Chapter One

Chastity

“Patrick, you better be glad you’re not here in person or I’d kick your ass.”

My Louboutin’s click-clacked on the scarred New York sidewalk, as I stepped out of the newest boutique in downtown Manhattan.

I turned the corner and headed down the alley where I’d parked my car, pulling my peacoat tighter around my body as I hustled down the dark street.

“Kick my ass? Please, you like my ass way too much to kick it.” Patrick laughed.

“Says you.”

“What the hell happened Chastity? Come on, lay it on me.”

“What happened? Nothing happened. It was totally fruitless. The meeting ran about an hour longer than it had to and there wasn’t even a contract on the table.” How the heck was I supposed to maintain my company’s image if we couldn’t push our clothing out into the world?

We were successful, but that wasn’t enough. The stakes were still high. We had to prove ourselves.

I had to prove myself. Instead, all I could prove was that I was totally exhausted and in serious need of a long bubble bath and a glass of champagne.

Patrick chuckled on the other end of the line. “What did you expect from a boutique called Bloom?”

“Ugh, there’s no excuse for the clothing I just saw. None. Seriously.” I continued down the alley, my car just ahead. My pulse skipped up a notch. This was… not what I was used to. The wrong side of town. The wrong burrow. And definitely the wrong vibe.

Too dark, too dank, and what was that smell?

“I take it, we won’t be working with Charlotte Bloom then, huh?” Patrick asked.

“Most likely not,” I said. “Our styles do not come close to – ”

Movement in my peripheral vision. A dark figure stepping forward, one hand in his pocket.

Ice flooded my belly, and my hand tightened on the cell.

Run, run, run, move your legs!

I focused on the car ahead and quickened my pace, stumbled forward. My heel – curse designer shoes – caught on something gross and I lost my footing. Flailed forward, barely caught myself on a dumpster.

My breath caught in my throat.

“Chastity? Is everything alright?” Patrick’s question was muffled.

The shadowy figure blurred into motion beside me.

This wasn’t happening. It was not happening. Time mushed together into a ball, then exploded outward.

The cloaked figure halted in front of me and I looked up at it.

Not cloaked. He wore a hoodie. And he had to be the biggest man I’d seen in my entire life.

He stood well over six feet tall and had to weigh somewhere in the neighborhood of three hundred pounds.

A lightning bolt of fear struck in my core.

His face was masked. His hand was in his pocket. The fabric was tented outward, pointing toward me.

“Chastity?!” Patrick’s voice was a dull yell.

Before I could answer him, the man stepped toward me. Whiskey oozed from his pores. His eyes were mean and black, too small in the mask, but blazing nevertheless.

I froze up. Stood dead still, phone in one hand, the other gripping the dumpster’s edge.

“Hand it over, bitch,” the man growled, his voice gruff.

He stepped closer and poked me with the end of what had to be the gun in his pocket.

I dropped my phone, watched as it fell to the ground in slow motion, and hit it with a loud crack. I looked up at the mugger and put both hands in the air. “Please,” I managed. “Don’t hurt me. I –”

I searched around for anyone who might be able to help, but the building closest to me was under construction. Empty. Just the shell of a building with no one inside. I was screwed. Totally screwed.

“Please don’t hurt me,” I managed. “You can have everything. Just take it and go.”

“Hand over the bag,” he said. “Jewelry too. Do it now.”

I handed him my LV bag, trembling, hating this moment. My car keys were in that bag. God, would he take the car too?

Of course, he’ll take the car. He’ll take everything. Just be glad he’s not taking you with him.

Oh no, that was a horrible fucking thought. I wasn’t huge on swearing, but this moment definitely warranted it.

The man reached down to pick up my phone.

I took the moment to search for anything to hit him with – but the alley held nothing but nasty goopy trash, a diaper, and what might’ve been a used syringe. Gritty and dirty and so not my usual place to be.

I was definitely going to kick Patrick’s ass into the cosmos when I got back to the office. If I got back to the office.

Another wave of fear assaulted me and I swallowed it down.

Focus. Think.

But my mind was a jellied mess of incoherence.

The mugger rose from the ground, a smile glinting on his lips and – another figure barreled into him from the side.

Two men, now, oh my god. What if they were both muggers, fighting for the spoils?

They hit the dumpster with a clang and my handbag dropped into a puddle of yuck.

I grabbed it and took off for the end of the alley, toward my Audi. My salvation.

My ankle hurt a little from the weird way I’d stepped earlier, but it wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle. God, I’d take a broken ankle over death any day.

I hit the side of my car with a boink, then fumbled my keys out of the front pocket of my ruined handbag. I blipped the alarm and reached for the door.

“Hey!” A man yelled behind me.

I shrieked – the hysteria had finally bubbled over – and jerked my car door open.

“Hey, wait, it’s okay. He’s gone, now.” This voice was still rough, but warmer than the mugger’s had been.

I halted, mid-stride, and risked a look back.

“He’s gone now,” the guy repeated.

My stomach constricted into a knot.

This guy… this guy made the mugger look small. Tall, broad with thick, tatted up arms nearly bursting free from his white t-shirt. Shit, if I’d been the mugger, I’d have run too. Gun or not, this man was huge. I was half-convinced that had the other man shot him, the bullets would have bounced off this Adonis’ toned, hard body.

I gulped.

“Are you okay?” He halted a couple feet from me, his hands up. “Look, I’m not going to hurt you. It’s just, you forgot this back there.” He held out my grubby, cracked cellphone. It was dwarfed by the size of his palm.

His turquoise-colored eyes were the most beautiful blue-green I’d ever seen.

Where the heck had he come from? Heaven?

Cheesy much? I blushed.

He’d just appeared out of the blue to save me.

The savior-dude reached up and removed a red hard hat from his head. The construction site! That was where he’d come from. Thank god for small miracles.

“Miss?” he asked. “Are you okay? Do you need me to call an ambulance?”

“Yes, I’m fine. Thanks to you,” I muttered, shaking my head as I gathered myself. “Sorry, I guess I’m still a bit shaken up. No, I don’t need an ambulance.”

“That must have been pretty scary,” he said, a smile forming on his chiseled face as he looked at me, showcasing a dimple in his left cheek. He reached out a hand to me.

“My name is Jordan,” he said. “I’m just glad I happened to be nearby.”

“Chastity,” I said, taking his hand in mine. His grip was strong, his hands rough. “I really can’t thank you enough.”

“No thanks needed,” he said.

I was transfixed by him, staring into those blue-green eyes and taking in his muscular build when he turned toward me. A small grin tugged at the corner of his mouth, that dimple making another appearance.

“You sure you’re okay, Chastity?”

I shook my head again, snapping myself back to reality. I cleared my throat and tried to gather my composure, mentally kicking myself for behaving like such a goon.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I muttered, reaching into my purse for my wallet. “Here, let me pay you for –”

He held his hands up. “No, ma’am,” he said. “No need for that. No reason to pay me for doing the right thing.”

“You put your life in danger for me,” I said. “I’d like to show you my gratitude.”

He arched an eyebrow at me, a small grin tugging at his lips. “You think I was in danger?” he laughed. “From that walking turd?” Jordan ran a hand over his short cropped, brown hair, smiling down at me with a mischievous glint in his eye. “You live around here, Chastity?”

There were thousands of butterflies in my stomach, flying around and battering my insides relentlessly.

“I’m staying at a hotel not too far from here,” I said.

Jordan licked his lips as he stepped closer to me, his eyes boring into me. My knees grew weak and my legs shaky as he stared into my eyes. Looking at him, I realized that the butterflies inside of me weren’t from fear – as they probably should have been. No, they battered my stomach out of desire.

God, maybe it was what’d just happened, or maybe I was totally crazy, but this guy… he made me feel as if anything was possible in the best way.

Jordan was everything I knew I should avoid in a man – a construction worker who was covered in tattoos wasn’t the dude I’d be bringing along to fashion shows and boutique openings. But, the other voice in my head whispered to me, who said anything about keeping him around?

“Maybe we should head back there,” he said. So forward. So confident.

I loved that.

“We?” I asked, my stomach lurching.

“Yeah, you still seem shell shocked,” he said, running his tongue over his plump, kissable lips once more. “I think it’d be a good for you to have a little company. You probably shouldn’t be alone in that state.”

He wasn’t sleazy to suggest it. He just wanted to walk me back. Or drive me back or… bend me over the hood of my car? Stop!

I nodded, despite the fact that every instinct in my body was telling me to pump the breaks on that. To not do it. I should tell him no. Tell him there was no way I was bringing a strange man back to my hotel room. That I wasn’t that kind of a girl.

My brain screamed at me – Abort mission! Abort! – but my insides were jelly and as I stood there staring into those devastatingly beautiful eyes, my resolve melted like butter on hot concrete.

It had been so long since I’d been with a man that my body cried out for release. For some attention. I hadn’t been with somebody since my ex, Charles. And God knew I needed to get laid by a real man in the worst way possible. Especially, after the turmoil and utter hell he’d put me through.

And the fact that I’d narrowly survived being killed for an LV purse and a couple Benjamins.

I deserved this, right? A little no-strings attached fun. There was nothing wrong with it. We were both consenting adults.

“Sure,” I said. “Let’s go.”

“Alright then,” he said, with a playful wink. “Lead the way, Chastity.”