CHAPTER 1
CALIGULA
I’m running so fastmy lungs might burst, but if I slow down, I’m dead. And I’m not going to die like a rat in some dirty alley.
Not tonight.
I was track champion all through high school. Right now, those years of training are the only thing keeping me alive. All those line drills in the August heat…
Worth it now.
I eat up the sidewalk as I sprint toward a bar a block down where there’s enough life to offer safety. Or witnesses, anyway.
I’ve reached full velocity when a colossal figure steps out of a dark alcove directly into my path. I try to dodge, but there’s no chance. I clip him hard and head teeth-first toward concrete.
But before I hit, I’m swung around and upright, set back on my feet as though I weigh nothing at all. It’s like hitting a wall that decided to help me out instead of letting me face the consequences of physics.
“Careful, pretty boy. You’ll hurt yourself.”
His voice is warm honey spilled on gravel and broken glass. Around my biceps, his hands are iron bands holding me effortlessly in place. I look up—up—up to see a face that looks rough, unfinished. As though the artist sculpting him wasn’t working with marble but clay, pummeling his face into place with fists, and forgot to smooth it all down before firing. The black hair is cropped short and a shadow darkens his strong jaw.
He’s not…unattractive.
And when his dark eyes meet mine, they’rehungry. Like I’m his next meal and he’s debating which bite to take first.
His attention shifts, scanning over my shoulder, and something he sees makes his grip tighten, fingers digging into my arms hard enough to make me gasp. I crane to look over my shoulder and see the hooded figure running toward us, the guy who’s been on my ass since I bolted from my grandfather’s townhouse.
Since I left my cousin’s body cooling on the floor.
The stranger angles himself to shield me. It’s such an instinctive, protective gesture that I almost forget to be terrified of him. Almost. The asshole chasing me pulls up short, reassessing. My rescuer—captor?—doesn’t move, doesn’t speak, just stands perfectly still, silently daring him.
The other guy backs up. Turns. Runs the other way.
Only when he’s out of sight does my companion’s attention return to me, and that ravenous focus is back, cranked up to eleven.
I pull myself the fuck together. “Let me go,” I tell him in my most imperious tone.
He tilts his head, considering. “Should I? Seems like you need someone to keep you safe.”
Every impulse I have is a conflicting signal. Run. Stay. Submit. Fight. Lick his neck…
What the hell?
“I can take care of myself,” I manage at last.
His lips pull back in not quite a smile—more like a wolf showing its teeth. No, not a wolf. A goddamn grizzly bear, looming over me. “Can you, though?”
With that, he pins me against the wall, one enormous hand flat on my chest, where he must be able to feel my hammering heart, and the other gripping the back of my neck. He leans down as though to kiss me, and I just stand there, speechless.
“You’re shaking like a rabbit,” he murmurs close to my ear. “Breathe.”
He’s right, Iamshaking. And now I’m breathing only because he told me to, pulling air into my lungs with sharp, desperate pants. His thumb strokes across the nape of my neck, and my entire body lights up like a Christmas tree. Heat floods me, making me warm despite the cold, and?—
“So,” he goes on conversationally. “What did a pretty thing like you do to get chased through my city?”
Hiscity? This city belonged to my Family not so long ago. My grandfather ran half of Manhattan before this jerk could tie his shoes.
And I don’t appreciate the victim-blaming, either.
