The Swedish Prince #ROYAL ROMANCE 1 Prologue I never believed in fairy-tales. Never held out for Prince Charming. Growing up poor in small-town California as the oldest of six siblings, I knew I would never ride off into the sunset with anyone. That was even more apparent when a senseless tragedy took the lives of my parents, forcing me to become the sole guardian of our dysfunctional household at the mere age of twenty-three. Then a fateful encounter literally brought Prince Charming to my doorstep. At first I thought Viktor was just your average businessman passing through, albeit obscenely handsome, six-foot-five, blue-eyed, and mysteriously rich. But soon I discovered the truth behind Viktor's façade. Beneath his quiet, enigmatic gaze and cocky charm, is a man who is running away from who he really is. A role he'd rather not fulfill. He is Viktor of House Nordin, His Royal Highness, The Crown Prince of Sweden. Yet uncovering Viktor's secret was only the first step. I didn't expect to fall in love with him. I didn't expect to have my whole life turned upside down. When you're from two different worlds, can your hearts meet somewhere in the middle? Or do happily-ever-afters only exist in fairy-tales?
NEW YORK CITY
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Maggie's POV
"That is the absolute last time I'm trying online dating" Sam says to me with an exaggerated sigh as she leans back in the couches we've taken over in the corner of the bar.
"What happened this time?" I ask her this out of courtesy because I know she's going to tell me anyway. Plus, Sam is a pro at online dating at this point. It doesn't matter how many times she says she's quitting, the next day she's back in the proverbial saddle, swiping left and right and complaining about dick pics. I should probably note that she doesn't exactly complain about getting them only If the dicks said in the pics are up to her standards.
"What didn't happen?" she says, brushing her bangs out of her eyes. "I mean, we just met up for drinks down in the village, which is fine. Super casual, you know? And in person he was a tiny bit more attractive than his picture online."
"Which pic, the one in his profile or his unsolicited dick pic?" I ask.
"For your information, no dick pics were sent, unsolicited or not. Anyway, so he wasn't bad looking though I could already tell we didn't have that easy chemistry I hoped we would. Halfway through the date, I was pretty sure I wasn't going home with him. Then he showed me his sex playlist."
I raise my brows. "Sex playlist?"
"Yeah. On his phone. And the music was really good." She shrugs. "So I slept with him."
"You're insane."
"I know. I know." She shakes her head before picking up her margarita and leaning over to take a loud slurp of it. "Worst part is, he put it on shuffle and I hadn't seen the entire list. So when he was going down on me, Never Going to Give You Up came on."
I burst out laughing. "You were Rick-rolled during sex?"
She nods frantically. "I couldn't come if my life depended on it! So I said I had to leave and quickly got out of there. Highlight of the night was getting a kebab on the way home. My life is a never-ending cycle of bad decisions and falafel."
She's kind of right about that. Sam is my closest friend here in the city, which counts for a lot since I've been living in New York for nearly two years now and making friends is harder than you think.
Luckily we're both in the same journalism program and we've bonded over hating most of our teachers and the dismal dating scene.
At least Sam is putting herself out there night after night. I won't even look at Tinder or Huggle or any of those oddly-named apps, even though Sam has created a profile for me absolutely everywhere. I might be just twenty-two years old but I'm pretty old fashioned when it comes to dating and still have it in the romantic recesses of my heart that I can meet someone in real life, rather than online.
Of course, this has proved to be nearly impossible in this city. Don't get me wrong–NYC is a million times better than my hometown of Tehachapi, California. The only guys in that town are ex-convicts from the state prison, and with my father being a prison guard there, there would be some definite disapproval.
But New York is just too big and chaotic to date. Everyone looks like a model, first of all, and while I'm fairly thin and not too hard on the eyes, I look like some tiny, cute, big-eyed pixie. Looks wise, I'd like to say I'm about an eight out of ten in Tehachapi, probably a six out of ten in the Midwest, but in the supermodel streets of Manhattan, I'm pretty much a Chihuahua. Woof.
Still, I'm holding out hope. Hope that one day, while I'm in a bookstore, I'll be reaching for the last copy of the new Neil Gaiman just as someone else is and my fingers will brush his and I'll look up and find the man of my dreams. I know that's a terribly optimistic way to look at love, but I can't help it. I never held out for a prince charming until I moved here, where a new beginning seems to be waiting around every corner.
Hell, I don't even need love right now. What I really need is to get laid and I know I don't need Prince Charming for that. We might reach for the same book in a bookstore but I'd be just as happy if he slammed me up against those bookshelves and fucked me senseless. Sam's been getting dick left and right–dicks flying all over the place–and I'm hard up for even just one.
"You'll find someone," I say to Sam. "And he'll have a better sex playlist than that guy. Here, let me buy you a drink."
"Don't be stupid," she says, putting her hand on my arm and forcing me to stay seated. "You know you're broke as fuck and this is one pricey drink."
Also true. I got a scholarship to NYU and the journalism program, thanks to studying my ass off for years, but I could only afford to move here thanks to working my ass off for years.
My family doesn't come from money–that's putting it mildly–and even though my parents both work, my father as a prison guard, my mother as a hotel housekeeper, they still have six kids, including me, to support.
The only reason I'm here right now is because I spent my evenings during high school working with my mom at the local La Quinta. Even now I'm working most nights and weekends as a barista at a coffee shop around the corner from the residence halls, and I'm barely scraping by.
I give Sam a grateful look, though I honestly wish I could do more. "How about I just sprinkle good blessings on you?" I reach into my purse I picked up from the thrift shop, a terrible fake of a Gucci that's made from plastic rather than leather, and take out a small jar of gold glitter eye shadow. I dip my fingers in and before she has a chance to object, I sprinkle some on her head.
"What are you doing?" she shrieks, trying to get out of the way, but she's laughing. Soon she's covered in a very light dusting of gold.
"I used to do this to my sister April all the time," I tell her, putting the shadow back. I don't want to waste it. "She believed it."
"And where is your sister now?"
"Well she's only thirteen and I think if I tried this again she'd give me the evil eye and never speak to me again. Teenage angst, you know." Actually, at this moment, all of my siblings are out with my seventeen-year-old brother Pike, the oldest after me. There's a fair or something down in Bakersfield that they've made the trek to, I guess to give my parents a night of peace for once.
Knowing that my siblings are all together like that makes my heart ache, just a little. I don't get homesick often. I mean, I'd been dreaming about leaving that town for most of my life. But every now and then it hits me for a moment, usually passing quickly. Tonight is one of those nights.
In fact, I've had this weird feeling in my chest for most of the evening, a sense of unease. I'm prone to worry about things like money and school and my lack of love life but this is something different, something I can't put my finger on. I consider myself to be quite intuitive so I probably should pay attention, but I just don't know how.
"Are you okay?" Sam asks me, staring at me inquisitively. "Why don't I buy you a drink?"
"I'm fine," I tell her. "Just vibed out for no real reason."
"It's not the company, is it?"
I grin at her. "No, not tonight."
"Then you look like you could use a drink. I'll be right back."
Normally I would protest a bit but Sam comes from money and is quite generous with it. It makes me feel small sometimes that she often has to pay for me to do the things she wants to do, but that's just my own pride. And tonight, I do think I could use a drink to settle my nerves.
I watch her as she goes to the bar, her lithe, barre-class sculpted body capturing the eyes of every guy in the room. You wouldn't even think she'd need Tinder and all those dating apps, but most guys are too intimated to talk to her.
Then there's me. Guys will sometimes approach me once I smile at them (I have a pretty severe case of resting bitch face otherwise), but then, once I open my mouth, I usually say something awkward or off-putting. My sense of humor can be odd and I'm not always on everyone's frequency.
I lean back into the couch, doing that thing where I'm scoping the crowd but trying not to make eye contact with the wrong guys. And by wrong guys, I mean the ones you have no interest in, ones who take a mere meeting of the eyes to mean something a whole lot more. I don't know why simply looking at someone means you want to have sex with them but anyway.
My phone vibrates in my purse and I fish it out.
It's a call from April which is weirder than weird. Maybe she could sense I was talking about her?
But even as I'm about to answer it, the unease in my chest builds and twists and I know this isn't a matter of her checking in with me and seeing how I'm doing. That's not like her. Something is wrong.
And usually when something is wrong, Pike or my parents would call me, not her.
My heart races as I press the talk button.
"April?" I ask, plugging my other ear and turning away from the noise of the bar.
Crying. I hear crying on the other end, sobbing, a kind of crying that isn't born of a teenager getting dumped or bullied, but of something unfathomably worse.
"April? Is this you? What's wrong?" I ask, trying not to sound panicked.
"Maggie," she sobs. "Oh my god, oh my god. Maggie, they're dead!"
Time seems to fold in on itself in slow motion.
The terror flowing through me is spreading, slow sticky fingers that take over every muscle.
"Who is dead?" I cry out softly.
Oh god.
Who?
Who?
"They were murdered!" she cries, then erupts into even louder sobs. "The guy, he came for dad."
Oh my god.
"He came for him, we weren't there," she goes on in hysterics. "Maggie, he shot them both, they're dead. Mom and dad are dead."
"I..." I don't know what to say, what to feel. Surely this isn't actually happening. This isn't happening.
This has to be a joke or a misunderstanding or maybe I'm dreaming? I look around me and I just see blurs and colors. I must be dreaming. "Are you...are you sure? Where is Pike?"
Irresistible #2 Sequel of 'SWEET SPOT' Prologue He was supposed to be my first and only one-night stand. He was definitely never supposed to become my boss. I had always been the good girl – the workaholic with every second of her life mapped out to a tee. Then I got trapped in an elevator with Julian Hoult. He was… irresistible. Sophisticated sex in a crisp white shirt. His voice alone dropped me straight to my knees. What was I supposed to do? Well…. I can tell you what I was definitely not supposed to do. I was not supposed to run into him ever again. I was not supposed to be desperately unemployed, and I was definitely not supposed to accept his dirty little job offer. But I couldn’t resist. As CEO of the Hoult Media empire, Julian will stop at nothing to get what he wants. So for his next venture with Manhattan’s most lecherous billionaires, he’s hired me to play the role of bait. And while my official title is that of Executive Assistant, my actual job requires low tops, tight skirts and flaunting everything I’ve got till his clients are easy to bend – till they can barely think for themselves anymore. It’s sleazy and wrong. Against everything I’ve worked for. But with Julian as my audience, I can’t help but enjoy every second. Thanks to him, I’m embracing the bad, and I swear… I’ve never in my life felt this damned good.
Our first meeting as neighbors was screwed from the start. He was hot. I was naked. And we had no chance in hell at ever being platonic. I'll be the first to admit that I live at extremes. After going ten years locked in what felt like a dysfunctional marriage, I'm now decidedly boy-free. In nearly three years I've had no boyfriends, no flings, no dates and no sex. For the sake of my dream career, the sacrifice has been easy. At least it was. Until he came along. Lukas Hendricks. He's rude, gorgeous, arrogant - a stone-carved wall of muscle and distraction. He's everything I know to avoid but there's no avoiding your next-door neighbor. Oh yeah. The man now lives three steps from me and to make matters worse, he crashed into my life while I was relaxed in the tub - mortifying to say the least and it went something like this: I was exposed. He looked. He laughed. And then I locked myself out. In short, Lukas Hendricks was trouble from the start. And me? I was - for the first time in years - about to be screwed.
Gabriel Maestri at the age of twenty-nine is one of Italy's youngest and wealthiest businessmen, owning several of the finest hotels in Italy and around the world. He is ruthless, arrogant and cruel. Look at him the wrong way, or say the wrong thing he will destroy you without a second thought. He has money, power and women falling at his feet. People say he is a demon, that he has no heart and is incapable of loving another human being. Paige Mosley, a twenty one year old woman, innocent, sweet, she sees the good in everyone she meets. Working as a maid in one of Maestri's hotels in New York City. When word spreads that the hotel is closing and everyone she loves will lose their jobs she makes a deal with the demon himself. Will she be able to save him and melt his hard, cold heart, or will he break hers, destroying the beauty within her.
Luca Mariani, a wealthy and powerful man, feared by men, every woman wants him. Being pressured by family to take a wife he comes across a woman who is abused and treated like a slave by her Uncle and cousins. Robin Potter is a young woman, dressed in loose fitting rags. Though she wore rags and her dirty appearance he sees beauty. He strikes a deal with her Uncle, not only does he buys the horses from the Potter family he also asks for her. He would make her his wife, not only save her from her family's abuse, he would also get his family off his back by marrying the poor and wild Robin. With no intentions of falling in love or sleeping with her, she would be his wife in name only. He had no desire to give up his playboy ways or his other women. But Luca was not prepared for the untamed and wild woman he would make his wife. She would end up changing him, but would it be for the better or worst. Robin will fight him in everything, she refuses to bow to his every demand and will not be broken. Nor will she let him have her body, and most important, her heart.
Rosalynn's marriage to Brian wasn't what she envisioned it to be. Her husband, Brian, barely came home. He avoided her like a plague. Worse still, he was always in the news for dating numerous celebrities. Rosalynn persevered until she couldn't take it anymore. She upped and left after filing for a divorce. Everything changed days later. Brian took interest in a designer that worked for his company anonymously. From her profile, he could tell that she was brilliant and dazzling. He pulled the stops to find out her true identity. Little did he know that he was going to receive the greatest shocker of his life. Brian bit his finger with regret when he recalled his past actions and the woman he foolishly let go.
Lindsey's fiancé was the devil's first son. Not only did he lie to her but he also slept with her stepmother, conspired to take away her family fortune, and then set her up to have sex with a total stranger. To get her lick back, Lindsey decided to find a man to disrupt her engagement party and humiliate the cheating bastard. Never did she imagine that she would bump into a strikingly handsome stranger who was all that she was currently looking for. At the engagement party, he boldly declared that she was his woman. Lindsey thought he was just a broke man who wanted to leech off her. But once they began their fake relationship, she realized that good luck kept coming her way. She thought they would part ways after the engagement party, but this man kept to her side. "We gotta stick together, Lindsey. Remember, I'm now your fiancé. " "Domenic, you're with me because of my money, aren't you?" Lindsey asked, narrowing her eyes at him. Domenic was taken aback by that accusation. How could he, the heir of the Walsh family and CEO of Vitality Group, be with her for money? He controlled more than half of the city's economy. Money wasn't a problem for him! The two got closer and closer. One day, Lindsey finally realized that Domenic was actually the stranger she had slept with months ago. Would this realization change things between them? For the better or worse?
"Love is blind!" Lucinda abandoned her beautiful and comfortable life because of a man. She married him and slaved off for him for three long years. One day, the scales finally fell off her eyes. She realized that all her efforts were in vain. Her husband, Nathaniel still treated her like shit. All he cared about was his lover. "Enough is enough! I quit wasting my years with an ungrateful man!" Lucinda's heart was shattered into many pieces, but she summoned up the courage to ask for a divorce. The news caused a stir online! A filthy rich young woman recently got divorced? She was a good catch! Countless CEOs and handsome young men immediately swarmed to her like bees to honey! Nathaniel couldn't take it anymore. He held a press conference and begged with teary eyes, "I love you, Lucinda. I can't live without you. Please come back to me." Would Lucinda give him a second chance? Read to find out!
"I heard you're going to marry Marcelo. Is this perhaps your revenge against me? It's very laughable, Renee. That man can barely function." Her foster family, her cheating ex, everyone thought Renee was going to live in pure hell after getting married to a disabled and cruel man. She didn't know if anything good would ever come out of it after all, she had always thought it would be hard for anyone to love her but this cruel man with dark secrets is never going to grant her a divorce because she makes him forget how to breathe.
22-year-old Evelyn Carter is attempting to start over in California while avoiding her past. She will be embarking on a new career path as a private school teacher. She is smart, attractive, and doesn't put up with nonsense. Who wouldn't notice her? However, what happens when she attracts the attention of someone unwilling to let her go? Who wants her and nothing else after falling in love at first sight? A 25-year-old billionaire CEO and single father, Lucian Carrington. He takes what he wants and he is also a very dangerous man. All it needed was one look at a stunning woman to realize she was HIS, even though he doesn't believe in relationships because they always end. Preview: Miss Carter, you will be mine. I say firmly. "Release my arm, Mr. Carrington, before I force you to." She says, seeming to smile at me. I give her a sly smile. Squeezing my wrist with her other hand, she twists it uncomfortably. I gave a painful hiss. "Don't underestimate me, Mr. Carrington." "This is the only time I will allow you to walk away from me, Miss Carter." She glared at me as she turned. "Mr. Carrington, I am no possession of yours." I was left standing there when she opened the classroom door and left.
"Who is she?" I asked, feeling tears well up in my eyes. "He met her at the Alpha training camp," he said. "She is a perfect suitor for him. It snowed last night, indicating that his wolf is happy with his choice." My heart sank, and tears made their way down my cheeks. Alexander took my innocence last night, and now he is taking that thing in his office as his Luna. **** Emily never shifted on her 18th birthday and became the laughingstock of the pack. When her old crush, Alexander Black, returns from Alpha Training, she never expected him to be her mate. After a night of passionate love, Emily finds out that young Alpha Alexander has taken a chosen mate. Heartbroken and humiliated, Emily runs off and disappears from the pack. Now, five years later, Emily is a high-ranking warrior in King Alpha's army, specializing in sensitive matters. When her best friend invites her to a night of music and laughter, she never expects to run into her mate, Alexander. Will Alexander figure out it is Emily? Will he chase after her, and most of all, will Emily be able to keep her secrets safe?