A Harem of One [The Moreland Brothers 3] (Siren Publishing Allure) Read online

  The Moreland Brothers 3

  A Harem of One

  Marques Moreland is a man with sexual needs that go beyond the norm. Just like a miser hides gold, he kept his penchant for sex on camera to himself. He knows that something is missing from his usual encounters, but cannot force himself to acknowledge his own desires for love and romance.

  Jamison Richards found herself a product of a faulty foster care system in her teens and after nearly being sexually assaulted no longer can trust another person, let alone herself. She knew that she wasn't happy with the course her life had taken over the years, but she didn't know how to change the status quo.

  After Marques catches Jamison in the midst of her morning yoga session, he knows he has to have her. There is more to her than meets the eye, and he is determined to show her what they are capable of experiencing together.

  Note: This book contains drug use.

  Genre: Contemporary, Interracial

  Length: 70,220 words

  A HAREM OF ONE

  The Moreland Brothers 3

  Jennifer Willows

  EROTIC ROMANCE

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

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  A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK

  IMPRINT: Erotic Romance

  A HAREM OF ONE

  Copyright © 2012 by Jennifer Willows

  E-book ISBN: 978-1-61926-728-2

  First E-book Publication: July 2012

  Cover design by Jinger Heaston

  All cover art and logo copyright © 2012 by Siren Publishing, Inc.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  PUBLISHER

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

  Letter to Readers

  Dear Readers,

  If you have purchased this copy of A Harem of One by Jennifer Willows from BookStrand.com or its official distributors, thank you. Also, thank you for not sharing your copy of this book.

  Regarding E-book Piracy

  This book is copyrighted intellectual property. No other individual or group has resale rights, auction rights, membership rights, sharing rights, or any kind of rights to sell or to give away a copy of this book.

  The author and the publisher work very hard to bring our paying readers high-quality reading entertainment.

  This is Jennifer Willows’s livelihood. It’s fair and simple. Please respect Ms. Willows’s right to earn a living from her work.

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  DEDICATION

  This book is dedicated to some truly wonderful people. I really need to thank several special readers first: Narci, Royia, Lisa, Didi, and Carol. Your e-mails always made sure I got back on track, even when I didn’t feel alive enough to push forward. To the real Jamie, thanks for your willingness to be an inspiration to me and for allowing me to borrow your blog. Thanks to my ex-husband, I can now pursue every dream that I never thought was possible. My mom goes without saying, as without her help and advice I wouldn’t have the time to fight for my dreams. To Siren Publishing, thank you for helping me make this story and the tales of many other authors come to life on E-readers and cell phones everywhere. And of course thanks to my editor for helping this story along so that it makes logical sense. I really could have used you when I wrote that very first short story. Enjoy!

  A HAREM OF ONE

  The Moreland Brothers 3

  JENNIFER WILLOWS

  Copyright © 2012

  Prologue

  January 1998

  “Hey look, ya’ll. It’s Shamu.”

  The laughter that followed her descent to the street from the school door was cruel and the tones mocked her, but no more so than yesterday. Or the day before that. Actually, being called a trick killer whale was the least of what she had been called over the years. Life was rough. She already got that. But what sixteen-year-old Jamison Richards didn’t understand was, why her? It seemed misfortune followed her in a black, smoggy cloud that tainted everything she so much as admired. Even from afar, as this last debacle showed clearly. She couldn’t even have a crush on a boy without stupidly falling over in his lap. Literally.

  She had let go of everything a girl would care about, just to avoid daily torment. She had perfected the green shade of the walls and wore green tops nearly every day. If it wasn’t green, she liked brown. It matched the earth outside and gave her a break on laundry, as she was face-first in mud half the week and the other days were spent in hiding. At first the library became a place to hide her shame during the social hours of the day. There she would enter other worlds through all types of literature.

  Jamison was alone enough to the point that even the AV nerds looked like they were having a better time than she was. Until one afternoon she overheard a heated discussion about a new movie and the cinematography in it, and she couldn’t help but to put her two cents in, and then she found out that they really had fun. Those hours locked in darkened rooms splicing film and dissecting classics with other pimpled freaks and geeks were the best hours of her life ADD, better known as “After Dad’s Death.” She learned about how movies worked, and soon she found herself critical of the myriad imperfections when she had a rare opportunity to watch TV.

  As she walked from school, she stopped at the grocery store and used her last quarter to buy a trinket from the machines in front of the store. Today’s treat was a sticky octopus, and she had several of those, but she kept the egg it came in in memoriam of her dad. When she arrived at her foster home, she wished her father was still alive. He used to give her a quarter and watch her awe at whatever treat would spill out of the gimmicky machine. The memory hurt, just as it always did, but she embraced the pain of loss to enjoy the bittersweet feel of her father. So tall, strong, and proud. Now he was nothing more than ashes she prized as her sole valuable, aside from the handful of eggs similar to the one in her hand. Mr. Foster opened the door as she ambled along the driveway. Her feet shuffled against the concrete driveway. The front yard was perfectly manicured for the Stepford family that lived wi
thin.

  “Hey, come on in.” Mr. Foster wore an excited mien, and his smile seemed smug somehow. The grin on his lips didn’t quite make it to his eyes.

  “Oh, okay. Where’s Mrs. Foster?” Jamie felt a little nervous, as if something was terribly wrong and every instinct she had begged her to run as fast and far away as she could. But where could she go? For an orphan, nowhere was safe, and there was no place to hide but the streets. She had quite a few friends she’d lost to runaway status, and for those considered wards of the state, few people bothered to look. There was no manhunt, missing posters on telephone poles, or any flashing messages to interrupt the daytime TV experience of the average household for a foster kid.

  “She is still at work.” At this point, it was too late. Something about Mr. Foster didn’t look right, and his eyes seemed to carry an unusual light in them. When she strode through the den, he pounced, and she found her balance was gone as she hit the ground headfirst.

  “Stop! Don’t—” But the man seemed to care less about her pleas. First, he tore her grass-green shirt off and groped at her chest painfully. Jamison felt the fierce grip of his hands and knew she was going to be in a world of hurt if she lashed out without a plan.

  “You want to be a part of the family, right?” The words hurt even more than they should because deep down she did want a family, even if she was too jaded to say the words aloud. But even as she remained quiescent, Jamison’s thoughts turned to her next course of action. Random objects nearby flickered through her mind, and she remembered where she was next to the couch, where Mrs. Foster liked to sew scraps into quilts as she watched TV. If she could only reach the mending basket, it was only a handful of feet away, and she could use it to hit him.

  But a surreptitious tug on the basket spilled the contents to the floor next to her, and she was unable to reach the weighted rattan. There wasn’t much time left, Mr. Foster had nearly succeeded in his quest to remove her jeans, and after that? Her virginity, the sole thing she kept for herself, would be buttered toast that her rapist would have for breakfast. Her hands rubbed across the nubby, beige carpet in a blatant attempt to find something, anything that could help her save herself. Her right hand located something. It felt like a metal pencil. All she knew for sure was that it was long, but she didn’t care what it was and fisted her grip around the cold metal, her only salvation.

  * * * *

  Marques Moreland was an outcast, plain and simple. There was nothing physically wrong with him, but mentally he was in another place that other people couldn’t occupy. Here he was, the last day of school before his freshman year in college, and he was the only senior not making a vain attempt to get melanoma on Senior Skip Day. To him it seemed like the world danced to a pop Michael Jackson album and he gyrated to Bach. There were girls who told him they thought he was cute with his slightly overlong hair and lithe frame. He got a bunch of comparisons to a slimmer-built Nick Lachey, but he had no idea who the guy was and didn’t really care. He just didn’t mesh with other people well. His saving grace was that he was born with a proverbial silver spoon in his mouth, but even among other children of his fiscal background he was different. He didn’t care about his clothes or the newest cars or expensive vacations to luxurious and exotic locations. He had a stutter in previous years, but a little therapy went a long way, and by the time he turned sixteen, his diction was that of upper-crust perfection.

  His humor was vaunted as droll, but what others mistook for jokes was the truth. He didn’t really give a fuck what anyone else thought and let them laugh. That was fine with him, as he really didn’t have the time to soothe anyone when he gave the cut direct. Aside from that, his free time was monopolized with computers and home movies with bad plots and campy wardrobes, but it was more fun than anything his peers like to do, which mainly meant drink and smoke weed or cut class. He had smoked before, his mother was a big fan of marijuana, and she grew her own in the greenhouse behind the main wing of the mansion. So it was there if he wanted it, but he didn’t find the same pleasure that most of his peers did in it.

  He liked to work with his hands, and no computer was safe within fifty feet of him. He’d already received contact from a couple of colleges about early admission in the last three years. But he wasn’t ready for that yet. He had enjoyed being a high school student, and at the time he had a date for the prom already. Ergo, he determined he may as well wait until graduation before he went to college. The only problem was his father wanted him to give the early acceptance a trial run or at least accept some of the classes being offered to him. But he didn’t need them, not really. At the rate he was going, any professor would be irritated with him as he already knew more than they could teach. He had enough of that now, and there was no need to be a small prepubescent fry on campus and annoy his teachers like he had done already. He only went to three classes for the last couple of years. The rest were on paper only as he could pass those in a coma and the teachers were sick of dealing with a know-it-all. So the afternoons were spent in the AV room, and he did the school a favor each afternoon as the unofficial IT guy on campus, while he bided his time.

  As he dug in the belly of a Mac PC and started the process to create a hybrid computer for his room, he wondered if he would ever fit in anywhere or with anyone. He’d met girls he liked, but none of them rang any bells. Not like his parents did for one another. The ladies he met so far were of the appropriate background, equally attractive, and knew what fork to start their meals with, but they all seemed…vapid. It was as if they were blank disk drives without programs and their parents filled the memory banks of their blank slates with unimportant garbage files versus anything of real importance. The girls could have conversations about world topics, but the words spoken were opinions provided to them from dinners with politicians and they had no inspired thoughts of their own on any subject.

  It was a hard thing to want to belong to another person in that way when he didn’t understand what he wanted exactly. Or even an inkling of what she would be like. But then again, he thought to himself, I’m a bit young to meet Mrs. Right when Ms. Right Now is happy to have hot teenage car sex with me. Even if the thought niggled and tugged at some small part of him, but he dismissed the urge as he didn’t understand quite what he felt at the moment.

  Chapter One:

  The Rice Paper Yogi

  Current Day

  Marq felt a vague sense of irritation. Here he was the only single man left in his family. He’d just watched Charyn fall for Makenzie last year, and now this? Deven, too? Those uncharitable thoughts plagued him as said eldest brother waded through piles of fabric, peering at his soon-to-be bride. They were currently in the boudoir of the family manse, hiding in the shared master and mistress’s suite closet. The closet spanned both rooms with one side the master’s bed chamber, and the other was for the mistress of the house. For whatever reason, Deven had to get a peek of his future wife’s gown, and Charli thus far refused to let him see hide or hair of the dress. As Deven knew the final fitting was taking place, he’d practically dragged Marq along.

  Marques had barely arrived this morning to the family home, just outside of Hartford, Connecticut. He had spent most of the night on the road, and he was rank and raggedy. Not his best look. But there were a few loose ends in the wording of a contract, and Marq wanted to pin down the fine points before leaving work last night. He didn’t get out of the office until after eight and, combined with the long drive, it left him exhausted and lank. His Oxford tee had seen better days, grayed with age and worn at the seams. The cargo shorts were just as limp as he felt, and the olive green fabric carried a multitude of wrinkles from the confines of his car. His feet were the only thing refreshed as he wore a pair of leather flip-flops to keep them cool.

  “Marq, if you ever loved our mother, you’ll come with me.”

  “What the deuce?” Marq mocked a convincing British affectation, sounding similar to his favorite cartoon. He even had the Stewie boxers on right
now to prove it.

  “Our rat-faced fink of a mother told Charli it was bad luck to see the gown.”

  “Why the need to see the gown? I’m fairly sure that she’ll be in the thing on August nineteenth.” Damn the man had it bad. The auspicious moment was only a day and night away.

  “I refuse to wait that long.” Deven’s face showed he meant business. Although Marq had no idea why it was so important. That aspect of the event seemed trivial. As long as she showed up for the ceremony, it shouldn’t matter if she was in a burlap sack.

  Apparently, the pair of them weren’t as quiet as they needed to be to get Deven the coveted look. Marq was wedged toward the back half of the master’s closet when he felt a quick tap on the left shoulder. Angling his head to the side, he saw little, just a flash of golden skin and a skein of soft, fluttering waves.

  “I don’t think the two of you should be here.” The mass of hair kept him from seeing the face of the owner of the gentle voice. He wasn’t sure who it was. Maybe she was from the dress shop.

  The woman behind him smelled vaguely of spice, a mingling of patchouli and cinnamon. He assumed she came in the closet to keep them from an unlucky peek of the gown. A gasp to the front of him forced Marq to look forward and revealed Charli standing at the other closet door, arms akimbo, lips pursed. They were in trouble.