Sinful Games (A Checkmate Inc. Novel Book 4) Read online

  Sinful Games

  A Checkmate Inc. Novel — Book 4

  Shelly Alexander

  Copyright 2018 by Shelly Alexander

  A Touch of Sass, LLC

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, things, locales, or events is entirely coincidental.

  Cover design by Fiona Jayde

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  About the Checkmate Inc. Series

  Also By

  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

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Epilogue

  Also By

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  About the Checkmate Inc. Series

  Leo Foxx, Dex Moore, and Oz Strong spent their youths studying a chessboard, textbooks… and women, from afar. Now they’re players in the city that never sleeps. Gone are their shy demeanors, replaced with muscle, style, and enough sex appeal to charm women of all ages, shapes, and cup sizes. They’ve got it all, including a multimillion-dollar business called Checkmate Inc.—a company they founded together right out of college.

  Some guys are late bloomers, but once they hit their stride, they make up for lost time.

  And the bonus? The founding partners of Checkmate Inc. didn’t become successful and smokin’ hot by accident. They were smart enough to surround themselves with guys who helped them transform into the men they are today. So get ready for more stories about the hotties who are connected to Checkmate Inc.

  A fun, flirty, and dirty contemporary series of STANDALONE novels in which the sizzling hot players associated with Checkmate Inc. meet their matches.

  Also By

  SHELLY ALEXANDER

  The Red River Valley Series

  It’s In His Heart – Coop & Ella’s Story

  It’s In His Touch – Blake & Angelique’s Story

  It’s In His Smile – Talmadge & Miranda’s Story

  It’s In His Arms – Mitchell & Lorenda’s Story

  It’s In His Forever – To be announced

  It’s In His Song – To be announced

  The Angel Fire Falls Series

  Dare Me Once – Trace & Lily’s Story

  Dare Me Again – Elliott & Rebel’s Story

  Dare Me Now – To be announced

  Dare Me Always – To be announced

  The Checkmate Inc. Series

  ForePlay – Leo & Chloe’s Story

  Rookie Moves – Dex & Ava’s Story

  Get Wilde – Ethan & Adeline’s Story

  Sinful Games – Oz & Kendall’s Story

  Wilde Rush – Jacob & Grace’s Story Coming 2019

  Dedication

  For the love of my life. You were my inspiration years ago, when I was first inspired to write my own love stories, and you’re still my inspiration today. I love you with all my heart.

  Prologue

  “She made the first move, so I’m all in and ready to play.”

  —Oscar (Oz) Strong

  Sometimes life gets fucked up. Is it my fault?

  Usually.

  I might be a literal genius in biochemistry, completing multiple degrees in the time it takes most people to finish one. I might have made the right choice when I let two of my college chess team buddies talk me into putting my multiple degrees to work in an unexpected way that has made us ridiculously wealthy. I may be the founding partner who developed our full line of wildly successful, supercharged pheromone colognes, which literally fly off the shelves and send men flocking to one of our worldwide retail studios where we focus on improving the whole man for a hefty five-figure fee. I might’ve even been damned smart coming up with the idea to take our multimillion-dollar company, Checkmate Inc., public.

  But that doesn’t mean I make the most intelligent decisions when it comes to my personal life.

  For instance, I let my parents push me into marriage right after I finished at Columbia. They meant well. In their own way. They honestly believed persuading me to marry inside of our family’s economic class would make me happy. I was young, green, and gullible as hell, so I agreed to the introduction, the rushed engagement, and the six-figure wedding at The Plaza.

  I should’ve reminded my dear old mom and dad that their geekster, brainiac son had spent a lot of time at the gym over the years packing on muscle, and I had also learned how to treat a lady both in and out of the bedroom. Sure, I’d have left out the part about how well I know my way around a woman’s body, but my point is…I’m not a bad catch. With an IQ of one hundred eighty-four, I’ve been doing chemical equations and coefficients since the age of five, so I’m smart enough to run a successful company, as well as pick my own woman.

  But naw.

  I married a girl because my parents liked her family’s name. A girl who didn’t love me but loved my parents’ old money and their seven-thousand-square-foot cottage in the Hamptons because she’d grown up in the same tax bracket.

  A girl who fucked me over by fucking the entire male membership at our country club. Her idea of fun was to get down and dirty with her Jiu Jitsu instructor—who had the IQ of a rock and couldn’t pay his own bills—just to see how the other half lives. Her words, not mine. No idea why she’s still with the twit.

  Thank you, Jill. And good riddance. Divorcing her was the best decision I ever made, besides following my business partners to Manhattan to start Checkmate Inc.

  I’m also man enough to admit that I actually believed the carpet burns on Jill’s knees, ass, and back were from Pilates.

  Smart people really can be obtuse to the point of idiocy.

  Which is why falling for my new assistant at the height of the #metoo movement wasn’t only my biggest fuck up, but was also a mistake that could put both of my business partners and our company’s future at risk.

  I just can’t help myself, though. There’s something about this girl that I can’t get out of my mind or my fantasies. I can’t stop wondering what she feels like or what she tastes like.

  What she sounds like when she’s in the throes of a window-shattering orgasm.

  It’s stupid, I know. But then she goes and makes the first move, and fierce competitor that I am, I can’t help but rise to the challenge.

  I’m all in and ready to play by her rules. I just don’t realize until it’s too late that the game she wants to play is seductive, steamy, and sexy. Oh, and so positively sinful.

  Chapter One

  “You’re fired,” I growl from behind my desk at the assistant sent over this morning from the temp agency.

  The young man’s face crumples as he gathers up his things and hurries out of my office, sniffling at the Checkmat
e Inc. logo etched into the glass door. My gaze snags on that logo—the knight, my favorite piece on the chessboard.

  Since the outer facing walls on the executive floor of our headquarters building in Manhattan are all glass, I can see my former assistant jerk his man-purse from the desk just outside of my office, then he breaks into a run in the direction of the elevators, wiping his eyes.

  Fuck.

  I’m going to catch hell for this. Not from Human Resources, because hell, I’m their boss and can fire them as easily as I just canned the temp. No, it’s my two business partners who won’t let me hear the end of it once they find out I’ve let another assistant go.

  I take off my Armani glasses—the only remaining evidence of my former chess team nerd status—and rub my eyes.

  Hanging onto the glasses was a pact I made with my college-chess-teammates-turned business-partners so we’d never forget our roots and the risk we took on each other to start this company. Keeping the glasses wasn’t a problem for me because I never gave a shit about looking like a brainiac nerd. The geekster persona kept gold-digging friends and fake girls from sniffing around because of my trust fund—mostly.

  The nerdy frames are gone, though, replaced by stylish designer brands and a wardrobe fit for a king. Hell, even a pair of the jeans my personal Checkmate Lifestyle Coach picks out for me at our anchor retail studio on Fifth Avenue costs as much as a small country.

  But the outward transformation was a must because of the nature of our business—improving the whole man from the inside out.

  If our clients only knew the expensive wardrobe and two-hundred-dollar haircut were an exterior mask that hides the irreparable damage caused by my previous marriage. My young heart was crushed into dust, and my emotions turned to stone. Which is why I prefer to keep a low profile, the least conspicuous of the three founding partners.

  “That has to be a record,” Leo Foxx says from the doorway. He’s our CEO because Checkmate Inc.—a company that started with biologically engineered cologne for men, specifically designed to produce supercharged pheromone responses in women—was born from his doctoral dissertation, but that’s another story.

  I stop rubbing my eyes and slowly look up.

  Dexter Moore appears, also, bracing one shoulder against the doorframe. “I told Leo this one wouldn’t last past lunch.” Dex is the face of our company with his GQ style and tall, dark, and handsome looks. Of the three of us, he ditched the socks and flip-flops look the quickest and easiest, and slid into his role managing our upscale chain of retail studios exclusively for men, which he recently expanded into Europe and Dubai.

  Leo digs a twenty out of his wallet and places it in Dex’s open palm.

  “Fuck you both,” I grumble.

  Dex laughs and stuffs the bill into his shirt pocket. “Fuck you, too, buddy.”

  If I didn’t love my partners like brothers, I’d kick their asses for constantly making me the butt of their jokes.

  Never mind that I deserve it for chewing up assistants and spitting them out like gum.

  What can I say? I don’t like letting new people into my world. I tried that once and got screwed, so I have little room in my circle of influence for new people. Especially new assistants who usually figure out way too much about their bosses. Like the fact that underneath my expensive jeans, custom-cut sport coats, and untucked, designer dress shirts, this particular boss doesn’t fit the company image.

  I’m only twenty-nine and already broken on the inside. I guess I always will be.

  “I told him I didn’t want to be disturbed.” I lean back in my chair. As the head of R&D, I’m rarely in my office, spending most of my time developing new products in the lab on a lower floor, where Checkmate’s other biochemists focus on work and rarely speak. Just the way I like it. “He disturbed me anyway.”

  “Because you had an important call holding.” Leo’s assistant, Leticia, pushes through the small space between my two partners and walks to my desk, waving a pink message slip in one hand. In the other hand, she’s cradling papers and her infamous iPad—the device from which she rules the universe. “Your assistant was doing his job.” I can hear the frustrated eye roll in her voice as she places the message in front of me. She gives the iPad a slight boost. “This is called technology. I send all messages to an electronic folder, but you never check it. You’re the only intellectual I know who ignores our latest technological advances.” She glares at the pink handwritten message on my desk, then pastes on a fake smile that says she’s close to the breaking point.

  Judging from the soccer mom stories her three kids and husband have shared with us during company family events, I’d have to agree that Leticia’s breaking point isn’t to be trifled with. So I try to look contrite. “I’m not ignoring technology.” I oscillate my chair back and forth when her pasty smile deepens and her eyes close and open with deliberate movements. It’s a little scary. “I’m ignoring people.”

  She throws a hand in the air and turns to my partners, who are wearing shit-eating grins. “I’ve got interviews lined up for him this afternoon.”

  “That fast?” I bark. “I doubt the one I just fired has even left the building. How do you stay five steps ahead of us?”

  She cocks her head to one side. “Because I’m Leticia. Do you not know who you’re dealing with yet?” She stalks toward the door, no doubt to go conquer another world for us, but stops in front of Leo and Dex. “One of the applicants is the person we tried to hire for him several months back, but she had to decline our offer due to a family crisis.”

  “Kendall Tate.” Dex nods. “She went to high school upstate with Ava. I met her when I went with Ava to her high school reunion.”

  Ava is Leo’s kid sister. We’ve been helping Leo look out for her since they lost their parents in a car accident several years ago. Ava was still a kid, and Leo was a student at Columbia. She grew into a beautiful woman and a damn good web designer. She partnered with four more smart as hell women to open 5 Muse Designs, which handles our massive website. Apparently, Dex noticed the beautiful woman part when they were working together on our website design awhile back. Now they’re engaged, and the wedding is in a few months.

  “Since Ms. Tate is a friend of Ava’s, I’m giving her another interview. There are several more good résumés here.” Leticia taps the papers under the iPad in her hand. “Dex’s assistant went on maternity leave last week, and we need another executive level assistant, or we won’t be able to handle the workload that’s coming our way.”

  True. I planted the seed to take Checkmate Inc. public several months back, and Leo bought into the idea. Dex eventually wised up and got on board, too. An Initial Public Offering will offset the mounting costs of expanding our company internationally and will make us even wealthier. It’s also going to create a shitstorm of work until the initial stock offering proves to be a success and our early investors are satisfied.

  Leticia spins on a heel to stare at me, a fist going to her hip like a mom scolding a precocious child. She’s been with us since Checkmate’s inception. She’s also been like a mother to all three of us, which is why I feel like I’m about to be sent to my room without dinner. “Hire one of these applicants. Suck it up and make it work this time, or one of you three is going to die. I don’t care which one.” She turns to waltz from the room, handing the papers to Leo as she leaves. “But someone’s going to get it if you can’t find one person in this stack who can tolerate him.” She hooks a thumb at me and sashays through the door.

  “I guess that settles it.” Leo shuffles through the résumés. “We’ll conduct the interviews with you.”

  Silently, I get up, pull on my white lab coat, and spend the rest of the day in the lab, working on our new line. We plan to release the cutting edge products in conjunction with our public stock offering, which should drive up the value. Then I have lunch alone at a deli down the street, after ignoring my partners’ text messages to have lunch with them so we can go over the ré
sumés.

  When I return to work, I make my way through Checkmate’s sleek, modern rotunda that is gleaming with glass and chrome. Once the elevator starts to rise, I press against the glass wall and look over the grand space below, the black and white flooring and giant chess piece sculptures meant to look like a chess game in progress makes me inwardly smile.

  It never fails to take my breath away and fill me with pride.

  The elevator dings, but when the doors slide open, I don’t turn around.

  Once our company goes public, this place…our life’s work, will no longer be totally ours. Small pieces of it will belong to hundreds or even thousands of faceless people.

  Uncertainty surges through me, and I’m frozen in place. What have I done, leading the charge to take our baby public?

  The elevator dings again, and the doors start to slide shut.

  I turn just as an arm, which is clad in Tom Ford, shoots through the opening. The doors part with a jerk.

  “Uh uh,” Dex says low enough for only me to hear. “You’re not getting away that easily.” He reaches around and presses the Open button. “Come on, Mr. Congeniality. The waiting room is full of eager applicants.”

  I grumble as I step off and charge past the sitting area, which is indeed filled with several professionally dressed people. From my peripheral, a mane of luxurious, brownish-red hair catches my attention. Involuntarily, I glance in that direction.