1
SYLVIE
I didn’t belong there.
The crowd was a baying, howling mass of wild eyes and open mouths, leaning far over the concrete balcony to gawp. The heat of a hundred frenzied bodies pressed in on me from all sides until I could barely catch my breath.
I had to get out of there but I needed to stay. I owed it to Alec.
I stumbled through the crowd, making my way around the edge of the huge, circular room. I kept my gaze fixed on the graffiti, on the rusted pipes...anything to avoid looking at what was going on below us.
There was a cry of pain and I glanced down before I could stop myself. One man had the other on the floor, fists pummeling his face. There was only one rule: it went on until someone couldn’t get up.
Welcome to The Pit.
I looked away, disgusted, and tried to move faster. Elbowing or pushing isn’t in my nature and I was the lone woman in a roomful of hyped-up, drunk men. So I muttered apologies and sneaked through gaps. Luckily, they barely noticed me—not the rich guys who’d come there for an edgy walk on the wild side, not the local guys who wereone bad bet away from disaster. Everyone was going nuts, jumping and yelling and punching the air.
No, wait. Not everyone.
I stopped in my tracks as I saw him. He stood like a rock in an ocean, a full head taller than the people around him and moving not even an inch as they ebbed and swelled against him. His broad back was like a cliff and his shoulders seemed twice as wide as mine. He was in a sleeveless top, arms folded across his chest, and the heavy swells of his shoulders and biceps led down to thickly corded forearms.Big,and ripped, as well. But it wasn’t his size or his muscles that made me stop, nor even the way he stood so still.
His hood was raised, throwing his face into shadow. Who wore a hood, in this heat?
I moved forward and lost sight of him for a moment. When I saw him again, I was closer. I was looking up into that shadowed face, now. I could just catch glimpses: a jaw dusted with dark stubble, a full lower lip pressed into a tight line. He was watching, but he hadn’t lost himself like the others. Maybe he was sickened by what was happening downstairs. Maybe, like me, he didn’t belong in this place.
I passed behind him, willing myself not to look. I made it three feet beyond him before the urge got too much and I glanced back over my shoulder. At first, I could see only shadows under the hood but then—
As one of the cheap fluorescent tubes flickered, I caught a glimpse of eyes: savagely blue and brutally hard. Starkly beautiful, they saw every weakness and gave no mercy.
I tore my eyes away, panting like I’d just missed a speeding truck. I’d been wrong. He wasn’t immune to this place at all—he was already lost. And if I didn’t belong here; he could have been born here.
I tried to move faster through the crowd. A drink. I needed a drink. I headed for the guy I’d seen on the far side of the room, the one who sold sodas out of a cooler at six dollars a time. He knew his market—six dollars was nothing to the guys who came here, the ones who bet thousands of dollars and then drove home in their Lexuses,speed-dialing their wives to apologize for working late. To me, six dollars was a day’s food. But I was going to pass out if I didn’t drink something.
I bought a Dr. Pepper and ran the cool metal can over my forehead, closing my eyes, letting the chill soak into me and calm me, pushing away the remembered fear from when I’d glimpsed that guy’s expression.
Fear and...something else.
The eyes had been gorgeous—coldly beautiful beyond anything I’d ever seen. And that jaw, those lips, that body—the expression had sent ice down my spine but, when it reached my groin, it had turned into something else entirely. Cold had become hot. Fear had become—
I closed my eyes for a second and took a deep breath.Stupid.Sure, from the glimpses I’d seen, the guy might just be hot as hell under that hood. But that expression...he was like the distilled essence of this place.
Stay. The fuck. Away.
I popped the top and drank. The cold soda foamed down my throat like liquid sex. A calming chill soaked through me and I felt my heart gradually slowing down.
I drained the whole can before I looked up and saw him. The hooded man. Closer, this time, no more than ten feet away.
And staring right at me.
The momentary cool from the soda boiled away in an instant. A wave of heat shot through me, rippling upward from my groin. I wasn’t ready for how deeply sexual his gaze was, how it connected with me right where I lived.
I told myself,of course he’s not looking at you.I’m not much to look at. My brother’s the eye-catching one, all blond hair and muscle, like my dad. I take after my mom—small and slender, with boobs like half-oranges.
I wrenched my eyes from him and stared fixedly into the distance, waiting for him to look away.
But I could still feel his gaze on the side of my face, never wavering for a second.
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