PRAISE FOR
CAUGHT UP IN YOU
“Fresh, engaging, and incredibly sexy! Be prepared to have a bucket of ice cubes handy to cool you down! It’s lip-biting good!”
—Under the Covers Book Blog
“Amazing from the very first page. It is definitely one of the best books I have read.”
—Night Owl Reviews (5 stars, Top Pick)
“A very steamy and satisfying read.”
—Fiction Vixen
“Caught Up in You is Roni Loren’s best book to date. An angsty backstory made beautiful by a hero who doesn’t know how perfect he is. Don’t miss this Ranch treat!”
—Carly Phillips, New York Times bestselling author
NOT UNTIL YOU
“Loren takes readers on a wild, sexy ride!”
—Fresh Fiction
FALL INTO YOU
“41⁄2 Stars! Steamy, occasionally shocking, and relentlessly intense, this book isn’t for the faint of heart. But with fiery, emotional characters and their blisteringly passionate relationship, it is also one that isn’t easily forgotten.”
—RT Book Reviews
“Fast-paced and riveting with clever plot twists. Loren writes vivid descriptions, and Fall Into You is a hot erotic romance.”
—USA Today
“This is quickly becoming one of my favorite erotic romance series . . . It’s hot, it’s sexy, full of alpha dominant goodness, and a thrill of a story.”
—Under the Covers Book Blog
“Fall Into You is an erotic romance with heart and serious heat, one that I could not put down.”
—Romance Novel News
MELT INTO YOU
RITA finalist for Best Contemporary Single Title Romance
“Quite a ride. The story is heartfelt and pulls you into the relationships with the characters. Melt Into You takes the traditional version of romance and twists it so that the idea of three individuals in a relationship seems perfectly right.”
—RT Book Reviews
“I can’t say enough about this book. It really gave me everything that I want in a romance. It’s edgy, entertaining, emotional, and romantic. It’s just beautifully written. The sex scenes are sizzling hot. The BDSM scenes are accurate and descriptive. The plot line is like a roller-coaster ride. It’s full of ups and downs and moments where you can’t take any more and your tummy is in knots, but when you hit the last page, you say, let’s ride it again.”
—Guilty Pleasures Book Reviews
“This one is deeply emotional, gut-wrenching at times, and sexy as sin.”
—Romance Novel News
“Roni Loren’s books are masterful, story-driven, sensual, and very erotic . . . definitely one of my have-to-get-as-soon-as-possible series!”
—Under the Covers Book Blog
“Loren does an incredible job portraying the BDSM lifestyle in a sexy and romantic way . . . Loren should definitely be put on the must-read list.”
—Bookpushers
CRASH INTO YOU
“Loren writes delicious, dark, sensual prose . . . Multidimensional characters, a very complicated relationship, and suspense combine to make Crash Into You unique and emotional—an impressive debut from Loren.”
—USA Today
“Revved up and red-hot sexy, Roni Loren delivers a riveting romance!”
—Lorelei James, New York Times bestselling author of the Blacktop Cowboys and Rough Riders series
“Hot and romantic, with an edge of suspense that will keep you entertained.”
—Shayla Black, USA Today bestselling author of Ours to Love
“A sexy, sizzling tale that is sure to have readers begging for more! I can’t wait for Roni Loren’s next tantalizing story!”
—Jo Davis, author of Hot Pursuit
“This steamy, sexy yet emotionally gripping story has the right touch of humor and love to keep readers coming back for a second round.”
—Julie Cross, author of the Tempest novels
Titles by Roni Loren
CRASH INTO YOU
MELT INTO YOU
FALL INTO YOU
CAUGHT UP IN YOU
NEED YOU TONIGHT
Not Until You
PART I: NOT UNTIL YOU DARE
PART II: NOT UNTIL YOU RISK
PART III: NOT UNTIL YOU CRAVE
PART IV: NOT UNTIL YOU TRUST
PART V: NOT UNTIL YOU BEG
PART VI: NOT UNTIL YOU SURRENDER
PART VII: NOT UNTIL YOU BELIEVE
PART VIII: NOT UNTIL YOU LOVE
Specials
STILL INTO YOU
NEED YOU TONIGHT
RONI LOREN
HEAT | NEW YORK
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) LLC
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014
USA �� Canada • UK • Ireland • Australia • New Zealand • India • South Africa • China
penguin.com
A Penguin Random House Company
This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.
Copyright © 2014 by Roni Loren.
Excerpt from Nothing Between Us by Roni Loren copyright © 2014 by Roni Loren.
Excerpt from Not Until You by Roni Loren copyright © 2013 by Roni Loren.
Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.
HEAT and the HEAT design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA)
eBook ISBN: 978-1-101-62981-9
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Loren, Roni.
Need you tonight / Roni Loren.
pages cm
ISBN 978-0-425-26856-8
I. Title.
PS3612.O764N44 2014
813'.6—dc23
2013044622
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Heat trade paperback edition / March 2014
Cover photograph © Photokin/Shutterstock
Cover design by Rita Frangie.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
Contents
Praise
Titles by Roni Loren
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
PROLOGUE
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
&nbs
p; TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
EPILOGUE
Special Excerpt from NOTHING BETWEEN US
Special Excerpt from NOT UNTIL YOU
About the Author
To my husband, my family, and my readers. Without your support, I would just be that weird girl who spends way too much time thinking about imaginary people.
PROLOGUE
Someone’s naked ass is on my imported marble countertops. That was Tessa’s first thought when she walked into her kitchen that warm Tuesday afternoon. Not, Why is Doug home this early? Or, Why does he have his pants around his ankles? And most definitely not Why is my best friend moaning like an injured cat? Nope. Tessa’s brain couldn’t absorb those things just yet. Instead all she could think about was how there was a butt cheek sliding along the spot where she’d chopped strawberries for breakfast.
The two occupants in the kitchen didn’t even notice they were no longer alone, apparently too caught up in their counter defiling to bother. God, were they that oblivious and swept up in passion? It’s not like she’d been particularly quiet walking in. And she’d slept with the man who’d dropped trou in this little tableau for the last thirteen years. She knew he didn’t inspire losing yourself to the moment. But maybe he saved his good tricks for Tuesday afternoons when he fucked the woman Tessa would’ve trusted her life with before today.
Tessa cleared her throat, attempting to draw their attention, but all that greeted her was the sound of Doug telling that lying bitch how hot she was. Rage washed through Tessa in a slow, powerful roll, boiling up and over until she was shaking with it. She calmly set down her purse next to the fruit bowl and wrapped her hand around a large navel orange. Without pausing to reflect, she lifted the fruit and launched it right at her husband’s head.
It went whizzing past him without notice, sailing into the living room, but she couldn’t stop herself now. She picked up another and hurled it even harder. This one hit him right on the ear with a fat thud.
“What the fuck?” Doug’s hand went up to his ear, and he swiveled his head her way. “Shit.”
The traitor on the counter opened her eyes then, her gaze going wide.
But Tessa kept throwing. Oranges, apples, a grapefruit that landed with satisfying impact. It was as if some other force had possessed her. Fruit whizzed across the kitchen, pelting the both of them as they scrambled to get up and pull their clothes around themselves.
“Ow, Tessa, stop it! What the fuck is wrong with you?” Doug roared as he yanked at his pants with one hand while trying to fend off flying fruit with the other.
“What is wrong with me? Me?!” Tessa shouted, knowing she sounded like a lunatic but unable to stop herself.
“Tessa, honey,” Marilyn said, hands out in front of her, blouse still hanging open. “Let’s just calm down, okay?”
Tessa pinned her former best friend with a glare. “Did you just dare speak to me?”
“Marilyn, sweetheart,” Doug said softly, putting a hand on her elbow and blocking her from Tessa with his body. “Why don’t you get out of here? I’ll deal with her.”
Sweetheart? Deal with her? Loud, crashing bells were going off in Tessa’s head. She was glad the knife block was out of reach because she wasn’t sure she could trust herself in that moment.
Marilyn nodded after a quick, worried glance at Tessa then hurried through the living room toward the sliding glass doors that led to the pool area and a backyard exit. Apparently, she knew better than to try to walk by Tessa to get to the front door. Wise move. Because Tessa was ready to throw down Jerry Springer style.
With a tired sigh, Doug turned back to Tessa, his fly still unbuttoned and his dick still half-mast behind the material. The bastard hadn’t even lost his erection. In fact, he looked more annoyed that he’d been interrupted than ashamed of what he’d done. Tessa’s fist balled. “You lying, cheating asshole.”
He pulled on his dress shirt and looked around at the carnage of busted fruit on the floor. “Call the maid and have her come in early to clean this up. It’ll draw ants if it sits too long. I’ve got to get back to my office.”
Tessa blinked, almost too stunned to speak. “That’s what you have to say for yourself?”
“You don’t want to hear what I have to say.” He adjusted his cuffs like it was any other day of getting ready for work and not like the whole foundation of their marriage had shattered beneath them.
“Oh, no. I really do,” she said, seething.
His mouth curled in condescension. “Fine. You want to hear that I need something on the side? That you don’t satisfy all of my needs?”
“Your needs?” If she’d had another piece of citrus to throw, she would’ve reached for it then. How many nights had she put all she had into pleasing him even when he hadn’t put half the effort toward her? How many times had she donned expensive lingerie trying to catch his eye? She’d been willing to do anything for him. She’d loved him.
And he’d been screwing around on her the whole time. With her best friend. The thought almost doubled her over. She reached out and grabbed the edge of the counter.
“Look, you’re upset. I get it. But, Tessa, it’s just sex. I don’t love them, and I’m not going to leave you for any of them. They’re not a threat to you.”
“You have the nerve to talk to me about love right now?” she asked, her throat trying to close. Them. So it was more than Marilyn. She wondered if Marilyn knew she was just the tramp in the Tuesday slot on his calendar. “You’re disgusting.”
His lips curved back into that patronizing smirk he was so good at. “And you’re boring in bed and my intellectual inferior, but I’ve learned to live with it. At least you’re nice to look at now that you’ve gotten your gym routine back on course.”
The hateful words knocked the breath right out of her. Doug had said mean things to her before in the heat of the moment. They’d been together since high school, so of course they’d had their fights. He could be critical beyond reason, always watching that she didn’t eat too many calories or go outdoors without makeup or say the wrong thing in public. She’d tolerated it because she knew how concerned about image he was in his role as the great Pastor Barrett of the Living Light mega-church. And she’d comforted herself with those moments when he was sweet and indulgent with her behind closed doors. He had the capacity to make her feel like a princess. And even though those times had grown few and far between over the last few years, she’d had no idea his opinion of her had sunk so low. Boring in bed. Inferior. Stupid.
God, is that what he told the women he cheated on her with? My wife isn’t too bright, and she’s clueless in the sack.
She grabbed her purse, her stomach threatening to toss up all its contents. She couldn’t stand here for another second and look at his smarmy face, smell the scent of sex in the air. “Go to hell, Doug. I hope you’re happy with your college-educated whores. Now you won’t have to worry about me getting in the way.”
He scoffed. “Come on, Tessa. Stop being melodramatic. You’re not going to divorce me. Your life and everything in it exists because of me. Leave and it all goes away. You’re going to give up all this just because I like a novel fuck every now and then? Please. You wouldn’t even know how to survive without a man taking care of you.” He grabbed his wallet and flipped a piece a plastic her way. “Here, take the credit card. Go punish me by buying something useless and extravagant—you’re good at that—and we’ll move on.”
The credit card landed at her feet, and she had the urge to spear its platinum face with the heel of her Jimmy Choo pump. He
was right. If she left him, every bit of her lifestyle would disappear in a poof. From the clothes on her back to the oranges she’d hurled—all of it was funded by him. There’d be no way to prove his affair in court, not with the legal demons he could afford to hire. And she’d signed a prenup. She’d be left with a pittance of alimony. All the comfort and security she’d worked toward her whole life would be gone. She’d be back where she started all those years ago—a nobody with nothing.
Alone. With no money of her own and only a high-school education to her name.
She bent and picked up the card from the floor, turning it in her fingers before dropping it in her purse.
Doug smiled, satisfied. Victorious.
Without another word, she turned on her heels and calmly walked back out to her Mercedes. When she made it into town, she bought the two most extravagant things she could think of.
The services of an attorney.
And a plane ticket home.
It’d be the last of Doug Barrett’s money she’d ever spend.
ONE
“Hold up. Why are you buying condoms?” Tessa snatched the box of Trojans from Sam’s fingertips and held them up like Exhibit A. “You said this was an emergency stop.”
Sam sent her an innocent look, one that Tessa had seen her use rather effectively on both sets of foster parents she’d shared with Sam. “What? I’m out. And we may need them.”
“You may need condoms,” Tessa repeated. “For a cooking class.”
Sam grabbed another box from the rack. “We may need them. I’ll get some for you, too. You never know who we might meet.”
Tessa groaned and looked up at the buzzing fluorescent lights of the drugstore. Sam’s ability to look for dating opportunities around every corner never failed to amaze Tessa. “We’re not going to meet anyone. It’s a cooking class. It’s going to be married couples, women, and gay men.”
Which is exactly why Tessa had agreed to go. After months of Sam trying to drag her out to bars or clubs on Friday nights to get her over that “dickwad ex-husband,” finally her friend had come up with something that didn’t make Tessa’s stomach turn and her body break out into a cold sweat. But now, as she took in Sam’s snug skirt and high heels, Tessa’s dread was growing. She’d thought Sam had simply chosen to dress up because the class was being held at one of the swankiest restaurants in Dallas. But now the puzzle pieces were locking together into a new picture.