Between Commitment and Betrayal (Hardy Billionaire Brothers, #1)

by Shain Rose

Declan Hardy’s voice was always strong. Deep. Authoritative enough that it commanded all the attention in the room even as all six foot three of him leaned casually against the doorframe. With chiseled muscle and a famous, beautiful face, the retired NFL star had not a care in the world—even though he’d intruded on someone’s private conversation.

My father’s business partner flicked his vivid green eyes to me with that comment, capturing my stare and holding it hostage like he owned it. I saw the spark of anger, the question, and the entitlement.

I let the quiet stretch on and on, unwilling to give him an iota of the information that I knew he must want. He didn’t deserve it nor was he entitled to it. Yet, even still, my whole body practically shook with the need to submit to him, to give up control to him. Did he have this effect on everyone? So dominating and attractive that he could bend most people to his will?

Declan Hardy was a global sensation for a reason. It wasn’t just that he was an investor in my father’s hospitality and fitness empire either. That face, his thick dark hair, those piercing green eyes that stared into my soul every time he glanced my way.

I don’t need the press telling me who to date.” I cut him off, furious that my father’s business partner thought I’d let the media’s story on a person sway me. I wouldn’t let journalists or the internet paint someone’s story like they had mine once before. In my hometown, I wasn’t trusted, wasn’t looked at as a person, wasn’t given the benefit of the doubt.

In the middle of this yoga studio, he was a beautiful sight among the mirrors reflecting around him with the backdrop of floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the Atlantic.

Declan’s voice was low in warning, like I shouldn’t question him, and I felt the vibration of it shoot through my body, giving me goose bumps everywhere. I considered giving him the finger as I left him in the studio by himself. But he was my boss. My off-limits boss I hated and wanted all at the same time.

“Are you going to apologize?” “For what?” His nostrils flared as he breathed out. “For the scene you caused,” I almost screeched, my composure slipping a little as I pointed toward Wes’s house. “For embarrassing me again.” “I don’t really give a fuck what scene I cause. And if that’s embarrassing, don’t go to a dumbass’s house and expect I’m not going to come for you. I’ll come every fucking time, Drop.”

“Everly, do me a favor. While you’re in my empire, please don’t wear that fucking jersey and stop going to his place.” I sighed. “You should learn to not let things bother you so much.” He leaned in. “What’s bothersome to you? Because I’d really like you to feel exactly how you make me feel.”

Everly was pure and unmarred by the world in a way I couldn’t really articulate. She had waves of curls that framed her face with a braid or two mixed in with the brown and black and blonde that flowed all around in ringlets so wild you wanted to tame them. Then you caught her gaze and saw how calm and focused it was. Sapphire blue and piercing against her tan skin while completely steady like she couldn’t be knocked down no matter how anyone would try.

then she spoke, and the rasp in her voice soothed even though her words grated on my every nerve because they made total sense. She held my gaze now with a mix of determination and what I think mirrored my lust. I was hooked. Trapped. Captured by the way she bit her bottom lip waiting for my answer.

“It feels like I have my business partner’s daughter sitting in front of me, riling me up, driving me near madness, and still my adrenaline is pumping, my cock is rock solid, and I’m scrambling to find any reason I shouldn’t be tasting those lips. Why I shouldn’t demand that you come sit on my lap for a minute.”

You forget that I’m one person you don’t control, Mr. Hardy.” I leaned in a fraction more, so my mouth was at her ear, and murmured, “I’m starting to think you’d like me taking control, Everly. There’s a reason I’m the boss, right? A reason you got in the car willingly?”

Her hands found their way into my hair, like she needed to hold me close as I grazed kisses over her collarbone. “I don’t even like you,” she breathed. I chuckled. “Oh, but your pussy loves me.” She gasped at my words, but I kept going. “It’s begging for me, babe. And you don’t really know me. I could make you like me.”

“I could make you enjoy the game and an adrenaline rush too, Everly.” I didn’t prepare her for my mouth, descending without further warning. I wanted to catalog how her body responded. How she met me taking what I wanted without apology with her own vigor. How she hung onto my shirt like she relished the moment as much as I was and wasn’t worried about the repercussions for once.

The fear of being seen wasn’t going to guide her orgasm. I was going to make sure of that. I wanted her every worry to be chased away by me this time. She was too composed all the goddamn time; too fucking perfect and pure, and she needed an outlet. I was the best fucking one. Not a party. Not Wes. Me.

“I want that damn jersey off you now. It shouldn’t ever be his name on your back,” I growled in her ear. “Take. It. Off.”

I was quick to temper, and it looked like Everly maintained her composure even after I’d unraveled her. Still, I was already figuring out a way I could do it again come the very next day.

Take the ride home from work today. Everly: I don’t need a car when I like to jog. I appreciate the thought though. She appreciated the thought? I’d appreciate bending her over my knee and spanking her ass for defying me every chance she got. Could I send her that?

No one needed to know about the night in the back of that SUV. Even though I couldn’t forget about it. I’d held her composure, her control, her damn undoing in my hands. She’d given it to me. And ever since, I wasn’t sure I could keep control of myself. I’d made her leave another man’s house. And she wasn’t even mine. Yet.

she’d stirred something different in me the moment I’d met her. The girl was beautiful, nice, quiet, and had a take-no-shit attitude.

Everly was an employee. She was my partner’s daughter. She should have been completely off-limits and not at all mine. Yet, my dick responded every time she was in the room. My mind had started to scream that no one could look at her but me. And my body obviously didn’t react to anyone else at this point.

I swear she was taunting me to come back there, playing a fucking game with my dick that I couldn’t win. Everly was the mastermind, and I was the dumb man being led by lust rather than reason.

She may have wanted to fuck someone else. She may have been ten years younger than me. And she may have been my partner’s daughter. But Everly was going to be only mine right then and there.

“If you intend to fuck someone in my gym, babe, you can bet your ass it’s going to be me.”

I tried to let her go, because I knew everything Everly had said was right. It was just a matter of time before I figured out if we could ignore the pull of being wrong.

As I walked out of the sauna to allow for the medical staff to do their job, I knew my life was about to change. The only tie I had to this place was my father. And now he was gone. I’d be gone soon too. Or so I thought.

It might have been seconds or minutes or hours when I heard her voice so soft behind me. “You’re going to overheat, Declan.” The name she never spoke left her lips out of compassion, trying to pull me back from the darkness that was enveloping me.

Everly Belafonte couldn’t be bothered with what should have been, it seemed. I knew she should have been afforded a moment at that funeral to break down. She didn’t. She should have been afforded a damn moment to commemorate her father, but Melinda took on the whole eulogy with her daughters. Everly didn’t bat an eye even.

I’d do anything that old man wanted now that he was gone, I thought. Well, I thought so at least until I heard what he asked me to do in that damn will.

Declan and I had distanced ourselves since the night of Carl’s death, though he had stood up for me with Melinda by saying I was a part of the family. I wasn’t. I didn’t belong, and I didn’t know if I even wanted to.

She smiled wide and it was like I was seeing her for the first time, because that smile alone was capable of bringing a man to his knees. Her eyes scrunched up, her cheekbones rounded, and a pair of dimples showed that made her cute and sexy at the same time. Cute and lethal. She’d wreck a heart or two with it, I was sure. Mine just wouldn’t be one of them.

can I ask why you left that hometown of yours?” I was prying, and I knew it. Yet, I needed to know the type of person I was dealing with. Her face fell, she shut off all emotion, and she didn’t elaborate. “Sometimes, people just need a change.” I had a feeling she was about to change my life in more ways than one.

I felt the hunger in his eyes now, the way he licked his lips like he was going to devour me. I saw the man who’d conquered the world and how he was ready to take what he wanted now from it. Even with me. Fuck all the consequences because Declan didn’t hesitate or wait to be told a damn thing. He didn’t dwell on what might be or what might have been.

Declan was bad for me. I knew it. Knew from the way he held himself in luxury and riches that he was as entitled as the last man I’d been with, and that last man had almost been the death of me.

We studied one another as he stepped back and unbuttoned his suit jacket, threw it off, and rolled up the cuffs of his white collared shirt. It was instantly soaked by the rain, allowing the outline of his muscles, the hints of black tattoos on his chest and his strong biceps, to show through. I saw the man every woman longed for. The man who was to be mine for a year.

We came from different worlds. He loved control and domination while I wanted to appease the masses and squeak by unnoticed. He was intense and larger than life, and I was quiet and enjoyed the silence. Somehow, we were all wrong for one another. Yet, I couldn’t stop myself from calling out for him.

My body shook. Not from the cold, but from the need to have him. To have this man at the center of my body, in me so deep I could feel all of him at once along with the emotions I hadn’t experienced in so long. He’d awakened my pleasure, my adrenaline, my desire again.

I’d known the second I saw her I wanted her, but this was raw, feral, fucking unhinged desire that I hadn’t tapped into in, quite frankly, maybe ever.

I gripped her hair hard, wanting all of her now, wanting to prove that I would be the one to leave a mark—even if she’d barely given me the time of day over the past few weeks. I kept her laying against my car as I ground out, “The only thing you move right now is your ass so that you can feel my cock on your pussy, baby. I get to see you come against my car, ass up just for me.”

“Such a pretty fuck you are. My wife, trying so hard to ride my cock.” “Don’t call me that,” I heard her murmuring as I put pressure on her clit. “Oh, God.” “Not God,” I chuckled. “Your husband. The one you married today. Seems even if you don’t like him calling you his wife, you like his cock right between your legs, huh?”

I was so ready for her I could have slid right in, but I needed to praise her. Needed her to know. “So fucking beautiful when you let go and let me give you what you really want.”

She opened her mouth slowly, and when she wrapped her lips around my fingers, her eyes fluttered closed, and I knew our relationship was going to be fucked. How would I stop enjoying my wife, enjoying this? I wouldn’t, and it was about to make this arrangement very messy.

I went back to working her between her legs, watching what brought her close to the edge again. I was taking notes, filing it away for next time. Because I wanted a next time. I was going to die trying for a next time.

“Say my name again.” “Declan, please move. Please, please, please.” “That’s it. Nice and loud. Give me every one of those screams and come for me. The world is going to know you’re my wife even if you don’t want them to.”

The way she’d whispered her truth to me showed me Everly had secrets that cut deep, that she hid in the dark crevices of her soul, and I wanted to see all of them.

Her saying my name had me stopping and looking at her. Curly hair weighed down by the rain, free of makeup in a black dress that wasn’t supposed to do anything for her, but she didn’t need it to. The statement was her. Her blue eyes, the freckles that sprinkled over the bridge of her nose, the slope of her neck. Raw beauty.

“You’re normally ready to go when you get to the gym.” “Sort of shocking you know that considering you never used to say hi to me or notice me the mornings I work.” He leaned against the doorframe, “I’ve always noticed you, Drop, no matter how damn hard I try not to.”

People are vulnerable when they’re tired. Might learn something new about my wife.” He shrugged and smirked at me, like we were suddenly friends. “I don’t … It’s too early for this. Don’t call me that.” “What should I call you then? My late business partner’s daughter?” I glared. “Probably better.” “Probably not since even knowing that, the first time I saw you, I pictured fucking you on the conference table.”

“My mansion feels empty when I know there’s a woman in the guesthouse who tastes as sweet as she smells.”