Billionaire's Protest: A Complete Romance Series Read online

  Billionaire’s Protest

  Copyright © 2017 by Kira Blakely.

  All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  First Edition: February 2017

  Want a free book? Kira Blakely is giving away a free copy of Billionaire In The Making which is the prequel to her best-selling series Billionaire Bad Boys (no strings attached). This book is exclusive to her free VIP readers group. Click the button below to receive your free copy of Billionaire In The Making today.

  Table of Contents

  Billionaire’s Protest

  Billionaire’s Claim

  Billionaire’s Promise

  Extras

  Billionaire Boss

  Exclusive–Hot in Vegas

  Sample of Caught Off Guard

  Extended Epilogue-Billionaire’s Protest

  About the Author

  Love Letter to You

  WOW! I don’t even know where to begin. SMOOCH, SMOOCH, SMOOCH! My last book was so successful and I have YOU to thank. I’m incredibly grateful. My goal is to create amazing romance stories for my readers and to convert you into a raving KIRALITE.

  To do that, I have included book 1 from my best-selling series, Billionaire Bad Boys. Obviously, I want to seduce you into buying the whole series, smiley face!

  NEW EXCLUSIVE. I’m also including an exclusive, yet to be released, copy of Hot In Vegas! Read it here, first. It’s book 1 from my upcoming Vegas Bad Boys Series. It’s a full length stand alone with a HEA!

  EXTENDED EPILOGUE. I’m also including an extended epilogue for Billionaire’s Protest at the end of this book.

  All of this writing will provide you hours of enjoyment. So, kick the family out, maybe keep the cat around (or dog), and grab your favorite glass of wine. Let’s get this party started!

  “Love doesn’t make the world go round. Love is what makes the ride worth while.”

  Franklin P Jones

  Casper

  I wasn’t looking for anything when the sassy redhead, Lily Fitz, led a protest against my company. I’m not used to women resisting me. Most women aim to impress me. Not Lily. And now, I can’t resist her. I want her. I need her. But how do you tame a wild animal? So, I did the only thing I could. I had her arrested.

  Chapter 1

  I held my protest sign as high up as I could, but it obviously wasn’t high enough. My friend Marla would have been quick to point out that was because of my slight height, which she, being my best friend, has never allowed me to live down. I clutched the edges of the neon poster board with my hands and held it over my head, aware that the glitter and pink letters didn’t exactly look like they belonged to someone who was twenty-eight.

  “You stand tall despite your proximity to the ground, Lily,” Marla would have said encouragingly.

  Zoe, Marla’s six-year-old, had helped me make the sign the previous night. She had turned her nose up when I showed her my usual white poster board and black permanent markers. That was my idea for entertainment for a babysitting night. She had brought her own craft kit instead, and what Zoe wants, Zoe gets.

  So, it was neon paper, pink letters, glitter glue, and some cartoon cutouts of birds. I had to concede though, it did stand out from the rest of the crowd. Well, the neon sign and the hand-made conch shell earrings. And not to forget, the bulging purple bag hanging across my body, which I had stuffed with extra art supplies and the tons of “emergency” things that I always carried with me. Yeah, I definitely stood out.

  These wanderers are lost! was my slogan, with the cartoon birds lining the edges of the protest sign. If I could get noticed, at least I would get my point across.

  Now I held the sign up over my head and screamed again, “These wanderers are lost. Don’t build the wind farm!”

  I was yelling at the top of my lungs, my voice drowned out by other voices around me. Nothing was going to deter me from standing there; something needed to be done. Argent Energy Systems. It’s more like Argent Enemy Systems. I smirked to myself when I stopped for a moment to catch my breath. We were going to show them. We were going to make sure they heard our voices and knew that we weren’t going to forget about our feathered friends. These bastards were going to hear us and know that we weren’t going to just sit back and watch while the wind farm destroyed the habitat of the Green Gleneagles.

  “Stop killing Mother Nature!” a woman beside me yelled, and then turned to me with a sour face and a crude look in her eyes. “I’ve been yelling my throat hoarse, and these fuckers have been cooped up in their offices all day.” She leaned in toward me to make herself heard.

  I rolled my eyes in disgust and started yelling again, waving the sign over my head to stress my point.

  The protesters had been barricaded by rope so we didn’t block the path between the front entrance of the Argent office building and the parking lot. There were a few cameras covering the protest on the other side, with their lenses turned toward us, just waiting and hoping for the moment when our peaceful protest erupted into violence. I could picture it as a headline in the newspapers the next day: Tree-hugging loonies kick a white-collar human in the balls.

  I rolled my eyes again at the scavenging cameras and screamed my slogan aloud.

  I had counted ten uniformed policemen already, standing with their arms crossed over their chests. They formed a human wall on the other side of the barricading rope and were glaring us down. I caught the gaze of one of them, who happened to turn his eyes on me.

  “Don’t build the wind farm, sir,” I called out to him from my post, shoving some of my auburn curls behind my ears.

  The policeman looked away, almost like he was embarrassed, although he knew as well as I did that my shouts weren’t necessarily meant for him. I was just trying to make myself heard.

  “Sir. Sir. Sir! Don’t build the wind farm,” I yelled at him, pushing my way through some of the other protesters. I was aware of stepping on other people’s toes as I made my way to the front of the rope, but this wasn’t the time to apologize. The lives of endangered birds were at stake, and the clock was ticking.

  “Do you know that only 160 Green Gleneagles are in existence today?” I screamed at him now that I was closer.

  I’m still not sure why I decided to lecture a policeman. In that moment, this cross-faced policeman was the only person I could vent my rage at. He was still looking away from me, pretending that he couldn’t hear what I was saying.

  “The species will die out if we build over their habitat,” I yelled at him, now very close to his face. I could feel the coarseness of the rope digging into the top of my belly, but I pressed myself against it to get as close to the cop’s face as I could. He was much taller than me, and he loomed over me with a look of disgust on his face. What a piece of unthinking meat.

  I propped myself up on my toes, with the sign still held over my head, just so I could reach him better.

  “Don’t you feel guilty about killing an entire species of birds? They will have nowhere to live,” I screamed.

  “Back down, Miss.”

  I had finally extracted a reaction, and that made me feel victorious. I held my position, still on my tiptoes.

  He whipped his head around to l
ook at me directly. He looked like one of those hardened cops who’d seen a couple of years as an undercover agent in the mafia. Severe scars marred his face, and his lips were set in a firm, thin line. He was at least fifty years old and had no time for some students protesting for the life of birds. I knew his type; I was well acquainted with them, and I detested him just as much as he detested me.

  “Back down, Miss. I won’t tell you again,” he said, while I glared into his eyes. He must have seen my nostrils flaring and the way my cheeks reddened with rage.

  Marla would have placed a hand on my shoulder and asked me to back off, but I was holding my ground.

  “Spill blood now if you have to, Officer. You’re spilling the blood of those birds anyway,” I snarled at him.

  To my absolute shock, the man turned to one of his colleagues and laughed like I’d made some kind of joke.

  I gritted my teeth and felt my breath catch in my throat from the anger coursing through my veins.

  I backed down. Not because he asked me to, but because my toes were giving way, and I couldn’t hold that position for much longer. I clenched my jaw at him and yelled out my slogan at the top of my lungs for good measure. I knew what these guys were doing. They were hoping for a violent reaction from us. Well, they weren’t going to get it from me. Not from me. I was going to take it out on my punching bag later, but I wasn’t going to be violent now.

  A group of employees emerged from the office building right then, and all protest signs and voices turned to them immediately. The people behind the cameras anticipated some action and turned their lenses, swinging from us to the employees.

  It was unclear whether these people were just walking to their cars, or if they were about to make some kind of official comment on behalf of their company. Either way, I was quick to notice their sharp suits, polished shoes and clean-shaven jaws. They looked at their watches and each other, like they had important things to do, like save the world. Oh, the irony!

  They walked as an entourage, slowly and silently, entirely ignoring the raging voices and abuses being hurled at them for what their company was in the process of doing.

  Of course, I was incensed. Just seeing their smug corporate faces was enough to make me lash out, and I screamed as loud as I could. At one point, I was even jumping, holding my sign up, just so that they might see it over the heads of the other protestors who engulfed me on all sides. Then the pushing began.

  My small frame didn’t allow me to see clearly where the shoving was coming from. My heart raced, because I knew something was going on. Someone had been hit, maced, or was being arrested. All I knew was that people were pushing against me. Elbows were being thrust in my direction, until one caught my face with a crackling thunder that sent me rolling backward.

  I was falling back, my sign was ripping in slow motion, and I no longer had control over my body.

  Chapter 2

  My head hit the concrete. I knew that because when I blinked my eyes open, a dull ache pounded at the back of my skull. For a few moments, I had no idea where I was or what I was doing there. I was helpless as a five-year old who had just fallen off her bike and scratched her knees. I stopped myself in time from calling out, “Mommy?”

  The noises around me were loud, and now the sounds were different. They weren’t simply rage-filled shouts of protest. A skirmish broke out around me, but I couldn’t quite catch what anyone was saying.

  I was on the ground, curled up in a fetal position with hazy vision that was only now beginning to clear. I had no idea what had happened until I felt blood trickling down my nose. Oh, yeah, someone had elbowed me directly in the face. Man down. Man down. The words rang in my head, but nobody was really paying attention to the girl on the ground. More punches were being thrown around, and I wasn’t sure who was fighting whom.

  The fog cleared as my thoughts pieced together, and I could finally see what was happening. A man clutched some other man by the throat and his fist was bunched up, poised for another punch.

  The hit I took must have disconnected some wires in my head, because the man holding the other one by the neck looked unrealistically gorgeous to me.

  His hair was thick, neatly styled waves of sandy blond, like he was red-carpet ready, on his way to attend the opening of a film. His profile was visible to me, his nose sharp to match his chiseled jaw. His lips were thin but luscious, like they were made of some sort of velvet.

  He loomed over me, holding the other man back by his neck, the muscles in his arms bulging. The spotlessly white t-shirt he wore clung to his broad chest. His shoulders were wide and strong, and his torso narrowed to where his jeans clinched loosely at his waist. What a beautiful man. I smiled, reminding myself that I was probably concussed and hallucinating.

  The other man swung at him, and this Greek god ducked and avoided the thrust, punching him on his side instead. If I could, I would have cheered. What was even going on?

  My body was reacting physically to this man’s presence, and he hadn’t even looked at me yet. He probably didn’t even know I was lying there on the ground staring up at him, googly-eyed.

  His jaw was clenched tight as he glared and fought off the man. The other man’s attempt at a punch to his jaw only met with this Greek god ducking and taking him out with a crashing blow to the stomach. The other man flailed his arms, but the hunk twisted his arm, pinning it to his back. Someone else joined the fight and he fought this one off, too, with one quick sucker punch that made my gut soar.

  I realized suddenly that it was no time to be aroused by a man. I was lying on the ground, possibly badly injured, in the middle of picketing for the habitat of an endangered bird species. But I couldn’t help but gawk at this man before me. He sent electric waves down my spine, and I couldn’t stop looking at him. Where did they manufacture the likes of him? And what was he doing at an environmental protest?

  I tried to straighten myself up, hauling my body up using my elbows.

  “Just stay down!” he said to me, and I collapsed back on the ground.

  What the actual…?! Did he just turn to me and ask me to stay down? Or was I imagining that, too? He knew I existed. He knew where I was. Did he know that I had been staring at him, too? This was all too unreal for me. What was going on?

  “You punched a girl, you idiot!” he roared.

  His voice was like an elixir, smooth and deep. He could be the voiceover for a documentary on kitchen sinks, and I’d watch it, just to hear him speak. Surprisingly, his tone of voice didn’t match his actions. Even though he was fending off punches and teaching bad guys a lesson right in front of my eyes, he sounded calm and professional.

  Goose bumps rose on my flesh as I stared at him. My mouth literally just fell open. What was happening to me? How was I slowly melting there, just looking at a stranger? And why was he barking out orders to me while fighting people?

  “Are you okay?” He turned to me again before shoving someone else out of his way, and I got my first real good look at him. Oh, my God! His face was perfection; nature had achieved the perfect symmetry of features. He had cool blue eyes, or they could have been gray, with perfect eyebrows. His cheekbones were high to match his nose and jaw, and his neck was long and muscular.

  My eyes slowly charted the rest of his body. A distinct bulge in his jeans did the trick, and my nipples hardened. This couldn’t actually be happening! I suddenly wanted to cry out, and he shook his head.

  “Don’t move, Miss!” he said, and turned to some other guy he was trying to hold back.

  “Stop pushing, asshole. There’s a lady on the ground,” he yelled in someone’s face. Oh, I finally realized what was going on. He wasn’t just sucker punching people left, right, and center. He was trying to push the crowd back from around me, to make some space, and to make sure that I didn’t get trampled on by the throngs of protestors.

  Every time he turned to say something to me, every time I heard his voice, I felt myself break a little. Nobody had ever had this magic
al, physical reaction on me before. This was unheard of. I still couldn’t be sure if I was imagining it or if it was real. Was he really that attractive? I could almost taste his breath in my mouth. I imagined an intense, luxurious chocolate flavor to match his refined good looks.

  I suddenly felt silly. This man was trying to do a good deed. As if protesting the wind farm wasn’t enough, he was also trying to keep a fellow protestor out of harm’s way. And here I was fantasizing about how his tongue would taste in my mouth and the bulge in his pants.

  I tried to straighten myself up again, this time actually managing to sit up. My head felt instantly dizzy.

  “Just lie back down, Miss,” he said, but I was trying not to look at him, so that I wasn’t distracted from my mission. I had to get back up and start protesting again. My fall should have been only a small impediment in my path, and this guy was just making a big deal out of nothing.

  “I’m fine,” I mumbled and rubbed the back of my arm over my face. I was still bleeding from my nose. The ache at the back of my skull wasn’t dull anymore, more like someone pounding my head with a sledgehammer. I had to get back up, and I managed to wobble upright, barely standing on shaky legs.

  “You’re going to be hurt again if I don’t keep this crowd back,” he said as I took an unsteady step toward him.

  “Miss!” he shouted, starting to lose his calm.

  People were shouting and screaming around me, pushing against my body. I was being engulfed again, and my breath constricted. I could barely move through the thrust and tug of the crowd. The handsome Samaritan probably couldn’t single-handedly keep the crowd away from me anymore. My eyelids were closing. I couldn’t breathe.

  “Come here!” he said, his hand tightly gripping one of my arms. He was pulling me in a different direction from the rest of the crowd. Just the touch of his fingers on my skin made my eyes yank open. It was like I had never been touched before, like he had breathed life into my soul. He was taking me somewhere, and I didn’t have the energy or will to protest.