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  Sweet Surrender

  Naima Simone

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be sold, copied, distributed, reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical or digital, including photocopying and recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of both the publisher, Oliver Heber Books and the author, Naima Simone, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  PUBLISHER'S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2017 Naima Simone

  Cover Art: Debra Glass

  Editor: Eden Royce

  0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Sweet Surrender

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  About Naima Simone

  Also by Naima Simone

  To Gary. 143.

  Acknowledgments

  First, thank you to my Father, and that I can always look to the hills—to You—for my help.

  Gary, thank you for having faith bigger than a mustard seed. You are my inspiration in my books and in life. And you make the perfect cup of coffee!

  Eden Royce. Thank you for your editing expertise! I loved working with you!

  Debra Glass. This cover! Sigh. And just…everything. You’ve been so selfless with your knowledge, your talent and yourself. A bestie and guru all rolled into one. And beware. I’m in your life for always. Just thought I’d warn you ahead of time…

  Jessica Lee and Dahlia Rose. Ladies, if not for you and our writing challenges, I might still be playing a rousing game of Pet Rescue. LOL!

  Thank you for pushing and, well, challenging me. Let’s keep it up!

  Stormy Pate. Thank you for always being so willing to beta read! When I receive your thumb’s up, I know the book is ready for the world. You’re simply awesome!

  Thank you to the Saints and Sinners for always being a bright spot in every day! The laughter and support I receive from you guys keep me pumped and sitting in that writing chair. Finding that special group of ladies who share your kind of crazy is invaluable! LOL! Love y’all!

  Sweet Surrender

  Killing the messenger is frowned upon. Okay, then... What about laying the messenger on the nearest flat surface and making her scream with pleasure?

  From the moment Hayden Reynolds approaches Griffin Sutherland in the local, Florida dive bar, all he can think about is fisting her dark curls and stroking those gorgeous curves. But hell would freeze over before she allowed him to touch her because she’s the woman he left behind five years earlier. And now she’s there to deliver a message—an ultimatum—from his estranged father. Blackmail forces Griffin, black sheep of his powerful Texas family, back home to play nice. But the terms of his bargain say nothing about not satisfying his need for the woman he’s never forgotten…never stopped wanting…

  Hayden is no longer the naive girl who once fiercely loved a golden Sutherland and believed he and a maid's daughter could live happily ever after. Griffin broke her all those years ago, but she forced herself to pick up the pieces and move on. Now he’s back in Texas, acting the part of the proper, dutiful son. But there’s nothing proper about the detailed—dirty—descriptions of how he wants to touch her…take her… Though her body heats every time he’s near, she refuses to surrender to his special brand of passion. Griffin may have returned home, but he's leaving again. And this time he won't take her heart with him…

  1

  “I’m leaving.”

  The low murmur assaulted Hayden Reynolds’ ears as if it’d been shouted with a megaphone. Her heart, which had just begun to slow from the after effects of a blistering orgasm, sped up again, pounding against her sternum like a caged wild thing. A sickening tension invaded her body, chasing away the delicious, warm lethargy that always followed making love with Griffin Sutherland. From the first time eight months ago, to the last time three minutes ago, he’d never failed to make her body sing. But now, two words had struck a discordant chord, and it reverberated through her like a sharp, painful note.

  “Hayden?”

  Rolling over, she clutched the sheet to her chest, wrapping it around her hips. She sat, one hand gripping the cover to her breasts, and the other curled over the edge of the mattress as if it were the only thing keeping her anchored. Keeping her from falling over into the dark hole of pain and loneliness that had suddenly yawned open at her feet.

  “I heard you,” she said, amazed at her calm tone. “When?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  God. Tomorrow? She stifled a gasp. She could count down the time she had left with him in hours and minutes. That explained why he’d shown up at the door of her small apartment without calling. Why there’d been a sense of urgency in his lovemaking. No. Not lovemaking. Sex. A person didn’t make love to someone they planned on leaving...on abandoning.

  “So what was this, then? A good-bye fuck?” This time she couldn’t prevent the hurt from thickening her voice. Grief started clawing at her throat, determined to leave her in an anguished rush. Swallowing convulsively, she shoved it back down.

  “No. Yes. Shit.”

  The mattress dipped as he erupted from the bed. And damn her, she couldn’t help but glance over her shoulder and stare as he picked up his earlier discarded jeans and dragged them up his legs and hips. Even with pain burrowing deeper and deeper into her heart, arousal snaked through her, heating her blood, tightening her belly.

  Moonlight streamed through the windows of her bedroom, gilding him in its pearlescent beam. Emphasizing the masculine beauty of his strong, broad shoulders, wide chest and ridged abdomen. Unable to help herself, she lowered her gaze to the flat belly and narrow hips where the defined vee only the truly cut sported arrowed into his unbuttoned jeans. At that moment, the Greek mythology stories she loved to read flooded her mind. The tales of the untouchable, powerful, beautiful gods who ruled from on high and sometimes blessed humans with their favor. That’s what Griffin was. A god.

  A Sutherland.

  And she was the poor, foolish human girl who dared to believe she could capture the heart of one.

  Screw foolish. Somewhere in a village there was a Missing Idiot poster with her picture on it tacked to a lamp post.

  She snatched the sheet off, and for a moment she fought the tangled material strangling her legs. Calm down, a voice warned. But she didn’t heed it as she finally tore free and grabbed her robe off the floor.

  “Baby, please, listen to me,” Griff whispered, rounding the end of the queen-sized bed that took up most of the space in the small room.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” She shrugged into the robe and tugged the sash tight, tying it in jerky movements. Then she gripped the lapels close at her throat, an arm circling her waist, shielding herself from the one person she’d never thought she would have to protect herself from.

  “Because I just decided it today. But, Hayden, you more than anyone know how much I hate it here. I’ve been slowly suffocating with my father, the business…” He shoved his fingers through his thick, golden waves, fisting the strands tight at the base of his skull. “I’m twenty-five, and I don’t know what it’s like to be my own man. To
be something other than my family name. To have a job I love and earned instead of inherited. I need to leave or else become someone I don’t know. Or worse. Hate.”

  Yes, she knew everything he’d stated. She was a student at Rice University working her way toward a Bachelor’s in Managerial Studies, but she already possessed a Ph.D. in Griffin Sutherland. Had been an avid student from the second she’d met the devilish eleven-year-old son of the wealthy family her mother had been hired to work for as a housekeeper. At eleven, Griff had been a hellion, and while he’d matured through the years, he’d never lost that sense of rebellion. While his older brother Joshua and younger sister Callie had toed the Sutherland line of decorum, proper deportment and obedience, Griff had seemed to glory in touting it. He’d scratched at the Sutherland skin, itching to find his own way, his own path that didn’t include the well-travelled one his father Joshua Sutherland, Sr., youngest son of Texas oil baron Bud Sutherland, had set out for him. At twenty-five, he chafed at the demands placed on him, and in the last six months, that restlessness and dissatisfaction had intensified. Objectively, his announcement shouldn’t surprise her. But, oh God, it did. It wrecked her.

  Because she’d allowed herself to fall in love with him. Fall so deeply, the thought of waking up tomorrow and acknowledging he was gone tore at her with greedy, vicious claws.

  “Have you told your father yet?”

  Griff nodded, his mouth firming into a straight line while his eyes blazed blue fire. “Yes, before I came here. He told me if I leave not to come back.”

  In spite of her own pain, her heart ached for him. “Griff, I’m sorry…”

  He shook his head, slicing a hand through the air. “Forget it. He reacted exactly how I expected. I don’t need his money or connections anyway. They come with strings, and I’m trying to escape his control and influence.” A hard smile curved his sensual mouth. “Besides, he still has the heir, he doesn’t need the spare. You’re the only one I had left to tell.”

  “Where are you going?” she rasped.

  “Florida, I think. We have distant cousins there. It’s a starting place, at least.”

  Florida. Damn near across the country. So far. So far from her…

  “Take me with you.” The words exploded past her lips before she could trap them. But once they were out, she couldn’t rescind them. No. No. She meant them. “I-I can go with you.” She hurried across the few feet separating them and clutched his arm, the heat from his body searing her palm. “Please, Griff. We can leave toge—”

  “No, Hayden.”

  Just that firm denial. Not even unkind, but gentle. Hell, a part of her wished the rejection had been harsh, mean. Because the soft tone smacked too close to pity. And like salt rubbed into an open wound, it was agony to her pride, her heart.

  “You have one more year left of school.” He cupped her jaw, smoothed his thumb over her chin.

  She shook her head. “I don’t care. I can finish online—”

  “And what about the Meyers internship? That’s an honor and a once in a lifetime opportunity, and you worked damn hard to win it.”

  Only two business students out of the thousands who applied for the prestigious internship program won it. Hayden had been chosen—one of the first women to be selected in the past five years, and the first Latina in the history of the program. During her senior year, she would work in a Fortune 500 company headquartered in Houston, earning invaluable experience and connections in the field she hoped to be employed in one day. When she’d been notified of her acceptance two weeks ago, she’d been ecstatic. Now, staring at the resolve in Griffin’s eyes, she resented it.

  “I can’t let you throw away all your hard work to follow me,” Griffin murmured. “You’ve worked too hard, put in too much time.”

  “I don’t—”

  “No, baby.”

  Still in that awful, terrible, tender voice. And under it, she caught not just the resolution, but the determination.

  The finality.

  Jerking free of his hold, she stumbled backward before catching herself. Murmuring her name, he reached out to steady her, but she flinched from his touch.

  “You have no idea how much I want to—”

  “Stop it,” she ordered, slamming up her hand, palm out. “You’ve never lied to me, so please don’t start now.” Inhaling, she welcomed—finally—the numbness that eased in, coating the gnawing, pulsing pain and grief in a cool wash of white. Sealing it until later when he wasn’t standing in front of her, and she could crash into pieces without him as a witness. “I shouldn’t have asked you to take me with you. It was unfair,” she apologized, the flat tone a far cry from the desperate one of moments ago. “You’re right. I’ve always known how unhappy you were here, and you never made any promises to me.”

  Silence permeated the room. The occasional honk of a passing car as well as snatches of conversation and laughter probably from students returning home after hitting the bars filtered up to her bedroom, punctuating the thick quiet.

  “Look at me, Hayden,” he quietly demanded. Helpless to resist, she shifted her gaze from the base of his throat to his face. His hooded stare and tense, too-still frame reminded her of a predator about to leap on its prey. “Care to explain that?”

  An unbidden shiver tripped over her skin at the dark, faintly ominous question that wasn’t a question but an order. Disgust curdled in her belly. Because even as he stood here cracking her heart in two, he excited her, sent desire skating through her.

  God, she was pathetic.

  Crossing the room toward her dresser, she shrugged a shoulder. “Just what I said. You made no promises. And we both knew there was an expiration date on…this.” She jerked open a drawer and withdrew a t-shirt and shorts. It was one o’clock in the morning, but she needed more cover than the flimsy robe. More armor. Besides, she wouldn’t be getting any more sleep tonight.

  “This?” he repeated, his voice closer.

  She stiffened, momentarily pausing before stepping into the shorts and pulling them on. Only then did she remove the robe and let it slide down her arms, keeping her back to him.

  “Yes, this. Friends with benefits. Fuck buddies. Whatever you want to call it.” The lies tasted like the filthiest of ashes on her tongue. The past eight months hadn’t been just a casual passing of time filled with friendly fucking. For her, it’d been…everything.

  He’d catapulted her to a world where she’d transformed into a carnal creature that craved every erotic, dirty thing he said and did to her body with a need veering close to addiction. Instilled in her a feminine confidence that changed her, emboldened her. Wrapped her in a security that she’d felt free to explore and indulge her every fantasy without fear of judgment or recrimination.

  He’d made her feel wanted, beautiful…loved.

  But apparently, it’d all been a figment of her infatuated virgin’s imagination.

  “You’re going to want to shut up now.” The low growl had her stomach tightening, her sex pulsing. Her nipples beaded against the cotton of the shirt she’d tugged down. She sank her teeth into her bottom lip, trapping the moan begging to escape. Only he had this effect on her. Could make her ache with just his voice. It was his super power and her kryptonite.

  “Why?” she pressed, bitterness escaping the numbness in her chest and creeping into her voice. Part of her needed to poke him, shove him. Needed to hear him admit she’d been a fling, a fuck toy. Needed him to hurt her so badly with his words that this messy, terrible cracking of her soul could be a clean break. “I’m telling the truth. I mean, sneaking into each other’s apartments to screw is one thing. But could you imagine taking me to your parents’ house for one of their fancy dinner parties?” She laughed, the sound of it brittle and harsh, the jagged edges of it scraping her throat raw. “Picture you, a Sutherland, escorting the poor housekeeper’s daughter to—”

  “Shut the fuck up.”

  The enraged snarl burned her ear seconds before hard, implacable
fingers clamped down on her arms and whirled her around with enough force to steal the breath from her lungs. Her heart rammed up against her sternum, but not with fear. Need. Lust. It flared to greedy life at his touch, her pussy already softening and clenching in anticipation of having him tunneling through her flesh once more. She whimpered as his mouth slammed down over hers. Helpless, she opened under the relentless carnal onslaught, submitting, silently begging for more. God, the taste of him. Crisp but sultry, like lightning striking wet earth in the midst of a thunderstorm. He electrified her, stunned her. Set her on fire.

  She clawed at his shoulders, rising up on tiptoes to increase the almost bruising pressure. More, more, more, the sexual creature he’d brought to life inside her chanted. And maybe he heard her. Or possibly, after teaching her the exquisite pleasure he alone could bring her, he just knew what she desired, what she craved. Twisting her hair in a firm, merciless grip, he jerked her head farther back, tilted her face so he could deepen the penetration and angle of his tongue. Mimicking what he would do with her body. Take. Own.

  Leave.

  Jesus Christ. What am I doing?

  She wrenched her mouth away from his, and flattening her palms against his shoulders, shoved. Desperation, pain and grief lent her the strength his kiss had robbed from her. Chest heaving, she stumbled past him and lurched for her bed, a rough sob ripping free.

  I can’t… I can’t…

  “Hayden…” Griffin rasped.

  “No!” Wrapping her arms around herself, she shook her head, sinking to the mattress that only minutes ago had been warm and musky with their lovemaking. Now the tangled sheets mocked her naïveté, her foolish dreams of happily ever after with this man. “No,” she repeated, squeezing her eyes shut against the sting of moisture. A few minutes. That’s all she needed. Then he would be gone, and she could drown in the tears. Just a few more minutes. “You’ve had your one-for-the-road fuck. Go.”