How in the world did I get here?

I close my eyes for a second, taking a deep breath and trying to center myself — trying to find the angle here. But no, there’s no good angle here. I’m fucking handcuffed to him, and man is that confusing.

On the one hand, this is the man who fucking rocked my word last night. This is the man who made me explode, and scream for more — the man who got somewhere inside of me I was pretty sure I’d forgotten about. The man who left me breathless and spinning and aching for more.

And yet, this is also the man who’s fucking up my entire plan.

This money is my one ticket out of this whole thing — this whole mess I’ve found myself in. This money is supposed to get me a new life and get me out of the one I’m stuck in — the one that’s being decided for me.

He called me a princess, and I know he meant it sarcastically, but he’s not exactly wrong. He’d know how on the money he is if he knew my name.

Huntington.

Yeah, those Huntingtons. The tobacco fortune. The controlling portion of most of the refineries in the coal belt. The racehorses, the race cars. The big houses, the yachts, the trust fund, the tabloids.

All of it.

Yep, that’s me. Chastity Huntington. Basically a princess. Well, “Heiress socialite” they might say — or at least, that’s what my parents want me to be. That’s what their PR team tries to get me to be in the gossip magazines, or when they used to try and set me up with random vapid pretty boys who also came from money.

And yet, I keep resisting. Because that life is not what I want. I don’t want the glitz and glamour. I don’t want the paparazzi and all that crap. I don’t want this ridiculous expectation of what I “should” be doing to “uphold the Huntington name.” Maybe that’s why I’ve always been a thrill seeker. I’m sure a psychologist would have a field day with that.

First it was skipping school or climbing out my bedroom window at night to go on joyrides in my stepfather Martin’s cars. When they found me out, well, I just got better. I learned to pick my way out of locked bedroom doors. I learned not to get caught when you steal a car.

But it was at twenty-one, just a few months ago, when things went sideways. When I accidentally figured out what my stepfather was really involved in. I’d been using the big safe in his office for practice for years. Only this time, I finally cracked it. I don’t know what I’d ever expected to find inside a rich man’s personal safe — cash? Legal documents? Gold bars?

Well, whatever I expected, it wasn’t what I actually found, that’s for damn sure. Because what I found in the safe was iron-clad proof of what business he was really into.

Drugs.

Prostitution.

Horrible, terrible things. He worked with a man who went by the name Cyril Coleman — another “society” man like my stepfather. A fellow businessman also into the “gentlemanly” things my father was into like horse racing and cigars and all that shit. We’d met at cocktail functions before. And while I’d always thought Cyril was a little creepy and maybe that his eyes lingered a little too long on me at times, I never thought much of it.

Until the day I opened that safe, and learned who he really was.

His real name was apparently Billy-Ray, not Cyril. And it wasn’t horses he was into. It was cooking and selling meth. That and heroin, oxy, girls — all of that. Basically, a real piece of shit, and Martin and him were apparently about to go into business together.

All that would’ve been enough to send me running. Just that was enough to shatter me. Except, that wasn’t all. Nope. You see, their “business arrangement” had a little extra on top from my stepfather — something to “sweeten the deal” and “secure their mutual advancement.”

Something also known as me.

That’s what else I found in that safe that day — that Martin wanted me to marry Billy-Ray Coleman to cement their dirty business deal. And it was all planned out. Martin may have married my mother when I was all of one, but we’d never clicked. We’d never bonded much. But this? Well, this was beyond anything I could have imagined.

I lost my shit, of course. I screamed at him, throwing the evidence at him and swearing that I’d go to the cops with it all. But Martin had just sneered.

“Sure, rat me out. But what do you think is going to happen to your mother when all the money and all her pretty things and all her mid-day cocktail parties with all her friends goes away? You want that for her? It’d ruin her, Chastity, and you damn well know it.”

He was right, and I did damn well know it. My mother wasn’t a strong woman — not anymore at least, not after living with Martin for so long, and not with her crutch of the never-ending glass of wine. If Martin got taken out, she’d have nothing.

“This is how the wealthy stay wealthy, Chastity,” he’d growled. “This is how you keep an empire.”

Right, by marrying your step-daughter off to a creep.

Even if I knew I couldn’t report him, I’d thought about running. But really, what was I going to do? My marketable skills were stealing cars and robbing safes. Besides that, what I had for money was a trust fund, and if I ran, I knew that would disappear.

…It’s pretty hard to run without any money.

So I started digging. I started hitting up seedy clubs and dive bars until I found what I was looking for: Billy-Ray’s main operations facility. Hell, it wasn’t even that hard — the man practically bragged about it openly whenever he went out. And some basic surveillance on the cookhouse revealed that he basically kept all of his drug money there too.

After that, the plan was set: rob the piece of shit I was supposedly engaged to, run away with my mother, and start a new life. Hell, it’d even be easy.  The only ones “guarding” the place were Billy-Ray’s meth cooks, and they were all addicts themselves. They’d never see someone like me coming.

…And well, they didn’t.

But then, I didn’t see him coming.

Not at all.

And now here we are, and everything is fucked up.

* * *

“This place?”

The beat up old pickup truck rumbles to a stop. And there, up a rough little gravel walkway, is a cabin. Well, no. “Cabin” makes it sound quaint. Charming, even. But this place? Yeah, no. This place looks like a fucking horror movie. This isn’t the kind of cabin where your grandmother comes to knit holiday gifts next to a toasty fire.

This is the kind of cabin where people come to get murdered.

I swallow, turning to eye the rough cowboy sitting next to me. Yes, he’s gorgeous, and hot, and can fuck like a god. But, ax murderers can be hot sex-gods too, right?

“Sorry, the Four Seasons was all booked up.” He rolls his eyes, and he goes to open his side door and step out before his arm jerks back. He groans, turning to glare at the handcuffs.

“Hey, you put them on, jackass.”

“Let’s go,” he growls, pulling me towards his side of the truck.

“Sure, but we’re going this way.”

He squares his strong, chiseled jaw, those silvery gray eyes of his narrowing at me.

“You’re difficult.”

“Aww, thanks.”

He growls.

“Are we going inside your creepy cabin or what?”

I grin, knowing I’ve got him and taking a small pleasure in the fact that he’ll have to crawl over the truck’s bench seat to get out on my side. I mean, what’s he going to do? Pick me up and carr—

I scream as he suddenly grabs me, yanking me across the bench seat of the truck cab and hoisting me right out the driver’s side door.

“Are you kidding me?”

He chuckles deeply, throwing me right over his shoulder and marching towards the cabin, the bag of money in his hands.

“Put me down!”

“Your highness,” he says with this smug grin, setting me down when we get to the door.

“Yeah, you need to get these handcuffs off, now.”

“Right, because this was all part of my plan,” he mutters, grabbing a key out of his jeans and unlocking the door. We step in, and even I have to begrudgingly admit that the place is nicer on the inside than it was outside.

“Was it?”

“Was what what?” he frowns.

“Part of your plan? Finally found a girl who’d toss you a pity fuck so you though handcuffing me—”

“A pity fuck, huh?” He grins widely, that smile pulling across his gorgeous face. “Oh is that what I gave you?”

I roll my eyes, turning away from him.

“I mean, it sure was tight enough.”

My jaw drops.

“I’m betting it’s been a while?”

I whirl, fuming as I glare daggers at him. God, he’s so crude. And so damn cocky. And so infuriatingly smug. So infuriatingly hot.

…So infuriatingly right.

Okay, maybe it’s been a while. Maybe it’s been a long while. And maybe that’s why I went wild last night — stepping into that divey little bar, spotting the dark, gorgeous, rough looking cowboy, and letting my inhibitions go. One last night of wildness before there was no going back.

…Or maybe it was him. Maybe it was the way just seeing him when I walked into that place sent heat through my body. The way feeling his eyes on me had my skin tingling, my thighs clenching, and a fire burning inside of me.

But I shake my head of thoughts like those. No way. I may have lost my mind with him last night. But there’s no room for that now. Not when we’ve just robbed the biggest drug kingpin in Kentucky.

…A.K.A., my fiancé.

“Can we please take care of this?” I mutter, bringing my hand up and jangling the handcuff chain.

“Oh, sure, princess. I’ll just use my fucking magic wand.”

My eyes narrow. “Wait, do you not have a spare key here?”

“Darlin’, do I look like the kind of guy with a backup plan?”

I groan.

“And what’s the rush, anyways?” He winks at me. “Don’t you like us being so close like this?”

Yes.

I can’t say that though. Not to this infuriating man who’s thrown a big, giant monkey wrench into my whole plan.

“I have to pee.”

He shrugs, nodding with his chin. “Bathroom’s right there.”

I purse my lips. “I’m not peeing while handcuffed to you.”

He chuckles. “Well then you ain’t peeing, because I’m not cutting my hand off so you can take piss.”

I swear loudly, but he just keeps grinning at me.

“Fine,” I finally hiss, storming across the small cabin and yanking him after me. I step inside and slam the door shut — well, as shut as it will go with a metal-link chain stopping it from actually closing.

I mutter as I pull at the button and zipper of my jeans with one hand, skimming them and my panties down as I sit on the grubby toilet.

…This is humiliating.

I’m sitting here with one hand up in the air, with a chain running through the door to where the tall, dark, stupidly hot stranger I slept with last night is just standing, waiting.

I grit my teeth. “Could you cover your ears?”

He laughs.

“Or whistle a song or something?”

“Tinkle tinkle, princess.”

“Asshole.”

“Can we speed this up? I got things to do.”

“Keep talking, cowboy, and I swear you’re going to regret being handcuffed to me.”

He shuts up, and finally, I can hear him start to whistle.

Finally.

I’m just about done when the whistling stops. “Hey, you need a helping hand in there?”

I yank on my wrist, and when I hear the thud of his head whacking the door and the hissed swear from his lips, I giggle.

“Nope! All good now!”