Need You Now (1001 Dark Nights)
Need You Now
A Shattered Promises Series Prelude
By Lisa Renee Jones
1001 Dark Nights
Need You Now
A Shattered Promises Series Prelude
By Lisa Renee Jones
1001 Dark Nights
Copyright 2014 Lisa Renee Jones
ISBN: 978-1-940887-20-3
Foreword: Copyright 2014 M. J. Rose
Published by Evil Eye Concepts, Incorporated
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or establishments is solely coincidental.
Book Description
Need You Now (Shattered Promises Series Prelude)
By Lisa Renee Jones
Life is hard. Life leaves you beaten, broken...alone. Then one day, a stranger touches your hand and you feel something intense, unforgettable...but you want to forget. You need to forget. It’s safer than believing in things you’ve decided don’t exist. You know shattered promises and lost hope. You know them so much better than you know this excited, warm, wonderful feeling, and it scares you. He scares you, but he also makes you feel alive again. He makes you realize you haven’t really been living. You’ve been surviving and you fear he’s the one who’ll make you forget how to keep doing it. But what if he’s the one who changes everything?
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The First Night
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Table of Contents
Part Eight: Rules Are Made To Be Broken
Part Nine: The Morning After Take Two
An excerpt from
I Belong to You
by Lisa Renee Jones
One Thousand and One Dark Nights
Once upon a time, in the future…
I was a student fascinated with stories and learning.
I studied philosophy, poetry, history, the occult, and
the art and science of love and magic. I had a vast
library at my father’s home and collected thousands
of volumes of fantastic tales.
I learned all about ancient races and bygone
times. About myths and legends and dreams of all
people through the millennium. And the more I read
the stronger my imagination grew until I discovered
that I was able to travel into the stories... to actually
become part of them.
I wish I could say that I listened to my teacher
and respected my gift, as I ought to have. If I had, I
would not be telling you this tale now.
But I was foolhardy and confused, showing off
with bravery.
One afternoon, curious about the myth of the
Arabian Nights, I traveled back to ancient Persia to
see for myself if it was true that every day Shahryar
(Persian:
شهريار,
“king”) married a new virgin, and then
sent yesterday's wife to be beheaded. It was written
and I had read, that by the time he met Scheherazade,
the vizier's daughter, he’d killed one thousand
women.
Something went wrong with my efforts. I arrived
in the midst of the story and somehow exchanged
places with Scheherazade – a phenomena that had
never occurred before and that still to this day, I
cannot explain.
Now I am trapped in that ancient past. I have
taken on Scheherazade’s life and the only way I can
protect myself and stay alive is to do what she did to
protect herself and stay alive.
Every night the King calls for me and listens as I spin tales.
And when the evening ends and dawn breaks, I stop at a
point that leaves him breathless and yearning for more.
And so the King spares my life for one more day, so that
he might hear the rest of my dark tale.
As soon as I finish a story... I begin a new
one... like the one that you, dear reader, have before
you now.
Another year. Another moment in time that is here and gone, and right and wrong, in the same instant. That’s what birthdays mean to me, but tonight, to my best friend Katie, it’s a celebration her man has missed and a few too many Tequila Sunrises.
“One more!” she exclaims from the dimly lit corner booth of Mickie’s, the bar nestled inside the New York high-rise Norton’s Hotel where we both work.
“No more for me,” I say, holding up my hands. “My head is spinning and I don’t like it.”
“You’re too much of a control freak, Danielle. It’s my birthday. Let loose for once.”
“Danny,” I correct, hating the way my birth name reminds me of stepfather number two, my least favorite of the four. “And I’m already too loose.”
She crinkles her nose and blows a long lock of her blonde hair, as pale as my own, from her eyes. “Danny is too masculine,” she says, ignoring my comment about being “too loose.”
“Nothing wrong with a little masculine energy.”
“On a man. You’re not a man. You are not even close to being a man.”
“Thanks for that validation.” I laugh. “And you’re so drunk it’s not even funny. Work tomorrow is going to be hell for you.”
“My department doesn’t go in until noon on Tuesdays. Besides, I’m 25 and alone on my birthday. And I’m in a stuffy business bar with elevator music softly playing in the background because we both had to work late. We should be two babes in the city finding hot men and we’re not. Of course I’m drunk.”
“First, you have a man, and I’ve sworn off the other sex.”
“Oh please. A girl can’t go a year without a good hot man pressed nice and close without losing her mind. I worry for you, honey.”
“My mind is just fine.” I laugh. “I simply find men distracting when I can’t afford to be distracted. ”
“Then just have sex. You have to miss sex.”
She’s right. I do, but I don’t miss the way it creates a sense of being with someone that is all façade and fantasy, not reality.
“At least when you were on again, off again with that attorney Mad Max,” she continues, “you had a hot man to get naked with.”
I shake my head. “You named him Mad Max for a reason. He was always angry.”
“True, but not in bed, right?”
I bite my bottom lip.
“Oh God,” she gasps. “Was he violent? And why didn’t I know this?”
“He wasn’t violent. He was...rough.”
“In a good way?”
“Hmmm...Yes. No. Until I figured out that angry and arrogant were his only moods, in bed or out. There was nothing else.”
“But he was rich.”
“Which made him all the more arrogant.” My brow furrows. “And by the way. Alone? You aren’t alone. Who am I? The ghost of birthdays past?”
“You know what I mean,” she chides, glowering to boot. “David isn’t here and it’s hard to be without him.”
I’d rather be alone than with an asshole like her boyfriend, but I hold my tongue on that little tidbit of truth. To me, alone is safe. And I’m good at it, but everyone isn’t, Katie especially. “You’re dating a rock star,” I remind her, trying to ground her in the reality of her decisions. “That means you accept he’s often away on tour.”
She snorts, proving she left normal ladylike tendencies swimming in the last glass of tequila. “He’s not a rock star yet,” she argues. “He’s still indie and if he won’t go out of his way for my birthday now, what do I have to expect if he gets that contract he’s after? He’s got days before his next show. He could have been here if he wanted to be.” She finishes off her drink. “He’s got groupies already. He’s probably with them.” Her cell phone rings and she anxiously scrambles for it, clearly hoping it’s the rock star asshole himself, but her face falls. “It’s my mother. I have to take it.”
I share an understanding look with her, scooting to the end of the booth, preparing to give her privacy.
“Can you—” she begins.
“Get drinks,” I supply, standing. “You got it.”
A look of appreciation flashes over her chiseled, model-like features, so different from my sweet cheeks and heart-shaped face, as she mouths, “Lord help me” and answers the call.
I make tracks toward the oval bar at the right of the room, dodging several smaller, round tables with red, pearl-shaped lights dangling above them, fully intending to buy her some comfort. I know how this conversation is going to affect her, even on a birthday. Heck, especially on a birthday. I love my mother but I dread her calls, too.
At the counter, I claim a gaping spot between two empty barstools, and flag Jimmy, the thirty-something bartender who works in accounting by day and here at night for nearly a year. “Ready for the cake?” he asks.