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King's Price
Jackie Ashenden
His marriage deal…Her sexual awakening!Unscrupulous businessman Leon King is going legit. A calculated marriage to the daughter of a wealthy Sydney philanthropist could help redeem his family’s reputation. But Vita Hamilton has her own scandal to shake: a decade-old sex tape that still haunts her. Getting emotionally involved with Vita will cost Leon dearly. With their intense sexual connection, is it a price this King is willing to pay?
His marriage deal...
Her sexual awakening!
Unscrupulous businessman Leon King is going legit. A calculated marriage to the daughter of a wealthy Sydney philanthropist could help redeem his family’s reputation. But Vita Hamilton has her own scandal to shake: a decade-old sex tape that still haunts her. Getting emotionally involved with Vita will cost Leon dearly. With their intense sexual connection, is it a price this King is willing to pay?
“DARE is Harlequin’s hottest line yet. Every book should come with a free fan. I dare you to try them!”
—Tiffany Reisz, international bestselling author
JACKIE ASHENDEN writes dark, emotional stories with alpha heroes who’ve just got 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 (http://jackieashenden.com).
If you liked King’s Price why not try
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Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk).
King’s Price
Jackie Ashenden
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ISBN: 978-1-474-07142-0
KING’S PRICE
© 2018 Jackie Ashenden
Published in Great Britain 2018
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 (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Contents
Cover (#ue3cd2f8f-994a-5243-a303-0416ce1b3b1f)
Back Cover Text (#ue75ba781-68c2-5793-97a6-6c62f57847fd)
About the Author (#ub4cf7616-74a6-5956-b609-80eaa6e88623)
Booklist (#uababf975-3fac-5c23-b43a-3d837c390434)
Title Page (#u26154989-8b01-5612-9d68-ad7f796a8c06)
Copyright (#uebdddfa0-6721-508e-918c-83ad35a4bc09)
CHAPTER ONE (#u15a4a489-8d85-5077-aa2a-a07ff734e976)
CHAPTER TWO (#u9b4e9aca-8e54-5dfa-8e7f-b82c9f3dce8f)
CHAPTER THREE (#ua0be195d-0d89-594a-b9d8-a4c0c1743eca)
CHAPTER FOUR (#u9401d290-fb15-5e9d-8a7a-eccdaaceb047)
CHAPTER FIVE (#ua1a25257-d5f5-54be-b37d-1b0251f64dac)
CHAPTER SIX (#u80645be2-ba6a-5a06-9e56-ce00de23870a)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINETEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#uacf83e4f-f369-5562-9e57-ac5943add40f)
Leon
‘IT’S VERY SIMPLE.’ I kept my back to the office as I gazed out of the floor-to-ceiling windows that gave magnificent views of Sydney’s impressive harbour. ‘I want your daughter.’
There was silence behind me.
Clearly, I’d shocked Thomas Hamilton—one of Sydney’s most beloved and lauded philanthropists—into silence.
Excellent. Keeping him off-balance until he’d agreed to my demands was half the battle.
‘What do you mean you want my daughter?’ he asked.
There was a hint of unsteadiness in his voice. It was very, very slight but I heard it, oh, yes, I did.
I said nothing, letting him stew, watching the yachts in the harbour and the ferry sailing towards Manly, the sunlight touching on the white curves of the iconic Opera House.
Christ, I loved Sydney. Bright and flashy and sexy, with a dark, dirty underbelly. My kind of town.
It was like looking at myself in the mirror.
Leon King. Second son of Augustus King, the erstwhile emperor of Sydney’s crime scene, now answering for those crimes in a maximum security correctional facility...aka prison.
Yeah, the King is dead. Long live the King.
Or should I say ‘Kings’?
The new Kings of Sydney were me and my two brothers, Ajax and Xander, and it wasn’t our father’s old empire we wanted to inherit, not when we were the ones who’d toppled it in the first place.
No, we were after redemption. Making good on the King name. Building something out of the ashes of the old empire. Going legit or some such bullshit.
At least that was what Xander and Ajax wanted.
Me, I was fine with going legit. Things were a hell of a lot easier if you didn’t have the cops interfering with your business, but it wasn’t redemption I needed.
I didn’t even particularly care about the King name.
I’d been my father’s lieutenant, the muscle at his back, and years of dealing out violence to other people had burned the fucks I had to give right out of me.
I’d been happy to be the bad guy back then and, five years after my father had gone to jail, I was still happy to be the bad guy.
It was a fresh start I wanted, in a city where no one knew who I was or who the Kings used to be. Where I didn’t have a past. Where I could be whoever and whatever I wanted to be, master of my own destiny. Where I could escape.
But before all of that, I had one last order to obey. A debt I owed to my oldest brother. And I was prepared to do anything to make good on it.
I turned from the view to the sleek minimalist room that was my office. We were in the tower that housed King Enterprises, the hugely successful property development company my brothers and I had formed out of the rubble of Dad’s empire.
Hamilton was sitting in the uncomfortable chair I’d positioned in front of my desk. He was an older man, silver-haired and blue-eyed, with that well-preserved look that only the very rich had.
Except he looked every bit of his sixty-plus years right now.
I tended to have that effect on people.
‘What do you think I mean?’ I gave him my very widest smile, the one that I was infamous for giving right before I was about to do some serious damage; nothing put someone off-balance like a smile right before you punched them in the face. ‘I want to marry her.’
Hamilton paled. ‘You can’t be serious.’
‘Of course I’m bloody serious. I’d never joke about the sanctity of marriage.’
He stared at me, confused by my sarcasm and my smile.
Good. Let him stay confused. It would make it easier to close the deal.
‘But...why do you want to marry my daughter?’
‘I thought I explained.’ I adjusted the cuffs of my white cotton shirt, admiring the contrast with the dark blue of my suit and taking my time about it. Small movements right before the gut punch. Another way to play with an opponent, and I did love to play with my opponents. It was such a power trip. ‘My brother wants to expand the King portfolio into the luxury apartment market and we’re having difficulty getting investors.’
Hamilton nodded. ‘I understand that. But I still fail to see why marriage is necessary for that kind of expansion.’
‘It’s the name,’ I said. ‘No one wants to put money behind a King. Not with our past.’
A muscle twitched in the side of Hamilton’s jaw. ‘But you don’t need my daughter for that. Simply pay me the money you said you would, and I’ll mention to my friends that you’re a good bet and—’
