1
To: Alpha Mail
From: Lia Quinn
Subject:A request I shouldn’t make.
Message:
I’ve spent years fighting men like the one I’m about to ask for.
Men who take.
Men who decide.
Men who don’t check first to see whether the world approves.
I can’t shake the truth I’m too proud to say out loud.
I want someone who feels like danger in human form.
Someone who looks at me and sees what I bury:
a woman who is exhausted from being good.
Send me a man who doesn’t ask permission to enter a room.
A man with sure hands, steady aim, and instincts honed somewhere far from Charleston.
A man who knows how to track what he wants—and takes his time doing it.
I won’t pretend I’m ready for him.
I won’t pretend I won’t regret this.
But if you send someone…
don’t warn me.
Don’t soften him.
Don’t make him safe.
Just let him come.
And let me face what it means to want a man like that.
—Lia
2
Iwoke up before my alarm, heart pounding like I’d run a race in my sleep.
For a moment, I didn’t know why. I stared at the ceiling fan spinning above me—too slow, too soft—and felt that strange electric hum beneath my ribs, the one that didn’t belong to morning or caffeine or anything reasonable.
Then it hit me.
The letter.
