Black Limit Read online

  Black Limit

  Charlotte Byrd

  Contents

  Praise for Black Edge Series

  About Black Limit

  Chapter 1 - Ellie

  Chapter 2 - Ellie

  Chapter 3 - Aiden

  Chapter 4 - Ellie

  Chapter 5 - Ellie

  Chapter 6 - Ellie

  Chapter 7 - Ellie

  Chapter 8 - Ellie

  Chapter 9 - Aiden

  Chapter 10 - Ellie

  Chapter 11 - Ellie

  Chapter 12 - Aiden

  Chapter 13 - Ellie

  Chapter 14 - Aiden

  Chapter 15 - Ellie

  Chapter 16 - Aiden

  Chapter 17 - Ellie

  Chapter 18 - Ellie

  Chapter 19 - Aiden

  Chapter 20 - Ellie

  Chapter 21 - Aiden

  Chapter 22 - Ellie

  Chapter 23 - Aiden

  Chapter 24 - Aiden

  Chapter 25 - Aiden

  Chapter 26 - Ellie

  Chapter 27 - Ellie

  Chapter 28 - Ellie

  Chapter 29 - Ellie

  Chapter 30 - Ellie

  Chapter 31 - Ellie

  Chapter 32 - Ellie

  Chapter 33 - Ellie

  Chapter 34 - Ellie

  Chapter 35 - Ellie

  Chapter 36 - Ellie

  Chapter 37 - Ellie

  Chapter 38 - Ellie

  Chapter 39 - Ellie

  Chapter 40 - Ellie

  Chapter 41 - Aiden

  Chapter 42 - Ellie

  Chapter 43- Ellie

  Chapter 44 - Ellie

  Chapter 45 - Ellie

  Chapter 46 - Aiden

  Chapter 48 - Ellie

  Chapter 50 - Ellie

  Chapter 51 - Ellie

  Chapter 52 - Ellie

  Chapter 53 - Ellie

  Books by Charlotte Byrd

  About Charlotte Byrd

  Copyright

  Praise for Black Edge Series

  "Titillation so masterfully woven, no reader can resist its pull. A MUST-BUY!" - Bobbi Koe

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  "Captivating!" - Crystal Jones

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  "Exciting, intense, sensual" - Rock, amazon reviewer

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  "Sexy, secretive, pulsating chemistry..." - Mrs. K, amazon reviewer

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  "Fast-paced, dark, addictive, and compelling" - Clpetit56, amazon reviewer

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  "Hot, steamy, and a great storyline." - Christine Reese

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  "My oh my....Charlotte has made me a fan for life." - JJ, amazon reviewer

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  "The tension and chemistry is at five alarm level." - Sharon, amazon reviewer

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  "Hot, sexy, intriguing journey of Elli and Mr. Aiden Black. - Robin Langelier

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  "Great start to fantastic series!" - Brenda, amazon reviewer

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  "Sexy, steamy and captivating!" - Charmaine, amazon reviewer

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  " Intrigue, lust, and great characters...what more could you ask for?!" - Dragonfly Lady

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  "An awesome book. Extremely entertaining, captivating and interesting sexy read. I could not put it down." - Kim F, amazon reviewer

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  "Just the absolute best story. Everything I like to read about and more. Such a great story I will read again and again. A keeper!!" - Wendy Ballard

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  "This series thrilled me from the first page and had me completely engrossed.

  The pacing and plot was excellent. It had the perfect amount of twists and turns, luring me into the fantasy of this amazing book.

  The story was well-crafted, starting off with characters I fell in love with. I instantaneously bonded with the heroine and of course Mr. Black. YUM.

  It's sexy, it's sassy, it's steamy. It's everything.

  I loved every second of it and was so thrilled to have had such a treat." - Khardine Gray, bestselling romance author

  About Black Limit

  Is this the end of us?

  I found a woman I can’t live without.

  We’ve been through so much. We’ve had our set backs. But our love is stronger than ever.

  We are survivors.

  But when they take her from me at the altar, right before she is to become my wife, everything breaks.

  I will do anything to free her. I will do anything to make her mine for good.

  But is that enough? And what if it's not?

  Chapter 1 - Ellie

  The sounds of his voice sends shivers through my body.

  What is he doing in my apartment?

  Did he follow me here?

  He just attacked Aiden and now he’s coming for me.

  But what can I do?

  Stay calm, Ellie, I say to myself. Just stay calm.

  “What are you doing here, Blake?” I ask.

  “I just wanted to come see you. You know, for old times sake,” he says.

  When I turn around, I come face-to-face with a disheveled man on the brink of collapse.

  His hair is out of control and so are his clothes.

  His eyes look frantic and terrified, yet mean all at the same time. He is pointing a gun at me.

  “We don’t have any old times sake to share, Blake,” I say. I stand back, leaning against the kitchen counter. I don’t know what to do, but I need to come up with a plan. Fast.

  “Aren’t you curious how I got here?” he asks, waving the gun around in his hand.

  I shrug. I don’t know whether it’s best to agree with him or to argue.

  “What are you doing here, Blake?” I repeat my original question.

  “I heard that the cops are looking for me. You know, for shooting Aiden. How is he again?”

  His question pierces me through my heart. How dare he ask me about Aiden? How dare he say his name at all?

  And then, all out of the blue, I have an idea.

  My purse is the crossover kind and it’s draped behind me. I turn away from him slightly so that he can’t see what I’m doing from behind the kitchen island. When I’m certain that he can’t see me, I reach in and bury my hand inside. I search for my phone.

  “He’s fine,” I say. “No thanks to you.” I say these words, but my thoughts go back to my phone and the task at hand. All I need to do is remember how to turn the recorder on. I just looked it up a few days ago. I thought it might be a good idea to record my outline for my writing rather than typing it out. Okay, now, try to remember, Ellie. You did it before. What buttons did you press?

  “Oh, c’mon,” Blake says, taking a few steps toward me. “You’re not really mad about that.”

  To record, I have to open the Voice Memos app. I try to remember where it was visually on the screen because I can’t exactly look down and find it without him noticing.

  “You don’t think I should be?” I ask.

  Blake turns away from me. Quickly, I look down at my phone and press on the App Store button. Then I search for Voice Memo and press open.

  “How did you get in here?” I ask, pressing on the big red button to record. Just as I drop the phone back into my purse and press my hands on the island for him to see them, Blake says, “Oh, you know, it’s amazing what you can find on YouTube these days.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He shrugs. “One of your nice neighbors let me in when I told them that I forgot my key and then I picked your lock.”

  “You picked my lock? How?”

  “I watched a few YouTube videos. Not all of them are useful, you know. Some are total crap.”

  I take a deep breath. I have no idea what’s going to ha
ppen, but at least I’m recording it. Now, I need to think of a way out of this.

  “You shot Aiden,” I say. “Didn’t you?”

  “Of course, I did,” Blake says nonchalantly. “I mean, who the hell do you think shot him?”

  My heart sinks to the bottom of my stomach. The way he just admitted that. There’s a desperation in his voice. And that’s never a good thing to hear.

  “I can’t believe you just said that,” I say before I get a chance to catch myself.

  “It’s the end, Ellie. There’s no reason to lie at the end.”

  My hands grow cold when I hear that. No. This is not the end for me. I need to do something. I need to save myself and my baby. No matter what.

  “The cops are going to be here any minute,” I finally say.

  “No, they’re not. They have no idea that I’m here. They’re looking for me, but they don’t know where I could be.”

  He’s right, of course. Shit. Okay, think, Ellie. Think.

  “There’s no point, Ellie,” Blake says as if he can read my mind. “There’s nothing you can do.”

  No, he’s wrong, I say to myself. He didn’t think I could record this whole conversation and here I am doing it. No, there’s a lot I can do. I just have to think of it first. And while I do, I have to make him talk.

  “Can I ask you something, Blake? What happened between you and Aiden?”

  Blake turns around. The expression on his face tells me that he never expected that question, but he’s pleasantly surprised.

  “I’m going to tell you the truth,” he says after a moment. “I mean, nothing else really matters now, right?”

  I wait.

  “I’ve always been jealous of Aiden. He was one of my closest friends at Yale. And I always loved him. But he had things easier than I did. And I hated him for it at the same time.”

  Okay, I say to myself. Just keep him talking until you figure something out.

  “Why?” I ask.

  “Well, he wasn’t rich like me. My parents had these large, overgrown, ridiculous houses with housekeepers and staff. But the thing is that when you’re a little kid, you don’t care about any of that. You just want your parents.”

  “And you didn’t have that?”

  “Nope. My parents just had each other. They spent all their time traveling and they always left me with grandparents, nannies, or whoever.”

  “I’m sorry about that,” I say. I mean it as a lie but it’s not really one. I am actually sorry. It’s little shit like this that really throws people off and ruins their childhoods. And then they take their broken childhoods out on other people. Like Aiden and me. Fuck his parents!

  “I wanted you from the first time I saw you,” Blake says. “At the auction. But of course, Aiden got to you first. And I was his friend so I had to go along with it. Do you know how much I hated that?”

  “No, not really,” I say.

  “Aiden hated his parents. He never thought they loved him, but he didn’t know how good he had it. Just like with you. He’s such an asshole. What the hell do you see in him, Ellie?”

  I shrug. I don’t really know how to respond, but luckily he doesn’t wait for the answer.

  “I was so happy to get his job. I finally got something that I deserved. But then they took that away from me. All because the stock price started to drop. I tried to implement his advertising strategy but I didn’t know how. And then you two got together again. So, what it did it all matter?”

  He is glossing over big swaths of what had happened between us, but I don’t dare bring that up. I’m putting my own plan into motion.

  “Blake, please let me go. I’m pregnant. Please. I won’t tell anyone that you were here. But please, just let me go.”

  “You’re pregnant?”

  “It just happened. It was an accident.”

  “And you’re keeping it?”

  “I don’t know yet,” I lie. I don’t really know what answer is going to make all of this worse for me.

  “Does Aiden know?”

  “Aiden is…dead.” The word just escapes my lips all of a sudden. It’s not planned. It just sort of slips out. Maybe if he thought that Aiden was dead then he would leave me alone? Maybe then he wouldn’t have anyone to be jealous of?

  “Blake, I won’t say anything about you being here. But you have to go. The cops are looking for you. Just go away. Drive away as far as possible from New York as you can. Go to Mexico. Start over again on some beach.”

  I talk and slowly inch my way toward the utensils drawer at the center of the island. When he casts his eyes down to the floor, I act fast. I open the drawer and grab a knife. But within seconds, Blake is next to me. He tries to grab the knife out of my hand. We start to wrestle. As I push back on him, I see that he left the gun on the kitchen island and I lean against him and swat the gun away. It flies across the room, giving me at least some sort of shot at living through this.

  Blake slams my hand onto the counter, knocking the knife out of it. Then he presses his hands around my throat and starts to squeeze. My airway is completely blocked. I can’t breathe in or out. I don’t have much time. My hands are free and I feel around for something to grab. When I find it, I wrap my fingers around it and plunge it into his throat. Blood squirts everywhere, covering my face with a thick gooey substance. He lets go of my throat and I collapse onto the floor. It takes me a few moments to catch my breath. When I finally do, I hear a scary gurgling sound coming from somewhere nearby. I throw up and everything turns to black.

  Chapter 2 - Ellie

  I wake up in a hospital bed with bright lights above me.

  “You’re awake,” Brie says, leaning over me. “You’re okay.”

  I nod, trying to understand where I am. Brie briefs me. Blake had picked a lock to my apartment. I had stabbed him in the neck with a ballpoint pen. He had bled out while I threw up and passed out next to him. A next door neighbor had heard the commotion and called the police. When they got there, they found us and listened to the recording that I had made with my phone. All of this seems about right.

  “How’s Aiden?” I ask.

  Brie helps me up and shows me to his room, which is five stories up. I sit next to him on the bed and take his hand in mine.

  “Everything’s going to be okay now, honey,” I whisper with tears running down my face. “I love you.”

  Chapter 3 - Aiden

  When she’s all I dream about…

  I hear her talking. Her voice sweet and sensual, reminding me of home. She’s here. Her presence is undeniable. And yet, she is also far away. Drifting. Fighting to get to me, but being held back by something that’s bigger than both of us.

  I feel her outstretched arms pulling toward me. I try to lift my hand, but it’s all to no avail. I try to lift my hand, but I can’t. It’s like I have something large and incredibly heavy pressing down on my chest, making it impossible for me to move even an inch.

  “Ellie!” I yell on top of my lungs, but don’t hear a single sound come out. I don’t have a voice.

  “Ellie! Ellie!” I try again. But again, nothing comes out. She is yearning for me, tears are running down her face, but she can’t hear me. It’s like we are separated by one of those two-way mirrors in police stations. I can see her, but she can’t see me. I can hear her, but she can’t hear me.

  I don’t want to give up. I don’t have a choice. I lie back down in bed, leaning against the tough hospital pillows, and watch her. Her hair cascades around her shoulders. Her face is puffy with tears. Her eyelashes, waterlogged with droplets, frame her almond-shaped eyes, which are wise beyond their years. She’s holding my hand. Her nails are brittle and bitten down, a sign of nervousness. Hair is falling into her face and I would do anything to get up and push it away. I would give anything to touch her cheek again, press it against mine, and tell her that everything is going to be okay.

  Somewhere in the distance, doctors gather around to discuss me. Tears run down Ellie’s face and she
buries it in her hands. One of the doctors, the younger one, puts his hand around her shoulders to comfort her. What did they tell her? Why can’t I hear them? Why can’t I move?

  My mind starts to drift. I try to remember how I got here in the first place. My memory is blurry. I remember only bits and pieces. The flashing lights of the emergency vehicle. The hurrying men and women in uniform who gather around me. All the equipment beeping around me as they put me onto a stretcher and drive off. The bright lights of the operating room. More people milling around. Everyone talking at me, but not to me. Someone saying, “Is that really him? Aiden Black?”

  But earlier than that? What of those memories? There’s Ellie tied to a post on my yacht. The most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. I craved her ever since the first moment that I saw her. There’s Ellie swimming in the turquoise Caribbean waters in her bikini. Her wide hips and gorgeous breasts, like two temples, moving like molasses up and down as she runs toward me. For once, she isn’t wearing a cover-up and covering up every one of her delicious curves.