The Dom vs. The Virgin Read online

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  FREE BOOK OFFER

  BOOK DESCRIPTION

  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

  A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

  BONUS - ROOKIE MISTAKE

  BONUS - ACE'S WILD

  BONUS - HARD TO CATCH

  BONUS - WINNING STREAK

  A SNEAK PEEK

  MORE BY ALICE WARD

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  COPYRIGHT AND DISCLAIMER

  The Dom vs. The Virgin

  FREE BOOK OFFER

  CLICK HERE to download my bestselling novel My Stepbrother, My Lover for FREE! You’ll also join my VIP Readers’ Club and be the first to know about new releases, free book offers, sales, exclusive giveaways, early sneak peeks of new releases, cover reveals and more!

  BOOK DESCRIPTION

  I'm a Dom. She's a Virgin. But not for long.

  Living life as a recluse, I’ve quietly built my wealth under the radar of public attention. Then I followed my dream and created the New York Beasts, a bunch of MLB misfits who just won the f’ing World Series. I’m not under the radar now. In fact, everyone wants a piece of me.

  How the hell I allowed myself to be part of a reality show, I’ll never know. But here I am, facing nine single women who see only two things — fresh man meat and big dollar signs.

  Except her.

  Beautiful, young, innocent Emery Rose didn’t plan on being here either. She’s flown under the radar too. But that won’t stop me from hunting her. Or from her hunting me.

  She doesn’t know what she’s in for. Yeah, I might be the Beasts' Daddy, but the real beast is me.

  *** This is a full-length STANDALONE romance novel with an HEA and NO CLIFFHANGER, which is also book five and final in my bestselling series, The Beasts of Baseball. All FOUR other standalone novels of the series are also included in this copy as a bonus for a limited time, so you can read the COMPLETE series when you one-click this book today! ***

  CHAPTER ONE

  Emery

  “Amen.”

  The single word continued to float around me as mourners — no, rubberneckers — filed away from the gravesite. Rain pattered the gray granite of the simple headstone as the cold West Virginia wind tunneled down the mountain. It caught my umbrella, nearly ripping it out of my hands, but my numb fingers held on.

  Held on to the shelter.

  Held on to my sanity.

  Just as I’d been holding on for the past year.

  “Didja know?” I startled as the clipped words rang near my ear so unexpectedly. With a long sigh, I turned to face Ryan’s mother. Her usually haggard-looking face had collapsed into a mask of anger and grief, turning the lines in her skin into deep rivers that contrasted harshly against her pale complexion. “Didja know my son was…?” She shook her head, unable to say the word. She looked up to the cloud-filled heavens and crossed herself before turning angry eyes to me. “Didja?”

  A camera flashed, and I turned away from it and all the news cameras behind it. Turned away from the reporters lying in wait to ask stupid “how do you feel” questions that only served to prolong the horror of the nightclub shooting that took place exactly one year ago today. Twelve were killed, including my precious Ryan. My best friend since I was ten years old.

  Marlene Steadman’s claw-like hand grabbed my arm, turning me to face her again. “Tell me, Emery! I wanna hear it from yer own mouth. Didja know my son was gay?” She spat the word out, as if it tasted like a combination of brine and venom. Her eyes were accusing, like it was my fault her son wasn’t “normal.”

  Normal.

  That was the word Marlene used when we buried him. When she ran out of the funeral home, crying tears of not grief, but embarrassment in front of the news stations blasting stories about the victims. She hadn’t even attended her own son’s funeral, and I was surprised to see her here now.

  Pushing my long, dark hair back from my eyes, I examined her face, wondering what to say. After all, there was no reason to protect the secret any longer. Ryan Bradley Steadman’s greatest fear had been revealed by his death three hundred and sixty-five days ago.

  “Yes, Mrs. Steadman. I knew. And I loved him anyway. Can you?”

  Smack!

  My face burned where her hand connected with my cheek, and I stifled the cry of not only pain, but surprise. The woman looking at me with so much hatred now had practically raised me since elementary school, providing me an escape from my own home for many years. I’d sat at her table. Spent the night at her house. Helped her clean and wash clothes, anything I could think of to be helpful so she would let me stay as much as possible.

  So I wouldn’t have to go to my own home.

  So I could be clean.

  So I could be near my only friend, Ryan. The boy who had offered me his protection. The boy I’d protected in return.

  But now, my relationship with her was dead too, it seemed. As dead as the boy beneath my feet. Today was my first day back to my hometown since we buried Ryan all those months ago. During that time, I hadn’t had to face the questions and accusations I knew would be hurled at me in my small coal mining town. But I was back now. And not just for the memorial service being held in all the victims’ honors, but because I’d failed in New York, and there was nowhere else I could go.

  I couldn’t pay the rent.

  I couldn’t afford to buy food.

  I tried, but after Ryan’s murder, the city had become too expensive for me to live in on my own. Even with two jobs and two new roommates, I couldn’t pay the exorbitant monthly payment. Ryan had been the one taking care of the finances. As a professional football player, he could afford the beautiful apartment in which we lived while I went to school and worked part-time on Broadway and at Rockefeller Center, gaining experience so I could follow my dream of one day writing my own screenplays and directing movies.

  In return, I was Ryan’s shield from a world that didn’t take kindly to homosexual professional football players, just as I’d been his shield from the small-town bigotry we’d grown up in for so long. As “boyfriend and girlfriend,” we protected each other. We took care of each other.

  Until a hate-filled bullet destroyed it all.

  A year later, I couldn’t do it any longer. After today’s memorial service, I would talk to my father about moving back home. My things were packed, and all I needed to do was rent a U-Haul and drive back with my meager possessions to Shitville, West Virginia.

  No, that wasn’t all I needed to do.

  I blew out a breath and faced Mrs. Steadman again. I needed to finish this conversation first.

  “Ryan was a wonderful man,” I told the one person I should never have needed to remind. “A wonderful human being. His sexual orientation changes none of that.”

  Marlene’s face crumpled into a mask of hatred. “His sexual orientation changes everythin’. It’s a sin. No, an abomination, I tell ya. And it’s all yer fault.” She extended a finger until it pointed about an inch from my nose. I didn’t flinch or even blink, thoug
h her tall form towered above my petite frame. “Don’t think I haven’t watched the TV and read the newspapers about those poor soulless victims.” She spat on the ground. “Don’t think I didn’t figure it out that you were helpin’ him hide his indecencies. If it weren’t for you, I coulda got him head therapy or somethin’ a long time ago.”

  I stared at her, refusing to allow the tears that burned my eyes to escape. “He was gay. Not depressed.”

  She raised her hand to smack me again, but I caught her wrist this time, not accepting the blow.

  “He was an abomination,” she screeched, yanking her hand away. “If he wasn’t, then why did he have to hide it? You answer me that. If he was so proud of his sex-u-al,” she sneered the word, her back-hills accent growing thicker, “orientation, why didn’t he tote a boyfriend around instead of hidin’ behind yer skirts?”

  I didn’t have an answer to that.

  Just like Ryan didn’t have an answer back in the ninth grade when he’d tearfully confided in me his feelings. He had been ashamed. Scared. No, terrified. And I understood why. I’d stayed in his home enough to know the Steadmans’ thoughts and opinions on just about everything. If you weren’t white and straight, you didn’t belong in their home. They had other rules too, but those two led the pack.

  When their oldest daughter got pregnant at fourteen, all they cared about was if the daddy was white. Clearly, the daddy wasn’t gay, so that line of questioning was mute.

  The hypocrisy was rampant.

  “He knew you would judge him, so he—”

  “Not just me judgin’ him, young lady. God judged him. God served as his executioner too.”

  My hand curled into a fist, and it took everything inside me not to punch her in that vile mouth. “I can’t believe you would say something so cruel.”

  “The truth is cruel, young lady. And here’s another truth. You used my son. You lied to me, and you used my boy. I—”

  I was stunned. “Me? I used him? How about that nice house he built for you? That nice car you’re driving? He bought all of that for you, even though he knew you’d hate him if you knew the truth.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “That’s what kids are supposed to do, take care of their folks.”

  I thought about Marlene’s drug addicted daughter. The same girl who’d, thankfully, put her baby up for adoption so the little boy would have a chance at some normal semblance of life. I thought about the other Steadman son. The laziest human on Earth. Both of those people still lived in her home. Yet, had she discovered that Ryan was gay while he was alive, he’d have been banned from ever returning again as those slobs whiled away on her couch.

  More hypocrisy.

  “He took very good care of you,” I reminded her.

  Marlene snorted. “And that’s over now, isn’t it? It was the devil’s work. Because he was hangin’ out at some gay club, he got shot, and all that money ended, didn’t it?”

  It did.

  Everything ended.

  When Ryan died, it all went away. Most people would be surprised to know that very few NFL players get multimillion-dollar contracts. Ryan’s was nothing to sneeze at, especially for a boy coming from a poor coal mining town. His initial contract was just over the league minimum of four hundred and fifty thousand, but he was up for renewal and was going to be bumped to over a million the week after he died.

  He’d been so excited.

  Not only had Ryan been doing well on the team and getting more and more playing time, he’d met someone and had been thinking about coming out of the closet. Some professional athletes had come out, paving the way for others. For the first time, Ryan had been filled with hope. He’d hugged me, thanking me over and over for being his friend and sticking by his side no matter what.

  I’d been so happy for him. Then… bam.

  I thought that was one of the cruelest parts of his death. He’d spent twenty-five years denying such an essential part of who he was, only to have his life cut short as he sat on the brim of happiness.

  Ryan’s death caused the biggest firestorm following the shooting, when his closet homosexuality was revealed. Even though he wasn’t a big name yet in the sports arena, I’d been hounded by the media, had offers from a number of TV shows — including Dr. Phil — to share my side of the story. People wanted to know if I’d known about his sexuality. They wanted to know “how I felt.” Ugh. After a few weeks, the media storm turned its attention elsewhere. Up until a couple days ago when the anniversary of the shooting grabbed headlines again. Memorial services were set up, and here I was. Not for the media and certainly not for the attention, but because the pull to support Ryan even a year later drew me here. I’d done that most of my life. Supported him, just as he supported me.

  We didn’t judge each other. Ever.

  In the weeks following the shooting, I never said a word to the media, but Ryan’s lover turned traitor and spilled the story for an “undisclosed amount of money.” Pictures included. They were so private that a part of me was glad Ryan wasn’t alive to witness this personal part of his life revealed so cruelly. After that, more dominos fell.

  I became a laughing stock to some people, a hero to others. I didn’t relish the attention either way.

  The Steadmans decided to fight for everything Ryan owned, and because we weren’t married or hadn’t lived together long enough to be considered common-law — even if our secret hadn’t been revealed — they took everything. All the furniture. His car. All the money left in the account. I’d been lucky to keep my little Camry and my clothes. The judge had granted that I could live in the apartment Ryan had leased; there was still nine months left on the lease at that time. I’d purchased a futon to sleep and sit on, then tried to go on with my life. I landed a job as an assistant to a production assistant at a food network, but the position paid only enough to cover utilities and some food. Even though I preferred to write screenplays, I began ghostwriting romance novels for authors on the side. That helped, but the work was inconsistent and writing a novel took forever in the small amount of time I had left at the end of the day. I took a job as a waitress, working the midnight shift a couple days a week. Nothing I did was enough for the first lease payment as the deadline loomed for it to come due. Three months and two roommates later, it still wasn’t enough.

  Marlene grabbed my arm again, her fingers digging into my skin. “He made me and mine a laughin’ stock. Reporters scurrying around everywhere wanting to know about his love life and about you.” She wiped her mouth with her sleeve. “‘Tweren’t able to show my face at church or the store even, while you took the easy route by livin’ in that big New York City penthouse in that vile and sinful place.”

  Easy route?

  Anger burned through my chest. “Easy? Nothing in my entire life has been easy, as I’m sure you know. I loved Ryan. I didn’t care that he couldn’t love me back in that way. We were best friends, and best friends stick by each other. Apparently better than blood. Your blood at least.”

  Her nostrils flared. “You shoulda talked him out of it,” she accused, then her eyes went mean, “and maybe if you’d been woman enough, he wouldn’t have wanted to be queer.” She looked me up and down. “Maybe that’s why he liked ya in the first place. Minus that long hair, you do look like a pansy-assed boy.”

  I couldn’t believe Marlene Steadman was talking to me this way, and I hated that I didn’t know how to respond. She didn’t give me time.

  “Don’t ya have anything to say for yerself?”

  I yanked my arm away from her. “I have plenty to say, but nothing your hateful, bigotry-filled mind will unglue itself long enough to understand.”

  Realizing there was no way I could continue speaking with this woman, I looked around for a route of escape. To my right, reporters and their cameramen continued to lurk by my car, so that was out. It was still raining, with thunder now beginning to rumble over the hills.

  Preferring to face a lightning bolt than a reporter, I made my dec
ision.

  “If you’ll excuse me, I need to go.”

  “Where ya goin’?” she sneered. “To that trash heap where you belong?”

  The hurt-filled barb hit its target, and I turned on my heel to walk away. Glancing down at Ryan’s granite marker, I kissed my hand and pressed my palm onto Ryan’s cold tombstone.

  “Love you forever,” I murmured before hurrying away, the sucker punch of her last comment having stolen my breath. I was at a near run when I started up a small rise. I’d been smart enough to wear flat boots, so I didn’t have to worry with heels slogging down in the wet earth. Risking a quick look over my shoulder, I heaved a sigh of relief that no one followed me. Cresting the hill, I kept going until I reached another tombstone. My mom’s.

  Tears filled my eyes as I stood in front of the heart-shaped granite, pulling my coat closer around me.

  How was it possible to miss someone you’d never known?

  From what my father had told me, she was dead before I’d drawn my first breath. It had been a car accident, a drunk driver crossing over the center line when Mom was coming home from work twenty-three years ago. The airbag ruptured her uterus, and she bled to death even as the paramedics did an emergency C-section on the side of the road in the attempt to save one of us.

  Brushing my tears away, I took a deep breath. “Stop feeling sorry for yourself,” I muttered.

  I normally didn’t.

  Normally, I forced myself to be amenable and good-natured, even when I wasn’t feeling it naturally. I refused to be one of those people — the ones who blamed their backgrounds or experiences on their shitty lives.

  Instead, I used those things as inspiration… or in my books and screenplays. There, the heroine overcame her many obstacles and lived happily ever after. There, rags to riches stories came true. There, I got to play God and had full control within the world I created.

  Didn’t like a character? Boom… they died. Quick, or painfully prolonged? My choice.

  Wanted a perfect mate? Voila… he appeared, sporting a six-pack and an enormous dick. And rugged good looks. And billions. And he was straight but as sensitive and compassionate as a gay guy. Because I wrote it so.