Wrecked (Crystal Book Billionaires)
Read Wrecked (Crystal Book Billionaires) Online
Authors: Jessica Blake
Tags: #alpha billionaire, #hot guys, #bad boy, #steamy sex, #seduction rich man, #north carolina, #Secrets
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ONTENTS
Grace Wells’ life is one long party until her world is turned upside down. When her family’s business goes under, she’s left with nothing. Goodbye mansion in the Hollywood Hills. Goodbye weekends spent sipping cocktails while fishing for the latest hotties. Goodbye shopping. Goodbye expensive cars. Worst of all… goodbye Los Angeles.
Now Grace is headed to Crystal Brook, North Carolina where she's left to practically fend for herself. With her inheritance down the drain, Grace is left having to start a new life—a task which seems nearly impossible. Until she catches sight of the gorgeous Luke Anderson who, cha-ching, is from a billionaire banking family.
Suddenly, Grace's luck seems to have turned around. Once she snags Luke and makes him her husband, she can return to her old pampered life. Unfortunately, Luke sees right through her. After all, he’s spent his entire life trying to escape her kind.
But Grace is on a mission and what Grace wants, Grace gets.
And this time, she gets more than she bargained for.
HAPTER
O
NE
Grace
T
he long streak of light crackled and whizzed, pirouetting up into the air and exploding in a glorious plume of purple and green. More fireworks followed, each one lighting up the sky and the calm ocean beneath them. I pressed my hips against the banister, leaning as far as I could. The scene was so vivid. If I only tried hard enough, it felt as if I could reach out and touch the multi-colored stars.
Next to me, Rainy whistled and jumped up and down, some of her cocktail spilling over the rim of its glass. “More blue!” she slurred, like whoever was at the pier setting off the fireworks might just hear her and abide.
“Swim over there,” I teased her. “Just make sure to change into your bathing suit first. That’ll convince them.”
She gave me a saucy pout. “That’s a good idea. Maybe I will. Or maybe
you
should go. Men love Latinas.”
I rolled my eyes. “Whatever.”
“Half Latina counts,” she said. “Because you know…”
Another round of fireworks burst into the sky, drowning out the end of her sentence. Several more people from the party pushed against the edge of the yacht,
oohing
and smiling up at the sky.
Two firm hands pressed into the small of my back before snaking around my waist. I tried to play it cool and hide my smile. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Rainy grin and waggle her eyebrows at me from underneath her thick blonde bangs.
“How’s the view?” Eli said into my ear between two explosions.
I pushed one hip back just right, the tight fabric of my sparkly green dress stretching to its limit. I’d picked it out with him in mind, although not in a million years would I admit that. My hip grazed his thigh, and he responded by shuffling forward a bit.
“Better now that you’re here,” I answered, making an attempt even though half of my sentence was lost in the noise.
I turned sideways to peek at him. His unruly brown hair was sticking up every which way — a style that was meant to seem casual but which I knew took painful time crafting.
His hand slid down to my palm and tugged. I hesitated, planting my six inch stilettos firmly into the deck. Eli gazed back at me, and I cocked an eyebrow, letting it be known that I questioned his intentions. No way was he drawing me away that easily, no matter how willing I was to go. Eli and I had only hooked up once. Well, maybe once and a half — that depended on exactly what you considered hooking up — and there was no reason for me to stop playing hard to get anytime soon.
He jerked his head to the main door leading below deck. Between us and it, several black tie servers moved about with trays, offering drinks and hor d’oeuvres to the mostly twenty something crowd. The best Fourth of July party I’d been to in years was in full swing, and there was no way Elijah Bishop Welty was going to enjoy the satisfaction of drawing me away from it without a fight.
“Well?” I said, despite the fact that he couldn’t hear me. He could read my lips, though, and his fingers grasped mine harder as he took a step towards me.
“I want to show you something below,” he said into my ear.
I tried to keep my face composed while I slowly nodded.
One minute,
I mouthed, although we both knew that if things went well for both of us, we would be gone for much longer than one minute.
I let him lead me through the door and into the red carpeted hallway decorated with gold and white striped wallpaper, past the entrance to the kitchen and into a long room at the end of the yacht. I didn’t know much about boats — except that it probably isn’t okay to call a yacht a “boat” — but I knew the vessel we were on was impressive. It was all thanks to Rainy’s father, a man who had made his mark as a leading actor in high budget action flicks decades before Rainy and I were even born. He called the party an early birthday present for her, though her twenty-second was still months away.
The room Eli pulled me into had a fish tank longer than a couch in the middle of it. A big flat screen TV was planted against the wall and strewn about the room were chairs and chaises. I walked over to the tank, inspecting the tan starfish creeping along the pebbled floor.
“You look amazing tonight,” Eli said to my back.
“Oh yeah?” I softly responded, watching his reflection in the fish tank’s glass.
His voice practically dripped with lust. “Yeah.” The boy wanted me, and he wanted me
bad,
but I was enjoying the chase too much to just give in right then and there. Trailing my finger along the base of the tank, I tried to think of what to say next.
The cell phone ringing in my clutch interrupted all thoughts. I jumped slightly, having forgotten that I’d left the volume on the stupid thing turned up all the way.
“Do you need to get that?” Eli asked.
I dug in my little white purse while I turned to face him. My fingers found the side of the phone, and I hit the silence button. “Nope.”
He took a couple of fast steps towards me, stopping only a foot away. “What was I saying?”
I tilted my face up towards his. “You were telling me how good I look tonight.”
His mouth broke into a side grin. “Oh, yeah. I was.”
“You wanna keep going with that?”
Two palms grasped my hips, pushing my back up against the tank. “I’d rather do other things with my mouth.”
The dam inside of me broke.
To hell with playing hard to get.
“Show me what you had in mind,” I whispered.