Mitchell “Match” Saltonstall Stood beside his fake girlfriend, Arielle Carter. The feel of her body against his when she’d been snuggling up against him in the dining room earlier was driving him insane. He could still feel her pawing at him while her voluptuous curves pressed against his stomach and hips.
Arielle was clapping and smiling prettily as Jericho Parr and Tiffany Jones, newly engaged, waved to the crowd. Without moving her lips or opening her teeth she snarled at him, “How much longer do I have to stay?”
Her accent was so upper-crust American that she almost sounded a little British.
Mitchell said, “Through dinner and the dancing, and then I’ll call you a limo to take you back to the hotel.”
“Fine.”
“We just have to make it through New Year’s Eve.”
“Fine.”
After only a few weeks into their fake relationship, it had become apparent that the two of them were complete opposites in every way, and he’d been a bit of a snob about it. After that, it was painfully obvious that Arielle thought he was a jerk, and she was probably right. She didn’t bother to hide her scorn and needled him every chance she got.
And, as always, Mitchell couldn’t help himself but needle her back. “After December, we never have to see each other again.”
“It can’t come soon enough for me.”
“That’s not what you said last night after you knocked at the door of my hotel room.”
“If you didn’t want it, you shouldn’t have invited me in.”
“Of course, I invited you in. I’m a gentleman.”
Her derisive snort sounded more like her previous Appalachian hillbilly accent that Mitchell thought they’d cured her of. She said, “You are no gentleman.”
Mitchell turned his back on the happy couple down below in the arena, still waving to the crowd and laughing at each other, and he whispered to Arielle, “That’s what you like best about me.”
That time, she didn’t snort. Her eyes narrowed, and Mitchell was pretty sure he heard her jaw pop from where she was grinding her teeth. “I don’t like anything about you, asshole.”
Mitchell turned back and continued clapping with the rest of the crowd. “Yes, you do.”
“I hate you.” Arielle grabbed her skirt in both hands and flounced away.
“You, too, sugar plum!” he called after her and continued to applaud for his best friend, Jericho, down below.
His body crackled with desire.
If Arielle didn’t knock on Mitchell’s hotel room door that night, he’d knock on hers.
As usual.
Behind every great fortune lies a great crime, and for Tristan "Twist" King, the time has come to commit his.
Tristan is twenty-six years old, six-feet-four, wealthy, frighteningly good at day-trading stocks, and lives on a yacht in Monaco. The Prince of Monaco is his buddy from boarding school, and his other friends are billionaires, politicians, CEOs, actors, and rock stars. He dates heiresses, minor princesses, models, and Fortune 50 VPs. He has it all.
But a debt has come due, and Tristan needs a large amount of stock of a certain company, GameShack. If he doesn't produce it, he’ll be in debt for the rest of his life. It’s worth far more money than Tristan has. It's more money than anyone has.
To get the stock, Tristan has to destroy GameShack.
He haunts the stock forum Sherwood Forest day and night, looking for a crack in the company's financial armor, until the forum's moderator, QueenMod, suspects his motives and trolls his every move.
But he’ll figure it out. He has to. Otherwise, he’ll not only be broke and in debt, but it will probably cost him his life.
What Tristan hadn't counted on was meeting Colleen Frost, a perky, funny GameShack employee while on a recon trip. She has no idea what he's up to, or so he thought.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
By day, Colleen Frost works the register at GameShack, but by night, she's a moderator on the infamous stock market hacktivist website Sherwood Forest. She's paid back half her student loans by trolling short-traders who tried to make a quick buck by setting companies on fire and selling the ashes.
And it's fun, too.
When her sub-forum begins to crackle with rumors that someone is trying to crash GameShack's stock, she suspects forum member TwistyTrader might be in on it. So, she dogs him every time he's online, calling out his baloney and making his forum life a living heck.
But when a tall, handsome hunk named Tristan King with incredible sapphire eyes walks into her GameShack store and starts flirting with her, all the while chatting about her favorite video game, she gives him her online contact info, which turns into a coffee date, which turns into more.
And that's when things get TWISTED.