All the King’s Men Series by Kennedy Ryan – Read Books Online Free Ebooks good best novels to read

All the King’s Men Series by Kennedy Ryan – Read Books Online Free Ebooks good best novels to read http://www.ilovenovels.com Sun, 09 Jul 2023 00:33:17 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 http://www.ilovenovels.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/favicon.png All the King’s Men Series by Kennedy Ryan – Read Books Online Free Ebooks good best novels to read http://www.ilovenovels.com 32 32 The Rebel King (All the King’s Men #2) Read Online Kennedy Ryan http://www.ilovenovels.com/the-rebel-king-all-the-kings-men-2-read-online-kennedy-ryan Sun, 09 Jul 2023 00:33:17 +0000 http://www.booksnovels.com/the-rebel-king-all-the-kings-men-2-read-online-kennedy-ryan Genre: Alpha Male, Billionaire, Contemporary Authors: Kennedy Ryan Series: All the King's Men Series by Kennedy Ryan
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Total pages in book: 113
Estimated words: 108242 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 541(@200wpm)___ 433(@250wpm)___ 361(@300wpm)

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Ambition. Revenge. Love.

RITA® Award-winning author Kennedy Ryan delivers the gripping conclusion to the All the King’s Men Duet.

Raised to resist. Bred to fight. Survival is in my blood and surrender is never an option.

Though surrender is what Maxim Cade demanded of my body and heart, I had other plans. We were fast-burning fascination and combustible chemistry, but the man I trusted with everything was a trickster. A thief who stole my love. If what we had was a lie, why did it feel so real? The man I swore to hate will have it all, and wants me at his side. But power is a game, and we’re the pawns and players.

Facing insurmountable odds, will we win the world, or will we lose it all?

*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************

PART 1

“Tell me a story.

Make it a story of great distances, and starlight.”

—Robert Penn Warren, Tell Me a Story

CHAPTER 1

LENNIX

I’m running.

Desert wind whistles past my ears and whips through my hair. My feet are feathers, light, quick, but my arms and legs are lead, the muscles aching and burning. The shouts, the encouragement of my tribe spur my spirit when I fear my body will fail.

Run.

Nistan.

The Apache word thumps in time with my heart and races through my veins as I run in the four directions.

East.

South.

West.

I turn north but falter, coming to a halt when I see the beautiful woman standing solemnly among the cheering crowd. The wind lifts the dark hair from her shoulders, and her eyes fix on me.

“Mama?” The strangled whisper catches in my throat. I stumble toward her, the ceremony forgotten. The run abandoned. Tears roll over my cheeks, and my hands reach out. Beseeching. Begging for my mother’s touch just once.

The unique blend of her soap and shampoo and natural scent floats to me. Longing, desperate and sharp, spears through me with aching familiarity. I’m almost there, can almost touch her, but she points a finger over my shoulder. She points in the direction I have not yet run.

North.

“Finish, Lennix,” she says, the words firm and unyielding.

“What?”

Her lips tighten. Her eyes are slits. She is the fierce warrior who lives inside the gentle mother, and she shouts.

“Run!”

I jerk awake in complete darkness, startled, disoriented.

Panic rips my mouth open on a scream, and the sound shatters, falls around my ears. I can’t move my arms. Ropes bite into my skin, my wrists bound in front of me.

Oh, my God. Where am I? What’s happening?

I want to be strong, but a whimper dissolves on my lips.

“Lenny,” a voice says to my right.

I know that voice.

“Wall?” The word grates painfully inside my throat. “Is that you?”

“Yeah. Thank God you’re awake.”

“I can’t see,” I tell him, choking back tears.

“They put a bag on your head. On mine, too.”

I turn toward the sound of his voice, and coarse fabric brushes my cheek. A stale scent clogs my nostrils. I’m entombed in burlap and uncirculated air.

“Shit, Lenny,” Wallace says, relief and torture in his tone. “I thought he was gonna drop you.”

Drop me?

The memory rushes back up at me like the ground when you fall, inevitable and jarring. The horror of a masked madman dangling me over the side of a mountain. The feel of his fingers slipping around my throat. The sight of him straining and struggling to keep me aloft. The utter indifference in his eyes about whether I lived or died.

The images set my heart on fire in my chest, the burning, pounding muscle beating so fast my head starts spinning.

“How long have I been out?” I ask.

“I don’t know. They shot us up with something that put us out. I just woke a few minutes before you did.”

“So you have no idea how long we traveled? Where we could be?”

“No.”

“Ahh, you’re awake,” a disembodied voice says, coming at me suddenly, an unforeseen intrusion into the darkness sheathing my eyes and ears. I hear the crunch of booted footsteps, sense a presence in front of me and tense, my muscles braced for a blow or a bullet. I have no idea which.

The bag is yanked off my head. We’re in some kind of cave, and the light flooding in from the opening, though dim, hurts my eyes. It’s just Wallace and me and the madman who brought us here. I squint up at him, masked as Abraham Lincoln, the grinning monster with wild blond curls who dangled me over the side of a mountain like an insect trapped between his fingers.

“I thought you could do with a nap while we traveled,” he says. “For your own comfort, of course.”

“What do you want with us?” Wallace asks, his bag removed, too.

“You’ve created something extraordinary, Dr. Murrow,” Abe says.

Wallace frowns. “Extraordinary? What do you mean?”

“Oh, don’t be modest.” Abe places the barrel of his rifle on the ground and leans his elbow on the butt. “You’ve made a thing of beauty in your lab, and there are many people who will pay a lot of money for it.”

“Wall, what’s he talking about?”

Wallace looks back to me, fear and horror dawning on his face, and shakes his head. “Oh God, Lenny. I’m so sorry I got you into this.”

“Into what? What the hell? What’s going on?”

“What’s going on, pretty lady,” Abe interjects, “is none of your damn business since it has nothing to do with you.”

“If it has nothing to do with me, then you won’t mind letting me go.”

His low chuckle rumbles, and interest flares in his eyes. “I like a little spirit in a woman.” His laugh dies abruptly. “But not that much. Keep it up and you’ll die even sooner than I’ve planned.”

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The Kingmaker (All the King’s Men #1) Read Online Kennedy Ryan http://www.ilovenovels.com/the-kingmaker-all-the-kings-men-1-read-online-kennedy-ryan Thu, 01 Jun 2023 11:54:29 +0000 http://www.booksnovels.com/the-kingmaker-all-the-kings-men-1-read-online-kennedy-ryan Genre: Alpha Male, Billionaire, Contemporary, New Adult Authors: Kennedy Ryan Series: All the King's Men Series by Kennedy Ryan
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Total pages in book: 114
Estimated words: 108483 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 542(@200wpm)___ 434(@250wpm)___ 362(@300wpm)

<<<<1 2 3 11 21 >114

Raised to rule, bred to lead and weaned on a diet of ruthless ambition. In a world of haves and have nots, my family has it all, and I want nothing to do with it.

My path takes me far from home and paints me as the black sheep. At odds with my father, I’m determined to build my own empire. I have rules, but Lennix Hunter is the exception to every one of them. From the moment we meet, something sparks between us. But my family stole from hers and my father is the man she hates most. I lied to have her, and would do anything to keep her. Though she tries to hate me, too, the inexorable pull between us will not be denied.

And neither will I.

*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************

PART 1

“My mother was my first country.

The first place I ever lived.”

—“lands” by Nayyirah Waheed, poet and activist

PROLOGUE

LENNIX

THIRTEEN YEARS OLD

My face remains unchanged in the mirror, but my eyes are older.

Older than the last time I stood in my bedroom with its pink canopy bed and the Princess Barbies shoved to the back of my closet. Posters of NSYNC and Britney Spears still plaster the walls, but right now I can’t recall one lyric. The songs of my forefathers and their fathers before them fill my head. Ancient songs with words only we know—the songs we had to reclaim—cling to my memory. They ring in my ears and hum through my blood. The ceremonial drum still beats in place of my heart. A woman’s spirit occupies this girl’s body with my barely budding breasts and baby-fat cheeks. I’m still only thirteen years old, but in the four days of my Sunrise Dance, the rite of passage that carried me from girl to woman, it feels like I’ve lived a lifetime.

I am not the same.

“How ya doing, kiddo?” my father asks as he and my mother walk into my bedroom. Seeing them together has been a rare occurrence lately. Actually, seeing them together has been rare for a long time.

“I’m fine.” I divide my smile between them into equal portions, like I do with holidays and my affection. Split right down the middle. “Tired.”

Mama sits on the bed and pushes my hair back with long, graceful fingers.

“The last few days have been hard for you,” she says, offering a rueful smile. “Not to mention the last year.”

We started planning the Sunrise Dance months ago. With enough food to feed everyone involved for days, gifts, getting the traditional dress made, and paying the medicine man and the ceremonial dancers, it’s a long process that is not only exhausting but expensive.

“I wouldn’t change a thing,” I reply. My knees ache from the kneeling, from dancing on my knees and on my feet. I danced and I sang for hours, led through the words by the medicine man. And the running. I’ve never run so much in my life, but when I ran in the four directions, I gathered the elements—earth, wind, fire, and air—to myself. I’ve absorbed them. They’re part of me and will guide me the rest of my days.

“I know you’re exhausted,” Mama says. “But are you up to seeing a few people? They’ve walked with you the last four days and are all so proud.”

Despite the fatigue, I smile. My friends and family rallied around me, not just during the last four days but for the months leading up to my Sunrise Dance. It is a huge deal, not only for me but for the entire community.

“Sure.” I run my hands over the supple buckskin of my ceremonial dress and moccasins. “Do I have time for a quick shower?”

The medicine man dusted my face with cattail pollen as part of the blessing near the end of the ceremony. Even though it was rinsed away, I still feel the traces of it and the last four days on my skin and in my hair.

“Of course,” my father says. There’s pride in his gray eyes. Though not Apache, he was involved with the ceremony and observed every step. As a professor of Native American Studies at Arizona State, though the traditions don’t belong to him, he understands and deeply respects them.

“Everyone’s eating out front and enjoying themselves,” Mama says. “They’ll keep while you get clean.”

My parents exchange a quick look, seeming to hesitate together. It catches my attention because they’re rarely in sync despite having once been passionately in love. My father had been a student studying reservation life. My mom lived on the rez in the same modest house we’re in right now. It was fireworks for a while. Long enough to make me.

Maybe the fireworks sputtered. Maybe my parents were too different, my mother wanting to remain on the reservation, connected to her tribe and this community. My father, a rising star in the department when he completed his doctorate, needed to be at the university. They drifted so far apart they broke. Now, I’m their only connection. Things haven’t been exactly contentious between them, but they have disagreed a lot lately, mostly about me.

“Today was a landmark for you,” Mama says carefully, again sharing that quick look with my father as if she needs reassurance. “You’re a woman now. The spirit of Changing Woman has made you strong.”

I nod. I’ve never been that religious. My mother doesn’t practice all the traditions, but today I did feel a surge of strength during the ceremony. Somehow I actually believe the spirit of the first woman empowered me. I still feel that zing along my nerves I couldn’t shake even after the ceremony ended.

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