Kitabı oku: «The Dare Collection April 2019»
About the Authors
JACKIE ASHENDEN writes dark, emotional stories with alpha heroes whove just got the world to their liking only to have it blown wide apart by their kick-ass heroines. She lives in Auckland, New Zealand, with her husband, the inimitable Dr Jax, two kids and two rats. When she’s not torturing alpha males and their gutsy heroines she can be found drinking chocolate martinis, reading anything she can lay her hands on, wasting time on social media or being forced to go mountain biking with her husband. To keep up to date with Jackie’s new releases and other news sign up to her newsletter at jackieashenden.com.
Formerly a video and radio producer, CHRISTY MCKELLEN now spends her time writing provocative, passionate, seductive romance. When she’s not writing she can be found enjoying life with her husband and three children, walking for pleasure and researching other people’s deepest secrets and desires. Christy loves to hear from readers. You can get hold of her at christymckellen.com.
NICOLA MARSH is a USA TODAY bestselling and multi-award-winning author who loves nothing better than losing herself in a story. A physiotherapist in a previous life, she now divides her time between raising two dashing heroes, whipping up delish meals, cheering on her footy team and writing—her dream job. And she chats on social media. A lot. Come say hi! Instagram, Twitter, Facebook—she’s there! Also find her at nicolamarsh.com.
KELLI IRELAND spent a decade as a name on a door in corporate America. Unexpectedly liberated by fate’s sense of humour, she chose to carpe the diem and pursue her passion for writing. A fan of happily-ever-afters, she found she loved being the puppet master for the most unlikely couples. Seeing them through the best and worst of each other while helping them survive the joys and disasters of falling in love? Best. Thing. Ever. Visit Kelli’s website at kelliireland.com.
The Dare Collection April 2019
King’s Ransom
Jackie Ashenden
Good Girl
Christy McKellen
Under His Skin
Nicola Marsh
Wicked Heat
Kelli Ireland
ISBN: 978-1-474-09548-8
THE DARE COLLECTION APRIL 2019
King’s Ransom © 2019 Jackie Ashenden Good Girl © 2019 Christy McKellen Under His Skin © 2019 Nicola Marsh Wicked Heat © 2019 Denise Tompkins
Published in Great Britain 2019
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.
® and ™ are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ® are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.
Version: 2020-03-02
MILLS & BOON
Before you start reading, why not sign up?
Thank you for downloading this Mills & Boon book. If you want to hear about exclusive discounts, special offers and competitions, sign up to our email newsletter today!
Or simply visit
Mills & Boon emails are completely free to receive and you can unsubscribe at any time via the link in any email we send you.
Table of Contents
Cover
About the Authors
Title Page
Copyright
King’s Ransom
Back Cover Text
Dedication
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
EPILOGUE
Good Girl
Back Cover Text
Dedication
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
Under His Skin
Back Cover Text
Dedication
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
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
EPILOGUE
Wicked Heat
Back Cover Text
Dedication
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
About the Publisher
King’s Ransom
Jackie Ashenden
The third book in the red-hot Kings of Sydney trilogy sees Ajax King kidnapping a rising crime lord’s daughter, Imogen White. His bargaining chip is her innocence, but when all Imogen wants is to feel the raw masculinity of the eldest King, Ajax is tempted to free her from her gilded cage for good...
Decades of being the eldest son of the biggest crime lord in Sydney doesn’t leave a man without scars, and mine run deep. Now I’ll do almost anything to destroy Sydney’s criminal underworld—even kidnap my enemy’s delectable daughter. Imogen White is pristine. Perfect. And if her father won’t leave Sydney for good, then I’ll take the one thing he prizes above all—and make her mine!
Only Imogen isn’t quite the innocent I thought. She wants to be freed from her gilded prison, and damn if she isn’t looking for a little carnal education in return. She’s primal incarnate. Just like me.
But I’m no knight in shining armour. I live cold and hard. I want nothing. I need nothing. The ends always justify the means...and no one—not even a sweet little spitfire like Imogen—will thaw the ice around my cold heart. No one.
Sexy. Passionate. Bold. Discover Harlequin DARE, a new line of fun, edgy and sexually explicit romances for the fearless female.
To the cat.
For absolutely no reason at all.
CHAPTER ONE
Ajax
I WAS TEN years old the first time I suspected my father was a criminal.
At thirteen he showed me the truth.
That’s when I decided I was going to take him down. But if you want to take down a man like Augustus King you have to do it right. You can’t leave anything behind. A crime empire is like a Hydra—cut off the head and twenty more sprout.
It took me nearly two decades to cut off every single head. Yet I did. And I put that prick in jail once and for all.
But surviving decades of being the oldest son of the biggest crime lord in Sydney doesn’t leave a man without scars, and mine ran deep.
That was okay, though. Scars were reminders of the big picture and my big picture involved keeping my brothers and my city safe. Staying vigilant for danger. Always on the lookout for threats.
Threats such as William goddamn White, my father’s enemy and the last head of the Hydra.
Dad had been in jail five years and I’d been legit ever since, running one of the fastest growing property development companies in Sydney, and, as much as I wanted to, I couldn’t simply cut that head off the way I preferred. Not if I wanted to avoid jail myself.
No, I had to use other methods.
I leaned against the wall of the ballroom of one of Sydney’s top hotels, studying the glittering, couture-wearing crowd all gathered to celebrate the formation of a new charity.
I hadn’t been invited—no one would invite a King to a swanky charity ball like this one—but I’d shown up anyway and they’d been too afraid of me to turn me away.
The King past was something my two brothers and I were trying to overcome, but it came in handy at times. And I wasn’t above using it, especially when it came to driving home to the cream of Sydney society that the King brothers were up-and-coming and they couldn’t ignore us any more.
But that wasn’t the only reason I was here.
That other reason was sitting across the ballroom from me, at a table surrounded by goons in suits trying hard not to look like goons in suits and failing.
Miss Imogen White, William White’s daughter and the most guarded heiress in the entire city.
The chick was like Rapunzel in her tower—no one was getting inside. Both figuratively and literally. She was the apple of her father’s eye and he made sure she stayed pure and pristine, his perfect Princess.
Sadly for White, I was about to storm his daughter’s pretty little castle and sully the fuck out of it.
He’d managed somehow to stay out of the law’s reach following the collapse of Dad’s empire and he’d been waiting in the shadows ever since. Not drawing attention, quietly trying to resurrect Augustus King’s filthy legacy.
A legacy I was going to destroy once and for all.
That motherfucker was going down and I was going to use his daughter to do it.
I tilted my head, studying her as she sat on her chair, all alone apart from her goons.
Five foot nothing, long blonde hair the colour of pale corn silk. Big green eyes that watched the rest of the room and the people in it like they were a cage full of tigers and she was a goat tethered to a stake.
Interesting that her father had managed to get her an invite and that she was attending without him. Almost made me think that she was playing the part of a goat tethered to a stake.
Bait. To lure someone out.
Me, perhaps? But then, probably not. As far as White was concerned, I was too busy running King Enterprises, my property empire, to worry about him—an illusion I’d worked hard to cultivate to hide my real motivations.
Whosever bait she was, Imogen was pretty in her plain white cocktail frock. A perfect little doll. Pale and virginal and pure. Except not totally pure, not with the kind of sulky pink mouth that would look great wrapped around a man’s cock.
Yes, she was lovely, but she was also nothing but leverage.
Her father’s weapon that I was going to turn back on him, using her to ensure that whatever he was doing in those shadows, whatever plans he was hatching, he needed to stop immediately and get the hell out of Sydney.
Only then would I release his daughter.
And if he didn’t? I’d take that carefully guarded virginity of hers and make her mine. Because if there was one thing I knew about William White, it was that he’d rather slit his own throat than have a King touch his daughter.
Especially me. As far as he was concerned, I was still rough and brutal, still only a few steps away from the violence that had made me.
He wouldn’t want his daughter anywhere near me.
As plans went it wasn’t all that subtle, but I’d been searching for some legal way to take that bastard down and hadn’t managed to find anything I could use against him.
No, his daughter was it. My plan to protect everything I’d built.
Ten years ago, I could have headed over to her and slung her over my shoulder and no one would have stopped me. Even the police would have given me a wide berth—they didn’t want to mess with a King.
But it wasn’t ten years ago. It was now, and even though I’d never have considered using Dad’s kind of tactics—I was, after all, a different man—the stakes were too high to risk failure, which meant the end justified any means.
Such as kidnapping William White’s daughter from a ballroom full of people.
Oh, yeah, and not get caught.
I glanced away from the scaredy-cat Princess and looked towards the bar area of the ballroom. Sure enough, there was my younger brother Leon, along with his wife, Vita. They were commanding a lot of attention, which was the reason I’d demanded the pair of them attend the ball with me.
They could take the heat while I did my thing unnoticed.
Leon would be pissed if he knew what I was planning, especially given his own past, but what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. This was my idea and not telling him would allow all the responsibility to fall on me if it turned to shit.
Ücretsiz ön izlemeyi tamamladınız.