Текст книги "Wanted"

Автор книги: J. Kenner

Соавторы: J. Kenner
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Wanted
Most Wanted – 1
by
J. Kenner

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to Elle, Christie, and Dana. I so appreciate you taking the time to read and comment, especially when the turn-around was so dang fast! Hugs, kisses, and buckets of emojis to you!

A big shout-out to my former boss, Steve, for letting me have the use of his Chicago condo so I could get the feel of the city, and to Jim at In Chicago Sedan and Limousine for being such an incredible and informative tour guide.

To my daughter Catherine (even though it’ll be years before she can read this book!), for being a great travel companion, and for not complaining when Mom insisted on walking everywhere in order to enjoy the city’s vibe!

To my awesome agent, Kim, and to Shauna and Gina and all the wonderful folks at Bantam whose support and enthusiasm thrills me to my toes and beyond.

Most of all, to all the incredible readers who’ve reached out to me through my website, social media, snail mail, conferences, and book signings. Y’all are truly amazing.

XXOO,

J.K.

one

I know exactly when my life shifted. That precise instant when his eyes met mine and I no longer saw the bland look of familiarity, but danger and fire, lust and hunger.

Perhaps I should have turned away. Perhaps I should have run.

I didn’t. I wanted him. More, I needed him. The man, and the fire that he ignited inside of me.

And in his eyes, I saw that he needed me, too.

That was the moment that everything changed. Me, most of all.

But whether it changed for good or for ill … well, that remains to be seen.

Even dead, my Uncle Jahn knew how to throw one hell of a party.

His Chicago lakeside penthouse was bursting at the seams with an eclectic collection of mourners, most of whom had imbibed so much wine from the famous Howard Jahn cellar that whatever melancholy they’d brought with them had been sweetly erased, and now this wake or reception or whatever the hell you wanted to call it wasn’t the least bit somber. Politicians mingled with financiers mingled with artists and academics, and everyone was smiling and laughing and toasting the deceased.

At his request, there’d been no formal funeral. Just this gathering of friends and family, food and drink, music and mirth. Jahn—he hated the name Howard—had lived a vibrant life, and that was never more obvious than now in his death.

I missed him so damn much, but I hadn’t cried. Hadn’t screamed and ranted. Hadn’t done anything, really, except move through the days and nights lost in a haze of emotions, my mind numb. My body anesthetized.

I sighed and fingered the charm on my silver bracelet. He’d presented me with the tiny motorcycle just over a month ago, and the gift had made me smile. I hadn’t talked about wanting to ride a motorcycle since before I turned sixteen. And it had been years since I’d ridden behind a boy, my arms tight around his waist and my hair blowing in the wind.

But Uncle Jahn knew me better than anyone. He saw past the princess to the girl hidden inside. A girl who’d built up walls out of necessity, but still desperately wanted to break free. Who longed to slip on a pair of well-worn jeans, grab a battered leather jacket, and go a little wild.

Sometimes, she even did. And sometimes it didn’t end right at all.

I tightened my grip on the charm as the memory of Jahn holding my hand—of him promising to keep my secrets—swept over me, finally bringing tears to my eyes. He should be beside me, dammit, and the swell of laughter and conversation that filled the room was making me a little sick.

Despite the fact that I knew Jahn wanted it that way, it was all I could do not to smack all the people who’d hugged me and murmured softly that he was in a better place and wasn’t it wonderful that he’d lived such a full life. That was such bullshit—he hadn’t even turned sixty yet. Vibrant men in their fifties shouldn’t drop dead from aneurysms, and there weren’t enough pithy Hallmark quotes in the universe to make me think otherwise.

Antsy, I shifted my weight from foot to foot. There was a bar set up on the other side of the room, and I’d positioned myself as far away as physically possible because right then I wanted the burn of tequila. Wanted to let go, to explode through the numbness that clung to me like a cocoon. To run. To feel.

But that wasn’t going to happen. No alcohol was passing these lips tonight. I was Jahn’s niece, after all, and that made me some kind of hostess-by-default, which meant I was stuck in the penthouse. Four thousand square feet, but I swear I could feel the art-covered walls pressing in around me.

I wanted to race up the spiral staircase to the rooftop patio, then leap over the balcony into the darkening sky. I wanted to take flight over Lake Michigan and the whole world. I wanted to break things and scream and rant and curse this damned universe that took away a good man.

Shit. I sucked in a breath and looked down at the exquisite ancient-looking notebook inside the glass and chrome display case I’d been leaning against. The leather-bound book was an exceptionally well-done copy of a recently discovered Da Vinci notebook. Dubbed the Creature Notebook, it had sixteen pages of animal studies and was open to the center, revealing a stunning sketch the young master had drawn—his study for the famous, but never located, dragon shield. Jahn had attempted to acquire the notebook, and I remember just how angry he’d been when he’d lost out to Victor Neely, another Chicago businessman with a private collection that rivaled my uncle’s.

At the time, I’d just started at Northwestern with a major in poli sci and a minor in art history. I’m not particularly talented, but I’ve sketched my whole life, and I’ve been fascinated with art—and in particular with Leonardo da Vinci—since my parents took me to my first museum at the age of three.

I thought the Creature Notebook was beyond cool, and I’d been irritated on Jahn’s behalf when he not only lost out on it, but when the press had poured salt in the wound by prattling on about Neely’s amazing new acquisition.

About a year later, Jahn showed me the facsimile, bright and shiny in the custom-made display case. As a general rule, my uncle never owned a copy. If he couldn’t have the original—be it a Rembrandt or a Rauschenberg or a Da Vinci—he simply moved on. When I’d asked why he’d made an exception for the Creature Notebook, he’d simply shrugged and told me that the images were at least as interesting as the provenance. “Besides, anyone who can successfully copy a Da Vinci has created a masterpiece himself.”

Despite the fact that it wasn’t authentic, the notebook was my favorite of Jahn’s many manuscripts and artifacts, and now, standing with my hands pressed to the glass, I felt as if he was, in some small way, beside me.

I drew in a breath, knowing I had to get my act together, if for no other reason than the more wrecked I looked, the more guests would try to cheer me. Not that I looked particularly wrecked. When you grow up as Angelina Hayden Raine, with a United States senator for a father and a mother who served on the board of over a dozen international nonprofit organizations, you learn the difference between a public and a private face very early on. Especially when you have your own secrets to keep.

“This is so goddamn fucked up it makes me want to scream.”

I felt a whisper of a smile touch my lips and turned around to find myself looking into Kat’s bloodshot eyes.

“Oh, hell, Angie,” she said. “He shouldn’t be dead.”

“He’d be pissed if he knew you’d been crying,” I said, blinking away the last of my own tears.

“Fuck that.”

I almost laughed. Katrina Laron had a talent for cutting straight through the bullshit.

I’m not sure which one of us leaned in first, but we caught each other in a bone-crushing hug. With a sniffle, I finally pulled away. Perverse, maybe, but just knowing that someone else was acknowledging the utter horror of the situation made me feel infinitesimally better.

“Every time I turn a corner, I feel like I’m going to see him,” I said. “I almost wish I’d stayed in my old place.”

I’d moved in four months ago when Uncle Jahn’s aneurysm was discovered. I’d taken time off from work—easy when you work for your uncle. For two weeks I’d played nurse after he came home from the hospital, and when he’d been given the all-clear by the doctors—yeah, like that was a good call—I’d accepted his invitation to move in permanently. Why not? The tiny apartment I’d shared with my lifelong friend Flynn wasn’t exactly the lap of luxury. And although I loved Flynn, he wasn’t the easiest person to cohabitate with. He knew me too well, and it always made me uneasy when people saw what I wanted to keep hidden.

Now, though, I craved both the cocoon-like comfort of my tiny room and Flynn’s steady presence. As much as I loved the condo, without my uncle, it was cold and hollow, and just being in it made me feel brittle. As if at any moment I would shatter into a million pieces.

Kat’s eyes were warm and understanding. “I know. But he loved having you here. God knows why,” she added with a quirky grin. “You’re nothing but trouble.”

I rolled my eyes. At twenty-seven, Katrina Laron was only four years older than me, but that didn’t stop her from pulling the older-and-wiser card whenever she got the chance. The fact that we’d become friends under decidedly dodgy circumstances probably played a role, too.

She’d been working at one of the coffee shops in Evanston where I used to mainline caffeine during my first year at Northwestern. We’d chatted a couple of times in an “extra cream please, it’s been a bitch of a day,” kind of way, but we were hardly on a first name basis.

All that changed when we bumped into each other on a day when extra cream wasn’t going to cut it for me—not by a long shot. It was in the Michigan Avenue Neiman Marcus and I’d been surfing on adrenaline, using it to soothe the rough edges of a particularly crappy day. Specifically, I’d just succumbed to my personal demons and surreptitiously dropped a pair of fifteen-dollar clearance earrings into my purse. But, apparently, not as surreptitiously as I’d thought.

“Well, aren’t you the stumbling amateur?” she’d whispered, as she steered me toward women’s shoes. “With a shit technique like that, it’s a wonder you haven’t been arrested yet.”

“Arrested!” I squeaked, as if that word would carry all the way to Washington and to my father’s all-hearing ears. The fear of getting caught might be part of the excitement. Actually getting caught wasn’t a good thing at all. “No, I didn’t—I mean—”

She cut off my protests with a casual flip of her hand. “All I’m saying is be smart. If you’re going to take a risk, at least make it worth the trouble. Those earrings? Really not the bomb.”

“It’s not about the earrings,” I’d snapped, then immediately cringed. The words had been a knee-jerk response, but they were also true. It wasn’t about the earrings. It was about my dad, and the grad school lectures and the career planning talks, and the never spoken certainty that no matter what I did, my sister would have done it better.

It was about the oppressive, overwhelming weight of my life and my future that was bearing down on me, harder and harder until I was certain that if I didn’t do something to break out a little I’d spontaneously combust.

Kat had glanced at my purse as if she could see through the soft Coach leather to the contraband inside. Then she slowly lifted her eyes back to my face. The silence hung between us for a full minute. Then she nodded. “Don’t worry. I get it.” She cocked her head toward the exit. “Come on.”

Relief flooded through me, and my limbs that had frozen in both fear and mortification began to thaw. She steered me to her car, a cherry-red Mustang that she drove at more or less the speed of light. She careened down Michigan Avenue, maneuvered her way onto Lake Shore Drive, and came so close to the other cars as she zipped in and out of traffic that I’m surprised her convertible didn’t lose a layer of paint. In other words, it was freaking awesome. The top was down, the wind was whipping my hair into my face and mouth, and all I could do was tilt my head back and laugh.

Kat risked our lives long enough to shoot me one sideways glance. “Yeah,” she said. “We’re going to get along just fine.”

From that moment on, I’d adored Kat. Now, with Jahn’s death sending my universe reeling, I realized that I not only loved her—I relied on her.

“I’m really glad you’re here,” I said.

“Where else would I be?” She scanned the room. “Are your mom and dad around somewhere?”

“They can’t make it. They’re stuck overseas.” The familiar numbness settled over me again as I remembered my mother’s hysterical sobs and the deep well of sorrow that had filled my father’s voice when he’d learned about his half-brother. “I hated calling them,” I whispered. “It felt like Gracie all over again.”

“I’m so sorry.” Kat had never met my sister, but she’d heard the story. The public version, anyway, and I knew her sympathy was real.

I managed a wavering smile. “I know. That means a lot to me.”

“The whole thing sucks,” Kat said. “It’s so unfair. Your uncle was too damn cool to die.”

“I guess the universe doesn’t give a shit about coolness.”

“The universe can be a raving bitch sometimes,” Kat said. She exhaled loudly. “Want me to crash here tonight so you won’t be alone? We could stay up late getting so wasted that there’s no way in hell either one of us will dream.”

“Thanks, but I think I’ll be okay.”

She eyed me uncertainly. She was one of the few people I’d confided in about my nightmares, and while I appreciated the sympathy, sometimes I wished I’d kept my mouth shut.

“Really,” I said earnestly. “Kevin’s here.”

“Oh, yeah? And how’s that going? Engaged yet?”

“Not quite,” I said wryly. I supposed we were dating since I’d slept with him twice, but so far I’d dodged the let’s-be-exclusive conversation. I wasn’t sure why I was so reticent. The sex wasn’t mind-blowing, but it did the job. And I did genuinely like the guy. But I’d spent the last few months holding him at arm’s length, telling him I needed to keep my attention on Jahn’s surgery, then his recovery.

Obviously, I hadn’t planned on his sudden death.

How horrible was it of me to think that now Jahn was gone, I had no more excuses to hand Kevin?

Beside me, Kat craned her neck and scoped out the crowd. “So where is he?”

“He had to go take a call. Technically, he’s working today.”

“What are you going to do now?” Kat asked.

“About Kevin?” Honestly, I was hoping to avoid doing anything on that front for the foreseeable future.

“About your job,” she countered. “About the roof over your head. About your life. Have you thought about what you’re going to do?”

“Oh.” My shoulders sagged. “No. Not really.” My job in the PR department of Jahn’s company might pay my bills, but it was hardly my life’s ambition, and Kat was one of the few people to whom I’d confessed that deep, dark secret. Right then, however, that wasn’t a conversation I wanted to have. Fortunately, something across the room had caught Kat’s attention, effectively erasing my lack of direction and purpose from her mind.

She stood slightly straighter and the corners of her mouth tilted a bit, almost hinting at a smile. Curious, I turned to look in that direction, but saw nothing but suits and dresses and a sea of black. “What is it? Kevin?” I asked, praying he wasn’t heading our direction.

“Cole August,” she said. “At least I thought I saw him.”

“Oh.” I licked my lips. My mouth had gone suddenly dry. “Is Evan with him?” I forced my voice to sound casual, but my pulse was racing. If Cole was around, it was always a good bet that Evan was, too.

Then I remembered what day it was and my pulse slowed as disappointment weighed down on me. “Isn’t tonight the ribbon-cutting for the hospital wing Evan funded?”

Kat didn’t even spare me a glance, her eyes still searching the crowd. “Not sure.” She shot me a quick look. “Yeah, it was. You invited me before, you know, all of this happened.”

I blinked back the sudden prick of tears. “Evan’s going to hate missing this. Jahn was like a dad to him.”

Beside me, Kat took a quick step backward, startling me.

“What is it?”

She dragged her gaze away from the crowd, then frowned at me. “I … Oh, shit. I have to go make a call. I’ll be right back, okay?”

“Um, okay.” Who the hell did she need to call right now? That wasn’t a question I pondered for long, though, because I’d caught a glimpse of Cole. And right beside him—looking like he owned the world and everything in it—was Evan.

Immediately, my chest tightened and a current of electricity zinged across my skin. Technically, I saw him first, but it was my body’s reaction that caught my attention. Only after I felt him did I truly see him.

And what a sight he was.

Whereas Cole might be sex on wheels, Evan Black was the slow burn of sin and seduction—and tonight he was in rare form. He must have come straight from the hospital, because he was still in a tux, and although he was clearly overdressed, he appeared perfectly at ease. Whether in a tux or jeans, where Evan was concerned, it was the man that mattered, not the garment.

He had the kind of chiseled good looks that would have gotten him plucked from obscurity in the Golden Age of Hollywood, and the kind of confidence and bearing that would have made him a box-office draw. A small scar intersected his left brow, giving the angel’s face a hint of the devil.

He both came from money and had made his own fortune, and it showed in the way he held himself, the way he looked around a room, managing to take control of it with nothing more than a glance.

His eyes were as gray as a wolf’s and his hair was the color of cherrywood, a deep brown that hinted at golds and reds when the light hit it just right. He wore it long in the back so that it brushed his collar, and the natural waves gave it the quality of a mane—which only enhanced the impression that there was a wildness clinging to the man.

Wild or not, I wanted to get close. I wanted to thrust my fingers into his hair and feel the locks on my skin. I imagined his hair was soft, but that’s the only part of him that was. Everything else was edged with steel, the hard planes of his face and body hinting at a dangerous core beneath that beauty.

I didn’t know whether the danger was real or an illusion. And right then, I didn’t care.

I wanted the touch, the thrill.

That desperate need to fly I’d been feeling all night? So help me, I wanted to fly right into Evan’s arms.

I needed the rush. I craved the thrill.

I wanted the man.

And it was just too damn bad that he didn’t want me, too.

two

I’d known Evan Black for almost eight years, and yet I didn’t really know the man at all.

I’d just turned sixteen when I first saw him during the sweltering heat of a summer that marked so many firsts in my life. The first summer I spent entirely in Chicago. The first summer away from my parents. The first time I fucked a guy. Because that’s what it was. Not a sweet teenage romance. It was release, pure and simple. Release and escape and oblivion.

And damned if I hadn’t needed oblivion, because that was also the first summer without my sister, who was back in California, six feet beneath the sun-soaked earth.

I’d been lost after her death. My parents—wracked with their own grief—had tried to pull me close, to help and soothe me. But I wriggled away, too burdened with loss to cleave to them the way I wanted. Too heavy with guilt to believe I had any right to their help or affection.

It was Jahn who’d rescued me from that small corner of hell. He’d appeared at the front door of our La Jolla house the first Friday of summer break, and immediately steered my mother into the dark paneled office that was forbidden to me. When they’d emerged twenty minutes later there were fresh tears in my mother’s eyes, but she’d managed a cheery smile for me. “Go pack your carry-on,” she’d said. “You’re going to Chicago with Uncle Jahn.”

I’d taken three tank tops, my swimsuit, a dress, a pair of jeans, and the shorts I’d worn on the plane. I’d expected to stay a weekend. Instead, I’d stayed the entire summer.

At the time, Jahn was living primarily in his waterfront house in Kenilworth, a jaw-droppingly affluent Chicago suburb. For two solid weeks, I’d done nothing but sit under the gazebo and stare out at Lake Michigan. Not my usual M.O.—during past visits, I’d taken out the Jet Ski or skateboarded in the street or taken off on a borrowed bike down Sheridan Road with Flynn, the boy I would later fuck who lived two doors down and had as much of a wild streak as I did. When I was twelve, I’d even rigged a zip line from the attic bedroom all the way to the far side of the pool, and I’d eagerly tested it out, much to the consternation of my mother who had screamed and cursed once she saw me whipping through the air to land, cannonball style, in the water.

Grace had squealed at me from her chaise lounge throne, accusing me of ruining her hardback copy of Pride and Prejudice. My mother had ordered me to spend the rest of the day in my room. And Uncle Jahn had remained completely silent, but as I passed him, I thought I saw the twinkle of amusement in his eyes, along with something that might have been respect.

I saw none of that the summer of my sixteenth year. Instead, all I saw was worry.

“We all miss her,” he said to me one afternoon. “But you can’t mourn forever. She wouldn’t want you to. Take the bike. Go into the village. Go to the park. Drag Flynn to a movie.” He cupped my chin and tilted my face up to look at him. “I lost one niece, Lina. Not two.”

“Angie,” I corrected, making up my mind right then and there to kick Lina soundly to the curb. Lina was the girl I used to be. The one who’d always felt larger than life, and who’d needed to feel the rush of the world around her all the time. Who’d been too alive to be calm or careful. Who’d been a damn stupid fool who smoked cigarettes behind the school and snuck out to dance clubs. A little idiot who made out with boys because she wanted the thrill, and who rode on the back of their motorcycles for the exact same reason. Lina was the girl who’d almost been suspended from high school just one week into her freshman year.

And Lina was the reason that my sister was dead.

I’d lived in Lina’s skin all my life, but I didn’t want to be that girl anymore.

“Angie,” I repeated, firmly cementing the first brick of the wall I was building around myself. Then I’d stood up and gone inside.

Uncle Jahn hadn’t bothered me for the rest of that day or the next, though I knew he was worried and confused. When Saturday morning came, he told me that he was having some students from the graduate-level finance seminar he taught as an adjunct over for burgers by the pool, and I was welcome to join them. My call.

I’m not sure what compelled me to emerge from the dark cave of my room that afternoon, all I know is that I came down in my ratty cutoffs with Uncle Jahn’s ancient Rolling Stones T-shirt over my bikini top. I thought I’d stay for an hour. Have a burger. Remind myself not to sneak a beer, because that was the kind of thing Lina would do, not Angie.

But when I actually got down to the pool deck, all thoughts of beer and burgers evaporated, replaced by pure, decadent, desperate lust. And not the teenage crush kind, either. No, I saw Evan Black shirtless and in swim trunks that clung in a way that made my sixteen-year-old hormones light up. His wet hair was swept back from his face, and he was brandishing a metal spatula as he stood by the grill, laughing with two other guys, who I later learned were his best friends, Cole August and Tyler Sharp.

All three seemed younger than the other four students who also populated the lush backyard. I later learned that I was right. The others were in their last year of grad school, whereas Evan was still an undergrad who’d been given special dispensation to take the class. And Tyler and Cole weren’t even enrolled at Northwestern. Tyler was a freshman at Loyola. Cole was a year older than Tyler, and had just come back from some sort of art internship in Rome. They’d come with Evan who, along with the others, made up the whole of that summer’s seminar class in finance.

Together, Cole, Tyler, and Evan were a smorgasbord of hotness that even my reasonably inexperienced eyes were more than capable of appreciating. But Evan was the only one that I wanted to take a bite out of.

I heard my uncle call my name, and the three of them turned to look in my direction. I stopped breathing as Evan’s gaze swept toward me, his expression never changing as he looked me over and then, oh-so casually, went back to flipping burgers.

I’m not sure what sort of movie I’d had running subliminally in my head. Something wild and romantic, I guess, because the moment he turned away, I felt a hot wave of disappointment wash over me. And that, of course, was immediately replaced by mortification. Could he tell what I was thinking? Was he going to think of me now as Jahn’s gawkish niece? The one with the schoolgirl crush?

Holy crap, the idea was horrifying.

“Hey, Angie,” Jahn called, his words jerking my posture straight as effectively as a string pulling a marionette. “You joining us for burgers?”

“I—” My words had stuck in my throat, and I knew I couldn’t stay there. I needed space. Hell, I needed air. “I—I think I’m coming down with something.” I blurted the words, then turned and ran back into the house, certain that my burning cheeks were a fire hazard.

I tried to concentrate on television. On a book. On screwing around on the Internet. But nothing held my attention. My mind was too full of Evan, and in the end I went to bed early. Not because I was truly sick, but because I wanted the pleasure of the dark. The thrill of sliding my hand down my belly and under the band of my underwear, then touching myself with my eyes closed as I imagined that it was Evan’s fingers upon me. His fingers, his tongue, every decadent inch of him.

It was a bedtime fantasy that became a personal favorite, and one I repeated many nights over the next few years. Fortunately, I didn’t repeat the squealing and running like a twit every time Evan came around. Fortunate because Jahn took a fatherly liking to them, and those three guys became a fixture at the house. And since I wasn’t inclined to spend my summer hiding inside, I began to venture out. By August, I thought of Tyler and Cole like big brothers. As for Evan—no way would I ever feel brotherly toward him, but at least I could carry on a conversation without imagining his lips on mine.

Jahn called them the Three Dog Knights, because the Three Musketeers wasn’t original enough for guys as unique as them. “Besides,” he’d joked one evening as he hooked an arm around my shoulder and grinned at the guys, “this way I have my knights and my princess.”

Evan focused those hypnotic gray eyes on me, obviously considering the comment. “Is that what you are?”

I froze, stunned by the question. Grace had always been the princess to my jester. But now that she was dead, I’d slipped on the mantle even though it was an awkward, uncomfortable fit.

He was watching me—his gaze holding steady on my face as I floundered for a reply, and for a moment I thought that he saw the girl beneath the facade and the family name. I thought that he saw me.

Then he smiled, all casual and false, and the spell was broken. “It’s just that in the stories, the princess is always dragonbait.”

I had no idea how I was supposed to respond to that, and my discomfort made my temper flare—and then explode when Tyler and Cole both guffawed and Evan shot them a cocky I’ve won this round grin.

“Don’t worry about me,” I said coldly. “I won’t ever be dragonbait.”

“No?” He looked me up and down, and it took every ounce of my self-control to stand still as his eyes raked over me. “I guess we’ll see,” he finally said, and then without another word, he turned around and walked away.

I watched him leave, feeling itchy and unsatisfied. I wanted something—something big and wild. Something like the sizzle and pop that Evan’s slow, heated gaze had made bubble up inside me.

Something? Oh, please. How much bullshit was that? I knew exactly what I wanted—or more accurately, I knew who I wanted. And he’d just flat out left, as uninterested in me as I was enraptured by him.

As I bit back a frown, I saw my uncle watching me with an odd expression, and for the first time I feared that he knew my secret: I had more than an innocent schoolgirl crush on Evan Black. And somehow, someway, I was going to do something about it.

I released a long-suffering sigh, my eyes still fixed on the almost-magical image of Evan in his tux. I didn’t know if I was charmingly optimistic or sadly pathetic. All I knew was that despite the years that had passed—and despite the lack of any interest on his part whatsoever—my fascination with Evan Black never waned.

For just a moment, I allowed myself the luxury of a fantasy. His finger crooked under my chin. The gentle pressure as he lifted my face to look into his eyes. His touch would be gentle but firm. His scent masculine and heady. “Angie,” he’d say. “Why the hell haven’t we done this before?”

I’d open my mouth to answer, but he’d cut me off with a kiss, hot and open and so desperately demanding that I would melt against him, our bodies fusing from the electricity zinging through me, all of it focused between my thighs, making me squirm. Making me need.

“And there she is.”

I flinched, yanked from my reverie by the caramel masculine tones. I turned to smile at the two-hundred-plus pounds of perfectly proportioned male that made up Cole August. At first glance, he was intimidating as shit, despite being empirically gorgeous. All muscle and power and hard edges, with the kind of air that warned away anyone who might want to fuck with him. He’d been born and raised on Chicago’s rather scary South Side, and the rawness of his heritage still clung to him despite the tailored suit and other trappings of success.