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The Grand is my home, just like I told a crowd full of beautiful strangers tonight.

And this man is my heart.

Ivan watches me with quicksilver eyes. “To the basement, little one.”

He calls to me, and I follow him down, into the heat of him, the depths of him, burned and made new again. He takes my desire and turns it around, turns it into sweetness. He takes my kindness, my love, and warps it into lust. And each time he twists me, I’m bound a little closer to him, tied a little tighter. There is nothing that could break us now.

Every love story is a knot, and ours is threaded with steel.

He follows me down the metal stairs, and I whirl in the dank grey space, a flash of color, a bloom. “Where do you want me, Daddy?”

He sits at the high-back chair and pats his lap. I start to climb onto him, but he shakes his head. “Bend over, little one.”

I drape myself over him instead. His thighs are warm and unyielding against my front, caressing my breasts. He pushes up my skirt, and I hear his breath catch at what he sees.

My lace panties are torn away. They land on the concrete, a pile of pink scraps.

He found me lost, alone, and helpless—and gave me a place to call mine. This basement, this building. The space where he watches me, both of us held by our own dark desires, in these moments before he gives me my reward.

We are made of the same thing, he and I. Of sin and hope, of power and pleasure.

We were made to dream.

Thank You

Thank you for reading Pretty When You Cry. I hope you loved Ivan and Candy’s story!

The next couple in the Stripped series is Giovanni and Clara. Hold You Against Me comes out in early 2016. Make sure you sign up for my newsletter so you can find out when it releases!

The previous couple in the Stripped series is Blue and Lola. You can read their story in the novel Better When It Hurts and sexy follow up novella Even Better.

If you’re new to the series, meet Giovanni and Clara for free in the prequel novella Tough Love. Then read the scorching hot and darkly mysterious Love the Way You Lie with Kip and Honor.

You can also join my Facebook group, Skye Warren’s Dark Room, to discuss the Stripped series and my other books!

I appreciate your help in spreading the word, including telling a friend. Reviews help readers find books! Please leave a review on your favorite book site.

The Stripped series is dark, dangerous, and twisted. If you loved this, you will probably also love Wanderlust, which is included a free bonus novel! Turn the page to start reading…

Wanderlust

Skye Warren

Praise for Wanderlust

“Great edge-of-your-seat writing, touching emotional introspection, and enlightening… even in its darkness.”

–Maryse’s Book Blog

“It was emotionally harrowing yet had bursts of humour, so extremely dark and disturbing yet sensual.”

–TotallyBooked Blog

“I love how Ms. Warren is able to make the angst of these two people so real…downright heartbreaking.”

–Salacious Reads

“I fell in love with Hunter, not sure if I was supposed to, but I did.”

–Sam, E and R’s Awesomeness

“And Hunter – you psychotic, tortured and oh-so complex beast of a man…how I adore you! How I would give anything to hear the rumble of your 18-wheeler behind me and the squeal of your brakes beside me.”

–Not Now… Mommy’s Reading

“I would say this was dark and disturbing…..and it kind of was but for me, when it counts, it’s a seriously sweet emotional book.”

–Dark Reading Room

Chapter One

The Niagara Falls were formed by glacier activity 10,000 years ago.

A clash of pots and pans came from downstairs. I winced but remained cross-legged on my bed, staring at the assorted items I’d deemed essential. Some clothes, toiletries.

A map.

There was so much I didn’t know, so much I hadn’t seen. My absence of knowledge had become an almost tangible thing, filling me up, suffocating me until I needed to kick up to the surface just to breathe.

Ironically, my innocence was my mom’s explanation for keeping me home. The world was too scary, and I wouldn’t even know how to protect myself. To hear her tell it, the streets were filled with ravening men who would attack me as soon as look at me.

That was the anxiety talking. At least that was what the counselor had said before we’d stopped going.

“Evie!” my mother yelled from the kitchen.

It would be three more times before she elevated to screams. Four before she threw something. Six before she came up to my room, demanding I make her coffee or whatever else she needed.

I’d grown up fast, fumbling with mac and cheese before I was tall enough to see over the pot, explaining away my excess absences to disinterested teachers. In high school, I’d stayed home and studied to get my GED. Two years of correspondence classes through the community college, and I was desperate for any human contact.

I picked up my book, running my fingers over the cool, glossy surface.

The library was one of the few places approved by my mother. I must have read almost every book in that place, living a thousand lives on paper, traveling around the world in eighty days and through the looking glass. I knew about hope and death, about fear and the dignity required to overcome, but only in theoretical constructs of ink and ground tree pulp. That was my irony: to wax poetic about the meaning of life while being unable to do something as simple as pay rent.

Weary of re-reads, I’d wandered into the nonfiction section. I’d picked this one up on a whim, on a joke almost because the title seemed so silly. Everything You Wanted to Know About Niagara Falls. Who wanted to know anything about Niagara Falls?

Then I read it.

I snuck back every day for a week, enamored by the descriptions, in awe of the pictures of water rushing, enchanted by the majesty and magic of this place both faraway and someday attainable. My mother didn’t let me get a library card, so I’d stolen the book and kept it ever since.

Now the paper was thin and pliable, well-worn from years of turning the pages. The binding was loose, the stitching visible between the cardboard and glue. By now it was probably held together by the clear tape that held the library tags to the spine.

“Happy birthday,” I whispered.

My present to myself: to finally see the place I’d been yearning for. The place I’d dreamed about even before I’d gotten the book, for all twenty years of my life. For room to breathe. For freedom.

Even my camera couldn’t sustain me. I flipped through the photographs on the digital screen, every single one taken in the house or the yard. Nowadays mom got antsy when I walked over to the park. There were only so many times I could pretend a new angle of the flower pot was artistic instead of just plain pathetic. I wanted to see new things, new places—new people.

I piled everything into my bag. I was far too old for the purple backpack. But then, my body was too old for me. Somewhere in the past five years, I had blossomed into a woman, with full lips and fuller breasts, with hair in places I was almost afraid to touch, except when I just had to at night in my bed, and I did—oh, I did, and it shamed me. I shamed myself with the wetness and the horrible, rippling pleasure around my fingers.

My twentieth birthday. Neither my mother nor I had acknowledged it at breakfast, as if even the mention of passing time would crack the fragile votive that ensconced us.

And now, I would shatter it.

I wouldn’t be going around the world or even outside the state—at least not today. But the fear felt huge inside my stomach. Her anxiety was rubbing off on me. I had to get out of here.