But there's something else, too.
Something I didn't expect, and it's scaring me more than anything else.
He's hungry.
Hungry for me.
HER BODY ISN'T THE ONLY THING I'M TAKING AS MY OWN.
Cole
The first time I lay eyes on her, it feels like I got struck by lightning.
You've probably heard that before, but trust me – this is different.
This isn't the "struck by lightning" you see in friendly little rom-coms with happy endings.
It doesn't come with warm fuzzies.
It's not cute.
No, the kind of lightning I'm talking about makes me want to do things, things that you might not always like.
It makes me want to bite her lip like a feral dog, to squeeze her hips in my hands and rid her of every scrap of clothing.
The lightning surging through my veins makes me harder than carved marble.
There's only one release: to own her, again and again, until the thirst is quenched.
I don't know how long that will take.
But I'm willing to find out.
Prologue
Sasha
At 3 a.m. the city streets were finally mostly quiet. I stood in the alleyway between the two supposedly vacant warehouse buildings underneath a light that hadn’t worked in decades. I listened to the sound of the occasional car or truck passing by. This was the lull between night and morning, when the people going home were settling in and the people going to work were just getting up.
This was also when the guard stepped away from the door to the room where the stash was kept. It was my chance to climb in through one of the broken windows of the old building and grab my prize. I proceeded carefully, without a sound. I was just another shadow in the darkness.
I was taking from the Hell’s Overlords MC, and I was shocked at the lack of security around their drugs. They kept separate stashes in several old buildings throughout the city, usually behind unlocked doors with one or two guards on duty at all times. The problem with live guards, though, was that they took piss breaks and naps. It wasn’t a problem for me, but I was pretty sure Cole Masterson, the president of the MC, wasn’t too thrilled about how much heroin I’d lifted over the last six months from his essentially unguarded stashes.
There wasn’t much light inside the building. Despite the stories that the Overlords had paid off law enforcement to turn the other cheek, they still maintained almost complete darkness and secrecy around their safe havens. That tactic, however, only drew more attention from those of us sharing the streets with them. I saw the interior clearly in the yellow-orange light spilling in from the streetlamps outside. I took a back stairwell to the third floor, where the drugs were held in a small room, probably once an office.
The heroin sat in densely packed bags taped closed on top of an old metal desk. My pulse quickened at this point in the job, when I was confronted with the stash and had to force myself to take much less than I could have carried. I could have stuffed several bags in my black cargo pants and backpack, but if that big of an amount were missing, it would have been readily noticeable. Instead, I only grabbed two bags, taking them in my gloved hands and stuffing them in my pack before anyone had a chance to notice I was even there. My take wouldn’t be missed until it was time to deliver. Only then would Cole realize he was short, usually leading to the guard taking the fall for the missing drugs.
I faded back into the night and made my way to Fang’s office.
“You asked me to bring it to you directly this time. Is everything okay?” I unzipped my bag and placed the two bags of white powder on the desk in front of him before sitting down.
“Everything’s fine,” he answered in his composed voice. He patted the bags and nodded to the larger gentleman standing by the door to his office.
His bodyguard walked over and picked the bags up off of the desk.
“Go ahead and deliver those,” Fang told him, waving him off with perfectly manicured fingers.
After the big guy left the room, Fang turned to face me in his desk chair. He leaned forward and rested his elbows on the desk. He laced his fingers together. I stared into his dark eyes. His black hair was slicked back. His tanned, chiseled face stared intently. His jaw muscles worked as he clenched his mouth shut. I looked at the black suit he wore over a deep red shirt with a black tie. A necklace hung from his neck with a long tooth, a fang, dangling from it.
“Sasha,” he said, and paused to look me over.
“Yes, sir?” I was used to his eyes taking in the sight of me. I wasn’t used to being called to deliver drugs directly to his office. In the five years I’d been working for him, he’d only asked me to deliver anything directly to him the first few times, to make sure I could handle the job ahead of me.