Iron Queen (Iron Palace Book 3) Read online

  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

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  IRON QUEEN

  Book 3

  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

  https://twitter.com/RomancingLisa

  Chapter 1

  Sunset.

  Maui.

  Kaanapali Beach.

  Christmas with Kellan.

  Warm water and gentle waves lap at our feet. We stand quietly together. The sand is warm and soft.

  The sky is ablaze with orange and pink light, painting the big, puffy white clouds. Kaanapali Beach is so gorgeous it’s otherworldly.

  “This is my idea of Christmas,” Kellan says.

  “Mine, too.”

  He’s standing behind me, with his arms around me, holding me close.

  Everything is so perfect, I’m not sure if I want to make love right here on the sand, or take a nap on it.

  “I could spend every Christmas here,” Kellan says.

  “Me, too.”

  “I want to spend every Christmas with you.”

  “I want to spend every Christmas with you, too.”

  Kellan gets down on one knee.

  “Claire, the first time I saw you was the day you walked into my gym. Our eyes met and I felt something I’ve never felt before. I was drawn to you. That afternoon, I was kicking myself because I’d let you get away. But that night, when I was doing my ab work and still kicking myself, I looked up and saw a beautiful woman doing cardio. I decided to go say hello to try and cheer myself up because I’d totally wimped out earlier that day. And that was when I realized it was you. You had come back. And I knew it was a sign. It was a sign that you and I were meant to be. I’ve wanted you by my side every day since then, and I want to be with you always. I love you more than I ever thought I could love another person. And when we’re together, I’m happier than I’ve ever been in my entire life. And I know, deep in my soul, that I want to spend the rest of my life with you. So…”

  Kellan holds out a square box made of shiny, polished wood.

  He opens it.

  Inside is the most beautiful ring I’ve ever seen.

  “…Claire Valentine, will you marry me?”

  Chapter 2

  THE LIGHT OF the beautiful orange sun shimmers in Kellan’s wondrous blue eyes.

  And on the ring.

  Kellan’s perfect, poetic words echo in my ears and fill my heart so full they brings tears to my eyes.

  “Yes.”

  I don’t have to think or ponder or debate or wonder.

  I know.

  Everything he said is true and I feel the same. I want to be with him forever.

  “Yes, Kellan, I would love to marry you.”

  Kellan takes the ring from the box and slides it onto my finger.

  It fits perfectly.

  It’s huge.

  Like… wow. It’s even bigger and more amazing and beautiful and perfect once it’s on my finger.

  Kellan jumps up and gathers me in his arms, sweeping me off my feet in every sense of the word.

  THAT NIGHT, KELLAN and I make love for hours and hours and hours.

  We can’t seem to stop kissing.

  We kiss nonstop.

  We kiss during dinner, sitting side by side in an amazing seafood restaurant.

  We kiss during dessert.

  And we kiss a million times more back in our suite overlooking the ocean and while we shower together and listen to music and make love on the bathroom counter and in the shower and on the bed and on the sofa and on the middle barstool in the kitchen and on the coffee table. We even turn off all the lights and stand on the shadowy lanai, naked. It’s exhilarating. I’ve never been naked in public like this before. I don’t think anyone can see us. Kellan spreads his legs and gets down low as he hooks one hand under my knee, curling my leg around his butt so we can make love standing up, with the warm ocean breeze buffeting our bare skin.

  I’m utterly and wholly lost in the throes of a mind-altering, blackout-caliber orgasm that has taken my voice away when Kellan grunts and I feel him exploding inside me.

  What do you give a woman to make her want to have sex?

  An engagement ring.

  What do you give a woman to make her stop wanting to have sex?

  Wedding cake.

  Or so they say. ‘They’ being the jaded assholes who make up stuff like that.

  The first one, however, is true.

  Because my body is clamped down so fiercely upon Kellan that I can feel every pulsation as it happens.

  Just when I think our lovemaking can’t get any better, that I’ve had the best orgasm I’m capable of having, we find a way. It does get better. I come harder than I’ve ever come in my entire life. As does Kellan, for he frequently tells me how powerful was his climax, so much so that he thought he was going to pass out, or that his penis is sore the next day.

  Being with him, in every way, is more fun than I’ve ever had.

  I AWAKEN THE next morning an engaged woman.

  I can scarcely believe it.

  It will take time to sink in.

  For certain.

  KELLAN AND I go downstairs for breakfast. We enjoy humongous spinach omelets with tomatoes and cheese and more fresh fruit than I’ve ever seen. And the coffee is quite possibly the best I’ve ever had anywhere. It’s fresh, organic, locally grown real Kona coffee. Kellan and I buy three bags of coffee beans to take home with us.

  NEW YEAR’S EVE we go to a luau.

  A bunch of people recognize us and, during the entertainment, between the hula girls and the fire twirlers, they bring us up on stage to say hello. Kellan announces that we’ve just gotten engaged. I hold up my hand for everyone to see. Everyone applauds and whistles. It brings tears to my eyes.

  Back in our hotel room, we make love and it’s on another level. I didn’t know we had another level, not after what we did in our hotel room in Fort Bragg, and on the kitchen island back home, and after what we did last night.

  But the reality that we’re engaged to be married has begun to set in and has become even more real for us. The wonderful anxiety of the moment has passed, we’ve announced it on stage to several hundred people, and that brought it home. For both of us.

  It�
�s four o’clock in the morning by the time we collapse. We dragged the mattress off the bed and out onto the lanai, where we arranged the patio furniture so no one could see us. The moon is out and it’s wonderful to make love in the moonlight.

  My lips hurt from all the kissing.

  Kellan came three times, inside me, in my mouth, on my breasts… I’m covered. I lost track of how many orgasms I had. Kellan says eight. I lost track after number four, which was one of the best orgasms of my life. Kellan was massaging my clitoris while he made love to me, and the perfect combination of stimulation made me come so hard my abs cramped up.

  Plus, not to be crass, but if you’ve never experienced the sight of moonlight on engorged, moist genitalia, you’re letting one of the finest things in life pass you by.

  It’s some serious, next-level bucket list type of stuff. (Even though I hate the very notion of such a list because it’s better to focus on life.)

  Kellan and I can’t stop staring into one another’s eyes, even now, lying here on the mattress in the moonlight…. I feel like we’re one.

  “I love you,” I whisper against his lips.

  “I love you,” Kellan replies.

  And it’s true.

  WHEN I FIRST met Kellan Kearns, I never would have guessed what was in store for me. For us.

  I think about that day often: the first day I saw him at Iron Palace. There were about a million people waiting in line to get into the gym. The parking lot was a zoo. I had to park way over by the Mexican restaurant that has since gone out of business.

  As I walked in the front door and had the front desk guy scan my ID card, I saw him. He had a table and a backdrop set up and people were buying supplements and photographs and posters and were clamoring, albeit patiently, for a selfie with him.

  I had no idea he is as well-known and as successful as he is. Or that the gym I was in and had been a dues-paying member of for over a year is his gym. He literally was, and still is, the owner.

  Kellan and I locked eyes while I was doing cardio and he was posing for selfies.

  I thought he was quite possibly the most gorgeous human being I’d ever laid eyes on in real life. Super heroes and movie stars and people on TV don’t count.

  Except, perhaps, for Ryan Reynolds in Green Lantern (I adore a man in a mask fighting evil; c.f. Carey Elwes as the Great Dread Pirate Roberts)

  Or, perhaps, Ryan Gosling in The Notebook (I also adore a man kissing his beloved in the rain and being so into it that he doesn’t mind being rained on).

  Or, perhaps, Chris Hemsworth in the Vacation movie remake (if you’ve seen it, you know why; if you haven’t, watch it; I wonder if Denise has seen it).

  It occurs to me that Ryan Reynolds wore a mask as both Green Lantern and Deadpool; he’s gotten to play two different super heroes; so, is he the only one?

  But I digress.

  We were talking about Kellan, and about how he and I met.

  I left the gym, Iron Palace, went home, ate too much food, felt like utter unholy crap, and did something I had never done before, something which would change my life forever: I went to the gym twice in one day.

  Eating an entire package of microwaved bacon followed by a pint of Ben & Jerry’s will do that to (for?) you.

  It was actually Denise’s idea so perhaps I have her to thank.

  When I arrived at Iron Palace, the place was a ghost town. Quite a change from that afternoon.

  I did my usual cardio, which is what I always did before I met Kellan, because I didn’t know how to use any of the machines and was too timid to learn. I was the only one there, except for a guy in a hoodie doing abs by himself.

  The next thing I knew, hoodie guy was on the treadmill next to mine, chatting me up.

  It was Kellan. Gorgeous hot guy from earlier.

  I was kind of pretty much totally floored by how gorgeous he was.

  And his eyes! Kellan has the most devastating blue eyes I’ve ever seen.

  And his body… holy cannoli. I’ve never personally known or been up close to a real bodybuilder. But being up close to Kellan was like glimpsing physical perfection; art come to life, borne in the flesh. He wasn’t all gross and veiny and weird looking. He was…hot. And perfect.

  He chatted me up and invited me to come do chest with him. So I did.

  The next night, we trained together again and went out to eat for a post-workout meal.

  Fast forward five months, and here we are on an airplane, sitting in First Class. Kellan is asleep beside me, worn out from all the hot sex we’ve been having the past week.

  He holds my hand as he sleeps. On my finger is the diamond ring he gave me when he proposed on the beach at sunset and I said yes.

  We’re flying home now, back to reality, oops there goes gravity, and I have no idea what’s going to happen, what people are going to say, what Denise will say, what my parents or my sister Beth will say.

  I’m very much looking forward to sharing the news with Sheila and Rami and Aaron and Heather and everyone at the production company in Los Angeles. They’re the ones behind the forthcoming movie Kellan and I may, or may not (let’s be realistic) be cast in. Three major studios have joined forces to finance the movie, which is billed as the first billion-dollar-movie. How the great good frick Kellan and I got involved in it is still a whirlwind. All I know is that he’s been friends with Sheila and Aaron and Rami for quite a few years, and he’s providing them personal training sessions to get in shape, which he does via Skype, very clever.

  I’m also looking forward to showing the ring to Calista Roth, my competition. Calista used to be a fellow fat girl who was cast in a trio of stoner comedies (which went on to make a buttload of money). But then she lost half her bodyweight, got crazy insane fit, and was cast in a video game adaptation action movie in which she pretty much ran around in a bikini for ninety minutes, cementing her place in the teenaged boy Hall of Masturbatory Fame. I’m not a boy or a lesbian but when I saw her in the movie, she kinda turned me on. The fact that she and I are now competing for the female lead in the biggest, most expensive movie ever made is thus quite trippy.

  But then the past five months with Kellan have been a trip, both literally and figuratively. We’ve taken several actual trips.

  I went with him to Hollywood for the Hollywood Classic Bodybuilding Expo, where I helped him work his booth and watched him guest pose on stage in front of 5000 screaming fans.

  I went with him to Newport Beach and helped him buy his dream car, a Lamborghini Aventador which he named The Mister Beaumont.

  We’ve visited Hollywood and the Paramount Pictures studio lot for production meetings.

  Kellan surprised me with a new car, a little red Pontiac Solstice convertible which I absolutely adore, especially after my best friend-slash-old college roommate-turned-law-partner (the aforementioned Denise) spent $118,000 on a brand new BMW X6-M to celebrate being made partner in her firm. The juicy part is she kinda wishes she’d gotten a little convertible like mine.

  The even juicier part is she kinda wishes she’d gotten a studly sex-god boyfriend like mine. She’s made a few passes at Kellan, all of which he’s rejected outright. Thank God he’s so honest and upstanding because he could have any woman he wants. All he’d have to do is smile and hand them his phone number and they’d be swallowing his gravy within the hour.

  I know this because that’s how I felt when I first met him.

  That’s pretty much how I feel when I’m around him, when he smiles at me, when he holds my hand, like he is now. And when he tells me he loves me.

  I only wish my parents felt the same way. Um, well, not exactly. That’s weird and creepy and gross, especially for my dad.

  But it would be nice if they would at least give Kellan a chance, if they would spend some time with him in order to get to know him so they could see all the wonderful and amazing things I see. Then maybe they wouldn’t be so effing judgmental. They’d see that th
eir little Claire Bear is in good hands.

  Most importantly, they’d see that I’m happy.

  Isn’t that what matters?

  It’s my life.

  I’m the one who went with Kellan to San Diego and stayed at the Del Coronado hotel and worked out on the beach late one night with a bunch of Navy SEALs. Their video of the workout went viral and now everyone knows me by the Iron Born tee shirt I was wearing that night. I’ve been an aspiring author for many years, most of my life, really, but more people know me online and in social media as Kellan Kearns’s girlfriend, the one who’s up against Calista “Legs” Roth for the movie role; Calista Roth, the girl who wore a bikini made out of bacon for a Carl’s Junior commercial.

  Being with Kellan has been nothing but beneficial. My newfound notoriety got me a meeting with a real New York agent in Manhattan. He turned out to be sort of a douchebag because he was as interested in getting into my pants as he was in my writing. His name is Nathan Wentworth, which sounds uppity and ridiculous so Kellan calls him Hamburger Wellington.

  Being with Kellan also got me out of my quasi-crappy catering job I had slowly come to loathe. I especially loathed the crappy men’s work pants I’d had to buy at Walmart because they didn’t have any black pants in the women’s department that fit me. The annoying white tuxedo shirt and bowtie didn’t help. So I was scared but ultimately relieved when I forgot to show up for a shift and Nancy called to fire me because she knew I was too nice to quit. She was cool about it, though. She said to go after my fledgling potential-acting career and not to spend the rest of my life carrying trays at banquets and weddings.

  As I doze on the airplane during our flight back to California, I’m amazed by how much has transpired since that fateful Sunday evening on which I met Kellan Kearns.

  Especially by the fact that we’re in love.

  I’ve never really been in love. At least, nothing like this. Being this head-over-heels crazy for someone is entirely new for me.

  It’s exciting.

  Terrifying if I let myself think about it too long, but also the most wonderful and exhilarating thing that’s ever happened to me.

  And we’re just getting started.

  I replay Kellan’s proposal in my mind, seeing the sunset and the ocean and him down on one knee… the embodiment of romance.

  And the sex.

  Lord have mercy!