Chapter 1

       “Excu-use me?” Candy Morgan stuttered out. Her amber eyes widened as she regarded the man sitting across from her at the expensive mahogany oak desk. She couldn’t have heard him correctly. There was no way in the hell that—

       “You heard me,” he murmured. His intense blue gaze bore into hers, his expression brooding. “I won’t repeat myself.”

       Candy stared at him open mouthed, too stunned to speak. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing, couldn’t believe that this man, James Douglas Mahoney III, was suggesting—no demanding—the things that he was asking of her. Under any other circumstances she would have said yes. Under these circumstances her pride would only allow her to say…

       “No.” She shook her head, swallowing roughly as she regarded him. “I won’t be used like that, JD. I can’t believe you’d suggest such a thing,” she whispered.

       His eyebrows rose, but otherwise he remained calmly stoic. His arrogant gaze wandered up and down the length of her body, all but disrobing her from the demure white silk blouse and matching white skirt she wore. So much for the casual lunch they were supposed to be having, she thought. There was nothing casual about the way he was attempting to dominate the situation.

       Her teeth gritted when she considered just how much the bastard was probably enjoying her discomfort. But then, could she blame him? If the circumstances were reversed, she thought, she didn’t know how she’d be treating him.

       JD Mahoney, she sighed. The man who had been the focal point of more adolescent wet dreams than she could count had finally noticed her as a woman. At the age of thirty, she had waited a long, long time for this moment to be realized. But now that it was here, she morosely considered, she had to turn him down. The irony was not lost on her.

       At forty, he was still as handsome, if not more handsome, than he’d been the first time she’d laid eyes on him when she’d been but thirteen. She had fallen instantly in love with the then twenty-three-year-old, but even so she’d been socially adept enough to realize that it was and would always be a one-sided attraction.

       Men who looked like JD Mahoney didn’t settle for women who looked like Candy Morgan.

       Not even when that woman was the daughter of the wealthiest man in Atlanta, Georgia.

       Candy supposed she’d aged well enough. She had an exotic, pretty enough face with amber eyes that were turned up a bit at the corners, full lips, a cheerful smile, long blonde curls, and a slight southern drawl. But she’d never been skinny, not even at her best, and she’d certainly never been tall.

       If there was one thing Candy had learned growing up amongst la crème de la crème of society, it was that handsome, powerful men wanted gorgeous, tall, beanpole, trophy wives. They wanted the women who ate salads and drank mineral water and called it a meal—not women who ate steaks and baked potatoes (loaded with butter and sour cream, of course), drank sugared sodas, and enjoyed it all without a qualm. They wanted the women with limbs long enough to wrap around a tree trunk—not a woman whose legs were shorter than felled stumps.

       She sighed. Delicately feminine she’d never be.

       “You do what you need to do,” Candy quietly said as she rose from the chair. She nervously ran her sweaty palms down the front of her designer skirt, her gaze purposely avoiding his. She would not be a whore for any man—not even for the only man she’d ever really wanted. “And I’ll do what I need to do,” she said with more staunch than she felt. “I believe I should leave now.”

       Candy walked towards the office door, then stopped mid-stride. She turned her head, gazing at him from over her shoulder. “Regardless to what you decide to do,” she said softly, “I am and have always been against what my father did to you.” His stark eyes seemed to widen a bit, but she couldn’t be sure. “And I’m not just saying that.”

       Indeed, she had been JD’s most vocal champion. When her father had turned against his young protégé, dropping him like soiled goods to earn a quick buck, she had been mortified. It had taken quite a long time before she was able to forgive him and continue on as a father and daughter should. Even then, it had been a few more years before the strain between them had eased.

       “Goodbye, JD,” she whispered, striding towards the door. She sighed, wishing things had never come to this, wishing too that she could have lived out her fantasies of being in his bed without doing it by serving as the familial sacrifice. But in JD Mahoney’s eyes, she knew, one of the Morgans had to pay for the father’s sins. And since the father was dead and she now owned Morgan Chemicals outright, there was only one woman who could pay for them.

       She made it to the heavy double doors of the posh office and was preparing to open them when a rough palm slapped against the wood beam above her head and didn’t budge. She nervously gulped, able to feel the heat radiating off of the six-foot one-inch body that was pressed against hers from behind. He was aroused, she could tell. Whether by her as a woman or by the power he held over her—or both—she couldn’t say.

       “Think about what you’re doing, Candy,” he murmured. “Your mother and brother are relying on you to make the best decision for everyone involved.”

       She was torn between arousal and anger. Arousal because it was the first time she’d ever heard him use the more familiar “Candy” as opposed to “Candace” when speaking to her. Anger because he had just presumed that her mother and brother were as greedy as her father had been. Anger won out.

       “My mother,” she ground out, “would never condone allowing myself to be used like a common prostitute.” Her nostrils flared. “And neither would my brother for that matter.”

       “I see,” JD growled from next to her ear. She could feel those intense, intelligent eyes of his boring into the back of her skull. Analyzing. Assessing. Calculating. That’s what he did best. That’s why, unlike the hundreds of other former employees her father had screwed over, James Douglas Mahoney III had managed to fight his way to the top and now held the upper hand over her today.

       “But what do you think is best, my dear Candy?” His free hand came to rest on her shoulder, rubbing it, caressing it. “What executive decision do you think is best for you to make today? Your family can lose so much. Or,” he finished, “I can let bygones be bygones and your family, corrupt though it might be, will be permitted to carry on as they always have.”

       Candy’s body stilled. “You want me to be your whore,” she said quietly. “Regardless to what you might think of my family, I was raised better than that.”

       “You were daddy’s little girl,” he murmured against her ear. He pressed closer, his thick erection poking against her back. “I have no doubt that Lawrence raised you to be everything he was not.”

       Which made JD’s revenge against the Morgan family all the sweeter to him, she thought glumly. She was sweet and innocent in his eyes—a true lady of elite breeding.

       And a true sacrificial lamb in every sense of the word.

       Her spine stiffened. Suddenly it all made sense. Suddenly she understood why it was that this man who had everything, this man who could possess any woman of his choosing, wanted her to play mistress to him…

       Because she was nothing like her father. And because he was hoping that Lawrence Morgan, his betrayer, would somehow know from the grave that JD Mahoney had managed to turn his beloved Candace into the same person Lawrence had been while alive—a proverbial whore who would do anything for a dollar.

       “What do you want me to do?” she ground out. “Have sex with you? How many times? When would it end?” She spun around on her heel, her eyes blazing into his. At over six feet, he stood almost a full foot taller than her own five-two so she had to push him back a bit before she could meet his gaze, but she was too angry to be intimidated by that fact. “How much of you would I be forced to stomach?” she spat out.

       JD smiled, an arrogant gesture designed to further infuriate her. It worked.

       “Well?” she shrieked. “Get on with your demands! I can’t put my family out on the street when I have the power to stop it and you damn well know it. So tell me what the hell it is you want from me,” she seethed, “and be done with it.”

       He chuckled, his intense blue eyes roaming over every square inch of her body. His gaze stopped at her breasts before continuing onward to her face. “I want more than sex from you, Candy,” he said softly. Too softly. “I want everything.”

       She swallowed against the lump in her throat. “What exactly does that mean?” she asked a bit weakly. “I’m not in the mood to solve riddles.”

       His dark eyebrows rose, but he said nothing. He stuffed his hands in the pockets of the expensive Italian suit he wore and intently regarded her face. “Everything,” he murmured, “means just that.” His jaw clenched. “Sex isn’t good enough, my dear. Not good enough by a long shot.”

       She blushed, feeling like a fool that she’d thought for even a moment that JD Mahoney wanted her in his bed. What a ridiculous notion, she conceded. She bit her lip. He could have any woman he wanted. He hardly needed to get his rocks off with ordinary her.

       “Oh don’t think you’re off the hook,” he growled, misinterpreting the look she’d given him as relief. “I’ll be fucking you whenever and however I want. But sex is only a small part of the overall penance, darling.”

       She hesitated, worry engulfing her features once again. “What precisely do you mean?” she muttered. “You’ve lost me.”

       “I’m going to own you,” he said simply, coming straight to the point. His blue eyes drilled into hers, his expression once again brooding. “Marry you, breed you, have total control over your body—”

       Her amber eyes widened. That was the last thing she had been expecting to hear. Marry her? He didn’t need to marry her to take over Morgan Chemicals. At this juncture, all it would take was one word to the bank and board of directors and it was all his.

       “—and Lawrence will know from the grave that not only have I succeeded in infiltrating his precious company, but I have also succeeded in infiltrating his goddamn bloodline.”

       Candy stared at him blankly, too stunned to react. JD’s grand plan went beyond anything she could have ever fathomed. It went beyond it, circumnavigated it, and then crash-landed into the realm of surreality. “Are you insane?” she whispered. “You can’t possibly want to marry me. Why would you sentence us both to a lifetime of—”

       “Question and answer period is over,” he arrogantly announced. One dark eyebrow shot up. “You have two choices, my dear. Come under my ownership and I allow your family to live in peace. Or reject the chance I am offering you to save their livelihoods and lose everything in the process. The choice is yours.” His gaze flicked down to her breasts, then back up to her face. “Make it and make it quickly.”

       She blinked, barely able to form a coherent thought let alone make a life-altering decision. “Why do you call it ownership?” she asked in a monotone. “Marriage isn’t exactly ownership—”

       “Mine will be.”

       Mine. Not ours. The possessive word hadn’t been lost on her.

       JD’s calculating eyes flicked down once more, grazing over her body. “You will fuck me as often as I want and however I want it. You will cater to my every whim and fulfill my every perverted fantasy.” Her body responded to his words, becoming aroused against her volition. “You will bear as many of my children as I say. You will behave as I say. You will never touch nor look at another man in a sexual way…” His gaze shot up to penetrate hers. “I will own you,” he murmured. “Completely.”

       She swallowed roughly, her eyes wide.

       “Give me your decision, Miss Morgan.” His jaw was firm, his eyes harsh. “The clock, and my patience, is ticking.”