Tamed

TAMED AN ARCADIA NOVEL JACKIE ASHENDEN Welcome to Arcadia…where every dark fantasy can be yours. For a price. Caleb I’m a man without limits, except for one: my best friend’s daughter. Isabel is a tempting little brat, but she’s definitely off limits. She’s too young, and far too innocent, and I’m not the right kind of man for that. My tastes run toward the dark side. When she shows up at my sex club spoiling for a fight, I’m tempted to give her one…and a punishment she won’t soon forget. I’m sure that I can scare her away, but when I tell her to call me daddy, she doesn’t run. She obeys. Isabel I’ve had a crush on my dad’s best friend for years, but who knew he wasn’t just hot? He’s also kinky, and he makes me want to do very bad things. He makes me call him daddy, and I want him to take care of me, and corrupt me in a hundred different ways. But when I start to want more than sex, Caleb is clear: He’ll take care of me, give me boundaries, make me his little girl, but he’ll never fall in love. Unless I can change him. COPYRIGHT Tamed: An Arcadia Novel Copyright ©️2023 Jackie Ashenden All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. CONTENTS 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 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Epilogue About Jackie Also by Jackie Ashenden 1 Isabel “I have to say, Isabel, I’m very disappointed in you.” Caleb’s hard black stare bored steadily into mine. “I expected better.” Caleb Cross. Certified asshole, well known slave driver, CEO of Cross International, a Fortune 500 investment company, with offices around the globe, head office currently based in New York. Also, my boss. Also, one of my dad’s closest friends. I’d known him all my life and when Dad had asked him to give me a position interning at Cross International, I’d been thrilled. Cross was a prestige company and working there was going to give me great experience for when I finally took over as CEO of Fox Tech, my father’s company. Also, Caleb was a brilliant businessman, and even though he was reputed to be somewhat of a tyrant as a boss, he paid his staff extremely well and apparently they all loved him. To say I was pumped to start work there would have been to understate my excitement. Then I actually started work, and it soon became rapidly clear that the rumors of Caleb being a tyrant were absolutely true. He was a tyrant, and the only question that remained was whether he was a prick to all his employees or whether he was just a prick to me. Now I’d been there a whole month, I decided that he was just a prick to me. He sat behind his desk in the massive corner office that overlooked Manhattan like the Death Star overlooking Alderaan, lounging in his CEO-registered black leather chair as if he was Darth Vader himself. And even though I was starting to resent him with all my being, even now I had to acknowledge once again my secret shame. He was hot. He was just. So. Hot. Six foot five and built like a Greek god, he wasn’t typically handsome — his face was too rough-hewn for that — but he was so charismatic you literally couldn’t take your eyes off him. He had this intense energy, something kinetic that set the air humming whenever he was in a room, that made everyone in it sit up and look around to see what the fuss was about. It was him. He was the fuss. With short black hair, straight black brows, and eyes dark as midnight, the man put Lucifer himself to shame. His features were all hard angles and brutal planes, like someone had taken a chisel to him and hadn’t bothered to smooth out the edges. Not that Caleb needed smoothing. He was too much as he was. Anyway, he was gorgeous and I had a crush on him a mile wide and needless to say I was angry about it. After all, he was nearly twenty years older than me, used to look after me when I was a kid, and still saw me that way if I wasn’t much mistaken. And he was also one of Dad’s best friends, so completely off limits. I was also angry because he was still gorgeous even when he was being a complete asshole and calling me out for being late. By two minutes. I glared at him. “Sorry,” I said, not sounding sorry at all. Caleb looked at me with that intense, laser focus, as if he wasn’t just memorizing my face, but memorizing every cell of my being. It was disconcerting, mainly because I found it such a turn on. Mentally I cursed my father for getting me this job and then I cursed myself for taking it. What the hell had I been thinking? I’d heard the rumors of his dictatorial management style, but I’d assumed that since I was a family friend, I wouldn’t have to deal with that bullshit. How wrong I’d been. “I don’t know that you are,” Caleb said. “Because if you were, you’d be on time.” “The subway—” “Don’t give me excuses.” His voice was deep, almost a subsonic rumble. “If you’re late tomorrow, you’re out. Understand me?” I could feel my cheeks heating even as I fumed silently, and the blush didn’t help my temper.