Iron Princess (Iron Palace Book 2) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Copyright © 2017 Lisa Ferrari.

  Contact

  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

  IRON PRINCESS

  Book 2

  of

  The IRON PALACE Series

  Lisa Ferrari

  Copyright © 2017 Lisa Ferrari.

  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.

  Published in the United States of America

  Contact

  Lisa Ferrari

  [email protected]

  http://lisaferrariromance.wixsite.com/books

  Chapter 1

  KELLAN AND I finally arrive home, and what a magical trip it was!

  Kellan parks the Mister Beaumont in the garage. It’s a three-car garage and he has four cars. At present, the white Mercedes convertible is parked in the driveway; the black Stingray, the green Huracan, and the new Azzuro Thetis icy-blue Lamborghini Aventador (aka the Mister Beaumont) are in the garage. I open the door on the Aventador and marvel as always at how it scissors open. It’s nothing like the regular boring door on my little silver Toyota Corolla, which has started making even weirder noises.

  We go inside and I am reminded immediately how much I love Kellan’s house.

  After our break-up, which was entirely my fault, of course, I feared I’d never again be here.

  But now that we’ve made up, I am here.

  With Kellan.

  Together.

  It’s a little Tuscan-style house with four or five bedrooms, I don’t remember which. He has his home office here where he manages his impressive business empire. I marvel at how one person is able to do so much.

  The pool looks inviting as Kellan opens the glass doors, sliding them all the way back to create a breezeway from the great room out to the patio where the pool and spa are beckoning me.

  We flop down on the sofa together.

  Kellan holds my hand. He loves holding my hand. I find that I love it, too. I’ve held hands with a boy before, as a young girl in school. But with Kellan it’s different. Everything is different with him.

  “What would you like to do for the rest of the day?” he asks.

  “Nothing. This.”

  “This?”

  “This is what I want us to do for the rest of our lives.”

  “Okay.”

  Eventually we drag our ultra-relaxed selves out to the pool for a swim. Four days at a seaside resort, making love multiple times a day, and for hours and hours each night, certainly is relaxing. I feel like I need a break from all the relaxation. A vacation from our vacation. I don’t know exactly what that might be, but Kellan has me stand beside the pool so he can undress me.

  Once I’m fully naked, he takes his sweet time removing his own clothes. The afternoon sun is warm on my skin and feels nice.

  I think I might be getting horny again.

  I’m a bit sore from all the hotel sex. But suddenly I don’t care.

  Standing there admiring Kellan’s perfect, sculpted body adds to the longing. Years and years of competitive bodybuilding have certainly paid off. How exactly I’ve become the beneficiary remains a bit of a mystery to me, although I vow not to venture into the realm of those thoughts just now. I need to lose about 40 to 50 pounds before I am in his league physically, but Kellan and I have a connection that transcends skin-deep-beauty. Ever since that night at Iron Palace when he came up to me as I was doing cardio, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about him. Every time he looks at me I swear my thighs go up in flames, to quote a famous 80s movie.

  And, he has an erection.

  I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him naked and without an erection.

  We both dive into the pool and come up in the deep end, treading water. Kellan grabs the floating pool chair and holds it steady while I climb into it. Kellan tries to share it with me but it threatens to capsize, so he settles for clinging to my legs with his arms. His face is between my knees, a perfect location for me to caress his wet hair and trace my fingertips over his chiseled cheekbones and across his sexy lips.

  But it is his eyes that captivate me most. In the afternoon light, they sparkle and seem even more blue and beautiful and sexy and handsome and smoldering than ever.

  Wow.

  Okay now I am getting horny. “Kellan?”

  He doesn’t answer.

  His eyes are closed and his head is resting on my knee. I think he’s falling asleep.

  “Earth to Mister Kearns.”

  He opens his eyes. “Yes, Miss Valentine?”

  “I’m horny.”

  Kellan laughs, puts his head back, opens his mouth, and laughs. I love that sound. He’s always very serious, very driven, always so focused on his businesses and his online training clients and on maintaining and improving his physique that is a key to his livelihood.

  He fixes me with those cornflower-blue eyes. “Oh really?”

  He’s not laughing now.

  I positively melt.

  I gather up my breasts, one in each hand, and caress them, fondling my nipples.

  Kellan is watching.

  Intently.

  I slide one hand down between my legs. I’m slippery down there. I begin to rub myself.

  “Whatcha doin, Claire?”

  “Touching myself.”

  I can’t quite see into the water to determine if Kellan is getting excited. I hope he is.

  Without another word, he swims to the shallow end, towing the pool chair and me with him. He holds out both hands and helps me out of the chair. Then he spreads a big beach towel on the grey cement deck and lays me down on it. It’s warm from the sun and feels nice underneath me.

  His penis is erect while he does this.

  His large, thick, beautiful penis I adore.

  Kellan eases himself onto me and within moments we’re kissing passionately.

  He enters me very slowly.

  “I’m not going to last very long,” Kellan breathes into my mouth. “Come with me.”

  I don’t know if I’ll be able to in time. But as soon as Kellan stiffens and cries out and his eyes clamp shut, I feel him coming inside me. I love it. I love it so much that I orgasm almost instantly.

  Kellan collapses on the towel beside me.

  I feel his semen dripping out of me. I reach down to catch it. I gather it in my fingers and spread it around my vagina and clitoris.

  Kellan takes my hand in his and we hold on to one another as we come down.

  “So I guess our no-penetration clause is officially over and done with,” he muses, “after this weekend. And just now.”

  “I guess.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “Me too.”

  We agreed to the no-penetration clause a mere two weeks ago, as a way to enjoy being naked together without the pressure of having intercourse.

  But after I let pretty much everyone I know convince me I wasn’t good enough to be with Kellan, I basically broke up with him, forcing him to leave me. That was stupid. So, so
very stupid.

  Our trip to Monterey was a reconciliation.

  And what a trip it was.

  Now that Kellan and I are back together, I won’t make that mistake again. Kellan Kearns is the best thing to ever happen to me. He’s sweet, kind, smart, driven, accomplished, gorgeous, and most of all, he loves me.

  And I love him.

  I marvel at how far we’ve come in such a short time. Saying I Love You on the beach in Monterey was perfect. The sun was setting, the waves were crashing, the foam rushing around our bare feet.

  And the kiss that followed…

  And the sex that followed the kiss…

  Wow wow wow.

  I never knew I could be so happy.

  I knew I would never be happier than when I was cuddled up in bed with Kellan, listening to him breathe peacefully while he slept and the waves crashed upon the shore outside our hotel room window.

  But now I realize I was mistaken once again. Because here we are, back at Kellan’s, naked, lying beside the pool in broad daylight, awash in post-coital bliss. I don’t think we were home even a mere 30 minutes before we were getting it on.

  I marvel at how physical Kellan and I are together. A new broom sweeps clean, but it’s more than that. Couples are always excited to get it on during the beginning of a new relationship. My relationship with Kellan is certainly new. And we’re certainly very physical. We can’t keep our hands off each other. We can’t seem to keep our clothes on.

  But it’s more than that.

  I feel like I’ve known him a long, long time.

  The way we talk and interact, the comfort level we’ve come to share so quickly…. It’s almost eerie.

  And the sex….

  Six months ago, if someone had told me that a Sunday-night bacon-and-ice-cream Game of Thrones binge followed by a guilt-induced trip to the gym would lead to me meeting the man of my dreams, I never would have believed it. And if someone had told me the man of my dreams would be the one and only Kellan The Killer Kearns, renowned bodybuilder, trainer, and well-known fitness professional, I’d have laughed. Me? With a guy like him? No way.

  Yet here we are.

  Naked.

  Covered in sex juices.

  Half asleep beside the pool in his million-dollar home in an exclusive community populated by professional athletes, actors, and other celebrity folk. We’re 450 miles north of Los Angeles, where the entertainment industry resides, but many of its members have vacation homes here. Rightly so; the whole place is gorgeous.

  As is the man beside me.

  I think he’s starting to snore. He has every right to be exhausted considering the manner in which he serviced me for hour after hour the last several nights.

  Even in his sleep, he’s holding my hand.

  Chapter 2

  THAT NIGHT, AFTER a light meal, Kellan and I drive to Iron Palace, his gym, for a workout. Iron Palace is literally his gym; he owns it. Just one of his many successful business ventures. I am in awe of how easily he seems to turn an idea into a successful business, thus reaping loads of profit. Enough profit to pay for his beautiful home and exotic car collection.

  Kellan makes more money in a month than I make all year at my catering job doing weddings and mitzvahs, both bar and bat, and golf tournaments and senior-citizen fashion shows. I heard a rumor that this year’s senior-citizen fashion show was going to be a lingerie show. I may call in sick that day.

  Kellan and I decide to train legs. So we begin with stationary bike in order to work our legs and to get the blood flowing into the big leg muscles.

  The gym is mostly empty tonight.

  Which is fine by me.

  Fewer people staring at us, fewer people grabbing our bench or cable-crossover machine while we grab a sip of water, or asking to work in when we’re in a groove and don’t want to share.

  As we pedal, Kellan says, “One of the secrets to having a really great and totally sexy body is to do a lot of leg work in the gym. The big muscle groups of the legs require a lot of energy to train and will burn a lot of calories as they hypertrophy, which is a four-dollar-word that means to get bigger. And once they’ve grown, or hyptertrophied, they act as anabolic tissue. So the more muscle you have, the more calories your body will use, the more fat your body will burn, and the leaner and fitter and sexier you will become. Legs need high-weight, high-repetition training because they’re composed of Type 1 endurance muscle fibers. See, there are two basic types of muscle: fast twitch and slow twitch. There are actually three, but the other group is also fast twitch. The Type 2 fast-twitch muscles are for quick, explosive movements. The Type 1 slow-twitch muscles are for endurance such as walking. Take, for example, Thanksgiving. What question is always asked at every Thanksgiving dinner?”

  “What are we thankful for?”

  Kellan laughs. “That’s true. What’s the second question?”

  I consider it for a moment. “I don’t know.”

  “Who carves the turkey at your house?” Kellan asks.

  “My mom.”

  “And what does she always ask you?”

  “White meat or dark meat.”

  “Exactly. Have you ever thought about why a turkey has two different kinds of meat?”

  “No, not really.”

  “The white meat is where?”

  “In the breast.”

  “And what does it do?”

  Kellan sees the blank look on my face. He says, “What happens when I do this?” He extends his arms straight out to his sides, parallel to the floor, and then brings them together until his palms are touching in front of him, like a bird flapping its wings. “My chest muscles, the pectoralis, the breast, are adducting my arms. In other words, I’m flapping my wings. A turkey has white breast meat because Type-2, fast-twitch, white muscle fibers are needed to flap its wings hard enough to fly.”

  “So what about the dark meat?”

  “You tell me.”

  “It’s in the legs. The drumstick.”

  “Exactly. It’s there to help the bird walk around all day. It’s Type-1 red muscle fibers. Now, we have all three types of muscle fiber all over our bodies. But there are concentrations in certain areas. And different people have different concentrations throughout their body. A person with more Type-2 fast-twitch fibers will be one of those really fast kids you knew in school who was good at sports and could run really fast, for example. A sprinter. But someone with more Type-1 slow-twitch endurance muscle might make a better long-distance runner. Now, there is research that suggests hypertrophy occurs in fast-twitch muscle more than it does in slow-twitch muscle. But there are bodybuilders who swear by a lifting technique called ‘super slow’ where you lift the weight up and down very, very slowly. See, normally, we explode up in the concentric portion of the movement, the portion when your muscles are contracting, usually in a one-second movement. And we then lower the weight and return to the starting position in the eccentric portion which should be at least two to three times longer than the concentric phase.”

  Concentric, eccentric, fast twitch, slow twitch, phases…. I’m starting to get a bit confused.

  “Don’t worry if you’re feeling a bit confused,” says Kellan, “it’s all a little technical and overwhelming when you first learn about this stuff and hear the terminology.”

  I love the way he’s able to read my mind like this.

  “But at the end of the day,” he says, “even after you’ve studied the anatomy and know everything there is to know about muscle fibers and whatnot, the most important thing is to challenge the body in order to make it adapt. It adapts by growing. Once it has adapted, usually in a couple weeks, you challenge it again, usually in the form of adding weight to your lifts and changing up the workout by doing the exercises in a different order or by doing different exercises altogether. The secret is to use variety and to constantly overload the body in a gentle way. That way, you force it to grow but avoid injury. Avoiding injury and staying healthy are your top priori
ty because even if you train half-assed, at least you’re training; you’re getting better; but if you train stupid by doing too much weight too soon or by not warming up and you hurt yourself, you may not be able to train at all; and that’s worse than a workout done at half or three-quarters intensity. Make sense?”

  “It does.”

  “Good. Ready to train legs?”

  System of a Down is playing on the gym’s music system. My thighs are burning a bit. My quads. It feels good. They feel bigger. “Yes. After your in-depth explanation, how could I not be? Plus, I want an ass so round and so perky and so fine that guys would eat a mile of my poop just to see where it came from.”

  Kellan laughs.

  “But you’re the only one who gets to do that,” I add.

  “Thank you. I’m glad. The only way to get a perfect ass is to squat, lunge, do hip thrusts, do leg press, do lots of cardio to burn the excess body-fat hiding your muscles, and, most importantly, to eat properly.

  “You can’t out-train a poor diet. Remember that.

  “Also, abs are made in the kitchen.

  “Abs are made in the kitchen.

  “Abs are made in the kitchen!”

  Kellan says it three times for emphasis.

  “Sexy butts, too!” I add.

  “Correct. It’s 20% training and 80% nutrition. Don’t ‘diet and exercise’ ”—Kellan makes air quotes—“eat and train. Lots of clean food rich in macronutrients. In your case, high protein, low carb, and low fat. Going low carb and low fat forces your body to burn its own fat stores for energy. The protein is there to provide amino acids to repair micro-tears in the muscle, building the tissue up bigger and stronger than it was before.

  “It can be a slow process,” Kellan says, “but the rate of progress is up to you. The harder you train and the more you adhere to your nutrition plan, the faster the changes will come.