Title: Yes, Mr. Van Der Wells
Author: S. Ann Cole
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Release Date: February 16, 2016
Synopsis
I’m
running.
Running
for my freedom.
Running
for my life.
I’m
running because everything hurts.
And
all I want to do is breathe.
The
old me was bold and wild and reckless and privileged.
The
new me is timid and freak-stricken and weak and broken.
All
I want is freedom.
All
I want to do is breathe.
A
complicated relationship? That’s the last thing I’m about right
now.
Something
casual and easy? I’m down for that.
But
he is not.
He
wants to own me.
He
wants me to own him.
He
wants to save me.
I’m
too terrified to give in.
All.
I. Want. To. Do. Is. Breathe.
But
it turns out, Noah is the air that I need to do that…
Breathe.
Excerpt
I
hear him returning, still talking on the phone. He emerges from
around the corner of a narrow hall, stopping short when he sees I’ve
invaded his living space. He fixes his stare at me, one hand holding
a cordless phone to his ear, the other gripping a wallet.
I
stare right back, noticing he hasn’t made an effort to don a pair
of jeans, still parading around in his Ralph Lauren boxers.
He
blinks then, away from me, his expression morphing into one of
extreme annoyance as he snaps into the phone, “Sienna, I’ve had a
shit night, alright? I’m not in the mood for your melodramatics
right now. Good night.”
He
listens for a second, then reiterates with emphasis, “Good.
Night,
woman,” before killing the call.
“If
you can afford to live here,
then you can afford a maid,” I comment as he carelessly tosses the
phone in an armchair.
“This
place is a mess.”
He
glances around, showing no signs of embarrassment. “My last male
help had an affair with my wife, and every other female help I hired
after that, I ended up screwing—yes, even the middle-aged Russian
ones—causing bigger messes than this apartment. So, I avoid hiring
help at all costs. My mom cleans up for me when she comes over on the
weekends and she—why am I telling you all this?” He frowns,
cocking his head at me.
“Thirty-eight
bucks,” I remind him, fighting back a smile.
As
he opens the monogrammed wallet and begins scanning through a thick
file of one-hundred-dollar bills, it hits me that this man lives in a
penthouse and obviously has a lucrative job, so why should
I
take a beating from Andrew for getting his car messed up because this
manslut couldn’t keep his dick in his pants? “Um, you know what,
you might want to add a few hundreds to that thirty-eight.”
His
head raises, eyes finding me, eyebrows winging up.
“Excuse
me?”
Crossing
my arms over my chest, I lock determined eyes with him. “You need
to compensate for the throw-knives lodged in my car, Abercrombie.”
Swearing
under his breath, he slaps a palm to his forehead as though the
events that took place less than an hour ago are already a distant
memory to him. “How about I make an appointment with my mechanic
and tomorrow we can—”
“The
car isn’t mine,” I cut him off, because I don’t like where that
suggestion was headed. Unless I have a death wish, I have absolutely
no intention of ever seeing this passenger again, let alone making
mechanic dates with him. “It’s my boyfriend’s. And he’s kind
of crazy, so it’s better to just give me the cash to pass on to him
to have the dents compounded.” Palms sweating at just the thought
of what Andrew’s reaction is going to be when he sees his car, I
avert my gaze, uncross my arms and shake them out, shake out the
apprehension, reminding myself to breathe. Breathe.
Breathe.
Breathe.
It’s
going to turn out fine, as long I get the compensation, it’ll be
fine.
“Your
boyfriend has you working a taxicab?
At night?”
He sounds furious. Which has me turning my eyes up at him to find
that his expression matches his voice. He is
furious. What the heck? “You don’t look a day older than
eighteen.
What
kind of—”
“You’re
wrong,”
I bite back in defense. “I’m nineteen.”
“Same
goddamn difference,” he grits out, stepping in to me.
“You’re
not—”
“What
the hell do you care about my life?” I return, standing firm,
refusing to be intimidated. “You don’t even know
me.”
He
stops advancing and chews on his lip, studying me. And then he nods,
returning to his wallet. “You’re right. I don’t know you. Will
five hundred do?”
“Six
should cover it.”
He
plucks out the bills and makes to hand them to me, and then pulls
back at last minute. His eyes latch onto mine and don’t let go.
They’re the green that the ocean appears to be closer to the shore;
not too dark, not too light, but just right. Penetrating, invading,
fierce.
“Just
answer me this one thing,” he murmurs in that same soul-stripping
soft voice he’d used on me in the elevator, the one that makes me
feel unsheathed.
I
snip out, “I wasn’t aware this was a negotiation?”
His
chest rising on an inhale, he moves in even closer to me. Lifting two
long, masculine fingers to my neck, he trails the tips across my
skin, from one side to the other. And I stand frozen, not out of
shock that he’s touching me so inappropriately, but because his
touch lays siege on me.
The
rabid feeling that his touch evokes, the rich desire that engulfs me,
is unprecedented. Not even when I thought I liked Andrew in the
beginning did his touch make me feel like this. This man’s touch
makes me want to prostrate at his feet and tell him all my secrets.
“These
fingerprints on your neck…” he whispers, ever so gently, “did
your boyfriend
leave them there?”
At
this, I stiffen.
Utterly
mortified.
He
isn’t touching me intimately. He isn’t caressing me. He’s
trailing Andrew’s frickin’ fingerprints left behind from my
near-death strangulation earlier. I never even thought about the
possibility that there might be residual marks from his assault.
Maybe, subconsciously, I figured they wouldn’t be visible in the
cab. But now, out under the glowing, expensive, penthouse lights,
under the penetrating, discerning stare of a sculpted demon, all
that’s wrong with my life is
seen.
Maybe
it’s my body language, or because I’m taking too long to respond,
but his jaw tightens and his fingers still on my neck as he grounds
out, “He did,
didn’t he?”
To
hell with this!
I don’t owe this man an answer. I don’t even know him. He doesn’t
know me. We’re complete
strangers.
Who does he think he is, anyway? Not because he looks like a Roman
god does it mean I have to leave an offering at his feet.
Closing
the minuscule gap between us, so my breasts are brushed up against
him, I tip up on my toes, lick my lips, and then hiss in his face,
“‘You
know nothing, Jon Snow.’.”
Snatching
the bills from his fingers, I spin and bolt it out of there before he
can stop me.
About The Author
Ann
Cole is a passionate writer and reader, and a lover of anything that
distracts her from the real world. Reader first and second a
writer, S. Ann Cole is an exaggerator, a laugher, sometimes
overly chatty, sometimes overly shy. She’s afraid of cats, dogs,
snakes—heck, she’s only tolerable to gold fishes in a tank.
Because if they
do
jump out and try to attack her, the suckers will surely die!
She
hates
fireworks, schmaltz and arrogance.
She
loves carbs,
Chris Brown and humility.
She
lives nowhere and everywhere.
Jokey
people are her utmost favorite people to be around, as laughter is
the way to her heart.
Never
mind her foul-mouth (she’s working hard on changing that!), she
loves GOD. Fiercely. And believes prayer is the essence of all good,
great, wonderful and miraculous things, and
the
most powerful privilege given unto man.
Ann
hopes that one day, the right day, when it’s her time (because
nothing happens before its time), her hard work will be noticed and
appreciated.
When
Ann’s not abusing her computer keyboard, you can find her nosing a
novel, watching anything on television that makes her laugh until she
breaks into hiccups (loves
Disney , TBS, and Impractical Jokers!)
studying the Bible, or sipping red wine.
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