A summer breeze wafts across my face as I stand outside my apartment, jiggling the key. I push into the lock and try to turn it, but it sticks.

I sigh, because the key not working is symbolic of my luck lately. Everything is stuck.

For instance, my date tonight went well, like all my dates have in the past three months. Which is to say, it lacked a certain excitement.

I'm tired of dating, but my therapist says I need to at least give these guys a chance. But I swear, it seems like every guy is either just out for sex—and they make that very clear, or else, he’s a lamo with the personality of my pet rock.

Tonight was a second date, and this guy took me out to a nice dinner at an Italian place downtown. He got in the cab, took me home, and it was all fine and dandy.

He was nice. But that spark was nowhere to be found. Zero butterflies.

Ted didn’t even try to kiss me, which leaves me wondering if maybe it’s me who's the problem, not him.

I take a frustrated breath, turning my key and twisting the doorknob, but the thing is jammed. It's not like I live in the worst part of town, but it's almost midnight, and I'd prefer not to play the odds that an attacker won’t come by my place. Even if the odds are slim. I’m a woman alone at a certain hour. A girl’s gotta think about safety.

Hearing my gate clank, I whip my head around and see a hooded figure. I freeze. It's like I summoned a stranger by just thinking about the possibility.

“Having some trouble getting in?” he asks, his voice scratchy and sounding like he just smoked a pack of cigarettes. He looks to be in his forties, and his skin looks withered. I can't make out most of his face, which is shaded by his hoodie.

Adrenaline surges through me, and I feel the urge to run. But my key is trapped in the door.

“No, I’m fine,” I say politely in a strong tone, not wanting to let on that I’m basically trapped outside.

“Let me see your purse,” he sneers as he walks up the steps and gets into my personal space. “I bet I could figure out that lock.”

My heart races. “No, I’m fine.” I repeat with emphasis.

And I don’t know what seeing my purse has to do with figuring out the lock.

“That’s okay,” he says, and he stops on the top stair right next to me. “I’ll just have a look.”

My heart thumps as my worst nightmare begins to come true.

He snatches the purse from around my forearm, but I don’t budge. The handle rips and the contents pour out onto the concrete stairs. He goes right for the credit cards.

“Get away from me!” I yell, hoping someone around will hear. Anyone.

He lets out a literal growl as he puts his paws right on my credit cards. I try to kick him but he grabs my foot.

“Oh no you didn’t, honeybuns,” he says with a smirk.

“Fuck you,” I scream, and try to kick him with my other leg, but it’s hard since I’m basically propping myself up on the stairs with only my arms.

He grabs hold of me, and I panic. He’s got the upper hand.

I hear the gate open and see another man running toward us.

In a flash, I hear the sound of flesh on flesh and a grunt, and the two figures duke it out right in front of me.

I grimace a little as the new man hits the hooded man in the face with a one-two punch combination. I put my hand over my heart, because I’ve always been anti-violence. But I can’t help the feeling of electricity that fires through me, starting in my chest and raising goosebumps all over my body.

This is clearly a one-sided fight.

And the stranger who just saved me is hot. He’s got thick brown hair, longish on top but short on the sides. Tattoos peek out of his rolled up sleeves.

“Oh my God,” I whisper to myself when I realize who the hot stranger is.

He’s not a stranger at all.

He’s my landlord Damien, who I’ve had a few brief encounters with when my checks didn’t go through.

And who has definitely been the subject of a few of my late-night summer fantasies.

Most people in the building aren’t big fans of Damien. Probably because he's the one we've got to give our fifteen hundred dollars to every month.

But as he’s holding my would-be attacker by the cloth of his hoodie, the truth is I don’t hate him.

My skin tingles, and a warmth comes over me.

Am I seriously...turned on right now? I feel heat rise up in my core.

Damn. This is what I wanted Ted to make me feel. But he didn’t. Or couldn’t.

“Get the fuck outta here, ya bum!” Damien yells at the hooligan in the hoodie, before shoving him down the stairs. The guy stumbles to his feet and hightails it, tripping through the fence on his way out.

I’m shaking as Damien takes me by the arms.

"You’re Krista right?" he says. “My tenant?”

I nod.

"You okay?"

"T-t-the lock doesn’t work.” My voice shakes as I point to the lock.

"Come on," he says, gruffly. "Let's get you inside." He puts his key in and turns the lock.

Damien walks me up the stairs to the second floor, carrying my purse. My heartbeat finally settles when I realize I'm out of danger. But inside my apartment, Damien brings me a glass of water and it speeds again when I notice something.

Damien may be my landlord and a dick who arguably charges too much. But his jaw is square, and his white T-shirt does little to hide the bulging muscles, biceps and all, popping out of his shirt.

His left elbow is covered by a tattoo of a red rose.

Suddenly, I am incredibly curious about this mysterious man, who owns my building and has damn good fighting skills.

I chug the water down gladly, as my throat is dry and I need it now.

I'm getting the butterflies I wished Ted could give me.

"Someone had better fix that lock," I mutter, trying to ignore the tumble of attraction suddenly building in my tummy. "That was completely unacceptable. If you weren't there....who knows what would have happened."

"But I was there," he emphasizes, leaning back onto the island. He stares at me with hazel eyes. "And if that guy woulda hung around one more second I woulda taken care of him."

Damn, those eyelashes.

I can't stop my heart from warming further, and maybe it's the adrenaline. But I'm feeling especially courageous all of a sudden. I reach my hard forward and grip his forearm.

Wow. It's nice.

"Stay and have a drink with me," I croak, no idea where I found the juice to be so forward.

"I don't think so," he says, taking his eyes off of me. "I don't drink with my tenants."

"Please, Damien. Just one. It would mean a lot to me."

He takes a deep breath, glances away, and then looks back at me. "One drink."

“One drink,” I emphasize, agreeing with him.

Famous last words.

In the kitchen I quietly get out a couple of cups and think about what kind of drinks to pour.

Damien furrows his brow oddly, smirking. His expression sends a chill through body, starting in my spine and working its way to my feet.

Damien billows in a low tone. “Just one.”

Then suddenly a little question comes into my mind and I can't help myself.

"Come to think of it, why you don't drink with your tenants, Damien? What's the matter? Afraid of a simple drink or of your tenant?"

I pour the light brown liquid into two tumblers.

“Well, no, I…I’m just not very social with my tenants. It’s better this way,” he mumbles. His cocky expression drops for a moment as I hand him the glass.

“You’re a loner, huh?” I ask, cocking my head his way.

“Bulleit Rye?” he asks, changing the subject. He chuckles. “I’m surprised you have this in your cabinet.”

He sticks out his glass to clink mine, and I oblige him, taking a sip as he does. The liquid feels warm on the way down, coating my throat. It’s truly quite soothing as it hits my lips.

I have to roll my eyes a little though, thinking about his question. “So girls can’t drink whisky, eh? That’s how your mind works?”

“No, not at all,” he says. “I just thought, you know, it’d be over there, by all of the other drinks,” he says, motioning toward the bar I have in my living room.

“Oh,” I blush a little. “I guess I have the good stuff in a hidden spot.”

“Saving the best for the guy who saves you from an attacker,” he winks. “I understand how it is.”

Damien stands steady, his drink wrapped in one big hand. He squints my way, and as he runs his eyes slowly up and down my body, I get the impression he’s eating me alive.

Though he could not be more laid back and relaxed, his head cocked to the side, I still have the feeling that he’s…. No. Damien wouldn’t have a crush on a girl like me.

“You never answered my question,” I swallow, trying to mask my timidity as I look up at him. “Why don’t you drink with tenants?”

Taking another pull of whisky, he scrubs a hand across his light beard. “I don’t like to mix business and pleasure. But…”

While he trails off, I sit down on the couch. He swills the rest of his drink down. “Well. That’s the one drink. I think it’s time for me to go.”

He turns to leave, but something in me makes a move. I jump up from the couch, lurch out and grab him by the wrist. “That was a small drink I just poured you. Have one more.”

His eyes examine mine. “Fine. One more.”

Smiling, he goes to the kitchen and pours another. I’ll be honest, I’m just staring at his ass in his jeans from behind as he stands there.

Something is up with him. No landlord should have an ass this good.

Spinning around, he takes a seat on the couch next to me, and slaps his hand on my knee.

“What are you doing?” I mewl with excited nervousness.

“I don’t know,” he growls, and looks me in the eye. “Fuck, I don’t know. I can’t help it, though.”

He looks down and away for a second. “You really want to know why I didn’t want to stay for a drink? Why I don’t drink with tenants?”

“Yes,” I whisper, clutching my drink hard.

“It’s not that I never drink with tenants—although you’re right about one thing: I’m a bit of a loner. I didn’t think I could control myself around you. And I don’t think I should be acting this way around a tenant.”

“Oh. And how are you acting, exactly?” I say, arching an eyebrow and leaning toward him. I try to make the space between us as negligible as possible.

Our eyes lock, and we both hesitate. As we sit on my couch there’s barely one foot of air between us, but that space is everything. This is the space between an appropriate tenant-landlord relationship, and the very dirty thoughts I am thinking right now about how it would feel to cross that space.

Damien’s eyes are intense, his jaw as tight as the tension palpable in the air. The dim light reflects on his Adam’s apple as he takes another swallow of his drink without letting his hazel eyes leave mine.

He lets out an involuntary noise, a cross between a grunt and a cough, and a wave of his cologne wafts toward me, pushing me over the edge.

I slide toward him on the cushions, and part of my bare leg touches his jeans. I put my hand on his mop of black hair, and pull his lips to mine for a heavy kiss on the lips.

Kissing should not feel this good.

Either it’s been way too long since I’ve had a real kiss, or Damien has some sort of secret way of creating an electric current through my body.

After five seconds, I let go, look up, and gauge his reaction. He holds his arm out with his drink, his chest heaving, his eyes wide with surprise. I smile slyly at him.

“Wow,” he finally says. “That was...wow.”

“Like...wow good?” I ask, hesitantly. “Or wow bad?”

He smirks. “It’s the kind of wow that makes me need to do this now.”

After setting his drink down on the table he takes my hands and squeezes them. My heart beats like a drum, and he presses his body against mine, our hips colliding. He runs a hand from my back down until he’s cupping my ass over the cloth of my skirt.

One hand on my ass, and another on the flesh of my thigh, his grip is strong and solid.

“Holy fuck, Krista, I’ve thought about doing this so many times.”

“You have?”

Has my landlord been watching me like I’ve watched him?

“Yes.”

“Doing what, exactly?” I breathe.

“Doing you,” he mouths, and then drowns me in kisses.

He wraps kisses around my neck, and lingers for a moment just underneath my jaw. I gasp for air and dig my nails into his back.

Continuing his all-out assault on my body, he presses his warmth into me and God, it feels so good.

I don’t know if I pull him, or he presses me, but soon we’re laying flat on the couch and his weight is on top of me.

And we’re making out and he’s grinding his leg between my panties like we’re a couple of teenagers.