Prince Roman Read online

  Prince Roman

  By CD Reiss

  1001 Dark Nights

  Prince Roman

  By CD Reiss

  1001 Dark Nights

  Copyright 2017 Flip City Media Inc.

  ISBN: 978-1-945920-56-1

  Foreword: Copyright 2014 M. J. Rose

  Published by Evil Eye Concepts, Incorporated

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or establishments is solely coincidental.

  Book Description

  Prince Roman

  By CD Reiss

  From NY Times Bestselling author, CD Reiss, love comes in the most ordinary and most forbidden places.

  Rules for my new job:

  1) Do not have sex with a man in the office (again).

  2) Do not break Rule #1

  I’m playing it cool, clean, and professional…until I meet Roman Bianchi. He’s not an insecure nerd or an ego-hole like the other kings of Silicon Valley. He’s charming and handsome. He’s fun, funny, and smart.

  He’s also in the office across the hall.

  Two broken rules waiting to happen.

  I can’t lose this job over some guy.

  But Roman’s not just some guy. Under that suit and cocky smile, he’s a prince.

  About CD Reiss

  CD Reiss is an Audie Award winner and New York Times bestseller. She still has to chop wood and carry water, which was buried in the fine print. Her lawyer is working it out with God but in the meantime, if you call and she doesn't pick up, she's at the well, hauling buckets.

  Born in New York City, she moved to Hollywood, California to get her master's degree in screenwriting from USC. In case you want to know, that went nowhere, but it did give her a big enough ego to try her hand at books.

  She's been nicknamed the “Shakespeare of Smut,” which is flattering enough for her to put it in a bio, but embarrassing enough for her not to tell her husband, or he might think she's some sort of braggart who's too good to chop a cord of wood.

  If you meet her in person, you should call her Christine.

  You can find more information on her at https://cdreiss.com.

  Also From CD Reiss

  Click to purchase

  Want to know more about Raven’s ex - Silicon Valley tycoon Taylor Harden?

  Check out King of Code !

  Raven’s world is expanded in two more full-length standalones:

  Prince Charming | White Knight

  More sexy and heartwarming standalones:

  Hardball: A pro baseball player falls for a buttoned-up librarian. What could go wrong?

  Shuttergirl: An A-list actor is obsessed with a girl from the wrong side of the tracks.

  Bombshell: When Hollywood’s most available bad boy has a sweet five year-old dropped on his doorstep, he hires the best nanny in town. All he has to do is keep himself from falling in love with her.

  Meet your next kinky billionaire obsession in The Submission Series.

  Submission | Domination | Connection

  What happens when a stuck-up heiress catches the eye of a dangerous mob capo?

  Find out in The Corruption Series.

  Spin | Ruin | Rule

  Celebutante Fiona Drazen lives a life of boundary-free debauchery.

  She’s utterly forbidden to the one man who can save her.

  Kick | Use | Break

  To keep up with new releases, get on the mailing list!

  Acknowledgments from the Author

  I am so grateful to be a part of the 1,001 Dark Nights family. Laurelin Paige introduced me to Liz Berry and MJ Rose. It was an honor then, and it’s an honor now.

  Laurelin and Lauren Blakely are my mentors and sisters. I owe them LITERALLY EVERYTHING. Luckily, they’ll take repayment in friendship.

  I’m a changeling. Liz and her team put up with a lot of crap from me as I changed this story, the title, and the blurb 1,001 times before I got the entire series the way I wanted it. She, Kasi, and Kimberly edited it exactly the way I liked, making it better without changing it into something different.

  I am always in my family’s debt. I work hard for them and I couldn’t do it without them.

  And Liz, again. I’m forgetting ten people, but I have to thank Liz three times over for her flexibility as I handed her books, then took them away. You’re a good soul and a true patron of this art form.

  Discover 1001 Dark Nights Collection One

  Click here to explore

  FOREVER WICKED by Shayla Black

  CRIMSON TWILIGHT by Heather Graham

  CAPTURED IN SURRENDER by Liliana Hart

  SILENT BITE: A SCANGUARDS WEDDING by Tina Folsom

  DUNGEON GAMES by Lexi Blake

  AZAGOTH by Larissa Ione

  NEED YOU NOW by Lisa Renee Jones

  SHOW ME, BABY by Cherise Sinclair

  ROPED IN by Lorelei James

  TEMPTED BY MIDNIGHT by Lara Adrian

  THE FLAME by Christopher Rice

  CARESS OF DARKNESS by Julie Kenner

  Also from 1001 Dark Nights

  TAME ME by J. Kenner

  Discover 1001 Dark Nights Collection Two

  Click here to explore

  WICKED WOLF by Carrie Ann Ryan

  WHEN IRISH EYES ARE HAUNTING by Heather Graham

  EASY WITH YOU by Kristen Proby

  MASTER OF FREEDOM by Cherise Sinclair

  CARESS OF PLEASURE by Julie Kenner

  ADORED by Lexi Blake

  HADES by Larissa Ione

  RAVAGED by Elisabeth Naughton

  DREAM OF YOU by Jennifer L. Armentrout

  STRIPPED DOWN by Lorelei James

  RAGE/KILLIAN by Alexandra Ivy/Laura Wright

  DRAGON KING by Donna Grant

  PURE WICKED by Shayla Black

  HARD AS STEEL by Laura Kaye

  STROKE OF MIDNIGHT by Lara Adrian

  ALL HALLOWS EVE by Heather Graham

  KISS THE FLAME by Christopher Rice

  DARING HER LOVE by Melissa Foster

  TEASED by Rebecca Zanetti

  THE PROMISE OF SURRENDER by Liliana Hart

  Also from 1001 Dark Nights

  THE SURRENDER GATE By Christopher Rice

  SERVICING THE TARGET By Cherise Sinclair

  Discover 1001 Dark Nights Collection Three

  Click here to explore

  HIDDEN INK by Carrie Ann Ryan

  BLOOD ON THE BAYOU by Heather Graham

  SEARCHING FOR MINE by Jennifer Probst

  DANCE OF DESIRE by Christopher Rice

  ROUGH RHYTHM by Tessa Bailey

  DEVOTED by Lexi Blake

  Z by Larissa Ione

  FALLING UNDER YOU by Laurelin Paige

  EASY FOR KEEPS by Kristen Proby

  UNCHAINED by Elisabeth Naughton

  HARD TO SERVE by Laura Kaye

  DRAGON FEVER by Donna Grant

  KAYDEN/SIMON by Alexandra Ivy/Laura Wright

  STRUNG UP by Lorelei James

  MIDNIGHT UNTAMED by Lara Adrian

  TRICKED by Rebecca Zanetti

  DIRTY WICKED by Shayla Black

  THE ONLY ONE by Lauren Blakely

  SWEET SURRENDER by Liliana Hart

  Sign up for the 1001 Dark Nights Newsletter

  and be entered to win a Tiffany Key necklace.

  There's a contest every month!

  Click here to subscribe.

  As a bonus, all subsc
ribers will receive a free

  1001 Dark Nights story

  The First Night

  by Lexi Blake & M.J. Rose

  Table of Contents

  Book Description

  About CD Reiss

  Also From CD Reiss

  Acknowledgments from the Author

  Discover 1001 Dark Nights Collection One

  Discover 1001 Dark Nights Collection Two

  Discover 1001 Dark Nights Collection Three

  Foreword

  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

  Discover 1001 Dark Nights Collection Four

  Discover the World of 1001 Dark Nights

  An excerpt from King of Code by CD Reiss

  Special Thanks

  One Thousand and One Dark Nights

  Once upon a time, in the future…

  I was a student fascinated with stories and learning.

  I studied philosophy, poetry, history, the occult, and

  the art and science of love and magic. I had a vast

  library at my father’s home and collected thousands

  of volumes of fantastic tales.

  I learned all about ancient races and bygone

  times. About myths and legends and dreams of all

  people through the millennium. And the more I read

  the stronger my imagination grew until I discovered

  that I was able to travel into the stories... to actually

  become part of them.

  I wish I could say that I listened to my teacher

  and respected my gift, as I ought to have. If I had, I

  would not be telling you this tale now.

  But I was foolhardy and confused, showing off

  with bravery.

  One afternoon, curious about the myth of the

  Arabian Nights, I traveled back to ancient Persia to

  see for myself if it was true that every day Shahryar

  (Persian: شهريار, “king”) married a new virgin, and then

  sent yesterday's wife to be beheaded. It was written

  and I had read, that by the time he met Scheherazade,

  the vizier's daughter, he’d killed one thousand

  women.

  Something went wrong with my efforts. I arrived

  in the midst of the story and somehow exchanged

  places with Scheherazade – a phenomena that had

  never occurred before and that still to this day, I

  cannot explain.

  Now I am trapped in that ancient past. I have

  taken on Scheherazade’s life and the only way I can

  protect myself and stay alive is to do what she did to

  protect herself and stay alive.

  Every night the King calls for me and listens as I spin tales.

  And when the evening ends and dawn breaks, I stop at a

  point that leaves him breathless and yearning for more.

  And so the King spares my life for one more day, so that

  he might hear the rest of my dark tale.

  As soon as I finish a story... I begin a new

  one... like the one that you, dear reader, have before

  you now.

  Chapter 1

  RAVEN

  I never thought about him naked.

  Probably because during our affair—which went on for about a year and ended with a whimper seven months earlier—I never saw Taylor fully undressed. We usually met in some dark corner of the office and did little more than expose the relevant body parts.

  But the other reason I never thought about him naked was because it just wasn’t like that. Brilliant, handsome, ambitious, rich, and about to get much richer, he was a real catch if you could ignore the fact that he was a complete ego-hole. I couldn’t ignore it and I couldn’t change it. So I’d used him like an in-office vibrator until he came back from a trip with a new girlfriend. I couldn’t find a hard feeling about it anywhere.

  “Is it money?” he asked, hands folded on his desk. “I promised you a bonus in December. Do you need it now?”

  “No.”

  “If it’s not about money…?” He let the sentence hang, hands open as if he wanted me to drop motivations in them. We were always frank with each other, but I didn’t have to make his life that easy, did I? He and every other Silicon Valley wunderkind ego-hole had it a little too easy.

  “It’s not about the other thing either,” I said.

  “Which other thing?”

  He wasn’t playing coy. He really did need to know which thing.

  “It’s not about your new girlfriend or any kind of hard feelings about anything associated with you and me fucking.”

  “Good, so…”

  “And it’s not about the fact that you came back from your trip with a ten-point plan for improving the culture in this snake pit, or that it fell on your human resource manager’s shoulders.”

  That was me and those were my shoulders. I really didn’t hold a grudge about it, but making him uncomfortable was its own reward.

  “Not about you staying late after work six nights a week,” I continued, “teaching me how to hack some girl I didn’t know, or the four hundred other new responsibilities you laid on me since you got back.”

  “I laid them on you because I trust you.”

  “I know. And I appreciate it.”

  “You’re not going to try and hack Neuronet, are you?” Taylor had taught me the basics of hacking, and it had been fun, but I was never going to be as good as him or his partner, Keaton. “Because they have core vulnerabilities,” he continued.

  “No, Taylor. I’m not going to hack Neuronet.”

  “Things aren’t going to be any easier there. It’s a goliath on its way to becoming a behemoth. You’re going to get overloaded and ignored. You’ll never be ignored here, even after we crush them.”

  “I’m sure I could be a big shot here in the next ten to twelve years, but here’s the thing. We’ve crunched the numbers. QI4 has challenges.”

  He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. The sleeves of his jacket hiked up, exposing an expensive watch and starched shirt cuffs. He was the only circuit mogul in town who wore suits.

  “In five years,” he said, “this is going to be the only computer company in the world.”

  “There’s a fifty percent chance you won’t be in business in five years.”

  “Forty-eight percent.”

  FILE UNDER: SOP mathematical hair-splitting.

  Taylor had changed in the past few months, but when he didn’t want to hear something, he didn’t hear it.

  “You’re building a vertical rollout that can fall apart at any stage. I don’t want to see that happen. I really don’t. But I didn’t come to Silicon Valley to wake up in five years and have to start over. I need stability.”

  “Stability and your stock options, I assume?”

  “I’d consider it a nice homage to the good times in the supply closet.”

  His smirk was as wicked as ever.

  “Good times.”

  Chapter 2

  RAVEN

  As a lover, I hadn’t had a future with Taylor, but I’d been attracted to him. Suits, cleanliness, and attention to detail got me off. Ego-holeness didn’t.

  The only reason I’d ever had a date in Silicon Valley was the pure odds that something had to make sense with so
meone. After all, I was a highly desired specimen, so rare in the wild that I attracted attention wherever I went. Numbers had been crunched. Articles had been written. The odds of my existence were infinitesimal. In this particular corner of California, I was a unicorn.

  Meaning, I was a single female of child-bearing age.

  I had my pick.

  The guy with the mutton chops he thought were neat-o, or the dude in the Van Halen T-shirt that had the porousness and smell of Swiss cheese. The guy who couldn’t stop talking about World of Warcraft or the one who mentioned he went to grad school “in Cambridge” four times in four minutes. The experts on beer, custom-tuned guitars, gastropubbing, and social awkwardness. I’d dated boys in men’s bodies, humorless geniuses, closet Nazis, and unapologetic sexists who could rattle off the most convenient stats, studies, biological “facts,” and “cultural norms” that proved a woman’s place was in human resources doing anything but hiring other women.

  Taylor had been a pretty good deal, everything considered. He at least showed me enough coding and IT to make me valuable in system implementation.

  “But never again,” I said to Masy on the walk from the parking lot on the first day. The weather was standard-issue California perfect but seemed just a touch more perfect on the way into my new job. It was going to stay that way. “No more intra-office fucking.”

  “Trust me,” she said, popping her lips off the green straw sticking out of her frothy coffee, “you’re safe from dating anyone at Neuronet. It’s like a cross-section of the worst of them.” My best friend, roommate, and fellow single-female unicorn worked in the marketing department. She’d mentioned the VP opening in HR systems when it opened up. Neuronet was as excited to meet me as I was eager to work with them.