Joy Delivered had already been thriving when she became the woman in charge. Under her care she’d turned it into an even bigger and more profitable business with her new focus on partnerships with like-minded companies. She’d been relentless in her pursuit of success since taking on Jack’s role. She wanted to prove to the business world and to herself, frankly, that she could guide the company as well as he had.

Being a woman had never held her back, but she knew she had to work that much harder. When Casey wanted something she went after it passionately, with everything she had. It was ironic that the strategy had worked well at her company, but her approach hadn’t gone as swimmingly in her rather dismal personal life. A string of bad luck in relationships trailed behind her. Yup, laugh it up. She was the Sex Toy Princess who didn’t get any action beyond the battery-operated kind.

It wasn’t that she chose badly, or liked jerks. She didn’t. But there were two issues working against her. One, men didn’t ask her out that often, and when she did ask out a guy, he’d often admit her profession scared him. “Do you have any idea how terrifying it is to approach a woman who sells sex toys?” one guy had said. He hadn’t lasted long. The other issue was that she had a notorious habit of speaking her mind, and, it turned out, that didn’t always work for the guys she had dated.

“You intimidate me,” Scott, her ex, had told her, when he’d said sayonara the same night she’d been planning to ask him to move in with her. “You’re fun as hell, but I can’t see myself getting serious with an alpha female.”

Ouch.

She’d bristled at the designation. “Alpha female?” she said with narrowed eyes. “What are you talking about? That’s a term for a dog.”

“You’re great at business, Case. But your relationship skills are kind of lacking. You never let me decide anything. You want to be in control of everything. You want to make all the decisions, from dinner to movies to what position in bed.”

“I didn’t hear you complaining about any of those positions when we were in them,” she pointed out.

“It’s not hard for a guy to get off,” he said in an admonishing tone, and the message was loud and cruelly clear—I’m not into you in the bedroom.

Later, after the soreness at being left again had abated, and after she’d turned a few hairbrushes into projective missiles lobbed at the door, she was able to call a spade a spade. She did like control. She did enjoy picking and choosing, whether they went to an art gallery or a film, and she absolutely loved telling a man how she liked it—harder, faster, there, right there, don’t stop. What was so wrong with that? Hell, this was the field she worked in. She marketed sex toys, for goodness’ sake. Her days, and her late, late nights were spent finding new ways to communicate all the joys her toys could deliver. And yet, something about Scott’s condemnations had stung because they’d hit home. They’d touched down and felt true. She was an alpha woman. Strong and confident, driven and ambitious, and absolutely unafraid of saying what she wanted. It scared some men. It scared most men.