Taking it all . . .
Slowly, like a predator, he strode toward her and cupped her cheeks. This time the kiss stole her sanity. The precision with which he slid his hands down to cup her breasts through the bra, the deliberate and meticulous way his fingers grazed her nipples, spoke of his familiarity with the female form. He knew how to touch, to taste, to drive her out of herself and back with crushing velocity.
She never knew being touched, being kissed, could be like this. Potent. Insistent.
Breaking the connection, he grazed his lips over her jaw, down her throat, and licked her collarbone. “I want you so badly I can’t think.”
His voice alone could make her damp and dreamy. A coarse murmur with need raking it raw. Hadn’t he said something similar, before the party? Yes. “You promised you’d make me forget to think.”
He groaned into her neck, a purely male sound of pleasured frustration. “Consider it done.”
Praise for
return to me
“Not your typical poor girl/rich boy story. An emotional roller-coaster ride I read in one sitting! Don’t miss it!”
—Carly Phillips, New York Times bestselling author
“Readers will find it impossible not to root for this couple, and the desire to see them get their happy ending will make it hard to put this book down.”
—RT Book Reviews
*Kathy Altman of USA Today on The Dysfunctional Test
Berkley Sensation titles by Kelly Moran
RETURN TO ME
ALL OF ME
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014
ALL OF ME
A Berkley Sensation Book / published by arrangement with the author
Copyright © 2015 by Kelly Moran.
Excerpt from Return to Me by Kelly Moran copyright © 2015 by Kelly Moran.
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.
BERKLEY SENSATION® and the “B” design are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
For more information, visit penguin.com.
eBook ISBN: 978-0-698-17552-5
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Berkley Sensation mass-market edition / September 2015
Cover photo of “Couple” by Uwe Krejci / Getty Images.
Cover design by Lesley Worrell.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
Writing is often called a solo profession, and sometimes it is. But the characters in my head keep me company, much as they do for the hero, Alec. I’m blessed to have a great group of author friends who are supportive, and so this book is dedicated to them. Carly Phillips, Carla Neggers, Brenda Novak, Sharon Sala, Caridad Pineiro, AJ Nuest, Vonnie Davis, Mackenzie Crowne, and JM Stewart . . . Thank you!
Acknowledgments
An author doesn’t get from manuscript to book alone. I have so many people to thank. To my agent, Dawn, thanks for believing in me. My editor, Julie, and everyone at Berkley for making this the best story possible, you guys are awesome. And to a few exceptional people on my street team, a special shout out to: Hannah Duckett, Tracey Parker, Kay Megonnell, Charlotte McFall, Casey Lalkas, Elizabeth Dent, Joy Whiteside, Lesa Goodwin, Tracy Comerford, and Sally Wagoner.
Contents
Praise for return to me
Berkley Sensation titles by Kelly Moran
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
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
chapter twenty-five
chapter twenty-six
chapter twenty-seven
chapter twenty-eight
A preview of return to me
chapter
one
It was a dark and stormy night.
Alec Winston cursed and shoved back from his desk. He swiveled his chair away from the computer and the one line he’d managed to write in almost a year. Pathetic. He’d typed it as a joke, something to propel him out of this writer’s block, or whatever it was, but the joke was on him. He’d fired his agent because the guy had demanded new material, and now he was seriously close to breaching his contract with the publisher. Deadline one passed two months ago.
Twenty-five bestsellers, twenty of them number one on the lists, three book-to-movie options, foreign language rights in fifty countries, and he’d been reduced to it was a fucking dark and stormy night.
He ran his hand down his face and rubbed his jaw. The three-day-old growth scratching against his palm was the only sound in his otherwise quiet home office. Before him, New York City bustled on outside the window, completely unaware of the pile of shit thirty floors up. Night had fallen while he’d stared at the monitor, but the city was never dark. Skyscrapers and streetlights and headlights cut through the inky blackness. So different from back home, where he could spend all evening counting stars and never catch them all.
Surprised by the tinge of homesickness, he made his way out of the room and into the kitchen to start a pot of coffee. Coffee cured everything.
While salvation brewed, he leaned against the counter and thought about the trilogy proposal which had landed him a seven-figure advance. The readers liked his prophecy-themed dark cult series so much that Hollywood was filming the second book. Working off the interest from that, he’d roughly sketched out a timeline for the next series and passed it off to his editor.