Wild Kisses (3:AM Kisses #7) Read online

  Wild Kisses

  3:AM Kisses 7

  Addison Moore

  Contents

  Copyright

  Books by Addison Moore

  Prologue

  1. Wild Child

  Owen

  2. This is a Test

  Owen

  3. Loose Cannon

  Owen

  4. Feral Affection

  Owen

  5. Get Lost Forever

  Owen

  6. Rumor Has It

  Owen

  7. Done With You

  Owen

  8. A Tameless Kind of Love

  Owen

  A Note from the Author

  Books by Addison Moore

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Edited by Paige Maroney Smith

  Cover Design: Gaffey Media

  Copyright © 2015 by Addison Moore

  http://addisonmoorewrites.blogspot.com/

  This novel is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to peoples either living or deceased is purely coincidental. Names, places, and characters are figments of the author’s imagination. The author holds all rights to this work. It is illegal to reproduce this novel without written expressed consent from the author herself.

  All Rights Reserved.

  This eBook is for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this eBook with another person, please purchase any additional copies for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Copyright © 2015 by Addison Moore

  Books by Addison Moore

  Romance

  3:AM Kisses (3:AM Kisses 1)

  Winter Kisses (3:AM Kisses 2)

  Sugar Kisses (3:AM Kisses 3)

  Whiskey Kisses (3:AM Kisses 4)

  Rock Candy Kisses (3:AM Kisses 5)

  Velvet Kisses (3:AM Kisses 6)

  Wild Kisses (3:AM Kisses 7)

  Burning Through Gravity (Burning Through Gravity 1)

  A Thousand Starry Nights (Burning Through Gravity 2)

  Fire in an Amber Sky (Burning Through Gravity 3)

  Beautiful Oblivion (Beautiful Oblivion 1)

  Beautiful Illusions (Beautiful Oblivion 2)

  Beautiful Elixir (Beautiful Oblivion 3)

  The Solitude of Passion

  Someone to Love (Someone to Love 1)

  Someone Like You (Someone to Love 2)

  Someone For Me (Someone to Love 3)

  Celestra Forever After (Celestra Forever After 1)

  The Dragon and the Rose (Celestra Forever After 2)

  The Serpentine Butterfly (Celestra Forever After 3) Soon!

  Perfect Love (A Celestra Novella)

  Young Adult Romance

  Ethereal (Celestra Series Book 1)

  Tremble (Celestra Series Book 2)

  Burn (Celestra Series Book 3)

  Wicked (Celestra Series Book 4)

  Vex (Celestra Series Book 5)

  Expel (Celestra Series Book 6)

  Toxic Part One (Celestra Series Book 7)

  Toxic Part Two (Celestra Series Book 7.5)

  Elysian (Celestra Series Book 8)

  Ephemeral (The Countenance Trilogy 1)

  Evanescent (The Countenance Trilogy 2)

  Entropy (The Countenance Trilogy 3)

  Ethereal Knights (Celestra Knights)

  Season of the Witch (A Celestra Companion)

  Prologue

  Piper

  I’m the only person that knows what happened last year. It’s a fact I have to keep reminding myself now that I’m hundreds of miles away from the boarding school where the hellish nightmare ensued. My harried past, the horrible taunts from my classmates are nothing but an echo ricocheting in my mind. Too bad I can’t seem to shut them off, get those voices to cease once and for all. The negative, internal tape tells me that I’m cheap on a loop. I’m easy. A tease. But worst of all, it tells me what I’m afraid I’ve known all along, something my parents passed down to me first—that I might just be unlovable. They’ve never come out and said it. They’re more your actions speak louder than words type—the send you to boarding school and wave to you at graduation before you go off to college type. I’ve had a conversation or two with my mother—not so much with my father.

  But tonight, I’ve somehow managed to suppress those negative voices because Owen Vincent, WB’s premier bad boy—the cheap, easy, male version of myself (albeit he’s the real deal) stands in front of me, buck naked, flaunting, or perhaps I should say pointing his rather lengthy, impressive genetics in my direction.

  As much as I want to get lost in the moment, my mind splinters to another horrible truth—one that’s come about in the few short months I’ve been at Whitney Briggs University. I’ve done something to Owen, something horrible, and he doesn’t know it. Owen didn’t deserve any of it. If I could take it all back, I would in a heartbeat. I wonder how long I can keep this terrible secret? How long I can keep it to myself without exploding to bits and making Owen Vincent rue the day he ever laid eyes on me.

  “Oh, wow.” I swallow hard at the sight. “That looks painful.”

  His brows arch with amusement. “For you or for me?”

  “Both.”

  “That’s not what I expected you to say.” His chest trembles with a laugh as he takes a bite out of my neck.

  “Should I try again? Tie me up and ride me hard? Is that more your speed?”

  A dark laugh rumbles from his chest to mine. “Anyone ever tell you that you talk too much?” He takes a hard bite out of my ear as his spare appendage stabs at my thigh, hot and hard to the touch, like flesh-covered steel.

  “Nobody dares tell me anything like that.”

  “That’s because everyone is too damn afraid of you.” He slips a kiss directly into my ear. Sometimes I think I’m afraid of me most. “You’re a mouthy little girl.” His brows arch with the dig.

  I look deep into his soulful eyes, and our sordid past—and all the ways I’ve effectively used him—come back to haunt me. I’m sorry, Owen. I’m really sorry for what I’ve done. I might be mouthy, but that’s one thing I don’t have the guts to say out loud.

  I wonder if I ever will.

  Wild Child

  Piper

  There are only three goals I have for my time here at Whitney Briggs University: graduate with honors from the business program so I can work for and eventually conduct a hostile takeover of my father’s investment firm, join a sorority to form lifelong bonds and social connections that span the entire PanHellenic structure which will ensure Greek-based nepotism for decades to come—and last, but not least, fall madly in love with a man of blue-blood standing, who has a brief yet meticulous list of overachieving yet underhanded if-need-be goals in life. I’m strong-willed, strongly opinionated, and I say what I want when I want.

  Those are the exact thoughts I rehearse over and over as I make my way down the middle of Founder’s Square to the long row of sororities seated at banquet tables with their perky painted-on smiles, their matching clothes and hairstyles. It’s all a bit Stepford Wives for me at the moment, but this has been something I’ve wanted for so long that I’m not going to let their silly little mix-and-match clothes and bodies, and their blood red lipstick grimaces frighten me from getting the prize.

  Actually, there’s one more thing that they should probably know about me—I have a temper—a damn ugly one, too. But I’m pretty sure informing someone that, should they cross me, hellfire shall spew from my mouth isn’t going to foster the po
sitive experience I’m looking for. There are some things best saved for later, and, for now, my warpath hatchet-wielding aggression remains on a need-to-know basis.

  “There are only three goals I have for my—” I whisper under my breath as I rehearse for the bazillionth time. My father says you only get one opportunity to impress people, and I plan on doing just that, impressing the hell out of every sorority captain here and her persnickety crews that are handing out pamphlets while sizing up the fresh meat—i.e., potential new members.

  My feet carry me that much closer to my destiny here at Whitney Briggs, and my heart starts in on a defibrillating pattern that has the power to land me in an operating room with my chest spilt wide. God, I need to calm the hell down. The last thing I need is for these sorority skanks to see my forehead beading with sweat.

  I do a quick sweep of the vicinity for Cassidy, my new roommate. She’s about as country bumpkin as you can get—super sweet, and I love listening to her thick-as-potato soup Tennessee accent that, on occasion, I seriously wish came with a translation guide. Cassidy is as calming as they come, and right about now both my jangled nerves and I can use a calming face in the crowd. I’ve never felt so comfortable around anyone before as I do Cassidy. Well, with the exception of my brothers, but as far as non-relatives go, it’s odd how quickly I’ve taken to her. Not that she’s particularly interested in how I feel. She was pretty bummed to find out that I was assigned to her dorm and not her old best friend, Scarlett, whom she went to junior high with. But then, Scarlett moved, and they became good old-fashioned pen pals—and that’s about the time I tuned out the conversation. I can only handle so much verbiage spewed at me before my ears beg to fall off, my eyes roll to the floor, and I voluntarily bite my own tongue off. It’s not that I strive to be cold and unfeeling; it’s just the way my cold and unfeeling parents happened to genetically engineer me.

  A pep rally breaks out in the grassy area just beyond the mayhem in Founder’s Square. The collective student body seems eager to kick off this school year right here in the thick of the club sign-ups extravaganza. The entire scene is quickly morphing into a spontaneous mixer as girls and guys alike size one another up for the pickings.

  I’m not going to lie—I’m pretty excited about doing some sizing up myself. This entire college experience is about exploration and self-discovery, and God knows I’ve yet to properly explore or discover what sits ahead on the horizon of this sexual terrain. I might have been known as a cock-tease in high school, but I’m ready to shed myself of that ill-deserved title. Just the thought of those dark days sends my chest constricting, my face scalding with embarrassment again. All those cruel taunts, the rumors that had me hiding beneath the covers—more days than not—flood to the surface, and I’m quick to submerge them. Thankfully, the Bentley Academy is an eternity away from the WB campus. I have a chance at rebuilding who I am, who I always knew I should be.

  My body moves swiftly through a tangle of limbs as I fast approach the endless row of sororities campaigning for my attention.

  Here I am, walking toward the most plastic group of girls I’ve seen since my Manhattan boarding school days, with their five hundred dollar designer jeans that beg the world to see them as casual and their three hundred dollar tissue-weight T-shirts complete with ragged edges that work hard to achieve that effortless worn look. And it happens to be the exact uniform I donned this morning. It’s always a good feeling to know I played it just right. But the biggest giveaway to their monetary good standing are those matching pearl necklaces that ring each of their necks like an oyster-inspired, shiny, white noose. I can tell by their blue-pink patinas they’ve been handed down generation after generation.

  Whitney Briggs is a magnet for children of the rich and infamous, but it wasn’t until I visited my brother, Wyatt, last spring that I knew this was where I was destined to feather my scholastic nest, even if I do fit nicely into the aforementioned child-of-the-rich-and-infamous category. Wyatt is technically my half-brother, but I couldn’t love him any more if he held every last bit of my DNA. We share the same father. Wyatt’s mother was Dad’s first wife, my mother being his third. Wife number two didn’t gift him any new heirs, and he’s been forever grateful to her for that. You might even say she was his favorite for just that very reason. Nevertheless, he’s content with just the three children. My parents seem to have a pretty solid deal, even if neither of them is around that much.

  I brush my parents out of my mind and sink them right down along with my shitty high school experience.

  A cleansing breath works through my lungs. It’s no secret the WB campus is crawling with trust fund babies amongst a smattering of scholarship recipients. I just can’t figure out which one these sorority snobs would like me to be. As horrid as it is for me to admit, it’s important for people to like me. I want to fit in. I’d do just about anything to land myself with the right people—shop couture or dumpster dive at a thrift shop. Take your pick; that’s about the only respect I’m easy.

  I do a quick assessment of the girls at the tables to determine social status and overall desirability, but they’re all flawless and beautiful as they smile and wave at the passersby with illegal amounts of enthusiasm.

  My feet quicken with each step, and my mind races with my well-scripted introduction. My mind fumbles for my father’s words about impressing people, and all I come up with is don’t fuck up.

  My fingers fly to my lips. God, I’m pretty sure my dad didn’t say that. Okay, he for sure didn’t infuse it with the expletive, but oh, my shit. My heart pummels my chest from the inside as I step up to the long, white, blanketed table with a trio of Greek symbols spread across the banner, and my mind turns to sludge the closer I get to these abnormally gorgeous girls.

  “Welcome to the Alpha Chi sorority chapter at Whitney Briggs!” An outrageously curvy blonde beams while stuffing a folder in my hand with hot pink letters printed across the front that spell out, Go Greek to be Great! She looks cartoonish, like a real-life Jessica Rabbit, and for some reason this pulls the reel I’ve been cementing in my brain for the last few days straight out of my head.

  She claps like a trained seal. “My name is Jules Flannery, and this is Lucille Hoffman!” She bounces when she points to her near identical blonde running mate. “We have the largest group of diverse sisters among the WB Greek system, campus wide, and we would be honored to have you attend our general interest mixer tonight at our match-up fraternity Sigma Theta Tau!” She segues into the next segment of her diatribe, denying me an opportunity to impress her with my own verbal onslaught. “Now, there will be eleven other sororities vying for your time tonight, but at Alpha Chi we strive to—” Her speech continues endlessly with not a moment to spare for breathing.

  If this goes on, she’ll pass out long before I ever get a chance to get a word in edgewise. Then, as if on cue, the words start to bubble their way up my throat like vomit.

  “There are only three goals I have for my time—” Oh, crap, here I go. Not that I mind. God knows if I don’t speak right over her squeaky, perky, pesky non-stop prattle, I’ll forget my fucking lines. “Whitney Briggs University, graduate with honors—oh, wait…” A hot bite of sweat erupts under my arms. “Um, that’s actually not how it goes.” But it doesn’t matter that I’ve flubbed my lines, because she’s still speaking, not missing a single beat, her lashes batting, her lips buzzing like a wind-up doll, and all I can think to do is shout right over this Energizer bunny with a ponytail.

  “There are only three goals I have for my time here at Whitney Briggs University! Graduate with honors from the business program so I can work for and eventually conduct a hostile takeover of my father’s investment firm—did you catch that?” I lean in, ready to shake the crap out of her and those frenetically moving lips. “I’m actually going to conduct a hostile takeover of my own father’s investment firm!” My voice shrills so loud I can taste blood in the back of my throat, but the bodies bustling around us—the overzealous
cheer-bots shouting into their megaphones nearby have this conversation, this moment, quickly spiraling into nightmare territory. This is not how I envisioned this to be. It wasn’t supposed to—

  The spinning nose of a brown leather ball launches toward Founder’s Square, and the next thing I know I’m on my back, a venti-sized cup of raspberry iced-tea baptizing me from my head to my tissue-weight, newly see-through, newly annoyingly pink T-shirt. A towering, very much weighted body clamps down over me. His panting chest rides over mine, hot and heavy.

  “Hi,” he whispers just a breath above my mouth.

  “Shit!” I gasp and blink my way back to reality as I try hard to process who the hell just tackled me, and why the fuck they have my limbs pinned to the concrete like some sexual crime is about to take place.

  Stellar smile, bright blue eyes, hair as black as night—it’s some idiot, irritatingly handsome as he may be, licking his lips as if he were readying to take a bite out of me. He’s good-looking, and he knows it. I hate his type. That cocky smile jerking up his lips only confirms this theory.

  “That was close.” His eyes ride down my features, lower still to my now fuchsia T-shirt with my lace bra newly visible underneath. “You okay?” He sweeps back the hair from my face as if he had the right to, and I slap at his chest until he manages to scuttle off my body.

  A series of primal cries escape me as I assess exactly how affronted I should be on a scale of one to never-getting-into-a-fucking-sorority.

  “You ruined everything!” I shake the excess tea off my hands as if it were blood. “You have no idea how hard I worked to perfect that stupid speech!” I shriek so loud my hair vibrates, but it doesn’t make a damn of a difference. The band has cued up and happily belts out the WB fight song. If I hear Go Mustangs! in that ultra cheery welcome-to-Barbie-land falsetto one more time, I might reach out and strangle my dark-haired teetotaling, very unwanted suitor.