Read Dark Domination (Bought By the Billionaire Book 1) Online
Authors: Lili Valente
Tags: #dark romance, #alpha male, #BDSM, #capture fantasy
Dark Domination (Bought By the Billionaire Book 1)
Dedicated to M.F. my partner in crime.
Dark Domination
Bought by the Billionaire
Book One
By Lili Valente
All Rights Reserved
Copyright
Dark Domination
© 2015 Lili Valente
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 the copyright owner. This erotic 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 hot, sexy, emotional novels featuring Dominant alpha males. 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. Cover design by Bootstrap Designs. Editorial services provided by Leone Editorial.
About the Book
Marine turned billionaire arms dealer Jackson Hawke has one goal—to have the woman who ruined his life at his mercy. He’ll see her on her knees, even if he has to pay for the privilege.
Six years ago, Hannah buried her twin sister. Now, with her family in jeopardy, Hannah must sell herself to a wealthy stranger in order to save their home.
She expects to be scarred by the experience. She doesn’t expect to pay penance for her sister’s sins or to meet a man who brings her body savagely to life.
Now Hannah must choose—confess to Jackson that she’s not the twin he’s looking for and forfeit the money she needs to survive, or submit to a man whose dark domination may be the end of them both.
* *Dark Domination is the 1st in the Bought by the Billionaire serial romance series. The entire series will release summer 2015* *
Dedicated to M.F. my partner in crime.
CHAPTER ONE
Hannah
“Keep the door locked, Hannah, and don’t go outside.” Her sister, Harley, dug her fingers into the soft flesh of Hannah’s upper arms, the arms she could never keep as toned as her twin’s, no matter how often she hit the gym. “No one can know you’re here. Do you understand me? No one.”
“I get it,” Hannah said for the third time.
“Even if the hall is full of starving orphans,” Harley insisted, her blue eyes hard and focused. “Even if there’s a nun out there with her pants on fire, you keep the door closed and your mouth shut. Get me?”
“But nuns don’t wear pants.” Hannah winked, trying to ease the tension that had festered in the air since she’d surprised Harley at work this afternoon.
But her sister’s perfectly sculpted brows only drew closer together. “I’m serious, Moo. You know I love you, but if you screw this up for me, I’m going to lose it.”
“Screw what up?” Hannah asked, dread whispering through her chest.
Harley’s schemes were never good news. Her twin’s flair for the dramatic had taken a dark, twisted turn that summer ten years ago when their family had fractured down the middle. Afterward, their mother had been the one most obviously damaged, but something in Harley had been broken, too.
Since then, her sister never seemed to know when she’d gone too far, or care if people were caught in the crossfire.
“What’s going on?” Hannah pressed. “Is this why you’ve been pushing me away all summer?”
“I haven’t been pushing you away,” Harley lied, not even bothering to do it convincingly. When Harley was in top form, she could make you believe that the sky was green and the grass was blue.
But she didn’t bother turning on the charm for family. She saved that for the art dealers who purchased her sculptures, the wealthy lovers she played against each other like pieces in increasingly heartbreaking games of chess, and the unlucky victims slated to pay for wronging her.
It didn’t matter if the sin was real or imagined or if Harley realized halfway through crafting her blueprint for revenge that the punishment she’d conceived for her target didn’t fit the crime. She never shifted direction or altered course. Hannah was the second guesser, the person who could always see both sides of a story. Harley was simply…inexorable.
Sometimes, it made Hannah wonder if she had absorbed her twin’s share of empathy in the womb.
Sometimes it simply scared the hell out of her.
“Don’t go.” Hannah mirrored her sister’s stance, gripping Harley’s arms, but her touch remained gentle. It was her blessing and her curse, her inability to be as tough and pitiless as her father wanted his daughters to be. “Stay with me. Let’s make popcorn and watch
Pretty Woman
and pretend it’s the end of another perfect summer. Like when we were kids.”
“It is the end of a perfect summer.” Harley’s smile was sharp to the touch. “The most perfect summer ever.”
She leaned in, pressing an impulsive kiss to Hannah’s cheek. “I love you, Moo. And I’m never going to let anyone get away with hurting you or Mom again. Okay? Just stay inside, quiet as a mouse, and everything will be fine.”
Hannah’s stomach clenched. “Harley, please, I’ve got a bad feeling.”
“You’ve always got a bad feeling, worry wart.” She pulled away with a laugh, reaching for the black handbag on the polished table by the apartment’s front door.
The apartment Harley had chosen for her summer on the Virginia shore was uncharacteristically modest, but her purse still cost a few thousand dollars. When Hannah had left for college at Duke, she had adjusted her wardrobe to fit in with the other undergraduate students in her psychology program, gratefully abandoning thousand dollar dresses for blue jeans and tee shirts. But Harley’s taste had only grown more extravagant.
Her twin was making a killing in the art world, had sweet-talked their father into granting her access to her trust fund two years early, and was always getting gifts from her endlessly shifting assortment of suitors. She was never short on money, which was another reason the modest apartment, the summer job serving drinks at a restaurant by the beach, and the beat up VW Bug Hannah had seen parked in her sister’s space in the parking lot below made no sense.
Add in the tip envelope with “Harley Garrett” printed on the outside that Harley had tucked into her purse before hustling Hannah out of the bar this afternoon, and there was no doubt that Harley was up to something. Why else would she be using a fake last name?
But Hannah knew from experience her twin wouldn’t share a word about her latest scheme until it was a fait accompli. Her sister was as superstitious as she was fearless. She wouldn’t risk jinxing a plan by whispering a word about her hoped for outcome until the deed was done and the bodies were buried.
“There’s leftover rice and Thai curry in the fridge,” Harley said, checking her makeup in the mirror by the door, brushing away an invisible lipstick smear at the corner of her full mouth. “Feel free to have that or any of the stuff in the freezer, but don’t order anything to be delivered. Once I leave, this door doesn’t open until I get home tomorrow morning, not even for the pizza guy.”
“I get it,” Hannah said, irritation creeping in to singe the edges of her dread. “But we’re going to talk when you get back. A real talk.”
She’d driven six hours to spend the weekend with her sister and she wasn’t going to spend her last few days of freedom before graduate school locked up in Harley’s apartment, hiding from the world.
“And we’re going to the beach,” she added, glancing down at her pale, spent-the-summer-in-the-library arms. “I need some sun.”
Harley’s gaze shifted, meeting Hannah’s in the glass before flicking back to her own reflection. The eye contact only lasted a moment, but it was long enough for Hannah to be certain the next words out of Harley’s mouth were going to be a lie.
“Okay. We’ll go to the beach and talk. I promise.” She turned, pulling Hannah in for a quick hug. “Never ever, Moo.”
“Never ever,” Hannah mumbled into her sister’s silky brown hair before Harley slipped out the door. She couldn’t help repeating the familiar phrase, no matter how frustrated she was with her twin.
Never ever was what they had said to each other since they were little girls. It meant more than I love you. It meant I never ever want to be apart, I never ever want to wake up to a day without you in it, I never ever want to be as close to anyone in the world as I am to you, my sister, my best friend, my other half.
But they hadn’t been that close in years and lately, when Hannah thought of her sister, it was with an ache in her chest and a hollow feeling in her gut. She knew from her psychology classes that twins often had a slower, more difficult individuation process than normal siblings. It was just harder for “we” to become “me and you” when you’ve spent your entire life as one half of a matched set. But what was happening between her and Harley was about more than growing up. They were growing apart, becoming such different people that she could look down the road and see incredible pain in their future.
There would come a day when she wouldn’t be able to forgive Harley for something she’d done. A day when her sister would go too far and become someone she couldn’t trust, maybe even someone she was ashamed of. Hannah had a big heart and a forgiving spirit, but even she had hard limits, lines in the sand that, once crossed, could never be uncrossed.
Later, after a supper of leftovers and a few mindless hours passed in front of the television, Hannah lay in her sister’s bed, staring at the ceiling in the dark, thinking about those lines.
She didn’t want to believe Harley would hurt innocent people, but as the years passed, her twin reminded her more of their any-means-to-an-end father than their sweet Aunt Sybil—the woman they’d both sworn they wanted to take after when they were girls.
They’d been eleven years old the first time they’d gone to stay with Sybil for the summer, desperate for a woman to look up to, a woman who wasn’t broken and sad like their mother or cold and efficient like Nanny Hammond or the night nurses who had sat watch outside their bedroom since they were infants. Sybil struggled with severe arthritis and other health problems, but she was always upbeat, excited to greet the day, and eager to spread light around her corner of the world. She exuded a quiet strength and was unfailingly kind.