Free Breaking Stone: Bad Boy Romance Novel by Alexa Wilder, Raleigh Blake

grip Mom had on my self-worth. Whenever something went well for me, she either took credit for it or destroyed it. My dismay turned to anger. I felt like calling her back and telling her Stone’s name. I wanted to send her his books and tell her to stretch her mind past the narrow view she had of the world.
    But it would be wrong to use Stone as my weapon to end this battle.

8
    Stone
    I caught the last part of Katrina’s phone call with her mother. Should I have walked away and given her some privacy? Probably. If I were decent, I would have done that. On the other hand, the call was on company time, as they say. In a sense, while Katrina was here, I owned her. I paid her to dedicate a certain amount of hours to me each day, and during that time, I could do whatever I wished with her so long as my actions were lawful.
    She was becoming my study, my muse, and proving useful in crafting a different sort of character to the ones I usually put in my books. The time had come for Steele, my fictional manwhore, to find the motivation to change from his slutty habits and settle down. Poor bastard. I pitied him and wondered if that was the reason I was dragging my feet over getting down and writing the story.
    Katrina was turning out to be an intriguing CJM plant, but Sarah hadn’t thought this through. There wasn’t a lot to keep Katrina occupied because I wasn’t going to have her running to the shops for me or doing my housework.
    Her back was to me, and I waited a moment, studying her as she gazed out the window. Her shoulders spoke of despair, a half-deflated, forgotten football. She’d unraveled her braid and made some sort of knot on top of her head, held in place with a couple of pencils. I was fascinated that something so simple inspired so many ideas, all of which involved copious bodily fluids and no clothes. The way she’d clung to me on the motorcycle made me hard, as did the way she chewed her food, blushed, laughed, and tried to hide her indignity.
    Little inspired me these days since Lily. The idea of a hookup felt hollow. Flirting with the fans was often a marketing chore rather than the fun it used to be. Teasing Katrina was a worthy distraction.
    “Everything okay here, Poppins?”
    I’d startled her, and she quickly flicked the browser window on her laptop to show she was working on my Facebook page.
    “All good. I’m just working on your social media.”
    “Mothers are such an emotional suck, aren’t they?”
    She turned and looked at me. Everything there was honest, the hurt in her eyes, the confusion, all the shit I was well acquainted with. I used to see it in the mirror when I was a child. Fuck that. For some reason, it pissed me off that Katrina’s mother still had some kind of hold on her.
    “They are. Sorry about the personal stuff during work time. It won’t happen again.”
    I waved it off. My guess was that it would happen again, and I didn’t need to add to Katrina’s guilt load. “We’re not on a strict timetable here. If you need to deal with family stuff, roll with it.”
    “She’s nosy. Likes to involve herself in every detail of my life.”
    “So that she can control it.”
    There again on her face, the truth. We weren’t about to become therapy buddies, and my mother had never tried to control my life. She could barely control her own. Having a child had been so overwhelming, she’d had to put me aside so that she could exist. Don’t crowd me, Stone. I need to breathe .
    Katrina grimaced. “Your fans are rabid.”
    “And competitive. What are they up to?”
    She pushed her laptop across the desk. I couldn’t see anything beyond the regular veiled offers of sex, which typically escalated to blatant propositions. I scrolled through. The usual suspects were there, along with some new ones.
    “Nice work, Poppins. Some of them are actually discussing the books.”
    “Most of them are discussing your body parts, one piece of anatomy in particular.”
    “Those chicks are