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Chapter 1

Jase

I never should have agreed to allow Piper Ross to move in with me. But she’d batted those damn lashes and, like a damn pussy, I caved.

Caved.

I never cave. I never have trouble saying no to women. I do it all the time.

No, I won’t call you. No, you can’t spend the night. No, your hot friend can’t join—okay, so I do say yes to that. But Piper’s not like those women. She’s different in every way. Every way that would be good for anyone who wasn’t me.

“Can I have the room on the second floor, the one with the big bay of windows in the back?” she asks as she lightly jogs down the stairs. Her full breasts jiggle under her pink sleeveless top while her flirty skirt teases me with glimpses of the golden skin of her thighs. “It’s so pretty in there.”

That room is right beside mine. I won’t be able to take it, having her so close. No. Tell her no.

Piper walks up to me, a sweet smile on her face. “I promise to be quiet and not keep you up at night.”

Oh, baby. There’s no way you’ll be the one keeping me up at night. “That room—”

“Oh, I don’t know what I was thinking. You probably want more privacy than that.” Her smile grows faint as she shakes her head. “Sorry. I’ll bring my stuff downstairs right now and move into the bedroom on the other side of the house.”

Shit. I’ve hurt her feelings. “You didn’t let me finish, kitten. That room—the room you want—is perfect for you. Back when they built this house in the 1920s, it belonged to the owner’s wife.”

“You can up the rent if you need to. I think that room is bigger than the rest—except for yours.” She blushes when she says this, and I can’t help but wonder if she’s thinking of the time she walked in on me and Angel.

I’m not proud, but I’m not exactly ashamed to admit that it turned me on watching Piper watching us. She’d stood there, in the sexiest fucking dress I’d ever seen her wear, and hadn’t moved while Angel sucked me off, and I imagined that the lips around my cock were Piper’s instead.

Only Piper hadn’t been thinking that. It had shocked her. She’d been embarrassed, not turned on. Hell, I’m pretty sure I disgusted her, given the way she’d suddenly turned and ran down the stairs. My reaction, after I chased after her, hadn’t been the best, either.

I’d insulted her, called her a princess, and generally treated the sweetest, most thoughtful person in the world like she was a piece of shit.

It’s my own fault for wanting what I can’t have. For allowing myself to think I could touch someone like Piper.

I was already in hell, but now that Piper’s moving in, I’ll be in Dante’s Inferno.

“Rent’s firm.” I inhale the floral scent of her expensive perfume. “Can you start work on Monday?”

“I can be there right after my last class. It ends at two p.m.” She bites her lip. “So about guests. What’s the rule for visitors?”

I didn’t have any rules. Why would I? I’m twenty-six for Christ’s sake. “You need me to meet any potential boyfriends?”

“You would scare them off.” She keeps biting her lip. Oh, hell. She’s not biting it, she’s chewing on it.

Reaching out, I gently touch her bottom lip. “You’re going to make it bleed.”

Big hazel eyes gaze up at me and lust surges so hard that it nearly knocks me over. Her hand comes up, fingers wrapping around my wrist. Or trying to. “I’ll stop.”

“Just like that?” I say. I should stop touching her or tell her to stop touching me. No good will come of us touching each other.

She nods, dark hair sliding forward. “I’m very good at following directions.”

My dick gets hard at the thought of all the directions I could give her. Spread your thighs wider. Touch yourself. Suck me.

“Fuck,” I mutter, pulling out of her loose grip and pushing her hand away. “Take whatever bedroom you want. I have to go to work.”

I stalk out of there, grab my helmet, and head to my bike. “Get it the fuck together,” I say to myself as I throw my leg over it and start it up.

Piper

Standing at the window, I watch Jase drive away. As usual, I have said something completely dumb and driven him to leave.

It’s what we do.

But this time, he touched me…and he let me touch him.

My lip tingles with the memory. I rub my thumb over my fingers, in the exact spots that made contact with his hot skin. I want to touch him everywhere, to trace every tattoo, to kiss all the pain away.

Jase’s sister, Rowan, insists I have a bad-boy complex. That I want some badass to show me how to be just as bad. But, honestly, I don’t. I want one bad boy who isn’t a boy at all anymore.

The bad description, however, is apt. Jase Simmons is the epitome of bad. No good. An ex-con. All tattooed and motorcycle driving.

Exactly the opposite of who my mother and father want me to marry. They want me with a boy from the Oaks, someone who stands to inherit money and power from his family.

Funny enough, my father is chief of police in Forrestville, and while that position is very powerful, the pay isn’t exactly what my mother would call sufficient. Not that it matters. Our money comes from her side of the family. It does make me wonder why she married my dad. He wasn’t chief of police when I was born.

I make my way back up the stairs to finish unpacking.

Moving in with Jase wasn’t something I’d planned on, but I knew Rowan and Seth needed privacy, and I had no desire to move someplace my parents would find acceptable.

Walking into my new room, I start to hang up my dresses.

At least here, I don’t have to worry about Mother setting me up with someone. There’s no way Mark Williams will drive to Jase’s house again. Certainly not after that party that went horribly wrong.

Because of me, of course.

No matter what anyone tells me, I know the party ended because Jase and Seth and even Rowan were worried that Giselle—Jase’s on again/off again girlfriend—would try to hurt me.

I love them for protecting me, but I’ve been protected my entire life.

Sometimes I just want to live, to take the consequences of my actions and deal with them.

I glance at the wall that separates my room from Jase’s, then move closer, searching for the hidden latch. I press down and hear a click. The wall swings open like a door and I giggle.

When Rowan and I were little, we discovered this hidden passageway. Apparently, this house was a speakeasy in the 1920s and had hiding places for alcohol.

Stepping through the wall, I pull out my phone and turn on the flashlight app, sweeping it around to check out the place like I’m a detective in a television show.

Dust motes fall from the ceiling in the narrow passageway but other than that, there’s nothing.

Thank God. I have no desire to run into a mouse.

Quickly, I walk to where streams of daylight pour through narrow holes in the wall. Grinning, I take in Jase’s room. The huge bed is made with stark white linens, and the furniture is completely devoid of anything personal. Unlike the last time I saw his room, there’s no stripper named Angel on his bed. Between his thighs…

I flush hot, then cold.

Giving myself an inward shake, I blow out a breath. “This is stupid,” I mutter and make my way back to my bedroom. I give my eyes a moment to adjust from going from nearly pitch-black to full sunlight.