RONI LOREN wrote her first romance novel at age fifteen when she discovered writing about boys was way easier than actually talking to them. Since then, her flirting skills haven’t improved, but she likes to think her storytelling ability has. Though she’ll forever be a New Orleans girl at heart, she now lives in Dallas with her husband and son.
If she’s not working on her latest sexy story, you can find her reading, watching reality television, or indulging in her unhealthy addiction to rock stars, er, rock concerts. Yeah, that’s it.
She is the nationally bestselling author of the Loving on the Edge series.
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Believe in Me
JENNIFER L. ARMENTROUT
WRITING AS J. LYNN
IF THERE WAS ever a manual—something like Picking up Girls for Dumbasses—I could edit slash ghostwrite that mammoth tome in a nanosecond. Ever since I was twelve years old, I had a knack for obtaining company of the feminine kind.
Hell. When I died, my tombstone would read something like: Here lies Oliver (Ollie) Ryan. He sure got a lot of play in his charmed life.
And I didn’t discriminate.
Cougar. Kitten. Black. White and every shade of skin tone in-between. Curvalicious and then some or skinny as a sheet of paper, it didn’t matter. I just loved females and they loved me.
All except for one girl.
Brittany Simmons had never been a fan of my happy—and quite delectable—ass. My med school would be paid for if I had a buck for every time she rolled her eyes at me when I suggested we get to know each other better or walked away from me while I was in the middle of telling her something extremely important.
Like how great we’d look together in my bed. That hadn’t gone over like I expected.
When I’d said it to her at a party once, she’d looked like she’d been seconds away from punching me in my balls. And I liked my balls just the way they were, so I’d moved far, far away from her that night.
And if I remembered correctly, I moved on to this cute little brunette who wanted to do other things with my balls that didn’t involve pain.
Brit and I had this sort of antagonistic flirt thing going on my whole last year of undergrad. She was good friends with my roomie’s girlfriend, so we ran into each quite a bit around campus and outside. No conversation we had didn’t involve heavy innuendoes and end with some sort of insult being flung in my direction.
Maybe I needed to buy her a turtle. That seemed to have worked for Cam.
Then again, she’d probably throw the turtle in my face and that wouldn’t be fun, but she’d look hot doing it.
Brit . . . well, Brit was a different type of girl than the one I spent time with. As sexy as any of the girls with her shoulder-length blond hair and deep brown eyes. And what I’d seen of her curvy hips and shapely legs was enough to make me start drooling at any given moment. But it was more than that. The girl was smart and didn’t seem scared of shit. With her snappy comebacks and nuclear level of resistance when it came to me, she’d always presented the kind of challenge any guy would go for.
But a month or so back, the night before I’d left for med school, something had changed in her when we’d ran into each other in the parking lot of Cam and Avery’s apartment building.
Dressed in sweats and a plain T-shirt, hair pulled back in a short ponytail, and without a drop of makeup on, she’d still managed to pull off sexy like no one else.
I’d grinned as she’d stopped between the two first rows, waiting while I swaggered up to her. “You miss me already?”
She’d cocked her hair to the side and raised an eyebrow. “You’re leaving tomorrow, right? For WVU?”
“Yep.”
“Med school?” When I’d nodded, she’d laughed softly. “You’re going to have to cut back on the partying.”
“Whatever. I’m great at multitasking.”
Brit had stared at me, the skin around her full lips—lips I’d give up all my fingers to know how they tasted and felt—pinched. “You are not going to still party like you do now while in med school.”
I wouldn’t. I’d be stupid to do so, but she hadn’t needed to know that. “Why not?”
Her eyes had rolled. “Because the last time I checked, med school is pretty hard.”