Cruel King – Cruel Read Online K.A. Linde

Categories Genre: Alpha Male, Billionaire, Contemporary, Erotic Tags Authors: K.A. Linde Advertisement1

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I’d long ago discovered that not wanting to settle for anything less than perfection meant that I spent a lot of time alone.

“I don’t get the whole dating thing. I’ve done it. I’ve done it over and over, and it all ends the same way. With the other person saying I’m too wild or too indifferent or too something that doesn’t quite fit their definition of a girlfriend. Then, when I see the first sign of it going bad, I don’t just end it. I sunder it to the fucking cinders. I can’t let it go. I have to ruin it beyond measure. So, believe me,” I said in a desperate attempt for him to understand what a terrible idea this was, “I’m bad at it, King. I don’t think I can even pretend to be good at it.”

Gavin opened his mouth, as if he were going to disagree, but then stopped, as if a thought had struck him. “Wait, you wouldn’t have to be my girlfriend.”

“What? That’s what you told everyone.”

“What if you were my fiancée? My fake fiancée.”

I narrowed my eyes. That didn’t make it better. If I was a bad girlfriend, then, I’d be a bad fiancée, too.

But he kept speaking. “You’ve never been a fiancée. You … you don’t know if you’re bad at it. It’d just be for fun, Whit. Come on. Give me a few days. I’d owe you big.”

I bit my lip as I turned the idea in my mind. I imagined myself on Gavin’s arm at his cousin’s wedding. I’d meet his family and pretend like I was besotted with him. It wouldn’t even be hard. We already acted like that around each other. We always had, even before things went down. It was just our personalities. We clicked. And we could click this way too.

Varma had been trying to tell me to take some time off. Surely, he hadn’t meant to a wedding in Midland, Texas. But with Gavin’s pouting face staring at me with such hope, I found my walls coming down.

Would it be so bad to pretend to be his for a few days? Maybe I’d get the entire thing out of my system, and I could finally move on from what had happened. Maybe I’d prove that I was as bad of a fiancée as I was a girlfriend. It had been the thrill of being with him on vacation. I’d convince myself that it wasn’t going to work, and things could finally go back to normal.

“All right,” I said on a sigh. “When do we leave?”

PART II

BLONDES HAVE MORE FUN

7

GAVIN

She said yes.

I still couldn’t fucking believe it.

I’d wanted to invite Whitley every day for the last two months leading up to my cousin’s wedding. I wanted her to go as my date. But every time we got even remotely close, she backed off. Her eyes shuttered. Her body stiffened. She’d really meant it that night she told me that she wanted us to be friends.

Then, I was down to the wire about getting a date, and I was an idiot. I asked her to be my fake date. Even though I wanted her to be my real date. But she wouldn’t decline when it was a game. She never would have said yes if I’d been serious. As serious as I wanted to be.

Regardless, she’d said yes.

Now, I was fishing around in my apartment for the one thing I needed to give her to make this fiction a reality.

I was minutes away from heading upstairs to help her with her bags. We were flying out that afternoon, and I still couldn’t believe that we were doing this. She’d gotten her clients rescheduled for the week. She’d gone shopping and gotten a dress that she refused to show me. And now, we just had to get on a plane and head back to the town where I was raised.

God, my family was going to be a pain in the ass about this.

I continued to rummage through my drawers. I could have sworn I’d stuffed that thing back here somewhere. Admittedly, it had been a few years since my mother had given it to me, and I’d rolled my eyes, tossing it unconcerned into the back of a deep dresser drawer. When the hell was I going to need that anyway?

But now, I fucking needed it.

I reached my arm farther back into the drawer and felt the edge of a velvet box.

“Aha!” I said triumphantly, retrieving the little black box.

I popped it open and glanced inside to make sure it wasn’t empty. That would have been one hell of a surprise. Satisfied, I pocketed the thing with relief.

All set.

I slung my suit bag over one shoulder and pushed my suitcase toward the door. I took the elevator to Whitley’s floor and knocked twice. I couldn’t deny that I’d liked having her only an elevator ride away for the last couple of weeks. Getting coffee for her had been a pretense to see her.


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