Taking Control

PRAISE FOR
TAKING CONTROL

“This story is so well put together. Every part of it seamlessly done. It has passion, tenderness, obsession, love, revenge, a strong Hero AND heroine, and the ending was everything you could ask for. It’s so easy to fall short with a second book and sometimes I tend to get bored with the plot. But in this case...there was one! And it was awesome!”

—Christie from SHBB Blogger

“This isn’t a typical billionaire story. Tiny is an extremely strong woman…Really though what made this book for me was Ian, he is freaking smoking hot and a total alpha. I have a major book crush on him.”

—Julia’s Book Haven

“Watch out for the HOTTEST SHOWER SCENE EVER!!! I’d totally give this book as many stars as I can anywhere that I can!”

—Jammie at 2 Bookaholics

“
Taking Control
was extremely well written with a captivating story line and in depth characters. The whole book was very believable.”

—Kim from Goodreads

PRAISE FOR
LOSING CONTROL

“This book was so hot I thought I might spontaneously combust!”

—Chelsea (Starbucks & Books Obsession)

“...very fast paced—fantastic main characters...”

—Book Angel Emma

“Frederick weaves a strong tale about love, loss, hope and letting go of the past in order to build a future. She brings two lost souls together who have more in common than either of them realized and it will have your heart in flutters. The sincerity in this book is genuine; your heart will break for these characters; you will cry for them, love them and hope for them.”

—JC at All Is Read

“
Losing Control
is one HUGE SURPRISE! I absolutely loved it!”

—Lorie Economos at The To Be Read List

“
Losing Control
has one of MY favorite things... a nice slow burn. These two didn’t just jump into bed together, nope they let that chemistry build and build and build until they came together in flames of glory! The only thing I wish that Losing Control had was... MORE! I need more!!!”

—Nicole from Goodreads

PRAISE FOR
LAST HIT

“This was a great start to a new series and is without a doubt going on my favorites list and my re-read shelf…Ican’t wait to read the next book in the series because I’m already on edge about it.”

—Melissa at SM Book Obsessions

“
Last Hit
by Jessica Clare and Jen Frederick will forever hold a special place in my heart because quite honestly, I can’t remember the last time I gave a book a perfect 5 star rating. While I was sad to see Daisy and Nikolai’s story come to an end, I walked away feeling satisfied.”

—Mia at The Muses Circle

“More than a page-turner... I was enthralled!”

—Jona from Goodreads

ONE

IAN

L
OVE
WEAKENS
YOU
. T
HAT
’
S
THE
conclusion I’ve come to as I gaze down at the woman slumbering next to me. Victoria Corielli is a slip of a thing. My hands span her slender waist. In her stocking feet, the top of her head brushes my chin. While she has muscular legs due to her previous occupation as a bike courier, the rest of her is on the slim side—more due to poverty and illness than the intense dieting socialites engage in.

Despite her size and diminutive nickname, she’s powerful. With a word, a look, a gesture, she can bring me to my knees.

As if sensing my scrutiny, her body shifts under the sheet, a heady susurration forms as luxurious cotton brushes against equally luxurious flesh.

Ian.

My name on her lips is hardly more than a whisper, but it’s enough to send me from contemplative to alert in a heartbeat. It was only hours ago that we fell asleep, and yet I find cannot leave her alone.

I lift one of her legs over my hip and ease into her. She greets me with a murmur that is half gasp, half pleasure.

“If this is a dream, don’t wake me,” she moans.

A small chuckle escapes. “Surely reality with me is better than your dreams.”

Her lids flutter open, and in the moonlit bedroom, her eyes look wide and endless. “I don’t know. I was having a pretty good dream.”

“What were you doing?” My movements are slow, almost careless. There’s no hurry and that, in and of itself, is an aphrodisiac. I can have her as many times as I need, for as long as I need, but I know I won’t ever be sated.

“I was with this guy. He was tall, dark-haired. Wore a big cape.” She smiles sleepily. “He pinned me down and held my wrists together and told me that I was going to have to suffer endlessly for my sins.”

“And what was your response?” I roll her onto her back and gather her wrists together, pulling her body roughly beneath mine. In the recent weeks, Tiny had been too sorrowful to play with me like this.

“That his endless punishment couldn’t start soon enough.”

Dropping my head to her neck, I breathe in the scent of her warm, aroused body. We’re both drunk on each other, and I inhale, wanting to take her inside me and finding it nearly impossible to get close enough. Beneath me, her body tightens like a bow string, quivering and taut.

“Now,” she growls, digging her nails into my hips. “Come with me. Now. Now.
Now
.”

Her command is my undoing. Whatever idea I had about slow and tender goes out the window. I take her then, hard and fast, pounding her until we both explode—her release is screamed out and mine is expelled through gritted teeth.

Collapsing to the side so I don’t crush her, I pull her limp body close.

“Sorry,” I murmur into her hair, pushing the sweaty strands to one side to expose her temple for a kiss. Her head tucks itself under my chin.

“For what? Waking me with an orgasm?” she asks sleepily. “Please be sorry every morning.”

“It’s not morning yet, bunny.”

She cuddles closer, and I stroke my hands through her dampened hair and down her back, this time to soothe her. Soon her even breathing tells me she is asleep again. Carefully tucking a sheet around her, I rise.

In the bathroom, I dispose of the condom and return with a warm washcloth. She flinches when I press the cloth against her but doesn’t wake. With a frown, I realize this is the third time tonight we’ve made love. I need to be more careful with her.

Returning to the bathroom, I toss the cloth in the hamper and then stare into the mirror. Waking her for a third time like some randy teenager with no self-control is not like me, but then I haven’t been normal since I met her.

When I first saw Victoria—or Tiny as her mother called her—on the street delivering a package, I wanted her. I liked the way she carried herself—self-assured and comfortable. I thought her long, blonde hair would look tempting spread out on my pillow. I imagined her thighs would be steel-hard from the biking. She made me laugh when she kicked the doorframe of the store after realizing the shop owner, who needed to sign for the delivery, was missing.

She made me hard when she stared at my lips like she wanted to taste me.

In those few minutes of interaction between us, I saw a panoply of emotions—vulnerability when she considered my request to play hooky and enjoy a day in the park followed by a night in my bed; frustration when her customer was absent; and iron discipline when her sense of responsibility overrode all else. Her unfettered emotionalism was refreshing. But it was when she ran from me and my direct offer of pleasure that my appetite was whetted.

I was well and truly caught.

I hadn’t actively avoided love, but I hadn’t sought it out. Why should I? I’d spent most of my thirty-two years fixated on making money. And there were few bedroom doors closed to me. Reasonable attractiveness—made infinitely more so by the thickness of my wallet—ensured that bachelorhood in New York City was easy and entertaining.

Maybe too easy, because her refusal unwittingly transformed her into an irresistible challenge. The more she denied me the more I wanted her. Her mother was ill with cancer, and Victoria believed she couldn’t juggle both my interest and her concern for her mother’s wellbeing.

My arrogant belief was that money would solve her problems, making it easy for her to slip into my bed. After all, money had solved most of my issues, except one. But the more cash I threw at her, the more barriers she erected.

Even now, I’m not sure how many walls I’ve managed to tear down, how far inside the citadel of her heart I stand which is why I probably woke her for a third time. Why I can’t keep my hands off her. I’m afraid that all I have binding her to me is the response I can generate in bed.

The world I live in is inhabited by people whose lust for
more
—whether it’s power or money or influence—drives them to the basest of actions. Show a weakness and someone will attempt to leverage it for their own benefit.

Tiny had only one thought in her life—to save her mother. It was a story I understood all too well, and the ending was as tragic as I’d suspected it might be. Tiny’s mother lost her battle with cancer.

In slumber, she seeks my touch, the one thing that has given her pleasure in the weeks after her mother’s death.

Some might say that I was a lucky son of a bitch—in the right place at the right time—because she needed someone, anyone, after her mom passed. But I make my own luck. Tiny’s special, and I’ll do anything to keep her.

There’s a danger that she’ll wake up from her grief-induced fog and realize that I’m a manipulative asshole who is more trouble than he’s worth, but I have time and proximity on my side. I’ve bought my way into her heart and life. I’ll lie, steal, and cheat to stay there because nothing is worth more than her.

She might not want my money, but she wants
me.
And I’m completely devoted to seeing that she is replete with satisfaction during every waking moment. I simply don’t know if that is enough—for both of us.

She finds me there in the pre-dawn hours, still staring blindly in the mirror.

“What’s wrong, Ian?” she asks, wrapping her arms around my waist and pressing her face into the valley of my spine. “And don’t say nothing because someone who’s perfectly at peace doesn’t stand in his bathroom looking into the mirror for hours. Is it Richard Howe?”

A sharp, bitter laugh escapes me. “I hate that you even know his name. His existence should be unfamiliar to you. He shouldn’t be allowed to breathe the same air, walk the same streets, eat at the same tables as you.”

Her hand squeezes my shoulder in reassurance. I need to pull it together. It is Tiny’s mother who passed and
she
is in need of comfort, yet here she is trying to saturate me with the warmth and solace of her body.

“Is it me? Am I preventing you from taking action?”

Pulling her arm around my waist, I struggle for the right answer. “It’s not you. It’s never been you.”

“Why have you waited so long to pull the trigger on him? Metaphorically speaking,” she rushes to add. “I’m not suggesting you should have murdered him or something, but why the kid gloves? The man embezzled money and blamed it on your father. He…hurt your mother, and because of him you had to grow up on your own. You’ve had the power to ruin him for years.”

Her explanation of the horror my life turned into after my father’s death is laughably euphemistic. My father had a heart attack after being blamed for a seven figure embezzlement orchestrated by Richard Howe, my father’s protégé. My mother killed herself in an Atlantic City jail after prostituting herself to Howe. I’d left that jail with her few effects, vowing revenge…and then I met Tiny.

Somehow the need to have her in my life has superseded my desire for retribution. At least momentarily.