Black Bounds Read online

  Black Bounds

  Charlotte Byrd

  Contents

  Praise for the Black Edge Series

  About Black Bounds

  Chapter 1 - Aiden

  Chapter 2 - Aiden

  Chapter 3 - Ellie

  Chapter 4 - Ellie

  Chapter 5 - Ellie

  Chapter 6 - Ellie

  Chapter 7 - Ellie

  Chapter 8 - Ellie

  Chapter 9 - Ellie

  Chapter 10 - Ellie

  Chapter 11 - Ellie

  Chapter 12 - Ellie

  Chapter 13 - Ellie

  Chapter 14 - Ellie

  Chapter 15 - Ellie

  Chapter 16 - Aiden

  Chapter 17 - Ellie

  Chapter 18 - Ellie

  Chapter 19 - Ellie

  Chapter 12 - Ellie

  Chapter 13 - Aiden

  Chapter 14 - Ellie

  Chapter 15 - Ellie

  Chapter 16 - Ellie

  Chapter 17 - Aiden

  Chapter 18 - Aiden

  Chapter 19 - Ellie

  Chapter 20 - Ellie

  Chapter 21 - Aiden

  Chapter 22 - Ellie

  Chapter 23 - Ellie

  Chapter 24 - Ellie

  Chapter 25 - Aiden

  Chapter 26 - Ellie

  Chapter 27 - Ellie

  Chapter 28 - Ellie

  Chapter 29 - Aiden

  Chapter 30 - Ellie

  Books by Charlotte Byrd

  About Charlotte Byrd

  Copyright

  Praise for the Black Edge Series

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

  “Captivating!” - Crystal Jones

  "Exciting, intense, sensual” - Rock, Amazon reviewer

  “Sexy, secretive, pulsating chemistry…” - Mrs. K, Amazon reviewer

  “Fast-paced, dark, addictive, and compelling” - Clpetit56, Amazon reviewer

  “Hot, steamy, and a great storyline.” - Christine Reese

  “My oh my....Charlotte has made me a fan for life.” - JJ, Amazon reviewer

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

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

  “Great start to fantastic series!” - Brenda, Amazon reviewer

  “Sexy, steamy and captivating!” - Charmaine, Amazon reviewer

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

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

  “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

  “It had the perfect amount of twists and turns. I instantaneously bonded with the heroine and of course Mr. Black. YUM. It's sexy, it's sassy, it's steamy. It's everything.” - Khardine Gray, Bestselling romance author

  About Black Bounds

  I don’t belong with her.

  Born into darkness, life made me a cynic incapable of love.

  But then Ellie waltzed in. Innocent, optimistic, kind.

  She’s the opposite of what I deserve.

  I bought her, but she she stole my heart.

  Now my business is going up in flames.

  I have only one chance to make it right.

  That’s where it happens…something I can never take back.

  I don’t cheat on her. There’s no one else.

  It’s worse than that. Much worse.

  Can we survive this?

  Chapter 1 - Aiden

  When I can’t stop thinking about her… When I can’t stop thinking about her…

  Ellie has my heart and there’s nothing I can do about it.

  And the worst part?

  Or maybe the best part?

  I don't even care.

  I’ve never felt this way about anyone before. I was in love before, at least I think I was. But now, looking back, it all feels a little bit like infatuation instead of real love.

  I think about Ellie all the time.

  I crave her.

  I want to be with her all the time.

  When she’s not around, I want to call her or text her. Honestly, I feel like a child. Whenever we are apart, even for a few hours, my mind goes back to her.

  I think about the way she smells, the way she feels, the way she laughs.

  Ellie has an intoxicating aroma of home - lavender and sunshine mixed with love.

  She feels like a long lost friend who has always been there for me.

  And her laughter - it’s the best sound in the world.

  When I first met her, it was lust at first sight. I have been with a lot of women, but I’ve never felt that way about them.

  Sure, I found many of them sexy and alluring, but something about Ellie made me stop and drop everything and pay attention to just her.

  It’s like no one else in the world mattered anymore. No one else existed, except for her. And no one else would ever exist again. But as we started to spend more time together, I found myself falling for her.

  I’m not just falling for her, no.

  I’m falling in love with her.

  I am in love with her.

  In November, it’s already winter in Maine. The cold is nipping at my nose and my fingertips as I walk back from Mr. and Mrs. Warrenhouse’s mansion on the water, back to our cottage.

  There are lights all around, illuminating my path, and all of a sudden, it looks like the most beautiful place in the world.

  The cloud cover above has splintered and the bright full moon is illuminating the dew on the trees. It smells like it’s about to snow.

  I know, deep inside of my heart, that there’s no one else I would rather be here with than Ellie. Without her, I would probably not see any of this beauty around me at all.

  I open my mouth and taste the salty air all around me. I can’t remember the last time I ever savored a moment like this. When was the last time that I stopped to smell the flowers, as the saying goes?

  I’ve never considered myself to be a particularly sentimental person and paying attention to all this beauty never really occurred to me before.

  It’s almost as if it only existed in carefully planned shots in movies and photos, but not in real life. And now, walking all alone, toward my beloved, all I see around me is the beauty that life has to offer.

  What was I doing before?

  How could I have been so blind to all of this around me?

  I wonder. Oh, yes, of course.

  Work.

  I’m a workaholic, I know that.

  Work has always been an escape for me.

  Whenever things got tough at home and my parents were fighting, or we were about to get evicted, I just retreated into another world - a world where feelings and beauty were stashed in another place altogether.

  In this world, computers, numbers, and math dominated the space.

  Everything here made sense.

  Everything was rational and orderly.

  This tendency has made me a success and made me a lot of money.

  But it also took a lot away from me. It prevented me from seeing beauty and love, which is all around. It sucked up my days with meetings and algorithms, instead of life.

  Looking back, I can’t help but feel conflicted about it. Work has always been an escape and one that I relish. I need to work because without it I feel lost.

  It’s almost like I don’t know who I am. And yet, it also feels incredibly good to just put it aside and live in the moment for once.

  It’s incredibly freeing to live in t
he moment and to enjoy all the little pleasures that life has to offer.

  And this sudden awareness on my part - of this whole other way of existing - it’s all thanks to Ellie.

  Without her, my eyes would still be closed.

  I would spend all of my days in front of the computer and in meetings with colleagues and shareholders.

  All I would ever worry about is my stock price and the next project that Owl would be putting out.

  Chapter 2 - Aiden

  What happened with Robert Warrenhouse

  The irony about this whole thing is that it is also thanks to Ellie that things are looking up with Owl.

  If she hadn’t invited me to Maine with her and insisted on me coming, I would never have met Robert Warrenhouse. I’ve heard of him, of course.

  Who hasn’t?

  He and his family are some of the biggest investors in New England, which pretty much means that he’s one of the biggest investors in the world.

  He and his organization have invested in a variety of companies with a number of different interests, including lumber, sugar, solar, wind, and real estate.

  When he first took me to his library for a little chat, I couldn’t help but feel a bit intimidated. I wasn’t ready to pitch Owl to him, especially at a difficult time like this.

  Blake was one of my friends and my earliest investors. I will never forget how much he had done for the company in the beginning.

  But at the same time, I will never forget what he has done to Ellie and how spiteful and small-minded he was after I walked in on them on my yacht.

  He was embarrassed and ashamed, and instead of apologizing and admitting his mistakes, trying to make some sort of amends, he got angry and spiteful.

  He pretended that he’d done nothing wrong. And for that I can never forgive him.

  Well, I’ve always known that Blake was prideful, and I always knew that it would be this silly pride of his that would lead to his downfall.

  But I didn’t think he would be so petty as to take down Owl with him.

  It is one of my greatest mistakes, and regrets, that I allowed him to deal with the majority of the investors in Owl instead of taking on the responsibility myself.

  If I hadn’t done that, then he wouldn’t have had the opportunity to take them all away from me now.

  So, as you can imagine, the conversation I had with Mr. Warrenhouse, or rather Robert as he prefers to be called, was rather tense.

  I had a lot to explain because Robert follows financial news closely and has a lot of close advisors.

  He was well aware of most of what has been going on with Owl.

  A lot more than even the financial reporters out there, but of course he didn’t know that it all stemmed from what happened between Ellie and Blake back on my yacht.

  That part, I kept to myself because that’s what Ellie wants. Still, it’s not the easiest thing in the world to explain why and how you’re bleeding hundreds of thousands of dollars each day and why you lost a billion dollars in valuation within a few weeks.

  Looking back on our meeting, I think what made me stand out in Robert’s eyes is that I didn’t try to sell him a load of shit.

  I was completely honest about my falling out with Blake and even mentioned that it was over my current girlfriend, Ellie, whom he met at the party.

  I told him exactly what Blake was doing and the mistake I made in putting him in charge of all investor relations with Owl.

  I also told him about my plans for Owl and our plans to monetize the company by going into advertising.

  I pointed out the similarities that our proposed advertising approach has to the way that all the big companies out there do advertising, including Facebook, Google, and Amazon.

  But I also made sure to point out the differences and what makes our approach unique and even better.

  Much to my surprise, Robert is very well versed in tech companies and the way we do business.

  I had written him off as an old-school investor, who mainly knew how to make money with commodities and financial instruments rather than new tech, but I was all wrong.

  Robert knows a lot about my business and even asked me a few really tough questions about valuation, which I struggled to answer appropriately.

  That was a bit of a down point in the conversation. I thought I had lost him for sure. But again, Robert surprised me.

  At the end, he said that it all sounded good and that he was basically interested in coming on board.

  He still needs to have his team of lawyers and accountants take a look at all the relevant numbers, of course, and make sure that they are all lining up.

  But otherwise, I can count him in. He plans on making up for all the money that Blake pulled out of the company plus about 30% of what the company lost as a result of all the other investors who left.

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

  Was this a joke?

  Was this really happening?

  When we shook hands, I felt like I had just let a big boulder the size of New Zealand drop off my shoulders.

  Without his investment, the company was going under fast. I have a meeting with the board of directors next week and I was sure that I was going to get fired then.

  Everything that has happened over the last few weeks happened because of me and there was nothing I could say or do to make any of it better.

  Until Robert decided to invest, of course. And not just invest, invest so heavily that it would basically bring the company back from collapse.

  Without Robert’s money, the company would cease to exist. He’s putting in hundreds of millions of dollars. Of course, nothing is written in stone or put into an iron-clad contract and signed by me and a team of lawyers, but it’s something that I never expected in the first place.

  There are still lots of things to worry about. Will his accountants approve of his decision?

  Will the numbers line up?

  Will his lawyers advise him that this is an unwise decision - to invest in what is basically a failing company, which all other investors are running away from?

  But I can’t worry about those things right now.

  Right now, everything is perfect. Right now, the world is my oyster.

  I have Ellie and I have Owl.

  There is nothing else that I need in the world.

  Chapter 3 - Ellie

  When things change

  There’s a moment in each friendship when something clicks and you can never go back to how things were.

  Standing here, with a shawl of twilight wrapped around us, pushing us closer together, I suddenly feel happy for Tom.

  At peace.

  I’m glad that he is engaged to a woman he loves.

  Before I met Aiden, I was like a puppy dog. Foolishly following him around. Hoping that something would happen even though deep down I knew that it wouldn’t.

  It couldn’t.

  But right now?

  Well, I don’t feel anything but friendship.

  “You’re just so…amazing,” Tom says and puts his hand around my shoulder.

  I smile at him. It’s not very often that people have friends for life, and I hope that Tom will be in my life when I’m seventy or more.

  Tom flashes a smile and moves my hair off my neck.

  I smile at him and lean my head against his shoulder.

  With my eyes closed, I don’t see it coming.

  Something presses against my lips and it takes me a moment to realize that it’s Tom.

  My eyes pop open.

  My face freezes.

  Every muscle on my face freezes, but Tom just laughs.

  Then he buries his hands in my hair and presses his lips onto mine again.

  This time, I push him away.

  Hard.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m not doing anything.”

  “You just kissed me!”

  “It just felt right.”

  “Well, you better get a
better radar because it didn’t feel right at all.”

  “Yes, it does,” he insists.

  “Are you seriously telling me how I feel, right now?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “No, I don’t,” I say.

  He laughs and tries to kiss me again. I push him away again.

  “I don't want this, Tom. I don’t want you.”

  The words are sharp and to the point. The joking expression on his face vanishes and morphs into something fractured.

  For a moment, I feel a tinge of regret, but it quickly passes.

  Tom has no right trying to kiss me again when I already made things perfectly clear about how I felt about him.

  “So, you and Aiden…you’re what, together now?”

  “Yes, actually, we are,” I say, taking off his jacket and tossing it in his face. “He’s my boyfriend. I don't appreciate you kissing me.”

  “You know what, Ellie?” Tom says, slurring his words a bit.

  Was he always this drunk?

  How did I not notice this before?

  “Why don’t you just go fuck yourself then?” he says