But that friend had once been Levi Rush.
She didn’t know who this man was, with his pierced eyebrow, tattoos, and aura of leashed violence and menace. A man like all the other thugs who seemed to infest Royal Road.
And then, as suddenly as he’d swung around to stare at her, the quality of his strangely asymmetrical stare changed. Became focused, intensifying on her the way a sniper locks onto a target.
It was unnerving. Frightening. And Levi had never frightened her before.
He looked even less like her friend than ever before. More like a general about to conquer a city. With her being the city.
Her protective mechanisms, ones she’d built up over a lifetime of being on her own, kicked in with a vengeance, and she’d lifted her chin almost before she’d had a chance to think about whether being prickly really was the best way to handle this.
Eight years ago she would have launched herself into his arms for a hug.
But it wasn’t eight years ago. It was now. And she’d made so many mistakes already, what was one more?
“Hey, Levi,” she said, her voice sounding pathetic and scratchy in the echoing space of the garage. “Long time no see.”
Jackie Ashenden lives in Auckland, New Zealand, with her husband, the inimitable Dr. Jax, two kids, and two cats. When she’s not torturing alpha males and their stroppy heroines, she can be found drinking chocolate martinis, reading anything she can lay her hands on, posting random crap on her blog, or being forced to go mountain biking with her husband. Jackie also writes the dark, sexy contemporary Nine Circles romance series for St. Martin’s Press. Visit her at jackieashenden.com.
DIRTY FOR ME
Ezekiel “Zee” Chase has a complicated past. Born into a family whose wealth grew from the seedy world of big-time crime, he ran away as a teenager and made a home for himself on the streets of Detroit. By day, the mechanic works at a local garage. But by night, he throws down with the best of them in Detroit’s gritty underground fighting scene. With all those muscles, he’s never had trouble with women—until he meets one who challenges him to the greatest fight of his life....
Tamara Eliot is a hardworking corporate high-flyer who appreciates the finer things in life, from her expensive perfume to her designer handbags. More than anything, though, she likes to be in control—and when Zee explodes into her life, she feels anything but. He’s the definition of a bad boy: brash, fiery, and of course, irresistibly hot. And there’s a darkness about him that keeps her coming back for more. As Zee takes Tamara deeper into a world she never knew existed, she just might prove to be the one opponent he won’t be able to dominate—at least not without some pleasurable convincing....
Sin for Me Page 29