Kennedy Ryan

Kennedy Ryan – Read Books Online Free Ebooks good best novels to read http://www.books2020.com Wed, 13 May 2026 18:54:35 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 http://www.books2020.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/favicon.png Kennedy Ryan – Read Books Online Free Ebooks good best novels to read http://www.books2020.com 32 32 Coming Home Read Online Kennedy Ryan http://www.books2020.com/coming-home-read-online-kennedy-ryan Wed, 13 May 2026 18:54:35 +0000 https://www.books2020.com/coming-home-read-online-kennedy-ryan Genre: Alpha Male, Contemporary, Novella Authors: Kennedy Ryan Advertisement

Total pages in book: 28
Estimated words: 26166 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 131(@200wpm)___ 105(@250wpm)___ 87(@300wpm)

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They got everything they wanted...but never had each other.

Touré Wallace and Niomi Spencer were close friends at Finley College, the prestigious HBCU they attended. The attraction that simmered between them every semester was a question they never got to ask or answer before soaring ambitions launched them to opposite corners of the world. Both chased their dreams of grit and glamor as high-profile journalists. They got it all...except a shot at being more than friends.

Years later, Touré is an award-winning investigative journalist and Niomi is America's most popular morning-show host, but they both feel like something’s missing. When their alma mater recruits its most famous alums for an interview during homecoming, every look, every touch is electric. The air hums with what could have been, and they're tempted by what they could have right now, if only for one weekend. Have they traveled the world, chasing something special, when all it took was coming home?

Featuring Southern University’s marching band, Human Jukebox

*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************

CHAPTER ONE

touré

Phones should be banned.

At least when I’m on deadline. The ringing, after a morning where I’ve struggled to focus, jars me from my hard-won concentration and the little I’ve been able to accomplish. I thought I’d silenced that thing, but apparently not.

“Could you answer that?” I yell to my assistant Camille.

The insistent ring of my cell phone from the kitchen is the latest in a long line of distractions I’ve tried to ignore. I need to make more progress on this draft because my editor has been up my ass over this deadline. She’s in that teeth-gritted smile phase, where she asks for things nicely and at least tries to hide her frustration, but she moved to full snarl with my first book, and it’s not an experience I want to repeat. The problem is that every time I think I know what I’m supposed to be writing, the creative well goes as dry as the war-torn deserts where I earned my reputation as a journalist in the field. Is this the famous sophomore slump? Or just me not figuring my shit out?

That one.

The ringing stops and I shove the call from my mind, flipping through my notes, scouring them for the details I need for the chapter I’m working on. Camille clears her throat, and I glance up to find her standing in the door of my home office, phone pressed to her chest.

“Yeah? What’s up?” I ask, running a hand down my face and leaning back until my chair creaks.

“Um . . .do you want to take this call?”

“Is that a real question? You’ve worked with me long enough to know the answer is always no.”

Camille grimaces and nods, her pink dreadlocks twisted into a topknot bobbing with the movement.

“She just . . . she says you’ll want to talk to her.”

“Unlikely. Take her number and feel free to lose it until I finish this book.”

I squint at the notes on my desk, trying to decode my own hieroglyphic handwriting. The scribbled phrase could be Arab Spring or . . .I give up. In my defense, these notes were hastily jotted onto a palm-sized notepad. Phone dead, bombs overhead, hidden in a cave with barely any light, I made do.

“I was gonna take a message,” Camile says, hesitation in her voice. “but she said before you get rid of me, tell Big Country he can make time for an old friend.”

My head snaps up and I narrow my eyes on her.

“Big Country, huh?” A pleased grin chases my scowl away.

Only one person has ever called me that. I hold out my hand, flicking my fingers for Camille to give me the phone. I look down at the screen to check the call is muted.

“I’m gonna go, but I left lunch on the counter from that Ethiopian place up the street.” Camille crosses her arms over her chest and scolds with a glance. “Actually eat it this time. If I come back tomorrow and it’s still there cold and unopened then I⁠—”

“I’ll eat. Got it. Go.”

As soon as she turns to leave, I unmute the phone and lean back in my seat.

“Janelle Hopkins, what the hell you want?”

Her rich laughter hasn’t changed in twenty years and the sound of it tugs my mouth into a reluctant one-sided grin.

“So you do remember the little people.”

“Pfft. Little people, my ass. I heard you running Finley College now, Ms. Vice President of Student Affairs. Congrats on the promotion.”

“Thank you. I assumed you hadn’t given your alma mater a second thought since you left senior year and never looked back.”

“The alumni association would beg to differ. They hit me up on the regular for donations and I never say no.”

“Glad to hear that ‘cause I need a huge favor and I don’t want to hear nothing but yes coming outta that mouth.”

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Advertisement Can’t Get Enough – Skyland Read Online Kennedy Ryan http://www.books2020.com/cant-get-enough-skyland-read-online-kennedy-ryan Wed, 04 Jun 2025 21:19:23 +0000 http://www.books2020.com/cant-get-enough-skyland-read-online-kennedy-ryan Genre: Alpha Male, Billionaire, Contemporary Authors: Kennedy Ryan Advertisement

Total pages in book: 149
Estimated words: 142866 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 714(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)

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“Kennedy Ryan pours her whole soul into everything she writes, and it makes for books that are heart-searing, sensual, and life affirming.” ―EMILY HENRY Hendrix Barry lives a fabulous life. She has phenomenal friends, a loving family, and a thriving business that places her in the entertainment industry's rarefied air. Your vision board? She’s probably living it.

She’s a woman with goals, dreams, ambitions—always striving upward. And in the midst of everything, she's facing her toughest challenge caring for an aging parent.

Who has time for romance? From her experience, there's a low ROI on relationships. She hasn't met the man who can keep up with her anyway. Until...him.

Tech mogul Maverick Bell is a dilemma wrapped in an exquisitely tailored suit and knee-melting charm. From their first charged glance at the summer's hottest party, Hendrix feels like she’s met her match. Only he can’t be. Mav may be the first to make her feel this seen and desired and appreciated, but he’s the last one she can have. Forbidden fruit is the juiciest, and this man is off limits if she plans to stay the course she’s set for herself.

But when Maverick gives chase—pursuing her, spoiling her, understanding her—is it time to let herself have something more?

“One of the finest romance writers of our age.” –Entertainment Weekly

*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************

“A woman is free if she lives by her own standards and creates her own destiny.”

—Mary McLeod Bethune, educator, philanthropist, activist

PROLOGUE

HENDRIX

The front door stands wide open.

That has always meant a warm welcome at the two-story traditional house where I grew up, but now the sight makes me shiver more than the chilly wind of Christmas Eve whistling in my face.

“Is this it?” the Uber driver asks, watching me stand in the driveway with my rolling suitcase.

“Uh, yeah.” Uncertainty colors my voice and probably my expression if the driver’s Can I go now? face is anything to judge by. “This is it. Thanks.”

But is this home? The slightly overgrown lawn and uneven hedges would never have been tolerated by my mother in all the forty years of my life. The garage door is up and Mama’s pride and joy, Shortcake, her pearl-colored Lincoln MKC, is parked there. Mama wouldn’t leave her baby exposed like that.

Something’s wrong.

Something’s been wrong for a while. I haven’t exactly ignored it. I’m not one to bury my head in the sand, but I did hope it wasn’t as bad as I’d suspected. There are worse things to be guilty of than hope, but right now I can’t think of them.

As the Uber pulls off and I drag my bag up the driveway to the wide-open front door, the cloud of dread that has gathered in my belly for the last year calcifies and drops like a stone. I cross the threshold and shut the door behind me, surveying the front room Mama always kept immaculate. It was the first impression of our home, and I’ve never seen it in such disarray. Black dirt from an overturned plant soils the white carpet. A thin layer of dust dulls the end table’s usually shiny surface, and the lampshade is askew. The whole scene is askew, and I’m so disoriented it feels like I’m standing on the ceiling.

“Mama?”

Her name comes out thin and tentative, like when I called her as a child, scared there was a monster hiding under my bed. She always responded right away, coming into my room with a reassuring smile.

There is nothing reassuring about this answering silence.

Beep! Beep! Beep!

The smoke detector blares, breaking the quiet and jarring me from my stupor. White clouds billow into the hall, and I race to the kitchen. Plumes of smoke stream from a hissing pan on the stove. The acrid scent of something burning floods the air and stings my nose.

Shit!

Coughing, I rush past a mound of flour in the center of the kitchen floor, fumbling through the drawers where Mama always keeps dish towels. Wrapping one around the handle, I drag the pan away from the angry red burner. The pan sizzles when it hits the sink, a curtain of steam rising into the air and almost blurring—but not quite—the sight of raw chicken parts, chopped vegetables, half-formed piecrusts, and sloppily sliced fruit littering the counter.

What the…

Lifting the pan lid reveals collard greens, or what’s left of them. All the water boiled out and the charred mass is stuck to the bottom. I wrench open the oven door, and my nose wrinkles at the scorched, withered mess that may have been a ten-pound turkey in its previous life. Grabbing a second dish towel, I pull the smoking mess from the oven and plop it onto the range.

The smoke detector keeps squawking, so I stretch to vigorously wave my hands back and forth in front of the blinking alarm until it quiets. The silence that follows is even worse. With the immediate emergency of burning food addressed, I’m forced to deal with the bigger problem.

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Advertisement This Could Be Us – Skyland Read Online Kennedy Ryan http://www.books2020.com/this-could-be-us-skyland-read-online-kennedy-ryan Fri, 15 Mar 2024 06:57:36 +0000 http://www.booksnovels.com/this-could-be-us-skyland-read-online-kennedy-ryan Genre: Alpha Male, Contemporary Authors: Kennedy Ryan Advertisement

Total pages in book: 143
Estimated words: 136743 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 684(@200wpm)___ 547(@250wpm)___ 456(@300wpm)

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Soledad Barnes has her life all planned out. Because, of course, she does. She plans everything. She designs everything. She fixes everything. She’s a domestic goddess who's never met a party she couldn't host or a charge she couldn't lead. The one with all the answers and the perfect vinaigrette for that summer salad. But none of her varied talents can save her when catastrophe strikes, and the life she built with the man who was supposed to be her forever, goes poof in a cloud of betrayal and disillusion.

But there is no time to pout or sulk, or even grieve the life she lost. She's too busy keeping a roof over her daughters' heads and food on the table. And in the process of saving them all, Soledad rediscovers herself. From the ashes of a life burned to the ground, something bold and new can rise.

But then an unlikely man enters the picture—the forbidden one, the one she shouldn't want but can't seem to resist. She's lost it all before and refuses to repeat her mistakes. Can she trust him? Can she trust herself?

After all she's lost . . .and found . . .can she be brave enough to make room for what could be?

*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************

“There are years that ask questions and years that answer.”

—Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

PROLOGUE

JUDAH

I’m sure I loved her once.

And she loved me.

I remember the fluttery emotions early on, the quick-burn passion, the commitment that felt like it was anchored in cement. It became something that required little thought or feeling. What had once been a groove carved between our hearts settled with dismal comfort into a rut. Seated across from Tremaine now as we “mediate” the end of our marriage, looking into her eyes, I only see the remains of that love—mutual affection and respect.

We failed each other epically. Not through cruelty or infidelity, but through neglect. The idea we had of a love that would last forever, it’s a casualty of hardship and indifference. This should hurt more. I should be more disappointed that my marriage is over, but instead there is a sense of relief that almost overwhelms me. A breath that has been lodged behind my ribs, maybe for years—I released it when Tremaine finally asked for the divorce. What should have felt like a slice through me instead felt like a sigh.

Yeah, this should hurt more, but it doesn’t. So all I can think about now is the end and the new beginning, whatever that means for her, me, and our twin boys, Adam and Aaron.

“Custody,” says Kimberly, the child specialist, glancing up from the small stack of papers on the coffee table in our living room. “We need to create the parenting plan.”

“Right,” Tremaine agrees, uncharacteristic uncertainty in her eyes. A small frown knits the smooth brown skin between her brows. Her hair, in two-strand twists, billows around her face like a weeping willow, softening the keen features. “I don’t know how much they understand.”

“Adam gets it,” I say. “He’s been asking about divorce nonstop. He told me today it derives from the Latin divortere, which means separation. He can’t always wrap his emotions around things, so he leans more on facts.”

“Wonder where he got that from?” Tremaine asks with a wry smile.

Tremaine used to joke that the diagnoses for our twin boys might not be autism. Maybe they’re just mine because they share so many traits with me. I admit I may not have a formal diagnosis, but the more we’ve learned about autism over the last decade, the more of myself I’ve seen and understood.

“In my meeting with the boys,” Kimberly continues, “it did seem that Adam grasped what was happening. Aaron… I’m not so sure.”

Both boys are on the spectrum, but they present differently. Aaron doesn’t have much expressive language and is classified as level 3, which simply indicates the intensity of support he needs. Many tend to underestimate him, to overlook him, because he doesn’t often speak. Adam, classified as level 1, is less “observably” autistic than Aaron to others, so people often assume he needs less support than he actually does. Because he’s so bright in the ways in which we often measure intelligence, people may offer him fewer accommodations or expect things he has trouble giving. Some people still speak in terms of more or less severe, but it’s all autism. Just different needs that evolve, and we meet them as best we can.

We don’t compare Aaron and Adam, but try to meet each of them where he is with whatever he needs. They started at basically the same place, but along the way their paths diverged—Adam making more gains faster and Aaron lagging behind, still gaining, but less and more slowly.

“Aaron may not talk a lot,” I say. “But his receptive language—what he understands—is much higher.”

“Most of the time he just doesn’t care to let you know he understands what you’re saying.” A smile dents dimples in Tremaine’s cheeks. “That boy. There’s a whole world in his head he keeps to himself.”

“I did sense that,” Kimberly says. “Regardless of how much they understand, this is a huge transition. It would be for most, but especially for kids who need routine and predictability as much as Aaron and Adam do, for kids with autism.”

She pauses, looking between us.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I should have checked. Do the boys like to be referred to as ‘autistic’ or ‘with autism’ or…”

“‘Autistic’ is fine,” Tremaine replies. “We appreciate you asking.”

“Just wanted to make sure. Different families prefer different things.” Kimberly closes the file on the coffee table. “We’ll have to handle this transition with care.”

“Tremaine and I want to do anything we can to ease their way,” I offer.

“That’s what this whole process is for, right?” Tremaine sends me a quick look, as if to confirm we are on the same page. I nod and reach over to squeeze her hand where it is clenched on her knee.

We’ve both made sacrifices, each of us working from home or not at all early on when the boys kept getting kicked out of daycare centers or we had to assume their education ourselves. Adam, so bright he eventually placed in gifted classes, struggled with potty training even at seven years old. He has poor interoception—meaning his body can’t always sense what’s happening inside it. He had trouble telling when he needed to go, and by the time he realized how close he was, it would be too late. Interoception is a complex concept even for some adults to grasp, and kids definitely didn’t understand. They teased him badly. Adam felt so much shame when he had accidents at school and begged us to let him learn from home. Tremaine delayed law school and worked at night, staying home with the boys during the day, while I took the evenings. One year I freelanced, pursuing forensic accounting cases that allowed me to work remotely, squeezing in the boys’ lessons while Tremaine busted her ass at the firm.

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Advertisement Be Mine Forever – The Bennetts Read Online Kennedy Ryan http://www.books2020.com/be-mine-forever-the-bennetts-read-online-kennedy-ryan Sun, 14 Jan 2024 20:20:19 +0000 http://www.booksnovels.com/be-mine-forever-the-bennetts-read-online-kennedy-ryan Genre: Alpha Male, Angst, Contemporary Authors: Kennedy Ryan Advertisement

Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 94630 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 379(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)

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Can a secret crush . . .

Jo Walsh has loved Cameron Mitchell for as long as she can remember. Whether front and center in her life or on the periphery, the tall, brooding artist has made his presence seductively and irresistibly known. But whenever they start to get close, Cam pulls away. Jo's tired of keeping her feelings in a box Cam is afraid to open. If he wants her, he'll have to prove it. And if he doesn't, Jo will need to know the real reason why . . .

. . . become the love of a lifetime?

How do you walk away from your soul mate? Cam wishes he knew. No matter how far he runs from Jo, he can't resist looking back at the silver eyes that seem to see right through him. But as well as Jo thinks she understands Cam, the dark truth about his past is something she shouldn't have to handle. Cam's sure that setting Jo free is the right thing to do. Too bad his heart has other ideas . . .

(50,000 words)

Don't miss the other titles in the Bennett's Series:
When You Are Mine, Book 1
Loving You Always, Book 2

*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************

Chapter One

Cameron Mitchell had never been fond of bright lights. He squinted against the glare of the lighting kit poised above his head. The dark hid all his demons, and the brightness left him feeling like a cockroach when the lights come on without warning. So did the probing stare of the woman seated across from him.

“Cam, so glad to have you on the show today.” The interviewer, Shelby Jennings, offered him a grin she probably practiced in the mirror every morning.

“Glad to be here.” Cam waxed a smile onto his face, relaxing the muscles in his shoulders and shifting on the overstuffed couch of the studio set.

“You’re the first artist ever to make our Thirty Under Thirty List.”

She raised her ice-thin brows and smiled like she was waiting for a response. What did she expect him to do? Curtsy? Shit sunshine?

“Great.”

Cam saw her disappointment at his barely there response for only a moment before she slid her reporter’s face back into place. Just the right amount of curiosity and concern.

“Your street art in Paris made you a YouTube sensation. Tell us a little about that.”

“I was studying at the Sorbonne, which was amazing, and I met some graffiti artists. Paris has a rich street scene, and I was immediately drawn to it.”

“Did it take you back to your roots?”

Cam raised his own brows and cocked his head, determined to make her voice the condescension smeared all over her face.

“I mean…you know…in the…in the…”

With much effort, Cam pulled the smile fighting its way to the surface back under.

“I believe the word you’re searching for is ‘hood.’ I grew up in the hood.”

“No, I mean. I know, but I wasn’t—”

“It’s okay. That’s where I’m from. I’m not ashamed of it.” Cam shrugged, slouching another inch deeper into the cushions. “I discovered my talent for art in those streets. I grew up in Barfield projects, not too far from Durham, North Carolina. Bridges and the sides of buildings were the only canvases I knew back then. And a can of spray paint had to do.”

“So that’s why you were so drawn to the street scene?”

She said the word “street” so quickly, like it tasted rank in her mouth and she couldn’t wait to spit it out. She glanced at him with her Upper East Side suspicion. Like any moment he’d grab his crotch and start singing Drake’s “Started from the Bottom.”

“More or less. By then, of course, I’d studied art in college. Studied at the Sorbonne. I understood and could execute several art forms. I didn’t default to graffiti. I ran back to it. It’s the rawest, most organic art form I’ve ever experienced. Kind of my first love.”

“And the viral YouTube? How’d that happen?”

“I was painting in the streets of Paris one night, and some kid walked up behind me with a camera. Said he was making a documentary. Asked if he could follow me around while I painted.”

Cam paused a moment, still absorbing the incredible turn of events that had thrust him into a narrow, niched fame he hadn’t seen coming and that had landed him on this very list.

“That night turned into a few weeks. He uploaded the videos, and they went viral. He won at Sundance. The rest is history.”

“Now your art has been featured in several hip-hop videos and in two blockbuster movies. You’re a darling of the art world and on the cusp of your first exhibit. That’s some journey.”

Started from the bottom…

He could feel her eyes doing what everyone’s did. Assessing. Weighing. He was an ethnic enigma. Folks speculated—was he was Italian, Puerto Rican, Cuban? His olive skin and dark hair made some sense, and then they’d come to his eyes, which were like a flash of blue-gray lightning in his face. Scratching their heads. And when they gave up on staring and asked, well, how the hell was he supposed to know? His father was some john his mother probably fucked for twenty bucks. And when people got past his face and dug a little deeper, they were even less sure how to peg him.

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Advertisement Loving You Always – The Bennetts Read Online Kennedy Ryan http://www.books2020.com/loving-you-always-the-bennetts-read-online-kennedy-ryan Thu, 07 Dec 2023 05:55:13 +0000 http://www.booksnovels.com/loving-you-always-the-bennetts-read-online-kennedy-ryan Genre: Alpha Male, Angst, Contemporary Authors: Kennedy Ryan Advertisement

Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 68033 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 340(@200wpm)___ 272(@250wpm)___ 227(@300wpm)

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Kerris Moreton should be the happiest woman in the world: She has a successful business and is about to start the family she's always wanted. But the man of her dreams-the one whose green eyes see straight into her soul and whose gentle hands make her body hum with pleasure-is not hers.

Each secret moment with Walsh Bennett serves to remind Kerris of what she's missing. And every stolen hour makes it harder to see her future without him. But being with Walsh would betray a sacred promise and upend her perfect life. When tragedy strikes, the razor's edge between love and loyalty grows sharper than ever. And Kerris must decide where her heart will fall . . .

Don't miss the first installment in The Bennett's Series...When You Are Mine. Available now!

Approx: 65,000 words.

*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************

Chapter One

Walsh Bennett scowled at the teetering tower of paperwork overwhelming his desk.

“Trish, last time I checked we were in the twenty-first century,” he yelled through the open door connecting his office to his assistant’s. “What’s up with all this paper? Nineteen ninety called and wants its dead trees back.”

Trisha snickered and sauntered into his office, her matte red smile a vibrant slash in her golden brown face. She gestured to the offending paper pile, one hand on her curvy hip.

“The board expects your John Hancock on all these dead trees, so I hope 1990 sent pens.”

Walsh grinned, shaking his head before obediently plowing through the documents requiring his signature.

“Do we still have coffee around here?” He tried to keep a straight face while he growled, but it hadn’t taken Trish long to figure out he wasn’t the slave driver everyone expected Martin Bennett’s son to be.

“Would you like coffee, Walsh?” Voice saccharine sweet, Trish arched her brows at him, one of the little tricks she used to remind him that he might be the boss, but she wasn’t his gofer.

“Why, yes, Trish. Now that you mention it, a cup of coffee would be delightful.”

“Make him fetch it himself.”

They both looked to the open door, where his cousin Jo Walsh stood like a queen paying a royal visit. Her chestnut hair waved in an angled bob past her shoulders, a studied, tousled, beautiful mess. Her black leather and tweed panel dress may as well have been poured over Jo’s long, elegant body, its lines liquid against every firm curve. She strode deeper into the office, tossing her clutch onto Walsh’s desk and lowering herself inch by inch into the seat facing him.

“Jo, to what do I owe this pleasure?” He looked away long enough to catch Trish’s eye and send her on her way. “Coffee.”

“I’m here for Fashion Week.” She pointed to the dress. “Zac Posen show this afternoon. Donna Karan later.”

“Ah, I’d forgotten that was this week. Moneyed fashionistas descending on New York City. One of your favorite times of the year.”

When she remained silent, he looked up from the paper he was reading over before signing.

“Right? Don’t you usually waste obscene amounts of money and spend the week hobnobbing with all the other wealthy women who just have to have this season’s whatever? You and Mom always…”

Walsh let his words peter out, dropping the pen to give his cousin his full attention. He looked past the glistening surface; he looked at her eyes beneath the smoky eye shadow and mascaraed lashes and saw grief, a twin to his own.

He and his father had spent the last month since his mother’s funeral conducting business in Hong Kong. It had distracted him from the yawning hole in his heart, but every time he stopped for even a minute, the wailing monster inside reminded him his mother was gone. She would never return.

“It’s my first Fashion Week without her.” Jo straightened out the wobble in her voice before continuing, fixing her eyes on the large hourglass his father had given him, in its place of pride on his desk. “I know it seems flighty to you, but fashion was our thing. One of our many things. Doing this without her feels empty and foolish, but not doing it—”

“She’d want you to.” Walsh stood and crossed around his desk, settled on the edge, and reached for Jo’s hand. “Enjoy it as much as you can. We’ve gotta find joy wherever possible. Dad and I used work to survive the last month. You can certainly use fashion.”

Jo ran the tips of her dark, square nails over a leather patch on her dress before looking back up at him.

“I miss you, cuz.”

Damn. He had to add “asshole” to whatever titles his father and the board of directors wanted to bestow on him. How could he have neglected Jo? Sure, things had been strained between them before his mother had passed. All the drama with Kerris and Cam had managed to slither into his relationship with Jo, but she had needed him. Hell, he had needed her, and neither of them had reached for the other. Until now. He’d castigate himself as a self-centered so-and-so later. Right now he needed to fix this.

“Jo, I’m sorry we’ve barely talked. I didn’t mean to abandon you. There was too much in Rivermont I needed to get away from. Mom’s funeral and…”

Walsh didn’t need to finish that sentence. Jo had stood witness to the Pompeii-like destruction of the scene with Kerris and Cam at their cottage. One kiss. It had leveled his friendship with Cam like a city, standing strong one minute, and nothing but rubble and ash the next.

Too many emotions tangled in his chest, a toxic helix of grief and regret and frustration. He missed his mother. He missed Jo. He missed Cam.

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Advertisement The Rebel King (All the King’s Men #2) Read Online Kennedy Ryan http://www.books2020.com/the-rebel-king-all-the-kings-men-2-read-online-kennedy-ryan Sun, 09 Jul 2023 00:33:17 +0000 http://www.booksnovels.com/the-rebel-king-all-the-kings-men-2-read-online-kennedy-ryan Genre: Alpha Male, Billionaire, Contemporary Authors: Kennedy Ryan Series: All the King's Men Series by Kennedy Ryan
Advertisement

Total pages in book: 113
Estimated words: 108242 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 541(@200wpm)___ 433(@250wpm)___ 361(@300wpm)

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Ambition. Revenge. Love.

RITA® Award-winning author Kennedy Ryan delivers the gripping conclusion to the All the King’s Men Duet.

Raised to resist. Bred to fight. Survival is in my blood and surrender is never an option.

Though surrender is what Maxim Cade demanded of my body and heart, I had other plans. We were fast-burning fascination and combustible chemistry, but the man I trusted with everything was a trickster. A thief who stole my love. If what we had was a lie, why did it feel so real? The man I swore to hate will have it all, and wants me at his side. But power is a game, and we’re the pawns and players.

Facing insurmountable odds, will we win the world, or will we lose it all?

*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************

PART 1

“Tell me a story.

Make it a story of great distances, and starlight.”

—Robert Penn Warren, Tell Me a Story

CHAPTER 1

LENNIX

I’m running.

Desert wind whistles past my ears and whips through my hair. My feet are feathers, light, quick, but my arms and legs are lead, the muscles aching and burning. The shouts, the encouragement of my tribe spur my spirit when I fear my body will fail.

Run.

Nistan.

The Apache word thumps in time with my heart and races through my veins as I run in the four directions.

East.

South.

West.

I turn north but falter, coming to a halt when I see the beautiful woman standing solemnly among the cheering crowd. The wind lifts the dark hair from her shoulders, and her eyes fix on me.

“Mama?” The strangled whisper catches in my throat. I stumble toward her, the ceremony forgotten. The run abandoned. Tears roll over my cheeks, and my hands reach out. Beseeching. Begging for my mother’s touch just once.

The unique blend of her soap and shampoo and natural scent floats to me. Longing, desperate and sharp, spears through me with aching familiarity. I’m almost there, can almost touch her, but she points a finger over my shoulder. She points in the direction I have not yet run.

North.

“Finish, Lennix,” she says, the words firm and unyielding.

“What?”

Her lips tighten. Her eyes are slits. She is the fierce warrior who lives inside the gentle mother, and she shouts.

“Run!”

I jerk awake in complete darkness, startled, disoriented.

Panic rips my mouth open on a scream, and the sound shatters, falls around my ears. I can’t move my arms. Ropes bite into my skin, my wrists bound in front of me.

Oh, my God. Where am I? What’s happening?

I want to be strong, but a whimper dissolves on my lips.

“Lenny,” a voice says to my right.

I know that voice.

“Wall?” The word grates painfully inside my throat. “Is that you?”

“Yeah. Thank God you’re awake.”

“I can’t see,” I tell him, choking back tears.

“They put a bag on your head. On mine, too.”

I turn toward the sound of his voice, and coarse fabric brushes my cheek. A stale scent clogs my nostrils. I’m entombed in burlap and uncirculated air.

“Shit, Lenny,” Wallace says, relief and torture in his tone. “I thought he was gonna drop you.”

Drop me?

The memory rushes back up at me like the ground when you fall, inevitable and jarring. The horror of a masked madman dangling me over the side of a mountain. The feel of his fingers slipping around my throat. The sight of him straining and struggling to keep me aloft. The utter indifference in his eyes about whether I lived or died.

The images set my heart on fire in my chest, the burning, pounding muscle beating so fast my head starts spinning.

“How long have I been out?” I ask.

“I don’t know. They shot us up with something that put us out. I just woke a few minutes before you did.”

“So you have no idea how long we traveled? Where we could be?”

“No.”

“Ahh, you’re awake,” a disembodied voice says, coming at me suddenly, an unforeseen intrusion into the darkness sheathing my eyes and ears. I hear the crunch of booted footsteps, sense a presence in front of me and tense, my muscles braced for a blow or a bullet. I have no idea which.

The bag is yanked off my head. We’re in some kind of cave, and the light flooding in from the opening, though dim, hurts my eyes. It’s just Wallace and me and the madman who brought us here. I squint up at him, masked as Abraham Lincoln, the grinning monster with wild blond curls who dangled me over the side of a mountain like an insect trapped between his fingers.

“I thought you could do with a nap while we traveled,” he says. “For your own comfort, of course.”

“What do you want with us?” Wallace asks, his bag removed, too.

“You’ve created something extraordinary, Dr. Murrow,” Abe says.

Wallace frowns. “Extraordinary? What do you mean?”

“Oh, don’t be modest.” Abe places the barrel of his rifle on the ground and leans his elbow on the butt. “You’ve made a thing of beauty in your lab, and there are many people who will pay a lot of money for it.”

“Wall, what’s he talking about?”

Wallace looks back to me, fear and horror dawning on his face, and shakes his head. “Oh God, Lenny. I’m so sorry I got you into this.”

“Into what? What the hell? What’s going on?”

“What’s going on, pretty lady,” Abe interjects, “is none of your damn business since it has nothing to do with you.”

“If it has nothing to do with me, then you won’t mind letting me go.”

His low chuckle rumbles, and interest flares in his eyes. “I like a little spirit in a woman.” His laugh dies abruptly. “But not that much. Keep it up and you’ll die even sooner than I’ve planned.”

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Advertisement The Kingmaker (All the King’s Men #1) Read Online Kennedy Ryan http://www.books2020.com/the-kingmaker-all-the-kings-men-1-read-online-kennedy-ryan Thu, 01 Jun 2023 11:54:29 +0000 http://www.booksnovels.com/the-kingmaker-all-the-kings-men-1-read-online-kennedy-ryan Genre: Alpha Male, Billionaire, Contemporary, New Adult Authors: Kennedy Ryan Series: All the King's Men Series by Kennedy Ryan
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Total pages in book: 114
Estimated words: 108483 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 542(@200wpm)___ 434(@250wpm)___ 362(@300wpm)

<<<<1 2 3 11 21 >114

Raised to rule, bred to lead and weaned on a diet of ruthless ambition. In a world of haves and have nots, my family has it all, and I want nothing to do with it.

My path takes me far from home and paints me as the black sheep. At odds with my father, I’m determined to build my own empire. I have rules, but Lennix Hunter is the exception to every one of them. From the moment we meet, something sparks between us. But my family stole from hers and my father is the man she hates most. I lied to have her, and would do anything to keep her. Though she tries to hate me, too, the inexorable pull between us will not be denied.

And neither will I.

*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************

PART 1

“My mother was my first country.

The first place I ever lived.”

—“lands” by Nayyirah Waheed, poet and activist

PROLOGUE

LENNIX

THIRTEEN YEARS OLD

My face remains unchanged in the mirror, but my eyes are older.

Older than the last time I stood in my bedroom with its pink canopy bed and the Princess Barbies shoved to the back of my closet. Posters of NSYNC and Britney Spears still plaster the walls, but right now I can’t recall one lyric. The songs of my forefathers and their fathers before them fill my head. Ancient songs with words only we know—the songs we had to reclaim—cling to my memory. They ring in my ears and hum through my blood. The ceremonial drum still beats in place of my heart. A woman’s spirit occupies this girl’s body with my barely budding breasts and baby-fat cheeks. I’m still only thirteen years old, but in the four days of my Sunrise Dance, the rite of passage that carried me from girl to woman, it feels like I’ve lived a lifetime.

I am not the same.

“How ya doing, kiddo?” my father asks as he and my mother walk into my bedroom. Seeing them together has been a rare occurrence lately. Actually, seeing them together has been rare for a long time.

“I’m fine.” I divide my smile between them into equal portions, like I do with holidays and my affection. Split right down the middle. “Tired.”

Mama sits on the bed and pushes my hair back with long, graceful fingers.

“The last few days have been hard for you,” she says, offering a rueful smile. “Not to mention the last year.”

We started planning the Sunrise Dance months ago. With enough food to feed everyone involved for days, gifts, getting the traditional dress made, and paying the medicine man and the ceremonial dancers, it’s a long process that is not only exhausting but expensive.

“I wouldn’t change a thing,” I reply. My knees ache from the kneeling, from dancing on my knees and on my feet. I danced and I sang for hours, led through the words by the medicine man. And the running. I’ve never run so much in my life, but when I ran in the four directions, I gathered the elements—earth, wind, fire, and air—to myself. I’ve absorbed them. They’re part of me and will guide me the rest of my days.

“I know you’re exhausted,” Mama says. “But are you up to seeing a few people? They’ve walked with you the last four days and are all so proud.”

Despite the fatigue, I smile. My friends and family rallied around me, not just during the last four days but for the months leading up to my Sunrise Dance. It is a huge deal, not only for me but for the entire community.

“Sure.” I run my hands over the supple buckskin of my ceremonial dress and moccasins. “Do I have time for a quick shower?”

The medicine man dusted my face with cattail pollen as part of the blessing near the end of the ceremony. Even though it was rinsed away, I still feel the traces of it and the last four days on my skin and in my hair.

“Of course,” my father says. There’s pride in his gray eyes. Though not Apache, he was involved with the ceremony and observed every step. As a professor of Native American Studies at Arizona State, though the traditions don’t belong to him, he understands and deeply respects them.

“Everyone’s eating out front and enjoying themselves,” Mama says. “They’ll keep while you get clean.”

My parents exchange a quick look, seeming to hesitate together. It catches my attention because they’re rarely in sync despite having once been passionately in love. My father had been a student studying reservation life. My mom lived on the rez in the same modest house we’re in right now. It was fireworks for a while. Long enough to make me.

Maybe the fireworks sputtered. Maybe my parents were too different, my mother wanting to remain on the reservation, connected to her tribe and this community. My father, a rising star in the department when he completed his doctorate, needed to be at the university. They drifted so far apart they broke. Now, I’m their only connection. Things haven’t been exactly contentious between them, but they have disagreed a lot lately, mostly about me.

“Today was a landmark for you,” Mama says carefully, again sharing that quick look with my father as if she needs reassurance. “You’re a woman now. The spirit of Changing Woman has made you strong.”

I nod. I’ve never been that religious. My mother doesn’t practice all the traditions, but today I did feel a surge of strength during the ceremony. Somehow I actually believe the spirit of the first woman empowered me. I still feel that zing along my nerves I couldn’t shake even after the ceremony ended.

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Advertisement Until I’m Yours – The Bennetts Read Online Kennedy Ryan http://www.books2020.com/until-im-yours-the-bennetts-read-online-kennedy-ryan Sat, 24 Dec 2022 22:13:10 +0000 http://www.teennovels.net/until-im-yours-the-bennetts-read-online-kennedy-ryan Genre: Alpha Male, Contemporary, Drama, New Adult Authors: Kennedy Ryan Advertisement

Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 123579 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 618(@200wpm)___ 494(@250wpm)___ 412(@300wpm)

<<<<1 2 3 11 21 >130

The world knows her face . . .

Mean girl. Goddess. Bitch. Supermodel Sofie Baston has earned those labels . . . yet they don't scratch the surface of who she really is. Before she can follow her own dreams, Sophie must do her daughterly duty and reel in a "fish" for her father's business-a tall, brown-eyed entrepreneur who immediately hooks her. He's a big guy with an even bigger heart . . . but will that heart be open to Sofie once her darkest secret is revealed?

. . . but only one man knows her heart

To Trevor Bishop, Sofie is a beautiful mystery he would gladly spend his life solving. He figures her tough demeanor is armor against a world that's hurt her too many times. Then Sofie's deepest wounds are reopened by the powerful, ruthless man who made them. When she musters the courage to take him down, her world shatters. Now Trevor is determined to help Sofie pick up the pieces so they can build a future together. The challenge will be convincing his ice princess that it's safe to melt in his arms . . .

*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************

FIRST SIGHT

Trevor

The Big Apple. The city that never sleeps. If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.

Blah, blah, blah, blah.

“How long are we here again?” I glance out the cab window and up at the flock of billboards flying overhead in the Times Square airspace, a confetti skyline swirled with Technicolor and kinetic lights.

“Three months, give or take,” my assistant, Henrietta, says, not looking up from her phone.

I already miss my house in Atlanta. Despite the many miles I log flying all over the world, I’m a Southern boy at heart. A city like Atlanta makes an excellent home base for me. A world-class city with the charm and sensibility of a much smaller town. When I’m in New York, I feel on edge, like the Big Apple is taking a bite out of me. It’s not an easy place to negotiate. It’s a city bursting with possibility and creativity, but it requires a certain amount of armor. Feeling that way for three months…

“We’re lucky to have your sister’s place while we’re here.” Harold, my business partner and best friend of fifteen years, looks at our schedule on his iPad. “We have so many meetings at the UN this month. All the companies interested in buying us out are here in New York. We have several galas in the city over the next few weeks. Makes sense not to keep going back and forth, and just make this our base for a little bit.”

“Yeah, at least we’ll be staying in Brooklyn.” I lean an elbow on the base of the cab window, considering the changing digital billboards while we’re stopped at a traffic light. “Downtown gives me a seizu—”

The word freezes on my tongue when one advertisement in particular catches my attention. Or, I should say, the model does. Her name is nowhere on the ad, but it doesn’t need to be. Sofie Baston’s been one of the most recognizable faces in the world for more than a decade.

She’s naked. Even though she’s stretched out flat on her stomach with her chin propped on her hands, breasts pressed to the floor, she’s obviously naked. Her hair, famously silver and gold, is ruthlessly scraped back, exposing the flawless bone structure of her face. It’s rare to see someone like her wearing no makeup at all, but her face is completely bare. Matter of fact, the product she’s promoting is called BARE.

BARE: Skin care so good you’ll have nothing to hide.

She’s naked, no cosmetics at all, and yet her eyes make a lie of that tagline. She’s utterly exposed, and though her green eyes are the clearest I’ve ever seen, they yield nothing.

“You were saying?” Harold wears a knowing grin, glancing from my face to the billboard before it swipes to the next product being advertised. “I hope you’ll be less obvious when we meet her in person tonight, Bishop.”

“Tonight?” I frown. “What are you talking about?”

“That’s Ernest Baston’s daughter,” Henrietta pipes in, eyes still fastened to her phone. Sometimes I think she has eyes in the back of her head under that ponytail. “She’ll be at the Bennett charity dinner tonight. They’re at your table, if I’m not mistaken.”

I look back at the billboard even though a different image has taken its place. I still see her as vividly as when she stared back at me with those guarded green eyes.

Even when we’re several blocks away and have started discussing our upcoming trip to Cambodia, I’m still wondering how a girl naked on the side of a building managed to hide in broad daylight and show nothing at all.

CHAPTER ONE

Sofie

Sofie, over here!”

“One more shot, Sof.”

“Could we get one of you by yourself?”

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Advertisement Before I Let Go Read Online Kennedy Ryan http://www.books2020.com/before-i-let-go-read-online-kennedy-ryan Fri, 18 Nov 2022 16:24:13 +0000 http://www.booksnovels.com/before-i-let-go-read-online-kennedy-ryan Genre: Contemporary, Romance Authors: Kennedy Ryan Advertisement

Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 131486 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)

<<<<1 2 3 11 21 >137

“Real, raw, magnificent—Before I Let Go is the beautiful angst I love to read.” —Colleen Hoover, #1 New York Times bestselling author

Their love was supposed to last forever. But when life delivered blow after devastating blow, Yasmen and Josiah Wade found that love alone couldn’t solve or save everything.

It couldn’t save their marriage.

Yasmen wasn’t prepared for how her life fell apart, but she’s is finally starting to find joy again. She and Josiah have found a new rhythm, co-parenting their two kids and running a thriving business together. Yet like magnets, they’re always drawn back to each other, and now they’re beginning to wonder if they’re truly ready to let go of everything they once had.

Soon, one stolen kiss leads to another…and then more. It's hot. It's illicit. It's all good—until old wounds reopen. Is it too late for them to find forever? Or could they even be better, the second time around?

*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************

The Beginning

Josiah

“In the middle of the journey of our life

I found myself within a dark woods where the straight way was lost.”

—Dante Alighieri, Inferno

Do people remember the exact moment they fall in love?

I do. Yasmen brought me homemade chicken noodle soup when I was so sick it hurt to blink. Tasted like day-old dishwater. Not sure how you mess up chicken noodle soup, but my girl managed it. She watched me expectantly with those long-lashed doe eyes. God, I’ll never forget her expression when I spat that soup out, but it was so bad and I was too sick to even play it off.

For a second, Yasmen looked distressed, but then, despite feeling like someone dragged me over hot coals and needles, I laughed. Then she laughed and I wondered if this—finding someone you can laugh with when everything hurts—was the stuff happily ever afters were made of. Not the sugarcoated kisses and hot-air balloon rides and romantic walks under a full moon. My whole body throbbed with whatever plague infected me, but that day Yasmen made me happy. In the midst of a raging flu, she made me laugh.

And I knew.

I tipped over from wildly attracted and more-than-slightly pussy-whipped into the real thing. Into love. That moment is soldered into my memory. It’s one I’ll never forget.

And here, just months later, so is this one.

“What do you think?” Yasmen looks up from something she’s working on at the card table in the middle of the living/dining/kitchen zone of my dilapidated one-bedroom apartment, complete with impoverished student decor.

“Think about what?” I ask, sitting down in the raggedy chair across from her.

“Grits.”

“Baby, please don’t make grits again. I’m still recovering from the last time you tried.”

She glares at me without heat, the corners of her mouth fighting a grin. “Boy, not cook grits. Have you even been listening? I said what if you name your restaurant Grits?”

In an unprecedented move, I took a girl home for Christmas. She and my aunt Byrd hit it off right away, and by New Year’s Eve, the two of them were scheming about a restaurant I could open using my MBA and Aunt Byrd’s family recipes.

“Oh, yeah. Sure. Grits.” I scoot my chair closer and push back the fall of braids cascading over Yasmen’s shoulder. “Sounds good.”

“Sounds good?” She lays the back of her hand across my forehead. “Are you sick again? The Josiah Wade I know picks apart every suggestion and always has a yes, but on the ready.”

She’s not wrong. My father was a military man, a stern taskmaster who never settled for anything a day in his life. He planned each move like a military campaign. Control, discipline, and reason propelled him up through the ranks. That’s what he instilled in me even in the short time I had with him before he passed away, but all of that goes out the window in this moment when I realize that I not only love Yasmen, but I want to love her for the rest of my life.

“Marry me.”

The words slip out soft and certain. And I am certain. An actuary running a dozen risk assessments couldn’t be as certain as I am right now. Yasmen and I belong together.

She drops her pen and her mouth falls open.

“Wha-what?” Jerky breaths stutter over her lips and her eyes go wide.

“Marry me.”

Improbably—because this, all of this is as out of character for me as a goat tap-dancing—I sink to one knee in front of her, heart skydiving in my chest. Full-on romantic movie proposal posture. I reach up to cup her face, the beveled bones and delicate curves fitting perfectly against my palms.

“I love you, Yasmen.”

She nods, her expression dazed. “I know. I—I love you, too, but I thought we’d wait until you finished grad school.”

“I’m almost done. One semester left. Your lease is up next month. Perfect time to move in with me.” I sweep my arm around the sparsely furnished, shabby apartment. “Don’t you want to join me in this lap of luxury?”

She snickers, a wide smile breaking out on her beautiful face. The first time I saw her, my friends laughed because I stopped in the middle of whatever bullshit I was saying and stared. That’s not me. No matter how fine, no girl ever dropkicked me at first sight the way Yasmen did. I want to see her smooth brown skin, these sweet, full lips, the thick fan of lashes, on my children.

“You’re crazy,” she whispers.

“I’m sure of you.” I trace the silky dark arch of her eyebrow. “Are you sure of me?”

And I see it. I see the calm, the certainty, the love suffocate her doubts, smother the hesitations. She leaves the rickety chair, goes down on her knees to face me on mine, and scatters fleeting kisses across my face. They ghost over my lips and eyes like butterflies that float out of reach before I can grab them. I want to capture her face again, make her be still so I can kiss her back, but my hands hang at my sides, numb from the magnitude of what’s happening. Finally, she takes my hands in hers and looks directly at me. Tears pool in her eyes and slip over her cheeks.

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Advertisement The Close-Up (Hollywood Renaissance #1.5) Read Online Kennedy Ryan http://www.books2020.com/the-close-up-hollywood-renaissance-1-5-read-online-kennedy-ryan Fri, 26 Aug 2022 19:46:24 +0000 http://www.booksnovels.com/the-close-up-hollywood-renaissance-1-5-read-online-kennedy-ryan Genre: Contemporary, Novella, Romance, Sports Authors: Kennedy Ryan Series: Hollywood Renaissance Series by Kennedy Ryan
Advertisement

Total pages in book: 62
Estimated words: 58947 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 295(@200wpm)___ 236(@250wpm)___ 196(@300wpm)

<<<<1 2 3 11 21 >62

Read Online Books/Novels:	The Close-Up (Hollywood Renaissance #1.5)
Author/Writer of Book/Novel:	Kennedy Ryan
Language:	English
Book Information:
Set in the dynamic worlds of professional basketball and entertainment, two of Kennedy Ryan’s most critically-acclaimed series—HOOPs and Hollywood Renaissance—collide in this tale of forbidden romance. I met Nazareth Armstrong when I was eighteen years old. From the beginning, my brother warned me to stay away from him. Told Naz to stay away from me. Our hearts didn’t listen. I shared one magical night under the stars with my brother's rival, thinking it was the start of a once-in-a-lifetime something. But one awful moment ended it all. Years later when we meet again, we’ve both pursued our dreams, lived a little, found success…but never found love. What began as a tiny flame when we were young now threatens to consume us. I’m more drawn to Naz than ever, but his complicated history with my brother makes whatever this could be…nearly impossible. But Naz accepts impossible as a dare. Through his clever maneuvering and dogged determination, I find myself on a yacht with him and his friends cruising through the Mediterranean. It’s a whirlwind set ablaze. Away from reality, surrendering to the tender heat of his touch, I forget that everything could burn. This is the love story of Takira, who first appears in Reel, book 1 of the Hollywood Renaissance series. Characters from the HOOPS series also make appearances, but you do not have to read any of those books to enjoy this one. Every 1001 Dark Nights novella is a standalone story. For new readers, it’s an introduction to an author’s world. And for fans, it’s a bonus book in the author’s series. We hope you'll enjoy each one as much as we do.
Books in Series:	Hollywood Renaissance Series by Kennedy Ryan
Books by Author:	Kennedy Ryan

One Thousand and One Dark Nights

Once upon a time, in the future…

I was a student fascinated with stories and learning.

I studied philosophy, poetry, history, the occult, and

the art and science of love and magic. I had a vast

library at my father’s home and collected thousands

of volumes of fantastic tales.

I learned all about ancient races and bygone

times. About myths and legends and dreams of all

people through the millennium. And the more I read

the stronger my imagination grew until I discovered

that I was able to travel into the stories... to actually

become part of them.

I wish I could say that I listened to my teacher

and respected my gift, as I ought to have. If I had, I

would not be telling you this tale now.

But I was foolhardy and confused, showing off

with bravery.

One afternoon, curious about the myth of the

Arabian Nights, I traveled back to ancient Persia to

see for myself if it was true that every day Shahryar

(Persian: شهريار, “king”) married a new virgin, and then

sent yesterday's wife to be beheaded. It was written

and I had read that by the time he met Scheherazade,

the vizier's daughter, he’d killed one thousand

women.

Something went wrong with my efforts. I arrived

in the midst of the story and somehow exchanged

places with Scheherazade – a phenomena that had

never occurred before and that still to this day, I

cannot explain.

Now I am trapped in that ancient past. I have

taken on Scheherazade’s life and the only way I can

protect myself and stay alive is to do what she did to

protect herself and stay alive.

Every night the King calls for me and listens as I spin tales.

And when the evening ends and dawn breaks, I stop at a

point that leaves him breathless and yearning for more.

And so the King spares my life for one more day, so that

he might hear the rest of my dark tale.

As soon as I finish a story... I begin a new

one... like the one that you, dear reader, have before

you now.

Then

Takira

High School – Senior Year

“How’s the soup coming, Kira?” my mother shouts from the dining room. “It’s done?”

I roll my eyes and sigh, but not too loudly because I don’t want licks from Mama tonight, and she will pop me if provoked. Or toss the nearest shoe at me.

“Yes, ma’am.” I lift the lid from the fish soup, drawing in a deep breath of the flavor-rich aroma and letting the steam mist my face.

“Good,” she yells. “I hope we have enough of everything. All them boys’ll be hungry.”

The last thing I want to do in the middle of the week is help my mother prepare a full Trinidadian spread for twelve immature jocks. Bad enough I live with one. Now I’m cooking dinner for Cliff’s basketball team instead of watching Vampire Diaries.

<<<<1 2 3 11 21 >62

Read Online Books/Novels:

The Close-Up (Hollywood Renaissance #1.5)

Author/Writer of Book/Novel:

English

Hollywood Renaissance Series by Kennedy Ryan

Kennedy Ryan