Seduced, p.1
Seduced, page 1
Seduced
A V Card Diaries Novel
Lili Valente
All Rights Reserved
Copyright Seduced © 2022 Lili Valente
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. This romance is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners. This e-book is licensed for your personal use only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with, especially if you enjoy hot, sexy, emotional novels featuring firefighting alpha males. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work. Cover design by Kelly Lambert Greer. Image copyright Wander Aguiar.
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Contents
Seduced
About the Book
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Sneak Peek
About the Author
Also by Lili Valente
Seduced
A V Card Diaries Novel
By Lili Valente
About the Book
Last night I made out with a gorgeous, funny, quirky older woman. Today I learned she’s the new executive chef at my restaurant. AKA my new boss.
Yep, that’s the hot mess I’m in at the moment.
But the chemistry between Natalie and me is even hotter.
The problem? She’s a single mom focused on helping her little girl adjust to life in the big city. Dating right now—especially a co-worker—is asking for trouble.
So, what’s my next move? Seduce the hell out of the woman, of course.
I may still technically be hanging onto my V Card, but I know how to drive a woman wild in bed.
Even more importantly, I know I’m the kind of man Nat’s looking for. I love hard, keep my promises, and I’ll put her and her daughter first.
And then I learn the real reason she's been holding me at a distance…
Most men would be scared away. Me?
I’m even more determined to prove I can make this wounded woman’s dreams come true.
For the romance reading world. You were good to me, and I’m so grateful. Wishing you all the real life happily ever afters you deserve!
Prologue
DEAR DIARY
Dear Diary,
I could have “lost it” a hundred times by now.
Maybe more than a hundred.
That’s not some cheesy flex. It’s a fact.
And sure, being conventionally good-looking helps, but that’s not why women ask me to go home with them far more often than the norm. It’s because I love women. I care about them and respect them and was an ally back before that was even a thing. I was raised by a single mom and all of my best friends growing up were girls. I saw the shit they had to put up with from “non-ally” men and boys firsthand, and I vowed never to be part of that problem.
Basically—I’m just a nice guy. And while I’ve heard the old “nice guys finish last and can’t get laid to save their lives” adage as often as the next person, in my experience…it’s a crock of shit.
When I fell head over heels for my first girlfriend in high school, all I had to do was tell Mariah that I was interested. She jumped at the chance to go to a movie with me that night, and we were inseparable for nearly five years, during which I had more than my fair share of opportunities to cheat.
The other girls at school knew Mariah had made a promise to her family not to have sex until she was married. In turn, I’d made a promise to Mariah that I would wait, too—because I was straight up crazy about her—but my promise didn’t get nearly as much respect from our peer group.
I lost count of how many times I had to literally lift one of Mariah’s so-called “friends” off my lap at a party or turn my back on a girl who’d popped into the back of the pizza place where I worked to flash me her bra.
It became a game for some of them, seeing if they could break me.
Seduce me. Turn my body against my heart.
Similar things happened in culinary school, though the women there were less overt about it. It was a hand on mine in class while we were cleaning up the kitchen or a lingering glance over coffee in the student lounge that made it clear if I wanted more than friendship, all I had to do was ask.
But I didn’t ask.
I slept alone, except on nights when Mariah’s roommate was out of town, and she invited me over to share her tiny twin bed in her dorm room at NYU. Sometimes, lying there with her ass snuggled against where I was sporting yet another raging hard-on for her was torture.
But it was sweet torture, because I knew the waiting would eventually be over. We were planning to get married as soon as she graduated and move back to our hometown in Jersey. Even though a part of me dreaded leaving the five-star-restaurant gig I’d been lucky enough to land straight out of school, I was excited about the next stage of our life together.
It felt like we were doing the right thing—keeping our promises to our families and to each other.
And then Mariah decided to have a three-way with two soccer players when she thought I was going to be out of town. I walked in on them in flagrante delicto, and all our plans and promises went up in smoke.
The only silver lining to that betrayal was that I was suddenly free to fuck as many women as I wanted.
I had no moral issues with sex, after all.
Never had.
That was all Mariah’s shit and Mariah’s shit wasn’t my shit anymore.
As I left her dorm with a paper bag full of my things, I vowed that my dick and I were going to make up for lost time.
Starting immediately.
Imagine my surprise when I couldn’t get it up for the first woman who brought me back to her place after a few too many beers.
Or the second woman. Or the third…
I soon realized that one-night stands left me cold—and flaccid. But even with women I knew and actually connected with, it didn’t feel right to rush things.
I want more than a body connection.
I want a mental spark, emotional potential.
I don’t get off on fucking strangers, but it’s so damned hard to get to know anyone in this city. They’re either too consumed by ambition to have time for a relationship, too exhausted from working sixty-hour weeks to pay their sky-high rent to leave the house most nights, or just looking to get low-key laid.
Another shitty side effect of so many men being utter fucking assholes?
The women they hurt tend to emotionally shut down, holding future partners at arm’s length to protect themselves from getting the shaft again. But if there’s anything less sexy than going down on a distant woman who’s told you half a dozen times “not to get attached,” I can’t imagine it.
And I won’t even get started on how many times I’ve shared my virgin status only to have my date act like I just confessed I was infested with flesh-eating parasites and flee the restaurant/bar/my bedroom as fast as her stilettoed feet could carry her.
It isn’t overstating things to call my post-Mariah dating life a raging dumpster fire.
Until last night, in fact, I was starting to think I’d never find a woman who was on my wavelength. That maybe I’d missed my shot at hooking up with someone who was still optimistic about love and would spend the rest of my twenties growing just as disillusioned as the rest of the feral singles roaming the city streets.
No matter how naturally optimistic I tend to be, even I knew that a person can only try and fail to form a connection so many times before he either gives up or gets too jaded to find that honest, unspoiled kind of love I’ve always wanted.
And then I met her, and everything changed.
Absolutely everything.
I’m going to see her again, Diary.
Maybe sooner than either of us can imagine…
Chapter One
Cameron
A man about to lose his heart
while the woman of his dreams loses her lunch.
No one meets the love of their life over chocolate-covered crickets.
Or chili-lime cricket tacos.
&nbs
And I’m positive love at first sight is rarely accompanied by so much…barfing.
“I’m so sorry.” The woman heaving into the bucket I snatched from beneath a leaky sink in the corner of the basement kitchen, sucks in a deep breath. “I thought I could handle it. I wanted to handle it. Crickets are so healthy and packed with vitamins and minerals.”
I gather more of her silky reddish-brown hair into my hand, keeping it free of her face in case the vomiting starts up again. “They are,” I agree. “And an ecologically responsible source of protein.”
“And good for your gut. Allegedly, anyway.” She sits back on her heels on the tile floor and swipes the sleeve of her chef’s coat across her mouth with a shudder.
“And they reduce inflammation in the body,” I add, letting my hand slide from her hair to rest gently on her back, rubbing my palm in circles as her breathing slows. “If eaten in large quantities.”
She slides pale blue eyes the color of a summer sky my way and whispers, “Large quantities. God…that sounds like torture.”
I grin. “The chocolate ones weren’t so bad.”
“But the tacos,” she hisses, glancing over my shoulder toward the opposite side of the room, where the rest of the class has moved on to the granola recipe, bravely ignoring the purging in this corner.
I would feel bad for the instructor, but what kind of chef books a kitchen without access to a bathroom? Sure, there’s a handwashing station, but the class is three hours long. Most humans need to hit a toilet at least once every three hours, and that doesn’t include the travel time to reach this dreary corner of the East Village. The closest subway station is eight blocks away.
“The tacos were brutal,” I agree. “Way too many spiky bug legs in one tiny corn tortilla.”
“So many. So, so many.” The woman’s face pales until I can count every freckle on her adorable little nose. Even kneeling on the floor by a bucket of sick, this woman is so cute it should be illegal.
I have to know her name and her favorite recipe and when she got hooked on cooking and if that hint of a dimple I spotted on her right cheek pops when she smiles. Which means we need to bail. I can already tell smiles aren’t going to be forthcoming as long as she’s surrounded by bins full of crickets and the mealworms drying on the counter behind us for the next class.
I nod toward the door. “Want to get out of here? There’s a tiki bar a couple blocks over that has great mai tais.”
Relief sags her shoulders. “That would be amazing. Yes. Thank you.”
“I’m Cameron,” I say, extending a hand.
“Natalie.” She reaches for my fingers only to halt before we touch and snatch her hand back to her chest. “I may have wiped my mouth with this hand. I don’t remember. It’s all a blur of legs and crunchy bodies and my head in a bucket. I’m so sorry.”
I laugh. “No worries. You can clean up in the bar bathroom. They actually have one, and if I remember correctly, it’s not totally gross.”
“Thank you,” she says, as I help her to her feet. “And thank you for being so quick with the bucket. When I realized that door was a closet, not a toilet, I froze for a second.”
“My pleasure.”
She arches a wry brow. “Really? Got a vomit fetish I should know about?”
I shake my head. “Nope. But I’m pretty into dimples, so...”
She smiles and that shy dimple comes out to play, making me ridiculously happy. “Oh. Good. I happen to have one of those. And you are insanely cute, so…” She blinks faster, shaking her head as her cheeks flush pink. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to say that out loud. I’m obviously still suffering from cricket-related trauma. I don’t usually hit on strangers a few minutes after nearly vomiting on them. Or hit on them at all, really. I haven’t dated in years.” She winces and adds with a laugh, “Shit. I didn’t mean to say that, either. It’s fine if you want to cancel. I’m…a lot right now.”
“I don’t want to cancel,” I assure her.
“I talk a lot too, though. And you’ll have to walk me to a subway station after drinks and tell me how to get home,” she hurries on, “because I just moved here, and despite my allegedly high IQ, I can’t seem to get uptown without getting lost at least three times.” She lifts worried eyes to mine. “And I probably shouldn’t have told you that, either. What if you’re a predator with a vomit fetish who plans on getting me drunk, giving me the wrong directions, and then snatching me off the street when I emerge in the wrong part of town—lost and confused and wondering if moving to New York is the stupidest thing I’ve ever done?”
“I’ll call you a car and put you in it right outside the bar,” I say. “And we’ll only have one drink. And if it makes you feel better, you can call my roommates on the walk over. I live with three women who can vouch for the fact that I’m completely harmless.”
She holds my gaze for a long beat. “I’m not so sure about that, Cameron. Harmless is subjective, after all.”
Before I can ask her what she means or figure out why her words make heat creep up my spine, she claps her hands together and nods. “But that all sounds good. Let’s bail. Drinks are on me.”
Fifteen minutes later, we’ve made our excuses to the instructor—a lean hippie in her sixties with stringy blond-gray hair who is clearly relieved to see us go—shrugged on our coats and trudged through the winter slush to Cursed Kahuna Tiki, the best tiki bar in town and the only reason to travel this far east in lower Manhattan.
I order drinks while Natalie hits the restroom, emerging with a big grin that makes my stomach flip and my heart do weird things in my chest. “I had a toothbrush and toothpaste in my backpack,” she says, bouncing onto the stool beside mine at the nearly abandoned bar. Aside from two women knitting at the table by the window and an older man reading the paper at the opposite end of the bar, we have the place to ourselves.
“Awesome,” I say. “Feel better?”
“So much better,” she says with a sigh. “So good I’m not even going to ask how old you are.”
I slide her drink over on a coaster. “I’m twenty—”
“Shh!” She presses a finger to my lips that sends electricity crackling across my skin. Her lips part and her pupils dilate as she adds in a breathy voice, “I told you I didn’t want to know.”
“No, you said you weren’t going to ask,” I murmur, loving the feel of my lips moving against her skin. “And does it really matter?”
Her brows furrow but her finger remains pressed to my mouth. “It matters. But you’re right, I did say that. I’m thirty-four.”
My brows shoot up and she laughs.
“Yeah,” she says, abandoning my lips to grasp her straw, making me jealous of the swirly pink plastic. “If that makes you want to head for the hills, I totally get it. No hard feelings.”
“No, not at all,” I say. “I’m just surprised. You don’t look thirty-four.”
She points to the middle of her face. “It’s the pug nose. And the freckles.”
“It’s the whole package,” I say, swirling my straw through the spiced-rum and pineapple-scented drink. “And I’m twenty-four, completely legal and flirting approved.”
Her lips hook up on one side. “Yeah? So, you plan on flirting with me?”
“I’ve been flirting with you,” I say. “Or trying to, anyway. Maybe I need to up my game?”
She nods seriously. “Maybe. I wouldn’t know. Like I said, it’s been years, and the last time I flirted with someone, he turned out to be gay.”
