Paper
Dolls
Ketley Allison
(Falling Paper, #1)
Publication date: November 12th 2015
Genres: Contemporary, New Adult, Romance
Ketley Allison
(Falling Paper, #1)
Publication date: November 12th 2015
Genres: Contemporary, New Adult, Romance
It’s too bad for Scarlet that no matter how sweet a person is, fate can still screw you over.
Now she’s jaded, half of her torn away and the remainder
flesh and bones. In her grief, all Scarlet wants to do is to rebel against the
life that betrayed her and her roommate provides the perfect lure…
Scarlet awakens when she enters the New York City
underground, where vice and fortunes thrive. Hustling, trickery and savagery
allow her to discover her true self—-her forgotten soul reemerging. She just
can’t promise it’ll come back pure.
It won’t matter that there is a shadow in her periphery.
Theo Saxon thinks he can save Scarlet from a world she craves and protect her
from the very elements he’s spawned from. But it’s through his unwitting
instruction that Scarlet will become a part of his league and find the danger he
wants so badly to keep to himself.
Scarlet thinks the stakes are within her control. But
she won’t just be betting her heart on Theo and his seductive sins. She will
wager her life.
READ THE FIRST
CHAPTER:
Something was going to come out of the shadows and shank
me.
I clung to the wrought iron fence, staying put despite
Verily’s tugs on my arm. Our vulnerable bodies could be seen in every direction
on the deserted street. Cars lined the road, but they stood silent, their
windows shining onyx pits. Columns of brownstone buildings, bricked into two
long, looming lines on either side, blocked the moon. Their rows of windows
were as black as the cars below.
Blares of horns ricocheted through our residential
street, but their echoes were faint. All signs of life were too far away to
save me.
But I agreed to this. I wanted this.
“Relax, Scarlet. I promise it’s safe,” Verily said to
me.
Maybe no knife was needed. All the monsters in the dark
had to do was bend me over this waist-high fence and spear my abdomen with one
of the fleur-de-lis arrowheads, the skirt of my naughty maid’s uniform
flouncing in the wind and ruffling around my ass, drawing the eye of anyone who
lingered.
And come on, everyone would linger.
A form pushed past us and I tensed, choking on the
scream that wanted to rip out of my throat.
The cause of my stroke, a man, paused in his descension
into Hell—I mean, at the second step leading down to the entrance of a
brownstone. “Hey, Vare. New girl?”
Verily dug her fingers into my arm, since I clearly
wasn’t prying my death grip off the fence. “Yep. She’s cute, right?”
He didn’t respond.
I was pretty sure I was gaping at him. Not because of
his looks—I couldn’t see him in the surrounding darkness, just an edging of
hair and a framing of shoulders. It was more because I couldn’t stop thinking
about the newspapers headlining my DEATH BY FENCE AND FETISH! IMPISH MAID
CLEANS OUT HER OWN INSIDES!
And it was probably written all over my face.
“She up to it?” he asked.
Verily smacked my shoulder. The fence rattled underneath
my grip. “Wait’ll you see her in action.”
One of his shoulders lifted up in a shrug. I found
myself wanting to hear his voice again, soft like velvet lined his
throat.
He didn’t disappoint. “No reason to be
scared.”
“That’s what I keep telling her,” Verily said. She
wrapped a hand around my bicep and heaved. She was trying to wrench me free.
Damn if I would let her. “I’m extremely convincing,” she said through her
teeth.
“Mm.”
He stood with fluidity, a primal ease. He shifted,
lifting his chin in a way that accentuated his angular jawline but not much
else.
“Anyone gives you trouble, you let me know. They may
like dressing you up, but we don’t tolerate any more than that,” he
said.
“Okay,” I replied. Finally.
He sounded so adamant and sure. I wondered if all it
took in my life was for a man to sound like Batman.
He nodded once before descending the rest of the way.
His walk was exactly as I knew it would be. Like a lion pacing the edges of his
cage.
“Is he the bouncer?” I whispered into the curled crimson
tendrils around Verily’s ear.
“Nope,” she said. After one particularly unfair yank,
she pried one of my hands off the iron. “But if he’s here, it means we’re late,
so come. On.”
“Ow! Verily!” Another twist and pull and she had my
other arm, using my sudden imbalance to drag me down the stairs. “Seriously!
Ow!”
She stopped at the door and pressed a hand to my chest,
my boobs so hiked up they caressed the bottom of her palm. “Rules. Tell
me.”
“W—” I gripped her extended arm for balance. “What’s our
safe word? I mean my safe word, to let you know when I’ve gone Code
Red.”
Sighing, she dropped her arm. “Have I dragged you here
against your will?”
I pouted. “No.”
“Do you need the money?”
“Yes.”
“Would I bring you somewhere unsafe?”
I glanced down at my misbehaving maid outfit, then back
up at the entrance where a lithe, vulturine and kind of scary man just decided
to stop in and hang out for a while.
I countered with, “Do you possess a danger meter I’m not
aware of? A point at which you know we must escape?”
She shook her head. “Honestly, Scar.”
“Because I think you’re on the fritz.”
“You said you needed something,” she said, softer now.
“Something to make you feel like you could live again.”
I swallowed. “You told me you were just a waitress.”
“You’re falling, Scarlet. I can’t watch it anymore. And
so, I’m giving you this.”
A shuffling sound came from drums of trash behind her.
Noises sounding suspiciously like a critter. “You think I need saving and you
brought me to a rat-hole?”
“I don’t think you need to be rescued,” she said. “I
think you need an awakening.”
That could’ve been a warning or a promise. She went on.
“I know you. And I think this is what you need. But you have to promise,
promise, not to tell anyone.”
I needed excitement, yes. A pounding pulse, a taste of
uncertainty, a reason. I needed life.
But this. Here we were, standing on a dirty side street
in the Lower East Side, dressed like a rich man’s blow up doll.
“I don’t…” I said.
“Do you trust me?”
Verily’s green eyes, illuminated by the weak golden
light, seemed to shine. She stopped my fidgeting hands by pulling them closer
to her.
“Yes,” I answered. Of course. She was the one thing that
kept me in the present.
“Good. So trust that this will be fine. And God forbid,
that maybe you’ll have fun.”
Grumbling, I said, “Yesterday you were all over me about
professional responsibility, and now here we are…”
Instead of responding, she propelled me forward with
another mutant-strength twist of her toothpick arms. Verily opened the front
door and I toddled after her, mumbling threats involving her hair
bleach.
She halted at a second door, arching a brow at me. “Just
be thankful I’m not inducting you on lingerie night,” she said, and hip-bumped
it open.
After one last pull, I stumbled into my new society of
smoke, money and men.
Author Bio:
Ketley Allison began her creative career by writing
books as birthday presents for her friends (with her friend as the main
character and opposite a super sexy lead, of course) before ending it in order
to walk down a path she thought she was supposed to follow.
The writing bug never left her—and, in fact, would often
bleed into the official papers she was supposed to write—so now Ketley’s
putting down her suit and finally following her dream. While her friends are no
longer the stars of her books, she still throws in bits and pieces of them into
each and every one of her characters.
As a result, her books tend to focus a lot on
friendships as well as love, because let’s be honest, friends are what really
get you through—especially when your epic love turns into epic
heartbreak.
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