Billionaire Romance: Darque Shadows (A Darque Billionaire Romance Book 3) by Diana Steele

Chapter 1
     
                  Shadows are not just visual shapes coming between light rays and a surface—sometimes shadows are distant memories of the past. Baggage that hasn’t quite been processed, or maybe even the mistakes of a lifetime that never seem to go away. When we move forward, so do the shadows of yesterday, always second guessing whether we’re making the same mistakes again.
                  For Merva Stone, her shadow was a life of missed opportunity, having passed up a college education to raise an unexpected child. She became pregnant at the high school prom, making a scandal in Statesboro, a small town in Georgia.  The child’s father was able to pursue higher education and forget his mistakes; Merva didn’t have the luxury. She raised the baby in embarrassment. When she named her one saving grace in life ‘Arabella,’ she thought it nice that the meaning was, “beautiful, graceful.” However, the other meaning of Arabella, “yielding to prayer,” became a cruel irony. Everybody prayed for Arabella and Merva, who were to be pitied. Their shadows were tall and foreboding. Leaving Georgia behind was the only dream Bella ever had.
                  And yes, Bella was the preferred name when she went to American University. She ran far and fast, eager to escape the shadow of her past, only to make another mistake, another shadow that would follow her around for years on end.
                  Bradley kissed Bella’s cheek, his bare chest spooning her back, wrapped in the afterglow of a great first date.
                  “You okay?” he asked, noticing Bella seemed unusually mum for a girl who just had a decent orgasm.
                  “Yeah,” she said unsurely. “Just thinking silly things.”
                  Oh God, Bradley said, already paranoid this easy girl was becoming attached to him. “Hey, we had a great time, right?”
                  “Yeah, it was great,” she answered with a smile, trying to hide her nervousness.
                  “So for your first time, how was I? Was I special?” Bradley said raising his eyebrows.
                  “Of course you’re special. I…like you,” she said carefully. “Do you like me?” she asked with a double flinch.
                  “I like us together naked in bed, that’s for sure.”
                  “Heh…” She laughed weakly. The last thing she needed was another shadow of a mistake following her around the rest of her life. She could feel herself becoming her mother already. All it would take is one careless night with a superficial guy and she would be living the same god-awful life as her mother.
                  Bella Stone snapped out of her daydream of yesteryear and stared at herself in the mirror. She had asked Bastien Darque, the billionaire woman-hater who was now apparently stalking her, for a moment alone. She had just broken it off with him, this ‘thing,’ this strange sexual obsession he insisted on creating, and now the psycho felt compelled to come to her apartment giving her clueless roommate the thrill of a lifetime.
                  “Helloooo? Bella are you still alive in there? Your billion dollar boyfriend is still here,” Alicia said from outside the bathroom.
                  She could barely hear Bastien saying something but heard Alicia laugh at him. Great , Bella thought, he’s back to being charming Bastien and not the psycho who demands I beg him to punish me.
                  Bella finally emerged from the bathroom, putting her best face forward.
                  “Hello again, Bella,” Bastien said. “I just wanted to come by and check on you. You seemed…sick the last time I saw you.”
                  “I’m fine. Thank you for coming all the way from work to check up on me.” She