Blurb:
Beautiful Bastard
An ambitious intern. A perfectionist executive. And a whole lot more name-calling. Chloe Mills is whip-smart, hardworking, and on her way to an MBA. Her only problem: Bennett Ryan. He’s exacting, blunt, inconsiderate, and completely irresistible.
Beautiful Stranger
A charming British playboy. A girl determined to finally live. And a secret liaison revealed in all too vivid colour. Sara Dillion moved to New York City to escape a cheating ex and discover a little passion of her own. So her hot night with the sexy Brit Max Stella should have meant nothing than a night’s fun… But sometimes the heart has other ideas.
Beautiful Player
A bombshell bookworm. A chronic Cassanova. And a lesson in chemistry too scandalous for school. Bookish Hanna Bergstorm decides she needs to get out, learn to make some friends. And who better to teach her than her brother’s gorgeous best friend, the wise-cracking playboy Will Sumner.
Rating: 5/5 stars
Side Notes:
- Genres: Contemporary Romance Fiction
- Highly recommend for 16 years and above
- TW: Sexually graphic scenes, explicit language
- Romance Tropes: Workplace Romance, Strangers to Lovers, Player
Book Quotes:
Beautiful Bastard
- “For some sick reason, fighting with this woman always ended with her panties in my pocket.”
- “If only he would keep his mouth shut, he’d be perfect. A piece of duct tape would do the trick. I had some in my desk that I’d occasionally pull out and fondle, hoping someday I could put it to good use.”
- “This flirting is all well and good, but I mean it when I tell you, I cant have you leaving me again. It almost broke me.” My ribs seemed to squeeze all of the air out of my lungs at the thought. “I don’t think I could. I don’t want to be away from you again either.” “But you need to give me a chance to fix things when I screw up. You know I’m an ass sometimes.” “Sometimes?” Growling, he whispered, “And I tear lingerie.” I pushed a curl off his forehead, “And hoard it. Don’t forget the creepy hoarding.”
- “Beauty is only skin-deep, and ugly goes straight to the bone.”
- “I knew everything happened for a reason. I just wished the reason would hurry up and make itself known.”
- “I didn’t know,” he whispered. “I didn’t know I could love you so much.”
- “The look in her eyes told me that under any other circumstances, I would either already be naked with her on top of me, or lying in a pool of my own blood on the rug.”
- “So here were the facts: I felt possessive of her. Not in a romantic sort of way, but in a “hit her over the head, drag her off by the hair, and fuck her” way. Like she was my toy and I was keeping the other boys in the sandbox from playing with her. How sick was that? If she ever heard me admit to that, she would cut off my balls and feed them to me.”
- “I was starting to see that this wasn’t just sex, and it wasn’t something just working out of my system. Sex was just the fastest route to the deeper possession that I needed. I was falling in love with her, and falling to fast and hard to easily find any footing.”
- “I don’t want to walk out that door and lose what we found in this room.” His simple words rocked me. He wasn’t declaring, he wasn’t promising, but he said exactly what I’d needed to hear. We might not know what was happening, but we wouldn’t leave it unfinished.”
- “I want you to watch. And tomorrow when you’re sore, I want you to remember who did it to you.”
- “Mr. Ryan was going to have my ass. I was twenty minutes late. As I experienced this morning, he hated late. “Late” was a word not found in the Bennett Ryan Dickhead Dictionary. Along with “heart,” “kindness,” “compassion,” “lunch break,” or “thank you.”
- “I told you, I want more than this. I want to be with you. I want to be your lover.” I swore, digging my hands into my hair. “I’m falling for you, Chloe.”
- “Promise me you’ll take me to bed when we get back,” she said. “I promise.” “Your bed.” “Fuck yes, my bed. My bed is huge, with a headboard I can tie you to and spank you silly for being so ridiculous.”
- “I was falling in love with her, and falling too fast and hard to easily find any footing.”
- “For some reason, the two of us arguing was like some sick form of foreplay.”
- “Give me all of you for one night, no holding back. Please, Chloe, I’ll leave you alone after that but I haven’t seen you in almost two weeks and…I just need tonight.”
- “Totally serious. I want to be the only guy who fucks you against windows, and also the first person you see in the morning-from where you lie, having stolen my pillow. I’d also like to be the person who gets you lime Popsicles when you’ve had bad sushi. We only have a few months left where it’s potentially complicated.”
- “I wanted her in a way that made me feel like every second I was sated and starving.”
- “I just want to see you come apart.”
- I wanted to tell her that she was witnessing it now, and in all honesty she’d been watching it happen for weeks.”
- “I was terrified of what that meant but as she took my hand in hers, kissing it softly before entwining our fingers, I realized it didn’t matter. I’d passed the point of no return and whether she wanted me or not, I was hers.
- “I’m going to make you come so hard you forget that you’re supposed to be the world’s biggest asshole.”
- “You better be ready to finish what you started.”
- “Sometimes I wonder how long I’ve actually loved you.”
- “One month flies by when you’re falling love with the woman you’re using for sex. Two is an eternity when the woman you love leaves you.”
- “The flirting is all well and good, but I mean it when I tell you, I can’t have you leaving me again. It almost broke me.”
- “For tonight, until the sun came up and the suitcases were packed, he was mine.”
- “I just don’t want to see you risk everything for a man who may never want the same things.”
- “For the first time in my life I was admitting defeat.”
- “Being inside of her was the most perfect torture. It satiated the hunger I felt at that moment, but like a junkie I found myself consumed by the need for more as soon as it ended. It was terrifying, because in those moments with her, I’d do anything she asked. And that feeling was starting to bleed into moments like this too, when I wasn’t even with her and still wanted to be what she needed. Ridiculous.”
- “You see, he wants something that’s mine, and he can’t have it.”
- “I hated her so much in that moment. I hated that she was right and I was wrong, and I hated that she was forcing me to make a choice. I hated how much I wanted her, most of all.”
- “Everything was so much better before I knew what I was missing.”
- “It’s okay if you don’t want it too. I’ll take anything you’ll give me. Just let me stay here until the morning, okay?”
Beautiful Stranger
- “Women don’t always want to be treated like we’re delicate, or rare, or somehow more precious. We want to be wanted. We want sex to be just as raw as you do.”
- “The way you seem nervous makes me think you don’t know that I’m in love with you.”
- “When I say ‘I love you’ I don’t mean that I love what being with you does for my career, or I love how often you’re willing to shag. I mean I love you. I love making you laugh, and seeing how you react to things, and getting to know the little things about you. I love who I am with you, and I’m trusting you not to hurt me.”
- “Because the whole British thing you have going on makes me want to do very wicked things to your mouth.”
- “Do you ever think about how weird it is that we run into each other all the time?” he asked, eyes unreadable “No,” I admitted. “Isn’t that the way the world works? In a city of millions you’ll always see the same person.” “But how often is it the person you most want to see?”
- “If a woman wanted a man to think of her constantly, she should tell him he could only have her once a wee and bam – concentration blown.”
- “I was really more like an old star, out of fuel, my own gravity pulling me inward, crushing me. I ran out of energy for my too-perfect life, my too-predictable job, my loveless relationship–exhausted at only twenty-seven. Like a star, my life in Chicago collapsed under the force of its own weight, so I was leaving. Massive stars leave behind black holes. Small stars leave behind white dwarfs. I was barely leaving behind a shadow. All of my light was coming with me. I was ready to start over as a comet: refuel, reignite, and burn across the sky.”
- “I looked around me as if it were possible to collect together the heart I’d nearly spilled all over the grass.”
- “When you’re coming, you just make unintelligible sounds. But when you’re close, you just whisper ‘please’ over and over, as if I’d ever deny you.”
- “You’ve made that clear. But why do you assume I’ve done something wrong? Have I ever lied to you, or kept anything from you? I trusted you. You assume I’ve never been hurt and that trust comes easily to me. You’re too busy guarding your own heart to realize that maybe I’m not the arsehole people expect me to be.”
- “But I didn’t think I’d ever wanted her more than in that moment when I was witnessing her put herself back together. I was falling in love with her. And I was royally fucked.”
- “When my old life died, it didn’t go quietly. It detonated.”
- “I was convinced that being ripped in two by him would be the best pleasure I’d ever known.”
- “I suspect I would do almost anything for you,”
- “Good Lord, little stranger. You’ve wrecked me.”
- “Her laughter vibrated along my neck and beneath my skin. I’d never heard her make such a goofy, indelicate sound. Another one of her walls I’d penetrated. Victory surged warm and sharp in my chest, and for a brief pulse I wanted to yell out the window that she was letting me in.”
- “And I already have a strong urge to devour you.”
- “You mean did I fuck you senseless and admit that you basically own me? Yes.”
- “I’m not interested in being anyone’s plaything right now.” “I believe I’m asking to be yours.”
- “Some pussy just tastes like pussy. Yours tastes like good pussy.”
- “But the thing is,” he said, smiling, “I don’t want anyone else. You’ve rather ruined me for other women.”
- “Your tongue tastes like candy, but your pussy tastes even better.”
- “Because the biggest mistake of his life—his infidelity—had given me the best part of mine.”
- “I think I want to know you feel the way I do.”
- “I’d had a few of these quiet, crystallizing moments in the past few weeks. Moments where I simultaneously registered how much I’d grown up and how little I really knew about life and relationships. Some of these moments happened when I was watching Bennett and Chloe, and the quiet way they picked on and adored each other in equal measure. Another moment was here, playing a game by myself, feeling more content than I had in a very long time.”
- “I love who I am with you, and I’m trusting you not to hurt me.”
- “I got tired of being so old when I was so young”
Beautiful Player
- “It’s about finding the woman who gets you thinking. She’ll be the one who’ll change your mind about everything.”
- “Don’t break me, okay?”
- “All that is rare for the rare.”
- “He nodded again and I was tempted to tell him the rule of silence: sometimes an awkward silence is actually far less awkward than forced conversation.”
- “Hanna, I don’t know if I’ve ever wanted something more than I want you.”
- “Do you ever feel like the people who mean the most aren’t the people you see the most? Lately I just feel like I’m not putting my heart where it matters.”
- “It wasn’t just a physical attraction between us. Of course I’d been attracted to women before. But there was something more with Hanna, some chemistry in our blood, something between us that snapped and crackled, that made me always want just a little more than I should take. She offered her friendship, I wanted her body. She offered her body, I wanted to hijack her thoughts. She offered her thoughts, I wanted her heart”
- “In the end one loves one’s desire and not what is desired.”
- “My love for her was a heavy, pulsing, living thing, and it made me feel crazy, and anxious, and famished.”
- “When you’re younger you want the boy who knows how to play the game but when you’re older you want the man who knows when it’s not a game anymore.”
- “His smile pulled up one corner of his mouth and he looked completely destructive. My heart and lady bits would not survive a night with this man.”
- “That look, that tenderness in her eyes, made me realize for the first time what was happening to me: I was falling in love.”
- “Life was built from the bricks of these connections and milestones and moments where you tell your two best friends that you’re about to have a child.”
- “Please,” she begged, kissing me again, reaching for my other hand and trying to pull it around her. “I want to be with you so much it’s making it hard to breathe.”
- “But when he kissed me? I didn’t feel lost in him the way I get lost in you.”
- “He looked to me, his eyes softening. “This is my Hanna.”
- “Hanna. I don’t know if I’ve ever wanted something more than I want you. I really don’t think I have,” I said. “I think about just kissing you, for fucking hours. Do you know that kind of kissing? Where it’s enough for so long you don’t even think of doing anything else?”
- “It was a relief so enormous it wrung the air from my lungs, and I deepened the kiss, wondering whether she could feel from my touch that I had just put a name to what we were doing—making love—or if she simply tasted her sex on my tongue, and didn’t understand that my entire world had just spun free of its programmed orbit.”
- “Show me, Will.”
- “I’m nervous all of a sudden, and I feel just like you’re mine only for these little bits of time. I guess I don’t like that as much as I thought I would.” He slid his finger under my chin and tilted my face up so I had to look at him. His mouth pressed against mine, once, before he told me, “I’ll be yours every second if that’s what you want. You just have to tell me.”
- “Hanna threw her head back, laughing my favorite laugh, the one that came from her belly and took over her entire body. “You’re so fucking pretty,” I murmured, without thinking, running my thumb over her cheek.”
- “You look so fucking perfect under me.”
- “I was so lost in love with this girl.”
- “That isn’t just sex,” I told her, sucking along her collarbone. “This feeling that it’s so good it almost hurts? It’s been like this every single time I’ve been inside you, Plum. That’s what it feels like when you do this with someone you’re fucking insane for.”
- “I sucked on her neck, closing my eyes and wondering if she’d let me mark her there, so I could see it tomorrow. So everyone could.”
- “When I looked up and met her eyes, I lost it. She was staring at me and it was her – Hanna, this girl I saw every morning and fell in love with a little bit more every single time she opened her mouth. It was so fucking real.”
- “I barely registered the warmth of her arms around my shoulders the press of her kiss to my neck when I stilled on top of her, or the way she whispered, “Stay on top of me like this forever.” “Don’t ever stop being so fucking open,” I murmured, pulling my gaze to her face. “Don’t stop asking for what you want.” “I won’t,” she whispered. “I got you tonight, didn’t I?” And just that simply, I was claimed.”
- “If I go up with you . . .” I started. She was already nodding. “I know.” “I don’t know if I can be slow.” Her eyes darkened and she pressed against me. “I know.”
- “Because he’s in love with you. And if you’re as amazing as he seems to think you are, you won’t blow this.”
- “You’re so fucking beautiful, I didn’t say. I love you so much, I didn’t say.”
- “She looked up at me, almost triumphant with discovery. “I was right—you made the best noise when you came.”
- “We’d been loud. Too loud? We were far down the hall, separated from the raging party by a number of rooms, but I still had no sense what the outside world had done while mine had melted in Hanna’s arms.”
- “The Danger of Will Sumner, I reminded myself. Everything he says sounds filthy, and now you’re thinking of him naked. Again.”
- “You always hold out so long. I want it to feel so good you can’t last.” “You’re so evil,” I hissed and she laughed, turning her head to capture my mouth in a kiss.”
- “I could tell her, I have feelings for you I haven’t had before. I’ve been struggling with them since the first second I saw you, weeks ago. I don’t know what these feelings mean, but I want to find out.”
- “It had been forever since I’d felt like I wanted to take over someone’s sexual history, completely overwrite it with my hands and dick and mouth.”
- “She ran her hands up my chest and cupped my neck, whispering, “Hey.” That look, that tenderness in her eyes, made me realize for the first time what was happening to me: I was falling in love. “Hey,” I rasped, bending to kiss her.”
- “Looking over at me, she licked her lips and my heart tripped as I registered she could taste herself from my fingers. I wondered if I’d be remembering her taste until the end of time.”
- “And, if she did, I wondered if she could see in my eyes that it had been good, so good for me; it was making me want to kneel at her feet right now.”
- “Your smoldering might eventually kill me, Will. And the best thing is I think you have no clue that you look at women this way.”
- “I closed my eyes, pressing my teeth into his neck, biting down, giving him every bit of pleasure could think. I wanted him to want me so much that it didn’t matter that I was inexperienced or unsure. I wanted to find a way to erase the memory of every woman who came before me. I wanted to feel–to know–that he belonged to me. I wondered for a sharp, painful beat how many other women had thought the exact same thing.”
- “I’ll be yours every second if that’s what you want. You just have to tell me, Plum.”
- “Fine. Have it your way, four. Is it bad form after only four months to tell you I think you’re my forever?”
- “Do you think about it?” she asked. “Kissing me there?” “I have,” I admitted. “I think about it and wonder if I’d ever come up for air.”
- “I pulled out a kitchen stool, sinking down onto it. Running a half marathon didn’t exhaust me as much as all of this did. My love for her was a heavy, pulsing, living thing, and it made me feel crazy, and anxious, and famished. I hated seeing her stressed and scared. I hated seeing her upset at my anger, but even worse was the knowledge that she had the power to break my heart and had very little experience being careful about it. I was completely at her fumbling, inexperienced mercy.”
- “I think you’d melt like sugar on my tongue. What do you think?” She laughed a little, holding on to my shoulders. “I think I’m melting now.” “I think you are. I think you’re going to melt all over my fucking hand and I’ll lick it off after. Are you loud, little Plum? When you come are you wild?”
- “Hi, Hanna.” Her mouth dropped open and her beautiful eyes went wide. “You didn’t call me Ziggy.” Smiling, I whispered, “I know.” “Say it again?” Her voice came out husky, as if she was asking me to touch her again, to kiss her again.”
- “I shook my head. “I’ve never said ‘I love you’ before, if that’s what you mean.” Though Hanna would have no way of knowing I said it to her, silently, nearly every time we touched.”
- “She was so fucking sweet and warm, our first kiss was unreal: just a slide of my lips over hers, asking: Let me do this. Let me do this and be gentle and careful with every part of you.”
- “I think I’d been lost in her the second I pulled the wool cap over her adorably rumpled bed head on our first run.”
- “I wanted to lie in bed with her at night, and bemoan the ordeal of planning a wedding. I wanted it all.”
- “Will’s jaw was carved and covered in dark stubble. I had a sudden and overwhelming urge to feel it on my thighs.”
- “Her eyes danced and then she tilted her head back and burst out laughing. Holy fuck, I liked this girl. I liked her a lot.”
- “She looked away, and I almost told her to come back. I was growing addicted to the buzz I felt when she was looking directly at me.”
- “I think about having you spread over my face,” I said. “And taking you on the floor just inside my apartment because I can’t wait long enough to get us anywhere more comfortable. I don’t want to be with anyone else lately, and it means I spend an awful lot of time going for runs at random hours, or with my hand on my own dick wishing it was yours instead.”
- “His voice rumbled low and encouraging in my ear, telling me how good I felt, how close he was, how he needed this so much he felt like he worked every day just to get back to me. He told me being with me felt like being home. And when I fell, I didn’t care whether I was awkward or jagged, whether I was inexperienced or naïve. I cared only that his lips were pressed firmly to my neck and his arms were wrapped around me so tight the only way I could move was closer to him.”
- “Something about her made me feel hungry, like I wanted to be as honest and calm about everything in my life as she was. I wanted to know Hanna, to hear her thoughts on everything.”
- “maybe it was simply that I was wild for her, and showing Hanna how to pleasure me made me feel like I was telling the universe, This one belongs to me.”
- “Seeing her face–strangely–like being home again, but also like meeting a beautiful girl for the first time.”
- “I like when you watch me. I can’t think straight when you have those crazy gray eyes on me.”
- “Ziggy was Jensen’s sister. Ziggy was the kid I never knew. Hanna was this uninhibited, self-possessed woman in front of me who I was pretty sure was going to effectively wreck my world.”
- “You’re looking at me like I’m food.” She held out her carrot, grinned wickedly. “Want some?” I shook my head. “I want you.”
- “Good?” she whispered, stroking the sensitive skin there, no smile, no frown, simply needing to know. I nodded, reaching to run my thumb over her cheek. “You’re perfect.”
- “She was silly, and confident, and so much her own person it almost made the rest of the world seem monochromatic.”
- “he might be nearly irresistible and the most naturally sensual man on the planet, but Hanna Bergstrom could handle Will Sumner.”
- “My stomach twisted with warmth when he said my name, and I knew I’d stand out in the cold all night if it meant he’d say it again.”
- “Are you fucking kidding? You’re so fucking soft; I want to lick up and down every part of this.”
- “He tilted his head and closed his eyes, moving in just enough to kiss me once, lips parted. “Tell me to stop, Hanna.”
- “I like when you can’t hold back. It’s how I always felt with you.”
- “My chest warmed intensely when it occurred to me: this was our beginning. Right here, partially hidden by the steam of the shower, was where we clarified everything.”
- “You look pretty,” I said, leaning against the counter beside her. She snapped into the carrot. “Thanks.” “Think I might fuck you senseless in a few minutes.” Shrugging and pretending to look nonchalant, she murmured, “Okay.”
- “You’re such a player.’ She said it with a smile but I hated it. I hated the tight edge to her voice and knowing that was exactly how she saw me: fucking anything that moved, and now her, in this conglomeration of limbs and lips and pleasure.”
- “It messes with my head to call you Hanna.” It makes me think you’re mine, I didn’t add.”
- “I heard him groan again as he stretched and closed my eyes at the sound. It sounded exactly, precisely, and distractingly like sex. Breathe through your nose, Hanna. Stay calm.”
- “Wasn’t it enough that I was secretly giving her the chance to break my heart?”
- “He continued to stare. He stared at my neck, at my lips, and then took time to inspect my eyes. The energy between us was palpable . . . but, no. I had to be completely misreading the situation. This was precisely the danger of Will Sumner.”
- “It was the first time she’d slept in my bed and yet it felt like she’d always been there.”
- “She slid it over me in tiny increments as if I were made of glass and not about to fuck her so hard the bed would drop into the apartment below us.”
- “For once I was looking for complicated, and she was trying on simple.”
- “I’d somehow always expected love to be primarily a mental state, so I still felt unaccustomed to the physical manifestation of my feelings for her: the way my stomach would grow tight, the way my chest would press in, my heart pounding blood hard and fast through my arteries.”