Hey, book bae! The Business of Lust goes live tomorrow! Click here to preorder if you haven’t already, and check out the sample below.
Fallyn Mitchell’s perfect life begins to unravel at the seams piece by piece. As life shows her not everything is within her control, she finds solace in her best friend, Stax. For the last ten years, Stax has been the one constant in Fallyn’s life that has been unchanging. When he finally meets the perfect woman for him romantically, Fallyn’s feelings for him start to come to the surface, and she has to choose between keeping her friendship intact or risking it for a romantic relationship that Stax may not even want.
Stax Tate gets everything he wants and needs from a woman in his best friend… except sex. Most women expect more than what he’s willing to give, so when he meets Paige, Stax believes he’s finally met his match. The joy Stax thought would come with having the perfect woman is buried under his true feelings for his best friend. No matter how much Stax tells himself he doesn’t deserve a woman like Fallyn, that doesn’t keep his heart and body from craving her.
Stax and Fallyn are alike where it counts and different where it matters most. Two things they have in common are their fear of rejection and belief that the other doesn’t return their romantic feelings. Will one of them find the courage to speak up, or will Stax’s relationship with Paige lead to a permanent engagement that will keep the best friends from experiencing love forever?
Fallyn
I couldn’t stop staring at Stax. He’d surprised me with what he had planned for the evening. We went on a hot-air balloon ride that included a champagne and steak dinner afterward. If he was courting me, the date would have had me absolutely smitten with him. A year had passed since I had sex, and it had been two since my last relationship. I hadn’t bothered to do much dating over the past year because I didn’t feel the need to. Having Stax and his brothers, I always had male companionship. The only thing lacking was romance and sex, and I’d gotten used to not having that. Nights like this, though, I wished I had a man that was all mine. If I did, we’d end the night making slow… nasty… love.
“What?” His boyish smirk made me squeeze my thighs together when he looked over at me. “Why you keep looking at me like that?”
“I’m just… surprised. You’ve never done anything like this before. This was… very… romantic.” I clutched my chest, pulling in a deep breath. “Let me find out this is what you had planned for Taijha and took me instead.”
That got a hearty laugh out of him. He accelerated his speed, licking those juicy lips as he gripped the steering wheel. I was obsessed with everything this man did. He even made driving look sexy.
“Nah. I took back the shit I got for Tai.” Stax made sure to look over at me when he said, “This was just for you.”
“Why?”
He didn’t answer me right away, and I anxiously held on to the silence. “You’ve been single for a while. I wanted to make sure you enjoyed yourself and felt loved tonight.” Stax shrugged, as if the words, the gesture, was minute.
“You’re a great guy… you know that?”
“I do, but it’s nice hearing that from a great girl.”
I smiled as I looked out of the window into the night sky briefly. “We’re gonna ignore how corny that was.”
Stax chuckled. “I’m only corny with you, so I hope you feel special.”
“I always feel special when I’m with you.”
He looked over at me with that curious expression that I was always too afraid to ask for the meaning behind.
“What do you have planned for the rest of the night?”
“Probably just read or play the game. What about you?”
Neither of us was really into TV. We’d have to be chilling or really bored to watch more than one episode of something or several movies back-to-back.
“I’ma slide through on Paige real quick. I’ma call you when I get home. See if you wanna get on the game.”
All I did was nod. Usually, him fucking on women didn’t bother me. Tonight… it did. I guess because what we’d shared was more intimate than our usual routine and it had me open in a way that was… different.
Regardless, I reminded myself that Stax was going to get pussy regardless of what was going on between us or him and anyone else for that matter. He loved sex, and honestly, I couldn’t blame him. I loved sex too. If I didn’t get attached so easily and had the ability to have so many casual relationships, I’d probably be on the same wave as him. That was yet another way we were different. My hopeless romantic ass fell in love with any man whose actions appealed to my soul and refreshed my spirit.
Plus, sex complicated things. I loved the closeness and would want to have sex daily. If a man wasn’t worth me or on the same page as me, I wasn’t willing to waste my body count on him.
For the rest of the ride to our neighborhood, we remained silent. It was probably best that way.