Jamie Sobrato - Once Upon A Seduction

Skye was pretty sure a smart-ass comment was forming in her subconscious at Nico’s words, but then he kissed her, and there were no more thoughts—snarky or otherwise.

There were only his lips—firm and hot, better than she’d imagined. Crazy, whirling sensations formed in her belly. The always-wrong voice in her head was drowned out by the hum of desire that coursed through her.

Nico pulled back and looked at her with half-lidded eyes. “You want me, too, don’t you?”

Well, duh. But she wasn’t going to give him the answer he wanted that easily, even though part of her knew they were at the point of no turning back.

Her dumb instincts were screaming at her to stop, that she barely knew him and casual sex was always a bad idea. So that meant…she had to do the opposite?

Damn straight.

Dear Reader,

I grew up enchanted with the Hollywood version of the California desert—sweeping vistas, endless blue skies and ragtop roadsters. So when I got the chance to write my very own California road story, I was all over it. I live in the California desert now, so my version of the setting is much more real than idealized.

Once Upon a Seduction is also a tribute to fairy-tale romance—complete with a Ferrari as an updated version of the prince’s stallion. Fun as it was to write a road story, it was even more fun to write a contemporary fairy tale based on my idea of happily ever after. It’s no accident that Skye Ellison is more like me than any other heroine I’ve written, and I hope you enjoy her journey to happiness as much as I enjoyed writing it.

I love to hear from readers, so drop me a note and let me know what you think of Once Upon a Seduction. I can be reached via e-mail at jamie@jamiesobrato.com. Also check out my Web site, www.jamiesobrato.com.

Sincerely,

Jamie Sobrato

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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To my dear friend Bethany Griffin-Faith, for inspiring me to write my first novel

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Epilogue

Once upon a time, in a land not far from L.A., there lived a girl who seemed to have it all.

NO, NO, THAT WASN’T RIGHT. Have it all was vague, cliché and boring. And Once upon a time? Would an editor even get past that first trite phrase to read the rest of the sentence?

Doubtful.

Skye Ellison glared at the manuscript she’d been struggling with for months. She couldn’t get the first line of the story right, so how could she expect to write an entire young adult novel anyone would want to read?

She might as well just face the fact that she sucked the big one and move on to a less creative endeavor, maybe even throw all her efforts into the job she was actually getting paid to do. Now there was a novel idea.

She minimized the document entitled The Cinderella Solution and turned her attention to the calendar hanging on her cubicle wall. Today’s square was empty, leaving her with two choices—she could start making follow-up harassment sales calls to her on-the-fence customers, or she could wade through the never-ending crapload of interoffice e-mail that flooded her inbox daily. The choices left her with a vague urge to go running out into traffic.

Skye had a theory about cubicles. She believed that if you sat in one long enough, all your thoughts became square. You’d lose your ability to think outside the box, and your creativity would get lost in a haze of geometric shapes and flickering computer screens.

After three tedious years at Dynalux Systems in her six-by-six cubicle, doing work she had trouble explaining to anyone outside the high-tech, pallid-faced world of networking equipment and the people who sold it, this had clearly happened to Skye.

She could no longer even compose a sentence that wasn’t an utter and complete cliché. Which was ironic, since she’d taken the mindless job in the first place thinking it would leave her with the mental energy to be creative enough to write novels during her off hours.

In fact, she’d slipped into such a state of crippling boredom at work in the past few months, she’d begun to fear her brain was atrophying. Nothing was going right in her life, she’d made no progress on her book, and she sometimes felt as if she was unable to complete even the simplest of mental tasks.

So when someone dropped a red lace bra on her desk, she couldn’t begin to imagine where it had come from. The burst of color alone was shocking enough, but to have something so blatantly sexy right out in the open at her office was an event unheard of since the time Bill Muller tried to spice up the corporate decor by putting a bunch of Hooters Girls posters on his cubicle walls.

“You left this at my house,” an unfamiliar male voice said as Skye stared at the bra she’d never seen before.

The only coherent thought she could form was that the cup size looked big enough to accommodate an engorged milk cow.

She looked up from the humongous bra to the source of the voice, and she realized he wasn’t so unfamiliar after all. He was someone she knew in passing—Nico Valletti, her ex-boyfriend’s landlord. And his expression wasn’t exactly congenial. He was one of those guys who smoldered all the time, regardless of whether it was called for or not.

Nico had been blessed with a physical appearance verging on the sublime. A former racecar driver who’d retired early after a famously bad accident on the track, he was gorgeous in the extreme, with nearly black hair, nearly black eyes and a body that could make a girl think dirty thoughts.

And he seemed all too aware of his power over women, as evidenced by his ever-present smirk.

According to Skye’s scumbag ex, Martin—or whatever his real name was—Nico had a different girlfriend every week. Sometimes two or three.

She finally found her voice and croaked, “That’s not mine. What are you doing with it at my office?”

“Returning it to you, because you’ve got information I need.”

“Are you sure that doesn’t belong to one of your girlfriends?”

His gaze traveled from her to the bra and back again. Something about his eyes made her feel as if he had X-ray vision, as if he could see straight through her blouse to her mismatched, no-chance-of-sex-today bra and underwear. As if he could tell she didn’t own a single red lace bra.

If he made a comment about the fact that the bra on her desk was about four cup sizes away from fitting her, she’d staple him in the hand.

“I’d recognize it if it did,” he said in a tone that made her feel like blushing.