Chapter One
Paige
I’d never felt anything even close to what I felt as the beautiful monster threw me into the back seat of his car that night. My fear was just a shiver away from all out panic as he threw my college bag in after me and slammed the door closed.
The boom was like thunder.
And so was he.
I struggled to pull myself to sitting against the sculpted leather as he moved to the driver’s side door, my gut still aching along with my head from the way I’d been manhandled in the alleyway.
I’d been insanely dumb and I knew it.
Approaching my sister’s violent loan shark drug dealers to try to palm them off with three grand in used banknotes and the promise of considerably more was a scheme worth one of those Darwin awards for idiots. My name would be up there in internet laughter for all time – Paige Rowan Emmerson, the dumb bitch who walked into certain carnage and a four-way dick fest.
And I would have. I’d have walked into whatever seedy nastiness they’d have dished out to me for the sake of saving my sister.
They would have dished it out too.
They’d have left me a battered mess on the floor of an alleyway in the dregs of drugville, spread open wide for whoever else wanted to take their turn – if it wasn’t for him.
Him.
The man who’d saved me from my own stupidity like a knight in the darkness.
My dangerous saviour.
He didn’t look so much like a saviour right then. Not as he climbed behind the wheel and started up the ignition.
He was seething. Dark eyes like black ice meeting mine in the rearview mirror.
“I mean it,” I managed to tell him in a raspy voice. “I really am sorry.”
“Oh, you fucking will be,” he snarled, and my terror notched up another gear.
Self-consciousness ate me up. Embarrassment for my stupid actions burned worse than the punch in my gut.
“Drop me anywhere,” I offered. “I can walk back in a few hours.”
And he laughed.
He actually laughed.
It was a horrible laugh. Right from the violent pit of him.
Because he was violent.
Brandon Grant was a dangerous man.
Brandon Grant. I still couldn’t believe I knew his name. His actual name.
I still couldn’t believe what I’d seen from him, either.
The power. The dominance. The unwavering strength of him in the shadows.
I had no idea there were men like him in this world. No idea that a single man could be enough to make four brutal loan shark scum think better of standing up to him.
There was no denying it.
I was just as scared of him as I was of the men he’d pulled me away from. Maybe even more so.
Yet still, I was grateful.
Grateful to him for saving me from obvious doom.
And I couldn’t deny it. Even as my heart pumped desperation around my body, I knew I liked it.
Liked him.
“I won’t be fucking dropping you anywhere,” he told me. “Your sixty days begin right here. Right fucking now. Prepare to pay your fucking dues.”
My blood ran cold at his words. I couldn’t leave Phoebe in my dorm room alone. Without me. Without anyone.
“But my sister…” I began, chancing a glance at the door handle.
“Your sister can go fuck herself, Miss Emmerson,” he snarled. “Believe me, you have bigger things to worry about.”
His eyes crashed into mine again. My adrenaline spiked to the max.
I knew it in that heartbeat. In the way his glare cut me right through.
I wasn’t going anywhere.
I daren’t even look for my phone in my bag. It was somewhere in the shadows of the footwell along from me, and the odds the thing was either in there or functional after being tossed in the alleyway were far from in my favour.
Plus, infuriating him any further was a whole world more shit to be reckoned with.
So, I didn’t. Instead I stayed quiet and buckled myself into the back seat with trembling fingers. It took three attempts before it clicked in place.
I was staring deadpan ahead as he pulled the car away with a heavy foot on the accelerator. The tyres screeched as we sped from the garages and onto the main street, his steering as strong as the rest of him as he took us through the city and out onto the open road of the countryside beyond.
Maybe a girl in my position should have screamed and shouted and lost her mind, bailing out of there and away from such a terrifying specimen of dominance before he could fuck her up beyond repair.
Maybe I should have asked questions. About where we were going and what he was planning for me.
Maybe I should have kept up with the semi-rational chatter about what was going to happen to my sister in my absence and how I couldn’t let that be so.
But I couldn’t.