Hello, I’m Serena James Chase, author of contemporary and fantasy romances, including my billionaire romance saga which has a hot new release called ‘Everything You Want’. Its equally heartwarming sequel, ‘Everything You Need’, is coming to Amazon May 2022 and my sexy enemies to lovers series will debut later this year.
My romances are fun, sometimes angsty, but always steamy and not like most romances you’ve read before. I deliver those hard-earned happy ever afters that will leave you satisfied and hungry for more.
When I’m not busy writing or dreaming up new swoon-worthy heroes my leading ladies can’t keep their hands off of, I’m a wannabe foodie and a proud, life-long hot cocoa and fuzzy blanket lover.
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Chapter 1 of Everything You Want
Fantasizing about a black hole appearing inside her Brooklyn apartment and swallowing her, Bri’s heart fell for the hundredth time.
Maybe it was a mistake. Maybe she was overreacting and Will blocked her on all his social media accounts by accident.
Is that even possible?
Brianna knew the answer.
She needed to make different choices in her life. Better ones than she made tonight.
Easier said than done.
Still tingling, Bri rolled onto her side. “Hey, don’t fall asleep.”
The broad-shouldered man beside her was not Will Abbott, CEO of Titan Media, and her ex-boyfriend. Nor was he the return to order her life cried out for. But he smiled. The kind of smile that kicked up torrents of lust and apprehension in her belly.
A delectable distraction from her heart being shredded to pieces, Ethan lazily opened his eyes. They were deep blue and determined.
“I’m ready for round two whenever you are. If that’s what you’re thinking,” he said.
The pit in Brianna’s stomach doubled. Moments earlier, he brought her over the edge. Their exertion left traces of sweat on her forehead and an ache her body demanded he satiate again.
Long before he spotted her at the bar, Bri sized him up. The tallest of two blondes in a five-man entourage, Ethan walked into the club dressed in a pair of dark jeans she couldn’t take her eyes off of.
By the time he whispered his name in her ear, she knew she’d take him home.
Ethan’s performance lived up to his promises and her wildest fantasies from the cab ride to her apartment.
If she wasn’t still reeling, she could fall for him. Thankfully, her head reminded her he’d overstayed his welcome.
“How do you like your eggs?” Ethan asked, making the prospects of eating his breakfast sound like a stroll through Paris in June.
Ethan possessed genuine underwear model looks. The man oozed sex appeal like she couldn’t believe. Did he really need a reservoir of charm, too?
Bri suppressed a smile and said, “I’m serious. You can’t stay the night. Or any other night.”
“How come?” he asked, cool and easy-breezy.
It wasn’t something she advertised, for obvious reasons, but Bri liked bravado in men. Will downplayed his. Alan, her billionaire client, personified it. Ethan had it in spades. Too bad for him she needed to curb it before it caught like wildfire and burned her bed with her in it.
“I’m flying out in the morning and I haven’t even packed yet.”
Ethan’s thick brows quirked up. “You a flight attendant?”
“What did I say about asking personal questions? Tonight was just fun.”
“You were serious?”
Perplexed, his beautiful boyish features contorted into a delicious frown. Even confused and annoyed, he couldn’t make himself less appealing.
Stay focused. “Yes, I was serious. This has zero chance of repeating. You should probably get going and consider it me doing you a favor.”
Good job, girl. Solid comeback.
If Ethan had half a brain, he’d take her advice. He’d climb back into those black jeans and hustle into the first Uber back to Jersey.
He raised himself onto one elbow and came close, his gaze searching her eyes. Bri broke their stare, preferring to take in his full lips.
Another bad idea.
Fresh memories of him kissing between her thighs resurfaced, tempting her to forget he was a slight detour before she and Will got back together.
Ethan’s fingers took another tour of her naked skin. He trailed them down her arm, hopped from the tip of her elbow to follow the curve of her hip. Bri relished the contact. His touch acted like an incendiary, reigniting the explosive desire she had for him.
Damn him. He wasn’t going to be smart.
He leaned in for a kiss and Bri didn’t resist because she planned on being susceptible to the slightest coercion tonight.
This misadventure wasn’t an accident. It was a choice. A chance to forget how fucked up things had gotten with Will.
She shouldn’t have tagged him on that racy picture of herself wearing his old t-shirt and not much else. It was stupid, but she was desperate. And after feeling the sting of Will’s digital rejection this morning, she needed an escape from the hurt. Nothing more.
Except now she wanted more.
She wasn’t prepared to admit failure yet, though. Even while she considered maybe she was the one who shouldn’t be smart tonight.
“Is Brianna really your name?” Ethan said. His rough voice contrasting with his soft kisses.
She nodded, then groaned against his lips as a low, persistent hum droned from behind her.
These days, Alan’s phone calls were the most frequent and the most reliable, especially after midnight. She knew it was him calling now, but she stayed inside the daydream with Ethan.
“I want you again, Brianna. What do you really want?”
Not much. Just everything she had.
Her life had never been boring, but a sharp upheaval in its natural flow coincided with the moment she affixed her name to a contract from Alan Mitchell. Every day since felt like she was losing control over every part of her life.
“I need to answer my phone.”
“No, you need me inside you again. Right now.”
Between his mouth and his firm grip on her ass, Ethan had already won the argument. Perhaps he sensed the victory because he let her off the hook. He backed away. They stared at each other like a couple of fighters in a ring and she prayed Ethan saw the same conviction on her face she saw on his.
“I need to make a call,” she said.
“Hey, was that your boyfriend? You never mentioned him when we were dancing.”
“Stop trying to know my business.” She fired a warning glance, and in return, his smugness ballooned. “It’s time for you to go, Ethan.”
He shrugged. “Okay. I can’t say I didn’t try.”
Tossing aside the blanket, he fled her bed. Although she shouldn’t be thinking about how marvelous his ass looked, she admired the view as he stepped into his jeans and yanked them up his muscular thighs. He opted not to zip himself up, but he snapped his shirt off the floor and shuffled back over to her.
“Do I at least get the honor of giving you my number, princess?”
His tone was somewhere between derisive and teasing.
“Look, Ethan, we had a nice time. You’re sweet and if the circumstances were different…maybe we could see where this could go, but…”
Bri hated telling him goodbye like that, but she shouldn’t want him to stay. He wasn’t a part of her future and he was better off staying that way.
Ethan’s blue eyes sparkled in the warm lamplight and she felt compelled to tell him more.
“Look, my boyfriend dumped me, okay,” she said. “We were in a long and meaningful relationship and if I’m honest with myself, I’m still pretty hung up on him. So, no staying over and no next time. I’m a fucking mess right now and nothing about us will end well. I’m sorry, but I told what to expect out of this and you said you understood.”
He nodded, possibly recalling his own words. “So, why don’t we keep it simple?”
“Keep what simple?” His eyebrows quirked up again, and Bri scoffed. “You mean just hook up whenever. Like…friends with benefits? Except we don’t even know each other. One-night stands only last one night, Ethan.”
“Hey, I’m not looking to get hurt here, but I’m not gonna lie either. I don’t want to walk away from this.”
All four years of high school, she dated one guy. They parted ways when she moved to Manhattan for college and he stayed upstate. Guys came and went, but scratching by to eat and making sure she didn’t lose her scholarship consumed the next four years. After that, Will came along.
“Put my number in your phone,” Ethan said. “Call me whenever.”
Her phone interrupted them again. Bri sighed loudly. Reaching behind her, she plucked the phone from the nightstand. Underneath it was Alan Mitchell, gazing up at her. The magazine cover called him the Money Whisperer and proclaimed him one of Wall Street’s most brilliant minds under forty. The brash new king old media should fear.
Bri chose both the tie and the watch he wore for that photo shoot. He looked fucking amazing. Alan always did. She could feel him judging her. Still, Bri couldn’t take her eyes off his handsome face.
“For a minute there, I thought you were reconsidering taking my number, but I guess not?” Ethan said, and she snapped back to the present. “Go on. Make your call. I can wait.”
He took a seat on the bed. As Bri walked out on him, it occurred to her she hadn’t casually dated in a while. She was out of practice and she might be in over her head.
***
Alan answered on the first ring. “Two missed calls. You couldn’t have been asleep,” he said in a relaxed voice.
Alan thrived on long days. She didn’t.
“People tend to be sleeping at one in the morning,” Bri said. “Even in Manhattan on a Friday night.” She glanced at the gap in the bedroom door, wondering what Ethan was doing. “Where are you?”
“I just landed. I’m about to get in the car.”
“How was Florida?”
“It was hot. As usual.”
“And your parents? Ernesto? How are they?”
“They’re fine.”
In the year they’ve been together, she learned Alan inherited his money from both sides of his family—the prestige too. His parents lived in Palm Beach. He visited them occasionally. Whenever she couldn’t fend off her curiosity, he would answer questions about them, but Alan never brought them up in their conversations until recently.
At the moment, his responses were getting shorter. A sure sign he was growing impatient.
Straight to business then.
“Okay, no more small talk. What time is Reggie picking me up?”
“I’ll tell him to give you an extra hour. If you need it that is.”
Grinning, she asked, “Why me? You’re the grumpy one.”
Alan let a breath out slow. “I’m worried. Ernesto looked frailer than my last visit. His spirit was high, though. Like always. If anyone I know can beat cancer, it’s him. My mother had a wonderful time showing me off to her friends,” Alan continued. “I played golf with my father every morning, but I’d rather not rehash it. Tell me you missed me. That’ll make me feel better.”
One of the few personal trips where he didn’t invite her, Alan departed for Miami last Sunday. By Tuesday afternoon, he was calling her several times a day.
They talked for hours. About everything and nothing, too.
“Bri, you’re being coy? Why is that?” He paused, then asked, “Did something happen while I was away? Did I interrupt something just now?”
She opened her mouth to jab at his ego, but told him what he wanted to hear. What he paid her generously to tell him in moments like these. “I thought about you all week, even though I was trying to think about anything else. I missed you.”
A part of her had missed Alan a lot, so admitting it was easy enough. Conveying a longing for him? That was just how they were together.
It was everything Alan wanted.
After a moment, he said, “I believe you, darling.” Then a comfortable silence settled over them.
The mint green digits on the microwave’s clock flipped one minute closer to morning.
“Alan, I need to get some sleep.”
“Yeah, me too. All right. I’ll see you tomorrow. Oh, and Bri, why don’t you call Reggie and make the arrangements. We’ll leave for Bermuda whenever you’re ready.”
“Wait. What did you just say?”
“You heard me.”
“Any time I want?”
“Any time you want. I’ll wait for you.”
When she dragged Ethan into the cab, she feared Alan might swoop in on his private jet and summon her to his brownstone. She worried she’d need to make excuses and lie to a stranger to accommodate his whims.
Bri ended the call and headed back to her bedroom. Ethan’s black jeans were crumpled in a new pile on the floor while he sat in the middle of her bed, legs bent, with his cage-fighter’s arms resting on top of them. His head popped up when she stepped inside the room.
Bri joined him on the bed, crawled to him on all fours. He welcomed her into an embrace and she nestled between his thighs, wrapping her arms around those broad shoulders.
“Still here,” he said.
“Why’s that?” Bri asked.
“I’m swallowing my pride and begging you to let me stay. Again,” Ethan said, holding on to her waist with a set of calloused hands.
“How come?”
“Well, I thought about what you said, and I figured you probably won’t give me your number. There’s also a chance you’re making up this story about flying out tomorrow just to get rid of me, so I want to use every minute I can to make you regret kicking me out.”
“Do you really think I’ll cry over you?”
“Try me,” he said.
There was something in his eyes that drew her to Ethan. Something that one taste couldn’t satisfy. Not completely.
Bri studied his face. It was a little odd, fractionally asymmetrical. Like he broke his nose, and it never set back in place. She wondered what the story behind that might be.
“I wasn’t making it up. That was my boss. Calling me to finalize travel arrangements. And I wasn’t lying about not having a boyfriend. I don’t.”
“Never again?”
She smiled. “No. Not never again. Just not now.”
“Good,” he said, then kissed her.
His mouth was greedy and the same heady feeling Bri experienced in the club swallowed her again. Her yearning for this man refused to subside. She was drowning, and she liked the feeling.
“So. Can I stay?” Ethan mumbled against her throat.
Her head wanted to regain control, but her heart wanted to stay in the fantasy with Ethan a little while longer.
“Yes,” she whispered, giving in.
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