Monster's Temptation (Monster & Me #1) Read online

  MONSTER’S TEMPTATION

  MONSTER AND ME, BOOK 1

  C.R. JANE

  MILA YOUNG

  CONTENTS

  Join Our Readers’ Group

  Monster’s Temptation Soundtrack

  Monster and Me

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Monster’s Obsession

  Author’s Note

  Wild Moon

  Books by C.R. Jane

  Books By Mila Young

  About C.R. Jane

  About Mila Young

  Monster’s Temptation © 2022 by C. R. Jane and Mila Young

  All rights reserved.

  Cover by: Covers by Juan

  No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review, and except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

  For permissions contact:

  [email protected]

  [email protected]

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Proof: Jasmine Jordan

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  DEDICATION

  For all of us who don’t want Prince Charming.

  We’d rather sleep with the Monsters because they know better than anyone exactly how to make us scream…

  The Monster

  Eminem & Rihanna

  Monster

  Kanye West & Others

  Monsters

  All Time Love & Blackbear

  Monster

  Skillet

  I Fell In Love With The Devil

  Avril Lavigne

  Here Come The Monsters

  ADONA

  Noise Is Gone

  Ludovico Technique

  Diabolic Crush

  Third Realm

  The Sound of Silence

  Disturbed

  Listen to the Spotify Playlist here.

  MONSTER AND ME

  FROM C.R. JANE AND MILA YOUNG

  Monster’s Temptation

  The Monster King wants to play…

  It's been 1097 days and 14 hours since I've been locked in this place.

  And they've come to me every night.

  The monsters in my dreams worship my body.

  And when I wake up, I'm desperate for more…

  But they’re never there to finish me off.

  Dr. Adams says I can leave the asylum if I start to take my meds, but I've always hated how they made me feel...and I'm not sure that I agree with them that I'm actually crazy.

  Because dreams don’t make you crazy, right?

  I've got to start living someday though...so I finally take the plunge and obey so I can get out.

  My dreams stop, and the monsters disappear. I’m finally starting a new life.

  And that's when he comes...the monster king.

  Evidently my little dreams, weren't just dreams. And he and his demon horde were feeding off my lust.

  Their glowing eyes, sharp teeth, and big…

  They’re all real.

  The Monster King wants me back. I’m their favorite plaything after all.

  And I just might want to play.

  Monster’s Temptation is book 1 in this deliciously monstrous duet.

  PROLOGUE

  BLAKE

  A girl should really get some kind of warning when her life’s about to go to hell.

  But I hadn’t.

  There wasn’t a single warning that by the end of that day, everything was going to be over.

  The alarm on my phone dragged me from a restless sleep, and after turning it off, I just laid there, staring up at the ceiling. Another day.

  Awesome.

  Maybe most girls would have seen my life from the outside and thought I was completely out of my fucking mind that I was so miserable all the time. But you had to grow up inside the belly of the beast to really understand. The Governor’s Mansion glittered from the outside, but inside, it was rotting.

  Or at least that’s what it felt like every fucking day. I was just counting down the days until I left for college. Stanford was calling my name. The college was far enough away while still being acceptable in pedigree to my parents.

  I could almost taste my freedom.

  Reluctantly, I rolled out of bed, knowing that Annie, one of the staff who’d been assigned to me, would be by any minute to check I was on schedule.

  I washed my face and put on my freshly pressed navy and burgundy uniform, and then I carefully curled my hair and applied a light layer of makeup.

  Looking in the mirror, I wondered if there would be a point where I would recognize the girl staring back at me. Long, shiny black hair that was so long it almost fell to my ass…much to my mother’s chagrin. Blue eyes that I always got compliments on, and lips that were too big for my face. I was decent looking; I’d never been insecure about that. But the girl in the mirror had no backbone. She was told to jump, and she did.

  I hated her.

  My stomach clenched as a sharp, stabbing pain darted through it. I leaned over and clenched my teeth as my vision swam and a wave of nausea hit me. Fuck.

  A knock on the door sounded behind me and I took a deep breath, knowing it wasn’t an option to try for a sick day, not when I had a test today that my parents knew about.

  I straightened up and took a few deep breaths. Two more months and I’d be free.

  “Come in,” I called, when I’d gotten my shit together enough I could ensure that my voice sounded normal.

  “You’re ten minutes behind schedule,” Annie chided gently as she peeked in through the door.

  I nodded and forced a smile.

  “Put on some more blush. You’re looking a bit pale,” she instructed, her gaze moving over me as it did every morning, making sure that I looked perfect before the Governor saw me.

  I did as she asked and then followed her out into the hallway, my heels sinking into the plush crimson carpet as I walked. It was kind of creepy living in such a perfectly preserved piece of history. Sometimes I swore that the people in the black and white photographs on the wall were watching me as I passed. After living in this decadent mausoleum, I was determined that any place I called home in the future was going to be brand new and modern-looking. I’d had enough of living in the past to last me a lifetime.

  I heard the soft clink of glassware as we approached the dining room. Because our family couldn’t be anything but fancy, we couldn’t eat in the kitchen at the small, round table in there. Instead, we had to eat at the long, ornate table that
could feed thirty. It made every morning so cozy.

  As usual, my parents were seated at the table. My father was reading his daily reports while my mother gossiped about some politician’s wife. I could understand why her hair always looked so volumetric; she knew secrets about what seemed like every fucking person in this state. The secrets had to stay somewhere.

  Neither of them paid me any attention as I walked into the room, but I was used to that. I settled into the shiny wooden seat that was about as uncomfortable as sitting on a pin cushion, and I placed my napkin in my lap. Like a well-oiled machine, one of the kitchen staff came hustling forward with my plate practically the moment the napkin was moved.

  “Kayla, take that roll straight back to the kitchen,” my mother snapped after the lid to my plate had been taken off, revealing a delicious smelling omelette and a croissant. “And is that cheese on that omelette? I believe I specifically told you all that she needed to be watching her weight. It’s like none of you have a brain cell.”

  “Miranda,” my father said mildly, not taking his eyes off the paper he was holding. My mother shifted in her seat and took a deep breath as she struggled to tamp down her anger.

  “She.” That’s pretty much all I was to my mother. I think I heard her say the servant’s names about ten times more than she ever said mine. Or “the girl.” That was another title my mother loved to throw around when she was referencing me.

  “Don’t worry, Mother. I’ll eat around the cheese,” I drawled insolently, and her lips pinched. I knew she was just itching to slap me in the face for my tone, but at least around the staff…and before school, she wasn’t going to do anything.

  Pain ricocheted through my stomach again, and the fork I’d been holding clattered to my plate.

  That did get my father’s attention. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” he barked.

  “Nothing,” I answered through clenched teeth as I picked the fork back up with a shaking hand. My father eyed me closer, just daring me to do something else, but when I placed a bite of egg into my mouth without doing anything out of the ordinary, his attention went back to his report.

  It was the only bite of breakfast that I managed to get down. I spent the next fifteen minutes just cutting my food into small pieces and pretending to put things in my mouth so it looked like some of the food was disappearing. You’d think that my mother would love to see me not eating, but she was the kind of woman who could never be pleased. I was either eating too much, or I had an eating disorder. There was no in-between.

  My father finally set down his fork and stood up, my mother quickly following. They left the room without a word to me, and I breathed a sigh of relief as I put down my own fork and struggled not to be sick.

  I just need to get through my test, I thought to myself as I shakily stood up. I walked out of the room and headed towards the front door where one of the staff was standing, holding my bookbag and the lunch that would've been prepared for me, because heaven forbid the Governor's daughter be seen standing in the lunch line.

  Tony, our main driver, was standing in front of one of our family’s many black town cars right out front in the circle driveway that extended in front of the mansion. I got into the car and endured my usual silent ride to school.

  It said a lot for my home life that Winthrop Academy was a reprieve. Because the people there, they were awful. Putting together a bunch of pampered superstars in one place was a quick way to ensure that your classmates would be assholes.

  We pulled up to the front of the school, the dark red brick and Corinthian columns covered in ivy an instant giveaway that this was an elite institution. Everything about Winthrop was meant to set you up for success. It was one of the school’s principles, in fact, that you should constantly be preparing for success. Which meant that everything about Winthrop was designed to mimic the Ivy League institutions that we would be attending in the future.

  Or Stanford…if I had my way at all.

  I didn't bother saying goodbye to Tony. He’d been instructed by my parents to not talk to me unless it was absolutely necessary, but he did give me a slight wink as I left. Or that could have been an eye twitch…or a tic. Sometimes I just liked to imagine that the staff liked me.

  I walked up the golden brick-paved path that led up to the imposing wooden doors of the entrance that were currently open to allow students to pass through. There were giant lion heads carved into the middle of the doors with brass loops hanging down. Except they were so far up the door that you'd have to be a giant in order to actually use them as a door knocker. I'm sure that the doors were meant to be some kind of symbol, but I'd never cared enough to find out.

  I was sweating as I walked down the hallway teeming with uniformed students. No one talked to me, but I knew that everyone was very much aware of my presence.

  You would think that everyone would be trying to kiss my ass here since my father was the most powerful man in the state, and a sure contender for the presidency after his term of governor was over. But instead of breeding ass-kissing worshipers, my father's fame had bred assholes.

  The things my classmates did to torture me were always done on the sly; they didn't want to run the risk of getting in trouble, after all. It didn’t matter though, they all seemed to be experts in subterfuge. I would be tripped while walking down a row in between desks, and everyone would act innocent. My uniform was stolen from my gym locker and cut into a million pieces so I had to borrow the school’s castoffs. I had to suffer everything silently because heaven forbid I told my parents that I had a problem at school. They would consider it a personal attack on them that I couldn't manage to charm the sheep they so easily kept in place.

  Last week in the cafeteria, one of the scholarship students had been tripped right as he was walking past me, and he’d dumped his pasta all over the top of my head.

  On and on it went for the last four years…but still, it wasn't as bad as things were at home.

  Normally I would be trying to hustle through the hallways, my head held high like nothing they did affected me. But today I was too sick to do anything but trudge. Everything was spinning a bit around me, and my stomach pain had gone past the point of nausea into full-on “I might die" kind of pain.

  Luckily for me, my test was in second period. And although I wasn’t sure that I would be able to even read the math problems on my test, at least I could go to the nurse’s office right afterwards.

  I’d almost made it to my classroom when I was suddenly pulled into someone's hard chest and familiar cold fish lips slid against mine.

  I gagged when a slimy tongue slid into my mouth and attempted to tangle with mine.

  I ripped my head backwards, but not with the force that I usually put in when confronted with Adam Simmons’ antics. Son of one of the state senators, Adam thought he was a gift from God, and my parents had emphatically pushed me in his direction every chance they got. Adam had gotten the impression I was his girlfriend, despite the fact that I informed him daily how mistaken he was.

  Somehow he seemed to forget that every day. Case in point: his hands were still wrapped around my waist.

  To the rest of the world, Adam would've been quite the catch. Curly blonde hair and brown sparkling eyes, he was the captain of the football team and a million girls were desperate to let him in their pants. And they did let him in their pants. He must have fucked almost every girl in this school.

  It was always amazing to me how Adam had no problem telling me he was in love with me, and then was fucking a cheerleader in the football locker rooms by the end of the day.

  Sometimes I found a little bit of patience for him because at least when he was standing next to me, people behaved. It was nice not to have to worry about having my hair cut, or my bra snapped, or having ketchup thrown over my clothes.

  Today though, I was too sick to have any patience. I wiggled out of his grip, almost falling to the ground as I did so, and then I quickly darted into my classroom, trying not to fa
int.

  Just as I suspected, the numbers on my test paper might as well have been a foreign language when I sat down to take it in second period.

  But by that time, I was so sick that I didn't care.

  I'd only made it halfway through the test when I knew I couldn’t wait any longer. I shot out of my desk and staggered towards the door, ignoring the teacher’s shout from behind me. I somehow made it down the hall into the bathroom, and then I threw up, over and over again until my nose and throat were burning and my eyes were watering.

  “Ugh,” I moaned as I slid onto the floor, too sick to care about how disgusting it probably was. I laid there for a good half hour before I struggled to my feet and made my way down the hallway to the nurse’s office.

  “Oh dear,” the nurse said as soon as I walked through the door. “Come lie down.”

  I moaned as I got to the cot and collapsed.

  The nurse came over with a thermometer and held it against my forehead. She clicked her tongue when she read the temperature. "104. You need to go home right now, young lady. Should I call your…" She hesitated, because you couldn’t really just call the Governor and ask to speak with him now, could you?