Read an Excerpt
BACHELOR PARTIES WERE the worst. Stella Krane couldn’t understand why guys needed a wedding in order to go to a bar, drink their asses off, flirt with strangers, and talk about it for the rest of their lives. Remember when…? It was like a rite of passage for uptight businessmen. Real men took it to a hotel room, hired strippers, and fucked the hell out of them in ways their pretty little wives wouldn’t ever let them. She cringed at the thought. She wouldn’t want a man who did that. God, what was going on with her?
There was a time when Stella had dreamed of being someone’s pretty little wife, but that was before Carl Kutcher. Her gut twisted with the realization that he was getting out of jail in four days. The man had stolen every dream she’d ever had—and who knew when he’d steal her life. She no longer held on to the fantasy of a doting husband, a few kids, and a white picket fence. Now she was just happy to be alive.
“Hey, sweetheart, how about a little sugar with my drink?” drunken asshole number six asked as he leaned over the bar. He was with the bachelor party and had been drinking for the past few hours. Five guys with wedding rings pawing, groping, leering, making lewd comments, and trying their best to live out a stilted fantasy.
Stella eyed his wedding ring. Damn, she needed to get off tonight—and she wasn’t thinking about getting off work. It’d been too many months since she’d gotten laid, and she’d had it up to here watching everyone else play out their dirty fantasies. She longed for the feel of a man’s hands on her ass while his cock drove hard and deep inside her, allowing her brain to escape reality for a while. Stella wasn’t really a one-night-fuck type of girl—but right then, boy did she wish she were. She missed the feel of a hard chest pressing against her and the deep, naughty whispers of a man telling her how much he wanted her. She’d never been that down-and-dirty girl until Kutcher. He’d sparked a side of her that she hadn’t known existed, a dangerous, rebellious side that turned her on in ways she never imagined possible. But that was before things went bad and Kutcher showed his true colors. The bastard. She refused to even think of him as Carl anymore. Now he was just Kutcher. Kutcher had taught her many things, like that men pretty much suck. They lie, cheat, and sometimes…they beat the hell out of you.
She narrowed her catlike green eyes at the mildly attractive, dark-haired sure thing before her and practically purred, “How about I get you another drink and you go home and fuck your wife’s sugar-coated pussy?”
Jaw slack—check. Eyes wide—check. Oh, look, a bonus. Mr. I Want Some Sugar backed away from the bar.
Some days she felt like a babysitter and a whore at once, but hey, working at a bar in New York City might not be like running her own interior design business in Mystic, Connecticut, but it kept her alive. She missed Mystic. She missed the harbor, the safety of the small town, her friends. She missed her mother most of all. Her mother was battling cancer, but like everything else in her life, she’d had to sever all ties with her mother in order to keep her safe from Kutcher.
Stella had lived in Mystic her whole life. Until Kutcher. Fucking Kutcher. Slick-tongued, hard-bodied, and unfortunately, hard-fisted Kutcher. She’d dated him for only a few months before he showed his true colors. His possessiveness knew no boundaries, and she’d barely escaped with her life. No, this might not be Mystic, and she might have had to leave everything she knew and loved behind, but at least she’d survived—even if she had to spend the rest of her life pretending to be someone she wasn’t.
