One Man (Naked Trilogy #1)

The first book in the dangerously sexy Naked Trilogy by New York Times bestselling author Lisa Renee Jones.

We all have secrets. That means everyone, no matter how prim, proper, and perfect they may seem or pretend to be. Secrets they don't want revealed. Secrets they deny exist. Secrets they might even tell themselves can be forgotten. Sometimes the core of a secret is a sin and while some sins can be forgiven, all cannot. At least not in this lifetime, and maybe not even the next. Perhaps they simply have to be buried. Hidden. Denied. Denial might even be survival. But guilt is brutal.

I’m Emma Knight.

Denial is my survival.

Guilt is not my friend.

And for a while, I went to extremes to escape. I met a man. Isn’t that how the story always starts? The sex was wild. Consuming. Almost brutal at times, and I lost everything to it. No thoughts. No guilt. No self-respect, I realized too late. I lost me. But I found me again. And I’m a better me now and on my own. Better when you don’t see the scars. Better when you don’t see the sins.

Better alone.

I’m still the perfect daughter of the perfect father who runs the perfect hotel chain. Because perfect is what everyone wants from me, especially him. He’s demanding. He’s smart. He’s raised me since my mother died when I was five and while he loves me, he wants perfection from me. I will run the hotel chain one day, and everything I do is about preparation to be good enough, perfect enough, to do it as well as he does. And that’s okay because I love him and he is really is pretty darn perfect. I want him to be proud of me.


But then I wake up one morning and he’s gone. Lost. And it’s a heartache that sideswipes me. Now I’m running his company, and I find out he wasn’t so perfect after all. He had secrets. Dangerous, illegal habits that I'm now covering up and trying not to inherit. Because yes, I have a secret, but it was a tragic, horrible accident. My father’s secrets are no accidents.

And then he comes into my life. Jax North. He's handsome, brutally so, wealthy, which matters simply because he doesn’t need my money, which is now quite a lot, perhaps too much, if that is possible. Our first encounter is intense and sex is my escape. I go with it. I go with him and what a ride it is. And then, I say goodbye. Only you don’t say goodbye to a man like Jax, if he doesn’t want you to. I've challenged him without meaning to. He wants me. I don’t want to want him, and yet, I crave him. And he tears me down, my resistance, my walls. But those walls protect me. They seal my secrets inside. And I forget that being alone is safe.

Before long, my secrets begin to be revealed, and I trust him so deeply, that I think maybe, he can handle them. Maybe I dare to believe that alone isn’t better.

Until I discover that Jax was never an accident.

He has secrets.

He knew my secret.