The Bastard Read online

  Table of Contents

  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

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Also by Lisa Renee Jones

  About the Author

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to the supplier and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. To obtain permission to excerpt portions of the text, please contact the author at lisareneejones.com/contact

  All characters in this book are fiction and figments of the author’s imagination. www.lisareneejones.com.

  THE BASTARD

  THE FIRST BOOK IN THE FILTHY TRILOGY

  I'm the bastard child, son to the mistress, my father's backup heir to the Kingston empire. He sent me to Harvard. I left and became a Navy SEAL, but I'm back now, and I finished school on my own dime. I'm now the right hand man to Grayson Bennett, the billionaire who runs the Bennett Empire. I'm now a few months from being a billionaire myself. I don't need my father's company or his love. My "brother" can have it. I will never go back there. I will never be the mistake my father made, the way he was the mistake my mother made.

  And then she walks in the door, the princess I'd once wanted more than I'd wanted my father's love. She wants me to come back. She says my father needs to be saved. I don't want to save my father but I do want her. Deeply. Passionately. More than I want anything else.

  But she's The Princess and I'm The Bastard. We don't fit. We don't belong together and yet she says he needs me, that she needs me. We're like sugar and spice, we don't mix, but I really crave a taste. Just one. What harm can just one taste do?

  CHAPTER ONE

  Eric

  When the Kingston family decides to throw a party, it means no less than two hundred people at their twenty-thousand-foot Aspen estate, valets at the door, an abundance of Kingston Motors luxury cars in the drive, and money. Lots of money, because Jeff Kingston has nothing to do with anyone who doesn’t have money, aside from me, his bastard son, otherwise known as the backup heir just in case my half-brother kicks the bucket.

  I exit the guest house, where I’m staying until my meeting with my father tomorrow, which I shouldn’t have accepted. I don’t know why the fuck I’m even here, aside from the fact that these people are supposed to be my people, and leaving the SEALs was like leaving family. It’s hard to let go of that need for a family unit. Family. Right. What the hell was I thinking? Like I could ever really be a Kingston.

  I walk down a stone path shrouded in flowers and low hanging trees, twisting left and then right until I enter the courtyard filled with bodies in fancy dresses and tuxedos like the one I’m in now. A waiter walks by and I snag a glass of champagne when I’d rather have whiskey, but I’ll settle for anything to get me through tonight’s launch of a new model of car. I barely give a shit about the old model, which is exactly why my father shouldn’t want me to work for him. I walk to one of the few dozen standing tables covered in white tablecloths, down my drink and accept another when my gaze catches on a woman, on her and just her.

  She’s standing on the other side of the pool, a princess in a strappy black dress, with flawless skin and long brown hair, surrounded by her subjects. At least, that’s how she reads to me, no doubt like every other socialite I’ve ever met in this godforsaken world, and yet I’m watching her when I never watch them. There’s something about this woman, a white swan among the black swans on a pond made of money and death, my mother’s death most specifically, since that’s how I got here.

  My princess must feel my attention because she tunes out the conversation she’s having with several other people, her chin lifting, her gaze sweeping wide and then catching mine. I don’t even think about looking away. I don’t care that she knows that I’m watching her. I don’t care if she knows that I’m thinking about fucking her. I’m the bastard in these parts. From the time I was thrust into this place right before my senior year of high school, I do what I do and everyone whispers about it. I’m not going to change that now. Let them whisper about what I want, and this woman, whoever the fuck she is, is worth the whispers.

  The man next to her touches her elbow, his gaze shooting in my direction, his jaw setting hard with anger. Priceless and so typical of my father’s class of people. He’s pissed at me for getting his woman’s attention. He should have fucked her better. My cellphone buzzes with a text message and I cut my stare, downing my champagne and then reaching for my phone to find a message from Grayson Bennett, a close friend from my first go at Harvard right before I left and went into the Navy. He’s not a bastard, but rather the true heir to the Bennett empire.

  Call me, his message says, which is typical Grayson. He wants something, he asks, and usually with actual words. And since we have unfinished business I don’t want overheard, I walk toward the house where I know I can find that whiskey. I’ll likely find the rightful heir to the throne, right along with our father as well, but at least I’ll make my showing and get the hell out of here.

  “There he is. My brother.”

  My jaw clenches at the sound of Issac’s voice even before he steps into my path, and as if for the first time ever he knows what I want, and cares, he offers me one of the two whiskey glasses in hand. “The good stuff. The kind we drink around these parts.”

  He doesn’t mean we, as in me and him, he means we as in the Kingston family, which I've never been a part of. Our eyes lock and hold, the drama of the past, the hatred between us, and I have no doubt the crackle of energy around us is the attention of the room. We are after all the heir and would-be heir who hate each other. Him the prince, with thick, dark hair and green eyes, while I’m simply the bastard, with wavy brown hair, blue eyes, and a good four inches on Isaac at my height of six-foot-two. I don’t look like I’m his blood. I damn sure don’t feel like his blood, but my mother made sure I can’t be denied. She took the damn DNA test that changed my life and not for the better in my opinion.

  I accept the glass and his gaze goes to the ink peeking from beneath my white shirt, and lingers on the Rolex on my wrist, before lifting. “Looks like someone got all inked up.”

  “The bastard brother might as well look the role, right?”


  “You’re never going to let me live down calling you that, now are you?”

  “You don’t need to live it down, Isaac, but you will have to face me every day if I decide to join the company, and we both know that didn’t go well for you at Harvard.”

  His eyes spark with a familiar anger I don’t have to intentionally stir. He hates me for being the bastard child of his father’s mistress, the brother thrust on him only months after his mother died. An ironic turn of events considering my mother’s cancer. He steps closer, toe to toe, all up close and friendly. “If you think that because you’re some sort of SEAL Team Six hero or something, that I won’t buckle you right at the knees, you’re wrong. You will not take what is mine.”

  “I see you two got right back into the brotherly love.”

  At the sound of my father’s voice, Isaac grimaces and my lips quirk. “Seems we have,” I say, as Isaac rotates and we both face my father, who looks fit and younger than his fifty-four years in his tuxedo with his dark hair. “I have someone I want you to meet,” he says, and The Princess steps to his side, her crystal blue eyes meeting mine as my father says, “Eric. Meet your stepsister, Harper.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Eric

  Harper steps in front of me and Isaac and I offer her my hand. “Nice to meet you, Harper,” I say, and when our eyes meet at this close proximity, the spark between us is so damn combustible there’s no way it goes unnoticed.

  She presses her palm to mine, her gaze dropping to a portion of my inked arm to the collection of colors and designs that make up my full sleeve and reflect everything and somehow nothing in my life. Her lips part, her expression intrigued by the design, not at all the disgust I expect from a perfect princess. She tightens her grip on mine ever-so-slightly and looks up at me. “Nice to finally meet you,” she says, and fuck, the raspy quality to her voice makes my cock twitch.

  “Finally?” I ask, arching a brow and forcing myself to release her.

  “Harper’s become quite the protégé the past year,” my father says. “You’d think she was blood like you two, but then, her father owned a competing business we’ve now absorbed.”

  “I was with him night and day,” Harper says. “I learned a lot from him at a young age.”

  She’s my father’s protégé and if she didn’t want to fuck me as badly as I want to fuck her, she’d probably want to fuck me right out of town. Yet another priceless moment. “I need to make a phone call,” I say, and I don’t wait for anyone’s permission.

  I down the whiskey Isaac handed me, set down the glass, and step around Harper, my destination once again the castle-like house that is the centerpiece of the property. No one stops me. No one welcomes me because this isn’t home for me and they know it. If this trip has done one thing for me, it’s to remind me that I’m not in the midst of the Grayson Bennett clan, and a family that takes care of each other and wins together. These are the Kingstons, one step up from the devil’s own family.

  I reach my destination and enter the back door, directly into the kitchen which is the size of the mobile home I grew up in with my mother, right up until the time she killed herself before the cancer took her. Of course, she didn’t leave me in that trailer. She spent her dying days proving that I was the bastard child of Jeff Kingston and forcing him to claim me. I walk through the archway and down a hallway to the right toward my father’s office, which is where I’ll find whiskey a few grades higher than the bullshit Isaac gave me like I wouldn’t know better.

  Once I’m inside the man-cave of an office, with bookshelves lining the walls and a sunken seating area with couches and chairs, I walk to the bar in the corner, pour a thirty-year-old whiskey and sit down in a chair. After a damn good taste, I pull my phone from my pocket and dial Grayson.

  “My man,” he says. “That stock you hooked me up with came through in a big way. You’re a beast. That IQ of yours is financial genius.”

  That IQ I inherited from a mother who never put hers to use for anything but bad. “Glad it worked out, man. Are we even now?”

  “You paid for the past two years at Harvard and then some. I took the extra money and invested it back into the stock, for you.”

  “Consider it yours. Interest for loaning me the money.”

  “I don’t need the money. I’ll reinvest it in you ten times over, but I know you have your own empire to run down there in Colorado.”

  I down the whiskey and decide I’m done. I’m going to get drunk if I don’t slow the fuck down. “I’m the heir bastard, not the heir apparent. You know that.”

  “I know what you are,” Grayson says, “and it’s nobody’s bastard. You have a place right here by my side, not in some office two buildings over, if you decide you want it. Otherwise, I want a piece of Kingston Motors, if you’re running it.”

  That’s not going to happen. The question is, do I want any part of aiding in its success? I must. Why else would I be here? “Orian. Buy big. Buy fast.”

  “You want in?”

  “Yeah. Anything you made for me, put it in.”

  “You got it. When do you have that meeting with your father?”

  “Tomorrow after this godforsaken launch party.”

  “Call me after it’s over. Just remember you owe him nothing. You paid for your own school and you have a brilliant financial mind. He needs you. He knows it. Don’t let him convince you it’s the opposite.”

  “Right. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  We disconnect and I stick my phone back inside my pocket before pulling a mini Rubik’s cube from my pocket, rotating the puzzle in my hand, and thinking back to the psychologist who’d placed the first one in my hand. My father had hired him to try to “normalize” my behavior. A savant, the physiologist had said, needs a focal point, a way to slow the data in my head, and he was right.

  I scramble and solve the cube three times, settling my mind into a place of reckoning, and then shove the cube back in my pocket. The bottom line: I don’t belong here. I never belonged here. I stand up and walk to my father’s desk where I sit down and think about those words: You owe him nothing.

  Not exactly true. My father took me in when my mother died. He petitioned to get me into Harvard based on my academic record, which had been dismissed because of my trailer trash background. I owe him, but I don’t want to owe him anything more. I’m not going to work for my father. I’m leaving. I grab a pen and a piece of paper and write a note to my father:

  In payment for the whiskey I just drank and the roof over my head. If I were you, I’d invest big in Orian and do it quickly. —Your Bastard Son.

  I drop the pen and stand up, walking toward the door, my decision made. I’ll stay for the meeting tomorrow, simply because he did give me a roof over my head, even if it was to push Isaac, which meant shoving us at each other like a dog fight on repeat. That’s what he wants now, to use me to drive Isaac, but Isaac is vicious and not all that smart. I’ll eat Isaac alive. I just don’t want to anymore.

  I exit to the hallway, and when I look left, Harper is exiting the bathroom. I don’t even hesitate. I walk toward her while she freezes in place. I don’t stop until I’m standing directly in front of her. She looks up at me, the scent of roses lifting in the air and apparently I like roses a whole hell of a lot more than I thought I did because her scent is driving me wild. I don’t know what the hell happens, but my hand slides under her hair, and I lean in, my lips next to her lips.

  Her hand settles on my chest and grips my lapel, that perfect mouth of hers tilting toward mine as if she’s offering it to me. “What are you doing?” she demands, sounding breathless.

  “What does it look like I’m doing? Kissing my sister.” My mouth slants over hers and my tongue slides right past those perfect lips, and with one deep stroke, she moans, and I’m undone. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to kiss anyone more than I want to kiss this woman right here, right now. I deepen the kiss and press her against the wall, my
free hand at her waist, her hand on my hand. Her tongue meets mine for every lick and stroke until I pull back and stare down at her.

  Voices sound nearby and I take that last few minutes and decide to do her a favor and be honest with her, like no one else in my father’s world will. “He’s using you, just like he’s always used me. We’re the ones who push Isaac to keep him sharp. You’ll never inherit. You’ll never be anything but The Princess standing next to your King and brother. And just for the record. I’m not your fucking brother.” I release her and walk away, making a fast path through the kitchen and out of the house.

  Once I’m in the midst of the crowd, I cut through the mess of people and find my way back to the path to my cottage where I enter and have every intention of packing up and getting the hell out of here. I’ve barely shut the door when the bell rings. Who the hell followed me to the cottage, because someone sure as fuck did. I fling open the door to find Harper standing there.

  “Because why would anyone think that I have anything real to bring to the table, right?” she challenges, as if we were still in the middle of our prior conversation, her beautiful blue eyes sparking with anger. “Because all my time with my father, learning his business, taught me nothing.”

  I grab her and pull her inside the cottage.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Eric

  In about thirty seconds, I have the door shut and locked, and Harper pressed against the wall, my thighs shackling hers. “You don’t get to tell me what I can or cannot do,” she hisses, as if she doesn’t notice that I’m about double her size and presently the one in control.

  “How old are you?” I demand.

  “What does that have to do with anything?” she snaps back, not even close to backing down.

  “How old?” I repeat.

  “Twenty-three, but I still don’t get why that has anything to do with this.”

  “How long have you been out of school?”

  “Just because I’m not a thirty-year-old literal genius doesn’t mean I have nothing to offer, and the suggestion that it does makes you an asshole.”