.”

  She glances at me, rolls her eyes and looks away.

  “Nine”, I say. “Eight.”

  She looks back, this time the very slightest hint of a smile of disbelief teasing the edges of her lips. She shakes her head. “Seven”, I say.

  “Why are you counting?” she asks, and I know I’ve got her.

  “Six”, I say. She knows exactly why I’m counting.

  “This isn’t going to work”, she says, and looks away again, shifting her body to turn her back on me.

  “Five”, I say.

  “Try someone else”, she says, her arms crossed, refusing to look at me.

  “Four”, I say.

  “Three, two, one”, she says rapidly, while spinning around to stare me down. “There, I’ve saved you the hassle.”

  “I’ll be waiting for you outside”, I say.

  She raises her eyebrows, looks away briefly and then back at me, her eyes all over my body. She knows she can’t refuse.

  “What makes you think?...” she begins.

  “You already told me you would”, I say. “You told me at ten, you’re just having a little trouble accepting it.”

  I begin to walk away. “Hey”, she calls after me, but they always do.

  “Don’t take forever”, I say, and make my way outside.

  I barely have time to make it to my car when she draws up alongside me. We share a conspiratorial glance, and I see that smile again that tells me she’s going to be impossible to forget.

  “Don’t”, she says.

  “Let me guess, you don’t sleep with men like me”, I say.

  “I’m not going to sleep with you”, she says confidently. “I just want you to give me a ride home.”

  I have to laugh a little at that. We
pause at my car, just enough time to get a proper look at each other. She’s gorgeous in that tough, uptight way I love about fiercely independent women like her, who seem to be on a constant mission to prove their worth.

  She looks like she could be a lawyer or an accountant by the way she’s dressed, but her stormy eyes tell a much more interesting story of wild, insatiable hunger and a lifetime of dissatisfaction that makes me think her clothes woefully underrepresent her.

  Her outfit is kind of conservative, like she’s just come straight from work, or she’s bailing out on her boyfriend after a fight, and because it hides what is clearly an incredible body beneath, all I can think about is unpeeling the layers like a kid might carefully unwrap a Christmas present he knows is way more exciting than the paper that masks it.

  While she looks at me she bites her lower lip nervously, which makes me think she’s either never done this kind of thing before and always wanted to, or she’s the kind of girl that can screw all night without even breaking a sweat, and her play hard to get attitude is just a show.

  Whatever it is, finding out is going to be fun.

  “What?” she asks seductively, leaning back against the car casually to show me what I’m about to get involved in. Long brown hair carelessly tied back I picture wrapped around my wrist, the skin of her shoulder slightly exposed where her shirt has fallen unevenly to one side, that dangerous look she gives me with those fiery, fuck me eyes. She doesn’t sleep with men like me, because there isn’t anyone else like me.

  I could end up getting addicted to her, if I made the mistake of letting myself get attached. Even if I don’t, she’s the kind of girl whose heart I won’t be able to avoid breaking. Young but mature, sweet but dangerous, strong but fragile, a whole world of contradictions.

  “Get in the car”, I say. “Your time’s up.”

  She peels herself off the car. “I hope you take longer than ten seconds when you fuck”, she says.

  “I thought I was only taking you home”, I say, my eyebrow raised.

  “After”, she says plainly, and gets into my car as though she’s done the same thing a million times over.

  The countdown doesn’t always work, but when it does, I always end up with women who fuck like wild animals. It’s always the same kind of girl as well, usually wound about as tight as a drill sergeant, usually someone who’s significant other can’t please them, if they have one; usually high maintenance, which is terrible for a relationship but perfect for a night of no-holds-barred fun.

  I don’t even know this girls name, but that has never mattered to me anyway, she falls into the category of women who once they’ve admitted to needing it, will do absolutely anything in order to feel like they’ve let themselves go enough.

  This one is so sexy I feel like I’m playing with fire, but the bigger the danger the greater the thrill, and no matter how wild and fun the ride, I always make sure I know when to get off.

  That’s why I’m so good at this.

  “Zero”, I say to myself, and get into the car.

  Five years later...

  Chapter One

  Jaxon

  I’m six and a half miles into a ten mile run when the car pulls up alongside me, the window already lowered. Experience has taught me to be cautious in situations like this, and even though I hate to break stride, I’ve made enough enemies over the years to justify it. I pull up to make a rapid assessment of exactly what’s going on, before picking the pace up again and pushing on. From the old guy in the driver’s seat, I hear my name being called into the wind.

  A moment later he’s alongside me again.

  “What do you want?” I ask, glancing him over again. Everything about him shouts money, from the immaculate car to the expensive suit. He looks like government, but they usually come in twos.

  “I came to talk to you about Ruby Anderson”, he says, and the name makes my heart skip a beat. I haven’t heard that name come from anyone else’s mouth but my own for almost five years. “I’m her father”, he says, and I pull up so sharply I almost twist my ankle.

  ***

  “How did you find me?”

  The photo he’s brought of Ruby stares out at me from the coffee table. The same incredible smile, those eyes I lost myself in when I promised I wouldn’t, that knockout body. A little older, taken at a time when we were no longer together, but the same image I’ve got indelibly marked on the inside of my brain whenever I close my eyes. I want to stare at her picture for hours and remember that incredible time we had together, and I want to forget all about her at the same time, because I’ve spent the last five years trying to do just that. I look at the photo one last time and hand it back to him.

  “I’m police”, Ruby’s dad explains, sliding the photo into the inside pocket of his jacket. “Or I was. I still have contacts in a lot of places. Some people owed me favors, here I am.”

  “I haven’t seen Ruby for almost five years”, I say. “If you’re trying to find her, I don’t know where she is.”

  “Ruby’s in trouble”, he says solemnly. “Serious trouble.”

  Why doesn’t that statement surprise me? Ruby Anderson could never stay away from it, as though trouble sucked her in like a magnet. What I mistook for the clothes of a corporate professional, turned out to be the wardrobe of an investigative journalist hell bent on changing the world. My job was dangerous, but at least I got to carry a gun I was trained to use, Ruby went into battle with a pen and a moleskine notebook.

  “I don’t know how I can...”, I begin. I don’t even know how he knew how to come to me. Ruby and I were together for less than two months, and she never introduced me to her parents.

  “You have a special set of skills, Jaxon”, he says.

  “Had”, I point out. “I don’t do that anymore.”

  I don’t like the way this is going.

  He takes out another photo, this one a lot more blurry. It’s hard to make anything out, beyond what looks like a heavily guarded vehicle, perhaps someone being bundled into it. “She’s in Mexico”, he says, jabbing the photo. “They’re holding her hostage.”

  I look up to him and back to the photo. Eventually I hand it back to him. “Go to the police again”, I suggest, ignoring that pull of guilt in my gut. “I can’t help you.”

  “The police won’t do anything”, he says. “You know that as well as I do.”

  “This isn’t my job anymore”, I say. “You need to find someone else.”

  “There’s no one else like you”, he says, “anywhere. Plus, you know Ruby.”

  “I knew Ruby”, I correct him, “and that’s all the more reason why I’m not going to do it. You’re wasting your time here.”

  “They told me about what happened”, he says, as though admitting to a secret he shouldn’t be in charge of in the first place. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  The last thing I need is a complete stranger telling me I’ve got no reason to feel guilty because two people died and I did nothing wrong. “I think we’re done here”, I say, making it clear I want him to leave.

  “Please, Jaxon”, he says, his hand on my arm briefly. “I can pay you. There’s no one else who can do this.”

  I could do without the tears rolling down his cheek, and I could do without this being Ruby. I don’t care about the money, I do care about what it might mean seeing her again. After that fucked up extraction in Iran, that I’ve spent the last two years trying to deal with, there’s hardly anything in the world that could make me put other people’s lives at risk again, no matter how capable I am of doing the job. The problem is Ruby might be the only girl who’s worth that kind of risk, and I might be the only person who can get her back to the States. Getting her back into my bed would be a bonus, but that would have to qualify as the world’s most unusual pick up tactic.

  “They’ll kill her if we don’t pull her out”, he goes on somberly, as if I need the ultimatum.

  I promised I’d never set foot on another mission again, eith
er government or privately contracted. I’m as sharp as ever and arguably in the shape of my life, but I’m still nowhere near getting over what happened and after two years out of the game I’m not exactly bursting over with recent experience. This is Ruby as well, the one girl who somehow got away, and the last person in the world I’d want to lose twice, which makes this whole thing even more impossible to walk away from.

  “What intel do you have anyway?” I ask. “What makes you think this is a legitimate kidnapping?” I don’t want to say it, but the professional, emotionless, trained to compartmentalize part of me is thinking, how do you know she’s not already dead?

  “Thank you”, he says sincerely while he wipes tears away from his cheek.

  “Just tell me what you know”, I say, settling back down into the couch again, nothing about any of where this is going giving me a good feeling. “Tell me everything you know, and I’ll see what I can do to help you.”

  Chapter Two

  Ruby

  “Just tell us where it is and we’ll let you go.”

  Yeah, like I haven’t heard that one before. The only thing that’s keeping me alive right now is that flash drive. Give up its location and they won’t even bother hiding my head when they cut it off my body.

  “I told you already”, I whine, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  The punch that cracks my jaw and sends a lightning whip of pain shuddering out across my body suggests he doubts my credibility. I’ve barely time to shake the fug before he grabs my chin in his hand and squeezes hard.

  “What are you even doing here?” he asks. “A pretty girl like you messed up with all of this. Isn’t there enough crime for you to write about in America?”

  “Please”, I whine again, sticking to my tourist in the wrong place at the wrong time story. “You’ve got the wrong person, I’m not who you think I am.”

  My captor makes a sound of disapproval laced with what sounds like begrudging admiration. I guess he thought it would be easy to get what he wanted, that he wouldn’t have to resort to this. A slap across the other side of my cheek with the back of his hand nearly knocks me off my chair. I want to tell him he punches like a girl but it’ll only infuriate him more and as much as I can take the pain, I kind of like my face.