Prologue
Gianna
I really fucking hate the holidays. Call me a Scrooge. I really don't care. Being forced to spend time with your judgemental older sister, who acts more like a third parent than a sibling is cruel and unethical torture.
Don't get me wrong, I loved having a sister that's fifteen years older than me when I was a kid. By the time I was taking my first steps, Shauna already had a car and her driver's license. She would take me everywhere with her, and I enjoyed every second of it.
Now that I'm twenty-two, all Shauna does is tell me how badly I'm screwing up my life. It's as though the instant she got married, had children, and turned thirty-seven, she forgot what she was like at my age. I, on the other hand, still remember her stumbling into our childhood home at three in the morning, drunk off her ass, when I was just a kid.
I never used to mind her middle of the night wake up calls. She would come up to my bedroom to wake me up, and I always knew what that meant. We'd make pizzas in the early hours of the morning and laugh until Mom or Dad would come downstairs, scold her, and send me back to bed. It was the highlight of my younger years.
Now, she's walking away from me after yanking me away from the ridiculously attractive hockey player from Maxton's team. We'd barely struck up a flirty conversation before Shauna dragged me into the corner of the room to warn me off of the older man.
Crossing the room, I take another glass of the bubbling liquor and down it in one go. This champagne tastes like bad decisions and another stern talking to from my sister; a lethal combination.
I'm three glasses deep when I spot him again from across the Georges' living room — all broad shoulders and silver peppering his full dark facial hair — looking like this is the last place he wants to be. His eyes sweep over the crowd with a mixture of judgement and quiet amusement.
No matter how hard I have tried over the last two hours, I can’t seem to keep my eyes off him for long. Something about him calls to me. We only spoke for a few moments before, but I’m hooked.
I don't care what my sister thinks. I'm going back over there to talk to the only interesting person at this party.
“You look like you're plotting an escape,” I whisper, stepping up beside him with a fresh champagne flute in my hand.
He turns to me, eyes dark and intense in a way that perfectly embodies every man Shauna has attempted to steer me clear of for years. When they glide down my body, I feel his gaze like a physical caress against my too warm skin.
“Am I that obvious?” His voice is low and rough when he responds to me.
“You've been standing in the same spot since my sister interrupted us. You haven't smiled once, not even at me. You're holding that drink like it personally offended you.” I tilt my head to the side, smiling up at him. “So yeah, it’s incredibly obvious. What's your name, mysterious stranger?”
A slow smile spreads across his face. It's dangerous, like he knows exactly what a single smirk from him does to my heart. “Daemon,” he says, extending his hand.
“Gianna.” I take his offered hand. His palm dwarfs mine when he wraps his fingers around mine. His grip is firm, and everything about this simple greeting makes me feel small in comparison to him. Normally, I hate that, but with Daemon, it’s making me feel something else. Something I haven’t figured out yet.
“Are you one of the Georges’ kids?” he asks.
I shake my head and smile at the way he didn’t immediately exclude me from the possibility of being related because of my darker skin tone. “My sister is married to Maxton's older brother. What about you?”
“I’m a friend of the family. I play hockey with Maxton.” He says thehockeypart like an afterthought. He also doesn’t seem to be offended that I didn’t recognize him as the famous player he probably is.
I'm not really a sports person, but I did assume he was on the hockey team with Maxton. You don’t see many gigantic, handsome men wandering the streets of Brookside.
Even after Max got drafted when I was just a kid, I never got into the game. However, Daemon could convince me to change my mind.
“Hockey,” I repeat, scrunching my nose as I take in his towering frame. “So you're really strong and probably have excellent hand-eye coordination.”
He chuckles quietly at my obvious dig at him. “That's one way to look at it.”
“What's another way?”
“A liability. A loose canon. A washed up old man in a sport filled to the brim with young kids.” His tone comes off as a warning, but he's moving closer to me. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-two,” I huff, rolling my eyes at him. “Before you ask, yes, I’m mature for my age. Yes, I know what I’m doing. And yes, what I’d like to be doing is you.”
“Do you actually know what you’re doing?” His eyes light up with amusement. “You seem to be a bit impulsive, like someone who doesn’t think things through before they act.”
“I'm thinking right now.” I smile, trying to hide the hit of the insult he just threw my way. “I'm thinking that there was nothing coincidental about our meeting.”
He takes a sip of his drink, and I watch the way his throat bobs when he swallows. I want to drag my tongue up the expanse of his neck the next time he does that.
