Chapter one:

ARIA

Moving back in with my mother was already humiliating enough

Add her rich, terrifyingly attractive husband into the equation and what you get is me, standing outside a mansion in Minnesota at four in the afternoon, suitcase in hand, seriously reconsidering every life choice that led to this moment.

I should have stayed broke in Boston.

I really, truly should have.

Mrs. Dalton opened the door before I could even knock , sweet woman, soft voice, immediately took my bag and told me dinner was at seven and Mr. Voss was working from home today.

Mr. Voss.

Oh God.

My mother materialized from upstairs in a waft of Chanel and maternal guilt, pulled me into a hug that nearly cracked a rib and started talking immediately. The room, the gala next weekend, the stone work in the back garden, something about travertine. I smiled and nodded and said mm-hm in the right places and was doing a genuinely impressive job of being a normal, well-adjusted daughter.

And then I heard footsteps.

Slow ones. The kind that don’t apologize for themselves.

I turned around and okay. Okay, kill me. Just kill me right now.

Caden Voss stepped into the room in a black shirt with the sleeves pushed up and I felt my brain short-circuit like a laptop dropped in a bathtub. I’d met him before. Twice. I knew what he looked like.

 I thought I’d built up an immunity.

I had not built up an immunity.

He was tall and broad and unfairly, aggressively good-looking in that quiet, dangerous way that had nothing to do with being pretty and everything to do with the way he occupied space like the room had been rearranged around him and everyone else was just visiting. Dark hair going silver at the temples. A jaw cut from something cold and unyielding. And eyes the color of deep water that landed on me and just. Stayed.

“Aria.”

One word. My name. His voice was low and unhurried and it rolled down my spine like a slow, warm hand and I felt it I felt it somewhere it had absolutely no business going.

“Caden.” I said it back like a normal person and not someone whose thighs had just clenched involuntarily.

He looked at me for exactly two seconds too long, then turned to my mother and asked something about a call he had at six, and I stood there with heat flooding my face thinking ah. Ah, this is going to be a problem.

Dinner was a whole event.

My mother talked enough for all three of us, which was a mercy because I was barely holding it together. I ate my salmon and drank my wine and kept my eyes on my plate like a student who hadn’t done the reading and didn’t want to be called on.

Caden sat at the head of the table and said almost nothing.

He didn’t need to. The man had a gravitational pull that made you track him without deciding to every time he reached for his glass, every time he shifted in his chair, I felt it in my peripheral vision like some humiliating internal alarm system.

Once, my mother excused herself to take a call.

Just like that, it was the two of us.

I stabbed a piece of asparagus and stared at it like it owed me money.

“How was the drive from the airport?” he asked.

I looked up. He was watching me with that still, unreadable expression, elbow on the table, wine glass loose in his fingers.

“Fine,” I said. “Long.”

“Mm.”

Silence.

“You don’t want me here,” I said, because apparently I had no survival instincts.

Something moved in his expression. Not surprise.

More like recalibration.

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to.”

He looked at me for a moment and then the corner of his mouth moved. Not quite a smile. Something quieter than that, and somehow worse.

“You’re perceptive,” he said.

“Business degree,” I said. “First class.”

He made a sound low in his throat that might have been amusement and picked up his wine glass and I sat there with my pulse in my ears thinking omg, omg, what is wrong with me, he is your mother’s husband, get it together, Aria.

My mother came back.

I finished my wine faster than was strictly polite.

I went to bed at ten and lay there staring at the ceiling for two solid hours because sleep was apparently not something I was allowed to have anymore.

At midnight I gave up.

I went downstairs in my sleep shorts and an old university shirt, hair in a messy bun, not even a little bit prepared for human interaction. I just wanted water. That was it. Water and maybe something cold from the fridge and then back upstairs to resume staring at the ceiling in peace.

The kitchen was quiet and dark except for the small light above the stove. I padded across the tiles and grabbed a glass and filled it from the tap and drank half of it standing right there, cold floor under my bare feet, eyes half closed.

Then I heard movement behind me.

I turned around.

Caden was leaning in the kitchen doorway in grey sweatpants and no shirt and fuck me, honestly, just fuck me completely.

He was built like someone had sat down and designed him specifically to ruin women. Broad chest, defined stomach, a body that looked less like vanity and more like controlled force. Dark ink curled over his left ribs, a tattoo I couldn’t fully make out from here. He had one arm resting against the doorframe, hair slightly disheveled, eyes on me with that same unhurried attention that made my whole nervous system go stupid.

His gaze moved.

Slow. Deliberate.

From my face, down my throat, over the thin cotton of my shirt, down my bare legs, back up.

It lasted maybe three seconds.

It felt like being taken apart.

“Couldn’t sleep?” he asked.

His voice was rougher than at dinner. Like he’d been somewhere dark and quiet before he came down here and hadn’t fully come back yet.

“No,” I said. Brilliant. Stunning response.

He pushed off the doorframe and walked into the kitchen and I backed up one step without meaning to. He went to the cabinet, pulled out a glass, filled it at the tap. Stood about two feet away from me drinking it slowly.

The silence was so thick I could hear my own heartbeat.

He finished his water and set the glass down and turned to look at me and I made the catastrophic mistake of looking back. Really looking. Up close like this, in nothing but sweatpants, with the low light catching the line of his jaw and his eyes doing that dark, unreadable thing he was the most dangerous-looking person I had ever been alone in a room with.

And the worst part? The absolute worst, most humiliating part?

I wasn’t scared.

“You should go to bed, Aria.” Low. Quiet. Final.

“I know,” I said.

Neither of us moved.

Something shifted in his eyes then dark and brief like a door opening and slamming shut in the same second. His jaw tightened. He stepped back, putting distance between us like it was a decision he had to make physically.

“Goodnight.”

He walked out.

I stood in the kitchen with my thighs pressed together and my heart absolutely rioting in my chest and the deeply inconvenient realization that I was attracted to my stepfather in a way that was going to get me into serious, serious trouble.

I went back upstairs.

Climbed into bed.

Pulled the duvet up.

And then my phone lit up on the nightstand. 

Unknown number. With one message saying 

Wear something decent to breakfast tomorrow. I won’t tell you twice.