North didn’t linger. He never did. He lifted himself off the bed, not sparing a glance for Serena. For now the ache, the never-ending pressure in his chest, had eased. It was only a temporary fix. He knew that, but for as long as it lasted he’d take it. When the pressure returned and work and booze weren’t enough to kill it, he’d hook up with Serena or someone else. Nothing like sex to chase away the demons.

“Well, that was nice,” Serena chirped, still breathless. She peeked over her shoulder at him.

Fortunately, she wasn’t one of those clingy types that needed cuddling after sex. He gave a swat to her perfect ass and moved away. He knew it was more than nice. Women like Serena didn’t settle for anything less. They were a lot alike. She didn’t do relationships either. She was in it for the sex. A quick fuck, hard and satisfying, short on the foreplay and zero on the sweet talk.

He slid on a pair of jeans, snapping the buttons. He’d been out of prison for two years and he was doing okay. He had a job. A house. Sunday dinners at his brother’s place whenever he wanted it—which wasn’t as often as Knox would like. There was only so much marital bliss North could witness between Knox and Briar without feeling nauseous. He forced himself to go occasionally just so Knox wouldn’t show up on his porch determined to play big brother.

“You should try one of those scones I left on the kitchen table,” Serena suggested behind him.

“Scones?” He glanced back at her. She was wrapped up in his sheets like some artfully arranged centerfold. He wasn’t dumb enough to think she was posing like that, one knee bent halfway to her chest and a generous hip thrust out, accidentally.

“Yeah, chocolate chip.”

“You baked? Never pegged you for much of a cook.”

His brother’s wife cooked. Last time he’d visited them out at the farm, she’d baked a chocolate pecan pie that could make a grown man cry. Briar Davis—correction, Briar Callaghan—was a fucking girl scout. She was a nurse, a great cook, and even though he wasn’t supposed to notice it, she had a nice rack. Oh, and she loved his brother. The same guy who went to prison with him . . . whose hands were as bloodstained as North’s.

Knox had been there with him at Devil’s Rock. Except for those last four years. Then it had just been North. Alone. That was the difference.

Apparently, those four years made all the difference.

Knox was able to have a normal life with chocolate pecan pie and a wife.

Four additional years at the Rock made North fit only for booze and meaningless fucks.

Serena pouted. “Maybe you don’t know everything about me, North Callaghan.”

He looked her over appraisingly. “I think I know you pretty well.”

“Just because we’ve gone to school together since kindergarten.”

“We took Home Ec together freshman year,” he reminded her. “You almost burned down the classroom when you tried to cook a quesadilla.”

“Oh my God.” She giggled. “I forgot about that. Well, I’ve learned a few things since then.”

He scanned the luscious swell of her backside. In high school, she had been a tease. No guy got in her pants, but she’d enjoyed fooling around and tying them up in knots. Quite different from the girl she was now who worked four nights a week at Joe’s Cabaret.

“I know you have,” he admitted. They had all learned a few things since high school. In his case, nothing good.

She stared at him for a long moment and he was pretty certain she was thinking about how much they had both changed. She worked as an exotic dancer. He was a hardened felon—a far cry from the clean-cut kid he used to be. Tatted, scarred up, hair too long, his body a honed weapon, he bore little resemblance to the guy who’d sat across from her in Home Ec. Not only did he know how to take a beating, he knew how to give one.

He knew how to kill.

He slammed a heavy metal door shut on those thoughts. He’d just gotten laid. He didn’t want to lose his after-sex buzz by traipsing down memory lane.

“I’m gonna go work out back,” he said, tugging on his shoes, already done with this conversation and craving his space. Solitude. It was a downside to having sex. Sometimes they wanted to chat afterward.

Indifferent to his announcement, Serena continued, “Your new neighbor baked the scones.”

“Huh,” he replied noncommittally. He’d noticed the car in the driveway. He knew the place had been sold. The For Sale sign had come down a week ago. The duplex next door had been vacant almost three months after the old man who lived there moved in with his son’s family. Various Realtors had traipsed in and out of the house with prospective buyers in that time. He’d stopped paying attention.

The last thing he needed was a nosy neighbor bringing him baked goods.

Serena stood, indifferent to her nudity. “She seems like a nice lady.” She held his stare.

He shrugged.

She rolled her eyes. “She is your neighbor. You might want to introduce yourself.”

“What for?”

“It’s called civilized behavior.”

He laughed once. A harsh bark. “Does that sound like me? Civilized?”

She stepped forward and patted her fingers against his chest. “No, darling. That’s why I come to you. Nice men . . . well, they don’t fuck like you do.” She sighed. “Pity.”

He reached for her hips and hauled her against him. She was talking too much. Words he didn’t want or need to hear. If she was going to stay, she was going to have to shut up.

She continued, “Sometimes, whether you like it or not, you have to engage with other people. You have to speak to other people.”

“I talk when I need to.”

She smiled crookedly. “Sure you do.” She sighed and shook her head with an air of defeat. Which was just as well. She didn’t want to fix him. She liked him just the way he was. Always up for a good time between the sheets. “You should meet her.”

Nice. He didn’t do nice. He didn’t have nice in his life. It wasn’t that he didn’t want it. He just wouldn’t know what to do with it if he had it. For the majority of his life, he had been swimming in shit.

He reached for the shirt he’d tossed on the recliner in the corner of his room and pulled it over his head. “Let yourself out.”

“I always do.” Rolling her eyes, she sighed. “I guess this is my cue to go.”

He shrugged. “I didn’t say you had to go.”

“Didn’t you?” She slipped on her underwear and hooked on her bra. “You know someday I’m gonna get offended at your wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am attitude.” She grabbed her T-shirt. “Fortunately for you, I just want you for your body.” Reaching between them, she fondled his dick. “And for what you can do with this.” Grinning, she stepped back and finished getting dressed.

“Really?” he smirked. “Someday?”

She sniffed and rubbed under her eyes, where her mascara had smeared. “Not today apparently.”

“Night, Serena.” He turned to leave the bedroom.

Her voice stopped him. “You should come by the club. My friend Marcy was asking about you.”

“Marcy?” he asked blankly.

“Yeah. The other redhead. The fake one.” She tossed her mane of red hair proudly. “She said she’d like to be on your list.”

North winced. He didn’t like it when Serena referenced his “list” like he actually kept a running catalog of women on hand to access when he needed a quick fuck.

Don’t you?

He only ever did one-night stands. It was never messy that way. No one became entangled. Occasionally, those one-night stands were repeated. As with Serena. Sleeping with the same woman was sometimes convenient.

Turning, he passed through his bedroom door. Serena followed him down the stairs. She slipped on her high heels where she’d kicked them off near his kitchen table and motioned to the plate of scones.

“You should try one. They’re amazing.”

Homemade scones. So fucking domestic.

He stared at the plate. He owned a few dishes, but he usually ate off paper plates that he bought in bulk. He didn’t own a plate like this—cream colored with tiny little flowers edging the border. Briar would own plates like these. His brother would eat off a plate like this. Knox could pretend he was someone else. That he’d never been kept inside a cage.

Not North.

She sighed. “Fine. Be stubborn.”

He didn’t look up from the plate as Serena pressed a kiss to his lips and slipped out of his house. He heard her car door slam in the night. The engine started and faded away. He began to turn, intending to head out back to his welding shop, but then he was spinning around. He had plenty of work to finish—his own freelance and custom pieces he was hired to do for the garage where he worked—but first he had to deal with this. He snatched up the plate and pulled open the front door.

He stalked across the shared front porch. The light was on and he could see there was already a welcome mat in front of the door. Of course.

Bending, he set the plate with the three remaining scones on the mat.

He didn’t want to make nice with his new neighbor. He didn’t want homemade scones. He wasn’t that man. His time at Devil’s Rock had seen to that. Twelve years turned men into animals, and he was nothing less than a fucking brute. Scarred inside and out.

Two years free on the outside didn’t erase that. Nothing could be undone. Nothing was ever erased.

He knew it. He wouldn’t pretend otherwise.

He couldn’t if he wanted to.

She was still awake when she heard the back door open and slam shut next door. The slam reverberated for moments, traveling into the bones of her house. It was strange that she was connected to another person like this, sharing and sleeping within one actual structure, only a wall dividing them. And yet they hadn’t met yet. She didn’t even fully know what he looked like. Just the sound of him fucking.

She bounded from her bed and made it to her bedroom window in two strides. She peered through the blinds, craning her neck to get a better view of the figure striding across the backyard.

It was him. North Callaghan. The guy who had just made a woman scream like a porn star. She shifted in place on her feet, suddenly feeling itchy inside her own skin as she observed the way his jeans hung low on his hips . . . the denim hugging his ass perfectly. Her already alert girl parts clenched.

From her position at the second-floor window, she could see into both her yard and the neighbor’s, a fact she had noticed when she initially viewed the property. A work shed of some sort sat at the far back of his yard.

Usually the double doors were shut, but tonight they stood open, revealing various tools, machinery and equipment inside.

She sighed as he disappeared into the shed. Out of sight, out of mind. Well, not exactly out of mind. She was standing rooted to the spot, still staring after him like he was the hot lifeguard at the community pool the summer she turned thirteen.

God. She was hard up if the sight of a man’s back got her this flustered.

Yes, she wanted to date and meet Mr. Right, but maybe she should focus a little less on finding her forever guy and more on Mr. Right Now.

Would hot, meaningless sex be so wrong? How hard could it be to get laid? She knew the thought would traumatize her father and brothers. But wasn’t that why she wanted her own place? To lead her own life without interference or judgment from her family?

The privacy and freedom to do whatever she wanted—whoever she wanted.

It was something to consider.

Lights sparked and flared from inside the shed, spitting out into the night. It sounded like a blowtorch. Maybe he was welding? She wasn’t exactly sure about stuff like that. She’d grown up around guys. Changing the oil in her car, mowing the yard. Anything mechanical. Her dad and brothers handled that. Guy stuff might have rubbed off on other girls, but not Faith. Those things never interested her. She’d stayed inside in the air-conditioning and read her books and watched Barefoot Contessa.

Turning from the window, she moved and sank back onto her bed. Sliding under the covers, she listened to the distant sounds of a welding torch. It wasn’t nearly as distracting as the sounds of sex. It was almost pleasant. Like white noise to lull her to sleep.

She pulled the pillow to her chest and tucked it between her legs. White noise or not, her mind drifted back to him. To the sounds of him having sex.

She jammed her eyes shut. So the walls were thin. Serena wasn’t a girlfriend. By her own admission, she had told Faith that. Tonight wouldn’t be a daily occurrence. So loud sex would only happen sometimes. Occasionally. She’d deal with it. Having a place of her own, her first home, still outweighed the annoyance.

Rolling on her side, she prayed for sleep to come.