I’m in the middle of my Psych 101 class, which I’m taking as a senior just to use up a general elective. The classroom is a huge lecture hall with seating for about three hundred, but there are more empty seats than not most days. Miraculously, the entire room fills up on exam days. It’s hardly surprising when professors choose not to enforce any kind of attendance policy.

I barely pay attention to what I’m doodling in my notebook while my professor lectures, more zoned out than focused on any one thing. I keep replaying what happened yesterday. The car ride. The argument with my father about me needing to find a man. My lies. Then Angelo.

Every time I think back on him, chills pass across my skin and my head feels like it’s buzzing. There was something dark around him, almost like a foreboding aura, as if all my instincts were warning me away just like they’d keep me from taking a dark, unfamiliar backroad late at night. Except there was the promise of something in those eyes of his—something so alluring I can’t stop thinking about it.

There’s no point focusing on that now, though. I stood him up last night. I made it as far as getting dressed. I even… I even slid my panties off, just like he asked. I put my hand on the door to leave and couldn’t go through with it. I ended up watching Netflix all night instead, wearing a sexy black dress with sweatpants on underneath. And panties. Granny panties, in fact, as if I was trying to remind myself that I wasn’t sexy enough to deserve a guy like Angelo, anyway.

“...and Pavlov inadvertently laid the foundation for modern day scientific experimentation. Had he been less…” My professor—a rigid woman in her late forties with a tendency toward too much makeup and too-tight clothes—trails off, eyes fixed on something at the back of the room.

I see heads turning around me, toward the spot where she’s looking.

It’s not unusual for the door to be opening and closing all throughout class as people come in late or go to use the restroom, but it is unusual to see a man like Angelo towering in the doorway, so tall and broad that he dominates the entire space.

My professor clears her throat, and continues her lecture after a few seconds of stunned silence, but she sounds distracted, and almost every girl in the room is still gawking at Angelo. The ones who aren’t are red-cheeked and staring at their books.

He scans the room, eyes narrowed until they fixate on me.

The world seems to stop around me in that moment. I know how rabbits feel when a hawk sets its sights on them, the hopeless knowledge that no matter what they might try, there’s no escaping. They are outmatched. Prey before an apex predator.

He stretches his arm out and curls his finger, beckoning me wordlessly to him. From any other guy, the gesture would be ridiculous—obnoxious even. From Angelo though…

I cover my eyes, feeling simultaneously embarrassed and thrilled. My classmates mutter, looking around in the direction Angelo gestured. More and more eyes gradually land on me, jealousy and confusion plain in their eyes.

He waits, showing no signs of feeling awkward or uncomfortable.

Stupidly, I put my index finger to my chest, raising my eyebrows. Me?

He nods slowly.

I gather my things, not wanting to make more of a scene than I already have. I feel the weight of everyone’s eyes and jealousy burning into me as I scurry from my seat, mumbling apologies as I step on feet and make people move their knees to give me room to get out. To escape.

Realization settles in with every step I take, every inch I draw closer to him. I’m not making an escape as much as I am stumbling into the waiting jaws of a beast. A beast I dared to stand up last night.

He takes my hand when I reach him, favoring me with the slightest flicker of a smile before leading me out of the lecture hall and to the hallway outside.

A few students sit against the walls, textbooks or notebooks in their laps as they study. Just like in the classroom, he gradually draws more and more eyes just from his presence alone.

“I told you not to stand me up,” he says, voice so low it’s practically a growl.

He’s so big. So imposing. So unfairly sexy. I’ve kept my distance from men more as an act of spite until now, just to show my father he can’t use me like some bargaining chip to secure the future he wants. Actually wanting a man feels like a betrayal of all the effort I’ve put in until now.

Except maybe father wouldn’t have to know. It could be my secret. My dirty little secret.

“I had class this morning,” I say, gesturing dumbly to the lecture hall behind me. “I needed to get some sleep.”

He touches the rough pad of his thumb to my chin, stroking below my neck with his index finger as he looks down at me with a flicker of amusement in his eyes. “Responsible. No worry. We’ll fix that.”

I blush, not even knowing why I’m flushing with embarrassment on any conscious level. All I know is the way his eyes are smoldering with meaning is painfully obvious.

“You have two choices, little pet,” he says. “You can either take me somewhere on campus where we won’t be interrupted, or you can come to my club tonight.”

Little pet. The way the words drip with amusement and sexuality when they leave his mouth makes my core clench and fill with heat. “You’re serious?” I ask, half-laughing before an impulsive swallow chokes the sound off abruptly.

He takes a step toward me, forcing me backward until I’m between his hard body and the wall. His hand is pressed against the concrete behind me, eyes locked on mine. I feel my own eyebrows raise when I notice something hard and very big pressing against my lower stomach. Right where his… I look down, mouth falling open when I see what I’m feeling, the bulge in his pants.

“Do I seem serious to you?” he asks.

More serious than anything I’ve ever seen in my life. All I can do is nod.

“I don’t like to ask questions twice, but it wouldn’t be any fun if you didn’t need training. Broken in,” he adds, voice deepening into a low rasp that makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention.

My brain struggles to keep up, to figure out what he’s talking about, to focus on anything except those perfectly formed lips of his and those long, inviting eyelashes. “Q-question?” I stammer.

“Your choice. Now, or later?”

“The club,” I say. “I’ll come tonight. I don’t have class tomorrow.”

A small smile spreads across his lips. After a few moments, he chuckles, pushing off the wall and looking down at me. “Well that’s good, at least. I wouldn’t want to keep you up all night before class. Oh, and I like your picture,” he says, nudging my notebook with his knuckle before turning to walk away without waiting for a response.

Stunned, I turn the notebook up to look at what I drew, not even remembering. For the first time in my life, I wish I wasn’t any good at drawing, because there’s no doubt in my mind who I was drawing a picture of instead of listening to the lecture. It’s a sketch of Angelo that is embarrassingly lifelike.

I squeeze my eyes shut and let my head bang against the wall behind me before I sink down into an exhausted heap. Seriously? I drew a freaking picture of the guy in my notebook like some lovesick middle schooler? At least I wasn’t practicing my signature with his last name, I guess. Come to think of it, I don’t actually know his last name. I chew the corner of my lip as I sit there, trying to imagine what it would be.

Like it matters. As long as it’s not Luciani, it’s all the same. For some reason, that thought makes my blood run a little colder. The Lucianis are the only rival crime family in the city, and even if my father tries to keep the family business as quiet as he can around me, I’d have to be deaf and blind not to know that he’d be more likely to shoot a Luciani than to shake their hand.

I laugh a little to myself at the thought of that, sweeping my pen across the notebook and signing the name Anabella Luciani. Now that would give my father a heart attack.