The Dare Collection April 2020

JACKIE ASHENDEN writes dark, emotional stories with alpha heroes who’ve just gotten the world to their liking only to have it blown wide apart by their kick-ass heroines. She lives in Auckland, New Zealand, with her husband, the inimitable Dr. Jax, two kids and two rats. When she’s not torturing alpha males and their gutsy heroines, she can be found drinking chocolate martinis, reading anything she can lay her hands on, wasting time on social media or being forced to go mountain biking with her husband. To keep up-to-date with Jackie’s new releases and other news, sign up to her newsletter at jackieashenden.com.

CLARE CONNELLY was raised in small-town Australia among a family of avid readers. She spent much of her childhood up a tree, Mills & Boon book in hand. Clare is married to her own real-life hero, and they live in a bungalow near the sea with their two children. She is frequently found staring into space—a surefire sign that she’s in the world of her characters. She has a penchant for French food and ice-cold champagne, and Mills & Boon novels continue to be her favorite-ever books. Writing for Mills & Boon is a long-held dream. Clare can be contacted via clareconnelly.com or her Facebook page.

TARYN BELLE is the pen name of Cea Person, a bestselling Canadian author who wrote about her unconventional childhood in two memoirs, North of Normal and Nearly Normal, both published by HarperCollins. She is a former international model and a businesswoman, running a swimwear company with merchandise popularized by celebrities such as Jessica Alba and Kate Hudson. She loves playing board games with her husband and three children, hosting dinner parties in her Vancouver home, and crafting out.

MARGOT RADCLIFFE lives in Columbus, Ohio, right now, but surrenders to wanderlust every couple of years, so it’s hard to say where she’ll end up next. Regardless of location, her apricot dog will be by her side while she writes fun romances that hopefully make readers laugh and space out for a bit. With heroines who aren’t afraid to take what they want and confident heroes who are up to a challenge, she loves creating complicated, modern love stories. She can be found @margotradcliffe on Twitter and @margot_radcliffe on Instagram.

Also by Jackie Ashenden

The Knights of Ruin

Ruined

Destroyed

Kings of Sydney

King’s Price

King’s Rule

King’s Ransom

The Billionaires Club

The Debt

Billion $ Bastards

Dirty Devil

Also by Clare Connelly

Guilty as Sin

Her Guilty Secret

His Innocent Seduction

The Billionaires Club

The Deal

The Notorious Harts

Cross My Hart

Also by Taryn Belle

In Too Deep

In For Keeps

Also by Margot Radcliffe

Friends with Benefits

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk

The Dare Collection April 2020

Sexy Beast

Jackie Ashenden

Burn My Hart

Clare Connelly

Intoxicated

Taryn Belle

Sin City Seduction

Margot Radcliffe

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-0-008-90722-8

THE DARE COLLECTION APRIL 2020

Sexy Beast © 2020 Jackie Ashenden Burn My Hart © 2020 Clare Connelly Intoxicated © 2020 Cea Sunrise Person Sin City Seduction © 2020 Terra Rogerson

Published in Great Britain 2020

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

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www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Table of Contents

Cover

About the Authors

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Sexy Beast

Back Cover Text

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

EPILOGUE

Burn My Harty

Back Cover Text

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Intoxicated

Back Cover Text

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Sin City Seduction

Back Cover Text

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

About the Publisher

Sexy Beast

Jackie Ashenden

Commanding billionaire Everett Calhoun reveals his sexy dark side to his girl-next-door best friend in this smoking hot second installment of the Billion $ Bastards trilogy!

I was born bad. Maintaining tight control—in business and in the bedroom—is the only way to keep my darkness in check. So when my girl-next-door best friend, Freya, comes to me for a sexual favor, I don’t see the harm in giving her what she needs. After all, I’ve always kept her firmly in the friend zone.

But after showing her that there’s nothing wrong with her ability to orgasm, it’s all I can do to walk away. Unleashing my inner beast on the person who matters most to me is not an option. But she wants me… Is she prepared to follow my every command? To submit to my will and let me take her to the ultimate heights of pleasure?

Getting Freya on her knees should make me feel like the monster I am, but being with her leaves me more vulnerable, more human, than ever. I need to reclaim the friendship we had before I lose control completely, or will she have me on my knees…?

Harlequin DARE publishes sexy romances featuring powerful alpha heroes and bold, fearless heroines exploring their deepest fantasies.

Four new Harlequin DARE titles are available each month, wherever ebooks are sold!

To the lady in the University of Auckland library

staff room who used to blatantly read romance every

lunchtime despite the sneers. This one’s for you.

CHAPTER ONE

Freya

I HATED EVERETT’S launch party.

It wasn’t really his fault. It was just that my dress was too tight, making me feel like an overstuffed sausage, and when you’re nearly six foot, built on the Amazonian side—not to mention a redhead—an overstuffed sausage is not how you want to feel. Plus there was the whole being a Clydesdale in a room full of Arabian Thoroughbreds thing going on, what with the room being full of tiny women in glittering dresses, all prancing around.

But that wasn’t unusual for me. As a mechanic from a tin-pot little Texan town whose best friend just happened to be a billionaire, I was often in situations where I didn’t really fit.

I was way more comfortable in my garage, lying under a car in grease-stained overalls, than I was at fancy fundraisers like this one.

My friend Everett Calhoun and his two friends Damian Blackwood and Ulysses White were launching a special foundation that they’d set up with the backing of the giant multi-billion-dollar company the three of them had started years ago. The fundraiser had all the fancy trappings of a really big event, with famous people and designer outfits, jewellery auctions and a really amazing venue—the British Museum—in a gallery with lots of sculptures from ancient history.

Not my idea of a good time. I preferred hanging with friends at a low-key bar or pub, with a beer.

But then, I wasn’t here because I liked glitzy parties.

I was here because Everett’s business interests took him all over the world and I very rarely got to see him. He’d needed a date for this party, and so he’d asked me. He never asked for help; he was more usually attempting to help me—not that I’d ever let him—so it was nice to be able to do something for him.

I’d always wanted to see London and since I’d taken on Casey at the garage I was able to leave the business without worrying it might fall over if I missed a day or two.

Resisting the urge to rub my sweaty palms down the dress I’d hurriedly picked up at a store along Oxford Street that afternoon, I craned my neck trying to spot where Everett was. He’d told me he was going off to find me a drink and he was taking his time about it. Not that I was unhappy about that.

Because there was another reason why the party was getting to me. Why I was feeling antsy and restless and more than a little distracted. Everett might have needed me to be his date tonight, but I also needed something from him. Something I’d been considering a lot on the flight to London that I hoped wouldn’t change our friendship, but maybe would, and whether that was a good idea or not was anyone’s guess.

But I couldn’t start talking to him about that because he wasn’t here, which was super annoying. Especially when I really needed the margarita he was supposed to be getting me.

He shouldn’t have been that hard to spot considering he was six-four and built like Superman, but I couldn’t see him anywhere.

I could see Damian Blackwood, phenomenally good-looking and radiating charm like a Hollywood movie star, talking to a bunch of people and making them laugh, his beautiful voice and Australian accent making him easy to pick out in the crowd.

Ulysses White was there too, striding around grim-faced, his black eyes full of ice, his assistant trailing after him—another of those thoroughbred women—looking exasperated.

But Everett Calhoun? My best friend in the whole wide world? Where the hell was he?

‘Little,’ a deep voice from behind me said.

Only one person ever called me ‘Little’.

I turned and there he was, and right on cue my heart starting beating faster, the way it always did around him. The way it had been doing ever since he was sixteen and I, two years younger, was adjusting the bow tie on the suit he’d hired for prom.

He’d been gorgeous then and he was gorgeous now, especially in a tux, the tailored black fabric highlighting his height and the width of his shoulders and powerful chest.

Back in Texas, before the military, he’d worn nothing but jeans and T-shirts and always looked hot AF. But in the suits he now wore? Oh, man, flat out delicious.

His dark blond hair had once been shaggy and I’d always wanted to push it out of his eyes. Now he wore it cut army-short and, even though I missed the length, I liked the way the short cut highlighted his amazing face.

He wasn’t classically handsome, like his friend Damian. His features were blunter, harsher, intensely masculine. His jaw was strong and square, and his nose had a bump in it from when it had been broken while he’d been on deployment somewhere. His brows were heavy, his eyes deep set and blue as the ocean, with a tinge of green. He’d never been much of a smiler, which was a shame since his mouth was the perfect shape for kissing and—

Stop.

Everett was staring at me, blond brows pulling down into his usual frown, the one that made him look like a very stern Viking. ‘What’s up? I got you the margarita you wanted.’ He held out the drink while I tried to ignore my physical response to him.

It wasn’t usually this noticeable. Then again, I wasn’t usually at a party trying to get up the courage to ask my best friend if he’d help me out…sexually.

Not that I wanted actual sex. I just wanted an orgasm. No biggie.

First, though, I needed a drink.

Shoving thoughts of orgasms aside, I gave him a grin. ‘Took your time. What did you do? Make the tequila yourself?’

‘Had to help Damian with a problem.’ Everett was characteristically short on detail. ‘You want this or what?’

Still grinning, I grabbed the glass and took a large gulp, the alcohol burning on its way down. I probably needed to be careful, especially considering it had been alcohol that had put the thought of Everett and orgasms in my head in the first place.

It had been my twenty-first birthday and my first time in a bar. Too much beer and late night conversation about relationships—or, rather, my lack of one. And by ‘relationships’ I meant ‘sex’. Or, rather, me rambling on to Everett about how sex wasn’t that great for me, because men didn’t seem to know how to get me off. I couldn’t quite understand how the conversation had ended up where it had, but the result was Everett telling me that if I wanted an orgasm that badly to come and see him, and he’d give me one.

I’d forgotten about it the next day—mainly because I’d been drunk as a skunk—and he hadn’t mentioned it either, and so the offer had gotten lost in the mists of my own drunken memory.

But a week or so later the memory had popped back up, my embarrassment complete when it reminded me that while I might have been drunk during that conversation, Everett had been stone cold sober. Of course my brain had instantly frozen, the briefest burst of hope flashing through me before I could stop it. The hope that maybe the offer meant he was as interested in me as I was in him. Stupid brain. I knew he wasn’t. He’d never treated me as anything more than a friend and I was sure his orgasm proposal had more to do with friendship than it did with any kind of sexual attraction.

Which naturally had ensured I would never take him up on it. Ever. I didn’t want pity orgasms from Everett, because that was what it felt like, no matter what his intention had been in offering to help.

I didn’t need his help. Never had. And that had nothing to do with the fact that I’d been crushing on him since for ever and had always nurtured secret thoughts that maybe one day he’d suddenly turn around and see that his best friend was a woman, not just a tomboy in grease-stained overalls.

Except then Tiffany’s wedding had come along. She was my favourite cousin—I was brought up with her after my mother died—and I’d been asked to go, but the thought of enduring a hen party full of sexual innuendo, when I had no decent sex life to make innuendos about, seemed sad. My aunt and her family—Tiff excluded—thought I was pretty sad as it was, and I was a little sick of it. Being nearly thirty and not having had an orgasm with a partner seemed wrong, and I was a little sick of that too.

I could have pretended, I guess. Made up some story of wild, no-holds-barred sex with some amazing guy. But the truth was that I’d always had a nagging doubt that the problem lay with me. That there was something wrong with me, that I wasn’t much of a woman somehow.

I hated that feeling since I knew exactly where it had come from: my very critical aunt who never failed to comment on my faults, especially on my height and how unfeminine I was. And even though I was totally fine with myself these days, her comments had stuck, echoing in my head when I was at my lowest. Whispering to me that I’d never be able to have a fulfilling relationship, that I’d end up being alone for ever.

I didn’t want to be alone for ever. I didn’t want her comments in my head any more. I didn’t want to feel like a lumbering Clydesdale in a room full of pretty fillies. I didn’t want that doubt about myself.

So I’d changed my mind about Everett’s offer. I wanted to feel like a woman and if anyone could do that it was him. Sure, it might be a pity orgasm, but hey, at least then I’d know that the problem wasn’t me.

He had his hands shoved in his pockets now and was staring at me, still looking every inch the stern Viking with his steely gaze, hard jaw and powerful build.

An intimidating guy, Everett Calhoun.

But he’d never intimidated me. I’d known him since I was eight and he was the boy next door who’d seen me crying in the backyard. He asked me if I wanted to shoot some hoops with him, because he wanted to be a basketball player when he grew up and that I should be too, since I was tall.

He’d been the first person to see my height as an asset not a drawback, and that was how he’d treated me ever since. He was a good guy who looked out for people even though life had dealt him a shitty hand.

Or at least it had been shitty. Now it was pretty good, though he’d worked very hard to get where he was today, and I admired him for that.

Still wasn’t intimidated, though.

‘You didn’t answer my question,’ he said patiently.

‘What question?’

‘I asked you what was up.’

So he had.

‘So “what’s up” in the general sense?’ I said. ‘Or maybe “what’s up” in the literal sense, as in some balloons escaping or…’

Everett remained silent, his blue gaze unwavering. How had he picked up that I was nervous? Admittedly, I tended to run at the mouth when I was uncertain, but I was sure I hadn’t been babbling before.

I needed some more margarita. Stat.

‘Jet lag,’ I said, gulping at my drink. ‘It’s a bitch.’

‘Jet lag,’ he echoed, those two words somehow encompassing an entire universe of scepticism.

‘Yeah, man. Flying cattle class is no joke. You’ve probably forgotten.’

Everett’s brows twitched. ‘I offered to pay for business class.’

‘Which was generous, but unnecessary.’ I could have used the extra legroom, but it was just such a waste of money. A plane was a plane. ‘Anyway, so this is fun. Not. Why didn’t you ask one of the fillies over there to be your date?’ I waved my glass in the general direction of the Thoroughbreds. ‘I’m not ungrateful, believe me. Just…puzzled.’

‘Because Morgan said we had to bring someone who mattered to us,’ Everett said, turning to glance out across the crowded gallery.

Morgan was the little woman I’d seen trailing after Ulysses. His PA and Damian’s baby sister, apparently. She was the one who’d organised this launch for the new Black and White Foundation, which was something to do with disadvantaged kids. A great project, I thought, and it was very Everett to put all his considerable money behind a very good cause.