Wrecking Ball, page 1
Wrecking Ball
Lindsey Powell
Contents
Books by Lindsey Powell
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
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Content copyright © Lindsey Powell 2021
Cover design by Wicked Dreams Publishing 2021
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilised in any form, or by any electronic or mechanical means, without the prior written permission of the author.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional. Any similarities to other fictional workings, or real persons (living or dead), names, places, and companies is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
The right of Lindsey Powell to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents act 1988.
A CIP record of this book is available from the British Library.
Except for the original material written by the author, all mention of films, television shows and songs, song titles, and lyrics mentioned in the novel, Wrecking Ball, are the property of the songwriters and copyright holders.
Books by Lindsey Powell
The Perfect Series
Perfect Stranger
Perfect Memories
Perfect Disaster
Perfect Beginnings
The Complete Perfect Series
Part of Me Series
Part of Me
Part of You
Part of Us
Control Duet
Losing Control
Taking Control
Games We Play Series
Checkmate
Poker Face
Dark Roulette
A Valentine Christmas
Games We Play: The Complete Series
Stand-alone
Take Me
Fixation
Don’t Look Back
Wrecking Ball
Chapter One
Kat
Every girl dreams about it.
Every woman plans it.
The white dress.
The pretty flowers.
The handsome man waiting at the altar.
And that is the most important part.
The guy. The one you want to spend the rest of your life with. The one that will cherish you, love you, protect you and make you feel like they would move heaven and earth to make you happy.
Yeah. That guy.
Except, I’m not marrying that guy.
Instead, I’m stood next to the devil with a fake smile plastered on my face.
I’m wearing the dress and I have the pretty flowers, but that’s as far as it goes. The rest has all been fabricated.
You see, I’m stood here because of a debt. A debt I stupidly thought I could repay with money, but no. Instead, I’m paying with my life, and it’s all my fault.
I lost and gambled away my own future.
Crazy, huh?
That it may be, but it’s happened and here I am.
I’m not marrying the man I love; I’m marrying the most dangerous guy in the country.
Nate Knowles.
Number one asshole and blackmail extraordinaire.
I had a debt with the most powerful man in the crime world, and I truly believed that I could have paid him back… until I didn’t.
One wrong choice was my downfall.
And that choice I made was for love. A love that turned out to be false. The man I thought I loved turned his back on me and left me to rot.
And now, here I am.
Bowing down to the crime lord where his world involves popping a bullet in someone’s head as if it is as normal as eating breakfast.
Playing ball is what will keep me alive.
Acting the part is what will stop me from being fifty feet under.
So, even as I hate Nate Knowles with a passion, I will smile and say the right things in public, but in private, all bets are off.
I need a plan, a way to get the hell out of this nightmare.
I need to suss things out, ingrain myself so deep that he will never see it coming.
Role of a lifetime.
Good meets evil.
And I will take down the monster.
You just see if I don’t…
Chapter Two
Six months earlier
Kat
I was minding my own business, sitting in my office, looking at the books and wondering how the hell I’m going to keep my bar afloat when all it is doing is haemorrhaging money that I don’t have… I was minding my own, trying to deal with all the shit in my head… No money, fuck all customers, no Clark because he’s upped and fucked off––leaving me to deal with everything––no phone call, no note, no goddamn words from him… and then Nate fucking Knowles walked in to make my day even shittier. Not only do I have the brewery breathing down my fucking neck for their pound of flesh, but I’ve also got the most dangerous man to walk the earth sitting in front of me with a smirk on his face because he knows that I can’t give him shit.
He knows this business is on its knees.
He knows that I can’t pay up, and I guess my time of reckoning has come.
Except… it hasn’t come in the form that I thought it would. I figured I’d be led away, maybe cop a bullet in my head for a quick release from all of the stress I have carried around with me for the last few months. But no. Instead, Nate the Crime Lord has strolled in here like he owns the place and thrown down the gauntlet…
“So, you want to make me a deal?” I ask, flabbergasted that I may just survive another day.
“Yes,” he replies, his dark tones doing nothing to ease the worry in my mind.
“But I didn’t pay up in time,” I say, wondering what alternate universe I have woken up in to be given another lifeline.
“I am fully aware of that fact, Miss Wiltshire.” Oh damn. The way he says my name makes me shiver with… nerves? Excitement? Probably both with an added sense of fear chucked in for good measure.
“And why would you do that?” I ask, dreading what the answer may be whilst still being intrigued.
He chuckles as he sits in the seat opposite me, on the other side of my desk, and fucking hell, the noise alone is enough to pull you in and make you want this man for your own… if he weren’t an asshole who is only out for himself, of course.
“Because I want to fuck you,” he says, his eyes dark, his lips pulled together in a straight line, the chuckle he let out seconds ago long gone.
My mouth opens and closes like a fish out of water. Seconds tick by and turn into minutes as silence engulfs us.
He wants to fuck me?
What the hell?
In another lifetime, I’d probably have been quite happy to jump on his dick… I mean, he’s gorgeous, there’s no doubt about it. Those sea-green eyes are captivating, that chiselled jaw just begs for me to run my tongue along it, those broad shoulders are made for my fingernails to dig in as I ride him, that black hair is begging to be tugged and have my fingers entwined through it as we come hard together… and then that ass is something straight out of a catalogue where only the buffest men grace the pages. And the tattoo I can see, snaking its way up the side of his neck and stopping just below his ear… Christ, I need to get a grip.
“I can see that you are struggling over there, so let me break it down for you,” he starts as he sits there, dominating the room. “I want to own you, command you and break you. I want you to need me like you have never needed anyone before. I want to be your everything and more,” he says, his sea-green eyes fixated on my light-blue ones.
“Why?” I whisper as I try to calm my racing heart.
“Why not?” he counters, looking as cool as a fucking cucumber.
“Why not?” I repeat back to him, my voice not hiding the emotions running through me. “You’ve just said you want to own me, command me and fucking break me… Forgive me for being more than a little confused about what the fuck is going on here.”
“First of all, we’re going to need to get that potty mouth of yours under control. I’m not going to have my wife dropping f-bombs all over the place,” he says, and I feel like the wind has been completely knocked out of my sails.
“Wife?” I question. “You want me to marry you?”
“Yes.” No further explanation, just a simple ‘Yes,’ as if that settles things.
“No way. Not happening,” I say, shaking my head from side to side, my eyes wide with shock.
“Well then, Miss Wiltshire, it seems that you have two options. One, you become my wife and live a fairly decent life where you will have protection and
Choice?
I don’t have a fucking choice! Is he crazy? Of course he is. He’s Nate Knowles, crime lord and total nut job. I was an idiot to get into bed with him in the first place, so to speak.
“Be my wife or die, the choices are laid bare, nothing hidden,” he says, and I can’t help the sarcastic laugh that leaves me.
“Nothing hidden?” I muse. “You don’t expect me to believe that bullshit, do you?”
“Again with the vulgar words,” he says as he stands, buttons up his suit jacket and walks around to my side of the desk until he is stood beside where I sit. He turns my chair to face him, leans down and places his hands on either side of my chair, closing me in, encasing me as his delicious scent invades my senses. And as he leans down, his lips become level with mine, and I can’t help but notice how full they are. My heart races, my blood pumps, and my pussy tingles, because clearly, she wants what is right in front of me, even as my head fights against everything this man represents. Death, violence, crime… it’s so far from my world… and I need to stop looking at his body because I could easily let myself loose on this man. I bet he fucks hard and… For God’s sake, stop it, Kat.
I quickly move my gaze back up, but when I connect my eyes with his, I fear it was a mistake. His eyes are hungry, I can see it. He sees me as a fucking toy that he can destroy, but he doesn’t really know me and I’m not going to let some crime lord believe that he is going to kill my spirit. I’m determined, just like him, and if I have to become his wife in order to survive, then so be it.
If I gain his trust, I can ruin him, just like he’s trying to do to me.
“You have twenty-four hours to make your choice,” he says in a deep, low voice before pushing away from me and making his way to my office door.
“Wait,” I call out as his hand pauses on the door handle. He slowly turns as I make my way over to him, until I am standing in front of him, looking up, admiring how bloody handsome he is. If only he wasn’t an asshole that likes to fuck with people’s lives.
I think of my bar and how I’ve worked my ass off for years for it all to come to nothing.
I think about how Clark has totally screwed me over and how he just ran away because he’s a goddamn coward.
I think of my shitty apartment where I’ve been scrabbling to meet the rental payment every month because Clark never helped me do shit.
I think about how stupid I was to stay with Clark and how it’s led me to this moment.
Marry a crime lord or die.
Dear God, you couldn’t make this shit up.
And as I realise that I am going to have to kiss goodbye to my current life and adopt a new one, I open my mouth and speak before I have a chance to change my mind.
“I don’t need twenty-four hours,” I say, determination coursing through me. “I’m in.”
Chapter Three
Present Day
Nate
Kat Wiltshire. A woman that any man would be lucky to have. A woman that I am marrying in mere moments. Except, I’m not lucky, I’m not her soulmate, but she is mine, and I will do everything I can to fucking break her and make her see that I am the only person she will ever need. Seems drastic, but she’s fucking stubborn, and I look forward to smashing those damn walls she’s built around her. Walls that should never have been put up in the first place, but then, we all make shitty decisions at times and I guess her ex was one of hers. Fucking Clark. I mean, even the name is a shitty one, let alone the decision to spend your life with a total and utter fucking leech of nature.
She doesn’t know the half of what that douche bag did, and I have no plans to tell her, unless she pushes me of course, which I expect in my attempts to break her.
Yeah, I sound like a dick, and I’m okay with that. Because in order to save her, I have to break her first, but she isn’t going to know that.
In fact, she is going to think I’m her worst fucking nightmare.
As I wait for my bride-to-be to walk down the aisle, I cast my mind back to the moment I first laid eyes on her…
“Boss, you have a visitor,” Stefan––my right-hand man––says as he comes into my office with a suspicious smirk on his face.
I throw down the pen I was writing with and sit back in my seat. “And who is it?”
“Oh, I’m not making any introductions for this one,” he says before he disappears, and I refrain from calling him back because he’s just walked off and is about to let fuck knows who in here without giving me any details on who the hell it is.
I’ll be having fucking words with him later. This is not how we do shit. I like to know who thinks they can walk into my territory and think they have a free pass to come into my office––which on this occasion, I guess they do, because of Stefan. Fuck’s sake.
But all thoughts are halted as an actual goddess appears from behind the door, looking like Bambi caught in headlights for a few seconds before her eyes connect with mine and she schools her features.
Jesus.
Long brunette hair that is left down and framing her face, a slight tan to her skin that almost glows, curves in all the right places that instantly make my dick want to go exploring, full lips that just beg to have your tongue run over them and your teeth nibble them as you work her into a frenzy… and those eyes… light blue’s that have an array of emotions swirling in them. Determination, feistiness, doubt, nerves, excitement… And those tight jeans, come-fuck-me ankle boots and sleeveless shirt that has a couple of buttons open at the top but in a classy way rather than a slutty way… Jesus, fuck.
She seems to snap out of whatever daze she was in and fixes me with a hard stare, her emotions shutting off, and in its place, nothing but confidence. She walks further into the room, her jaw clenched, her chin lifting slightly as she comes to a stop in front of my desk, and I allow my lips to pull into the smirk that I had been holding back as I looked up and down her beautiful body and naturally gorgeous face.
“Mr Knowles, my name is Kat Wiltshire, and I am here to ask a favour of you.”
Her voice is like fucking music to my ears.
This woman is sex on legs and then some.
And her words bring me nothing but joy.
“I am here to ask a favour of you.”
This is going to be fun…
The music starts to play, and the guests begin to stand. There are a fair few here because I am a fucking crime lord, so if people get invited to my wedding, they come, no questions asked.
I turn around as the doors open fully and watch as my bride stands there, the light framing her like an angel. I have to control my jaw from dropping because she is fucking stunning. Wearing a gorgeous cream dress that highlights her perfect curves and shows off her slightly tanned shoulders, I have to admit that I did fucking good when she failed to pay up. Her long brunette hair is curled around her face, hanging loose, just begging to be wrapped around my hands and pulled as I fuck her senseless.
And then there is her face. Her beautiful face which she has kept as natural as possible, but let’s be truthful here, the woman doesn’t need any make-up. She’s naturally gorgeous, and she doesn’t even realise it, which just makes her even sexier.
Yeah, I hit the fucking jackpot, and it’s a damn shame that I have to break her in order to make her see that it is only me who can own her heart, her body, her mind, and her soul.
