Six months ago I baited a sinfully handsome but wickedly dangerous man. He didn't bite. I wanted to work for his company. Desperately. Did all I could to prove my worth and plead my case. To no avail. Until the night I come home to find his card on my kitchen counter. What follows is a game of cat and mouse that leaves me afraid and excited and even more attracted to the grumpy, silver fox mercenary who's occupied my mind for months.

There wasn’t a lot that surprised me. My years in the Navy taught me a lot, my years hunting human traffickers taught me the rest. Meeting a beautiful woman in a bar and spending the night with her should’ve been a blip on my radar. Instead, I spent years trying to forget her. In the middle of a rescue operation, fate dropped her back into my life, but there was a twist—she wasn’t alone.

I’m not looking for a hero, and definitely not a fake relationship with my new boss, nightclub owner Dante Fury—over six feet of dark, hot, and dangerous. But he isn’t taking no for an answer. The plan was to run, live under the radar, survive. My life’s been destroyed by some very bad people and everything I know is gone—career, friends, family. I thought I could hide as a bartender at New Orleans’ hottest new club, Ember.

Reese doesn’t do relationships. Especially not with tall, sexy men with golden retriever energy. Nope, she prefers her men brooding and silent—with no strings attached. So when she hooks up with her gorgeous coworker after their friends’ wedding, she does what any sane woman would do. She runs.

Once upon a time, Skye Xenos had a friend. He didn't know it, but he was the only reason she could survive the hell that was her home. Then he left, breaking a piece of her that could never be repaired. Now, over a decade later, he's back, and bad things start happening to her. A coincidence, or did he really return to destroy the remaining pieces of her heart?