Temptations

By Misty Reigenborn

Cleo Adams has spent her life being hurt by men, so she's made it a game to screw over attached men, taking anything from them that she can take and leaving them to live with the consequences. But on the night she meets him, everything changes. At first he looks to her like just another man to screw over, but she soon realizes that she's never been more wrong in her life.

Connor Bancroft was born to a militant feminist mother and a powerless father, and women have done little to prove to him that they aren't all the same, set out to screw as many men over as possible, in any way possible. Since reaching adulthood, he's made his living taking from rich women. And when he first saw her in the bar that night, he thought she was just another beautiful woman with too much money and no feelings. But he feels himself drawn to her in a way that he's never been drawn to a woman before.

Will the night they spend together be their one and only? Or will Cleo and Connor find a way to be together in a world that's left them distrustful of the opposite sex for good reason?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Misty Reigenborn
• Release date: Oct 3, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311682963

Misty Reigenborn

Misty Reigenborn has been writing poetry, short stories and novel length work since she was nine years old. She is the author of twenty titles: romance novels A Twist of Fate, Better Left Unsaid, Run to You, Better Left Unsaid: Alternate Ending, Crestview Academy: Tory, Crestview Academy: Molli, Crestview Academy: Mellenda, Girls of Gabe's Place 1: Brandy, Girls of Gabe's Place 2: Robyn,Girls of Gabe's Place 3: Ami, Run From You, Key to My Heart: Stay, Key to My Heart: Only You and Temptations, fantasy novel Mind over Matter, short story collections Second Chance, This Song Reminds Me of You and Love and Other Tales, poetry collection From the Heart, and non fiction title A Broken System: Examining the Clark County Department of Family Services. She loves to connect with her readers and appreciates an honest review.

Book preview

Part 1: Connor and Cleo

Cleo

Cleo scanned the bar in her usual manner, looking for an easy target. She was getting tired of the game, and felt altogether too old for it at the age of thirty, but her resentment towards men ran deep, and she wanted to do her best to screw as many of them over as she could by the time she felt ready to settle down, and perhaps have to accept the fact that not all men were bad.

Though unfortunately in Cleo’s case, most men had disappointed her, not once, but over and over again, like her father. Neither of her parents would have ever won a parent of the year award, but there were several things beyond her control that her father had never been able to forgive her for, things that had always stood in the way of a healthy relationship between father and daughter.

First, she had been born the wrong sex. Her father was old-fashioned, and believed that only a son would be able to take over his business once he decided to retire. Secondly, she wasn’t her father’s biological daughter. He had found out five years after her birth when he had pressured her mother to produce a male heir, and had been informed by the high priced fertility specialist that they sought the advice of that the problem of fertility did not come from the wife, who had no issues preventing her from successfully conceiving and carrying a child; but from the husband, who was found to have a low chance of being able to father one child, let alone two.

Her father had avoided their home like the plague after that, only staying for more than a few minutes when he absolutely had to. And though the house was rarely quiet between the staff and her mother’s visitors, she had always felt alone underneath its roof, and had made an eager escape the day after she had turned eighteen.

She had enough money to live comfortably for the rest of her life between what her mother had put into a trust for her (the knowledge of the trust had come as quite a surprise to Cleo, though the possibility that her mother did have a heart still seemed slim), and what her childless aunt had left her, but in all honesty she cared little about money.

Cleo gained more satisfaction by screwing a man over than she did by any amount of money that had ever sat in her bank account. Thinking back on all of the delicious moments of destruction she had caused gave her an almost orgasmic feeling. She supposed her feelings towards men were more than a little twisted, but she felt as if she had damned good reason to feel ill will towards the masculine sex.

Besides her father, various other men had taken part in the destroying of her image of what a good man looked like. Various house staff had made veiled and not so veiled attempts to seduce her during her teenage years, as had friends of her mother.

She had known even at the age of ten that her mother’s friends were much more than friends. Some of them stuck around for days, and some for months. One had lasted almost a year. She had often wondered how it was that somehow her father had never run into any of her mother’s affairs, but then she realized that her mother was free to do exactly what she wanted because the Adams family did not believe in divorce, no matter how bad things got. It was considered normal for an Adams man to divide his time between two, or sometimes even three families once he had tired of his wife, or she had tired of him.

And it was not only older men that had disappointed her, but every boyfriend she had ever had from her first to her most recent, to male friends, and even many of the males she had done business with over the years. Boyfriends has lied to her, had cheated on her, had stolen from her, one had crashed her car; but the real doozy had been the man she had loved who had gotten another woman pregnant shortly after he had moved in with her.

Cleo was aware that men found her attractive. She had creamy pale skin that had suffered few blemishes over the years, long, wavy, dark hair, cornflower blue eyes, and an amazing figure she had to do little to keep. She had curves in all the right places and she was satisfied with her breasts, something that she figured few women could honestly say.

But sometimes she wished she weren’t so beautiful. It had always been hard to tell if people’s intentions towards her were true. And she had come to find that all too often they weren’t. But while she agreed that women could be back stabbing, lying bitches, constantly full of drama; she felt she had been harmed by far more men than women in her lifetime.

She hid a sigh as she realized that yet again there were no worthwhile prospects in the bar. It had been six weeks since she had had a man in her bed, and she was feeling more than a little antsy. With all of the things that she found disagreeable about men, she enjoyed sex very much. From the worst partner to the best, she always found a way to get enjoyment out of the act. She supposed some may have considered her a slut, or high class trash, but it had been a long time since she had given a shit about what anyone thought of her.

She was tempted to strike up a conversation with the bartender, but business was far too steady to keep him at her side, and her earlier attempts at flirting had always seemed to fall short with the tall, lanky bartender whose tacky white nametag read Martin anyway. She figured him to be either gay or a rare man that had a woman that he was actually devoted to.

Married men had always been her favorite to play with. She supposed it had something to do both with the extramarital affairs of her parents and the experience she had had with the first man she had fallen in love with.

At nineteen she had fallen head over heels in love with a gorgeous, well-to-do man named Art. They had been together eighteen months and she was sure he had been ready to pop the question when the dream that their lives had been came crashing down on Cleo’s head.

A woman had shown up at her house on a Wednesday afternoon with two toddlers in tow, demanding to know where someone she called Brantley was. Cleo told the woman that she didn’t know anyone named Brantley and the woman had let out a long suffering sigh as if she had been through the very event before, digging around in her mammoth purse until she had come up with a photo album.

In the photo album there were several pictures of the woman before her with the man she had known as Art, dating back years. She found out that day that not only was Art not a single man, and had been married to the woman who introduced herself as Larisa since they were sixteen years old; but that he was not the twenty-two years old that he had claimed to be, but twenty-seven, and was nowhere near as well off as he claimed to be either.

She had been devastated that day, and had given up on the idea of ever finding a man that wouldn’t betray her. And after that she had set her sights on many married men, and had had most of them quite easily into her bed. She had broken the bonds of marriage so many times that she was sure she would never choose to get married, even on the rare chance she did find someone she felt as if she would be able to tolerate for the rest of her life.

Marriage had always seemed like a trap to her. It was so simple to get married, and yet so damned complicated to get divorced. She supposed she had to admit that women did often make out better than men in cases of divorce though. If the mother wasn’t totally incompetent, she often got the house, custody of the children, child support and alimony. Cleo didn’t believe that family court was fair to men, but she didn’t believe that life was fair period.

She took a sip of her drink and scanned the bar again. The door had just opened, and a group of men poured into the bar, letting a blast of cold wind in with them. She shivered and felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. She turned slightly, and caught the eye of a man who looked interesting at the least. She smiled slightly. Maybe this night wouldn’t be a total bust after all she thought.

Connor

Connor hid a smirk as the beautiful woman drank in the sight of him from across the crowded room. This bar was one of his favorites, and business had picked up since he’d come in forty-five minutes before. He was a little disappointed that he hadn’t noticed the woman before, she looked to be such an easy target, and beyond perfect for his purposes; but he had to admit he had been a little rusty as of late. And it was because of her.

It often seemed as if every bad thing in his life had been because of her; or women like her. Cruel, heartless bitches who tore through the lives of men and boys with no remorse while they professed to be the fairer sex. It was Connor’s opinion that feminists believed that they deserved more than men just because they had been born with a vagina, and that they deserved the right to spread their bodies around with abandon with no consequences. It disgusted him, and he had despised the idea of feminism ever since his bitch of a mother had shoved it down his throat during childhood, plainly telling him over and over again how inferior he was because he had been born with a penis.

His mother had ridiculed him, emasculated his father, and had run the household under an iron fist, always ensuring that things went her way. His mother had always been such a bitch that he had been convinced from a young age that all women were cruel, and not many women had been able to do much to change his mind.

But it wasn’t just his mother that had been cruel to him and had turned him into something of a woman hater. It was his mother’s friends, her sisters, every girlfriend and female friend that he had ever had, and various other women that he had dealt with over the years that had convinced him that women were far from the fairer sex. He had no idea why a man would ever want to get married anymore, and vowed never to make a trip down the aisle himself, even if he managed to find a woman that he could trust.

He had always gotten hurt by trusting women though. He had been lied to, had been cheated on, had even been physically assaulted by a jaded ex. And then there had been her. She had torn his world apart. And he had let her, because he had been foolish enough to believe that she had loved him as much as he had loved her.

Bre had been everything he had ever wanted. She was smart, and kind and gorgeous. Being with her had been like a dream that he had never wanted to wake up from. They had been together almost two years and he had been debating with himself for months on buying her an engagement ring. He may have been a jaded man, but he had always known that when you had something good you had to hold on to it, especially in a world that was full of deception.

But on the day he had come to the decision that he was going to buy her a ring and ask her to marry him, he had come home to find Bre in tears on his couch. She had let herself in with her key, and he had found her almost inconsolable. It had taken nearly half an hour for her to calm down enough to explain to him what was going on, but once she had opened her mouth, he had begun to wish that he had never met her. She told him that day that she was pregnant and that she was unsure whether he or the man she had been having an affair with for the last nine months was the father.

And his dream of a perfect life had crashed and burned, just like many of his other dreams had. Life was sometimes a struggle for Connor all around, but he had a feeling that tonight was going to be a good night. He hoped to score well with the beauty who was still eyeing him from across the room in more ways than one.

She stood and stretched, looking to be headed to the restroom, and he let himself admire her. Damn he thought, if she wasn’t damned near perfect. He wasn’t sure what he thought of her taste in clothes (she was wearing a white man’s dress shirt with a black tank top underneath, the shirt open and tied at the waist, a ruffled denim mini skirt, black fishnet tights, and black combat boots), or her hairstyle (long, and wavy, with lighter brown roots trailing about halfway down to darker brown, a braided chunk of blue on the right side, and a braided chunk of purple on the left), but her body was smoking hot.

She carried herself like someone who had money but cared little about it, and walked with not only elegance, but confidence. She knew she was sexy. She knew damned good and well that no matter how she was dressed, she was going to get the attention of almost every man when she crossed a room. And she had it as she made her way to the restroom, and lord did she have his attention too.

He had to swallow hard. He had never seen a woman so perfect for him. He wanted her. He could imagine the way she smelled, likely dark and exotic. He wanted to drink in the scent of her. He wanted to touch every part of her. And he oh so badly wanted to screw her. In more ways than one.

As she crossed the room towards him, he realized that he needed to reassess the situation. She had looked at him hungrily before, as if she were actually lacking in male attention, and was searching for a willing partner that she deemed suitable, but now she was all business, a slightly knowing smile on her face. She looked at him like she wanted to eat him alive, and his heart started to beat fast. Maybe messing with this woman wouldn’t be in his best interests, no matter how badly he needed the cash. This one looked like she might prove to be dangerous.

She cleared her throat, and looked pointedly at the chair across the table from him. He gave her a slight nod, his nervousness only growing as she settled herself into the chair. Well, he thought, hiding a sigh, this night was certainly going to turn out interesting to say the least.

Cleo

The guy across from her was giving off strange vibes. He had looked at her like he’d wanted her and would follow her into her bed without a second thought, but now it almost looked as if he wanted to run away from her. He looked like he had money in the bank, or at least knew how to play the game. He was well dressed, and had seemed bursting with confidence when she had felt his eyes on her before, but now that he had her, he seemed almost unsure of himself.

It made her pause, made her wonder if she wouldn’t be better off finding herself another target. There was an air of resignation about the man, or maybe sadness. Cleo had always found herself talented at reading people, and could spot a man that wanted to