Chapter 1 Cass

The guy fast asleep in my bed was named either Wren or Paul.

Yes, I was aware those were two completely different names—names nobody in their right mind could ever mix up. And yes, I was aware those two names didn't even share any of the same letters. And for the last time, yes , I was perfectly aware this scenario might have been a little, let's say, much for a Monday morning. But none of those things concerned me because last night was incredible. One for the history books.

Well, maybe not for the history books, but definitely worth remembering in lurid detail.

Wren/Paul moved against my pillow, eyes shut tight, as he adjusted his sculpted arms. A contented exhale escaped his lips. I knew from experience that he was nowhere close to waking up. Tentatively, I reached down and squeezed his shoulder, my hand resting on the edge of the gigantic tattoo of angel wings that spanned his toned back and arms. When he didn't stir, my fingers drifted lower and traced along the swirling wind patterns that spread from his back to his sides. He was more tattoo than skin at this point, inky and decorated over hard muscles.

Yeah. I was going to think about this guy a lot when trying to fall asleep at night.

Gently, I tickled his sides, barely caressing him. That did it. He jolted and heaved himself up on his hands, flexing his arm muscles as he elevated his massive body. Squinting against the morning light that peeked through my faded blue curtains, he looked left and right before he spotted me over his shoulder. He flipped onto his back and stretched sinfully. As he moved, he treated me to the sight of his marvelously ridged abdomen, which was adorned with tattoos of crashing waves.

"Look at you. Shapeshifter over there," he commented, nodding his chin in my direction. His voice came out low and scratchy, likely from his hangover and from the number of times he groaned and cried out while he was on top of me last night. The mere sound of his voice lit me up, igniting a desire in my core.

Playing it cool, I glanced down at my white chiffon blouse and the thick navy pencil skirt I was wearing. "You like my corporate uniform?" I asked, lackadaisically flicking the loose fold on my top where the hem tucked into my skirt. "Nothing says competence like spending the lion's share of your paycheck on something so plain you could be buried in it."

Wren/Paul smiled at my remark, still gazing at me with hooded, sleepy eyes. He had a good smile. It contrasted nicely with his dusky neck tattoos and the septum piercing in his nose. "I like you better in what you were wearing last night."

His words stoked that blossoming heat in me as I thought back to the ravenous look on his face when we locked eyes at the bar. The agreement was tacit: I'm game if you are. We had barely exchanged names before our tongues were twining together and his hands were grasping my thighs, right there in the dark corner by the ATM.

I managed to keep my expression neutral and unreadable before I said, "Some workplaces might be pro-fishnets, but Davenport-Ridgeway is definitely not one of those places."

"That's where you work?" he asked, pierced eyebrow raised. He released a low, breathy whistle. "Never would have guessed."

"And why is that?" I knew exactly what he was getting at, but I had decided I liked to listen to this guy talk. He said nothing of substance; every word that came out of his gorgeous mouth was a veiled attempt at seduction.

He was exactly what I liked in a guy.

Lazily, he gestured at me to come towards him. It was a small tick of his fingertips, curling in his direction. It looked practiced, like he had offered that motion to dozens of women before and they had all flitted over to him without objection. I shouldn't. There was a good chance he was going to make me very late for work if I went over there. But then he mouthed, "Come here," at me before he glanced down at the rumpled bedspread covering his lap. Then he pulled his lower lip back with this top teeth. Stop . Still, I was like a moth to a flame—a hard, colossal, tattooed flame with thick blond hair and rough hands that knew exactly where to touch me.

Screw it.

I climbed onto my bed and straddled him, letting my skirt ride up high on my thighs. His eyes went there and stayed there, fixating on the inches of tan skin I had just revealed to him without hesitation. His hands went to my waist and caressed me over the thin fabric of my top, drawing a sharp, involuntary inhale from me.

"Girls who go to clubs on a Sunday night and bring home guys who look like me typically don't have fancy, corporate jobs," he murmured before he leaned forward and kissed me. The taste of last night's whiskey still lingered on his lips. His kiss was scratchy from the stubble around his mouth. The small hoop piercing through the side of his lower lip rubbed against my skin. I couldn't keep in a groan—as much as I tried to. Hearing that sound, he tightened the hold on my waist and he tugged me closer to his immaculate, naked body. Heat radiated between us, clouding my brain.

Somehow, I managed to stop the kiss much sooner than I wanted to. I deserved a medal for that. A certificate of achievement, at least. Channeling willpower I didn't know I had, I broke away before his tongue could find its way between my lips. I didn't want to. I could hate myself for it. I was viciously fighting every horny, insatiable instinct in me in a gruesome, pre-season-finale-episode-of- Game of Thrones -style battle. But I had to. Once I got going, it was hard for me to stop.

"It's just a job," I responded, verging on breathless from his kiss. I forced myself to look into his dark eyes, instead of at that luscious mouth. One more look at that mouth and I would lose my resolve. "I work to live, not the other way around."

"I bet you live very well with a job like that."

"You have no idea," I replied, drawing my gaze away from his face. I didn't bother to tell him how much debt I still had to pay. I didn't bother to tell him I was bound to this job by a set of sturdy, golden handcuffs. Instead, he could cling to his fantasy. He could brag to his friends about the aloof, ambitious, rich girl he screwed three times in one night. He didn't need the truth.

I was none of those things—aloof, ambitious, or rich. Maybe once. Not anymore.

I offered him one last kiss, something of a parting gift, before I slid off my bed again. The distance between us was both welcome and necessary. This guy was devilishly sexy and single-mindedly interested in screwing his way through life. Bottom line: He was my type, like a textbook definition. And if I didn't steer clear, I could fall hard for him.

I wouldn't do that. Not again.

"Last night was fun," I said, talking for the sake of talking as I fished my work heels out of my closet. "If you give me your number, maybe we can do it again."

"Yeah, definitely." His voice was tinged with satisfaction. As it should have been.

I unlocked my phone and I tossed it to him. "Put your number in."

When he finished, he sat up and leaned forward to hand my phone back. That move made his abs tighten in ways that could have doubled the divorce rate in New York. Striving to look casual, I checked out the name he just added to my contacts. Yikes . Apparently his name was Jackson , which was obviously different from Wren and Paul. And while I probably should have been embarrassed I missed the mark so badly, it honestly wasn't the first time.

"So, what exactly do you do?" When he finally got up, he launched into yet another stretch that made me strongly consider calling in sick.

"It's not even remotely interesting," I responded. I leaned against the door of my closet, watching him as he tracked down the clothes we scattered across the room last night in a frenzied race to get naked. "Think about the most boring job anyone could have and multiply it by a power of ten. That's my job."

"Worse than accounting?" he asked as he pulled on his jeans over his tattooed thighs.

"Definitely," I confirmed, all while screaming internally at my heart rate to calm the hell down because we were not hooking up with this guy again. "Way worse. I actually just watch accountants work sometimes."

Hearing my response, Jackson frowned. He paused and looked at me, eyebrows tight. "You've got to be kidding me, right?"

I tossed him his t-shirt, which was dangling from the end of my bed. "Not at all. I lead due diligence for acquisitions."

I may as well have been speaking Spanish. "The hell does that mean?" he asked.

"I lead teams of external auditors who go into companies and basically rip them apart from top to bottom to make sure they're worth however many hundreds of millions of dollars we're paying to acquire them. So, I project manage accountants, investment bankers, lawyers, and whoever else we need, and I make sure no stone goes unturned."

His expression was blank when I finished my explanation. I knew that somehow, I had just become a thousand times less attractive in his eyes, which was fine. I was a one and done kind of girl—I probably wasn't going to contact him again anyway. He may have been hot, but New York City had no shortage of hot guys with tattoos and piercings and zero qualms about screwing a stranger into oblivion on a Sunday night.

"You're right," Jackson answered, nodding. He cracked a grin. "That's not even remotely interesting."

"Told you."

He was finally dressed, wearing last night's tattered t-shirt and worn-down jeans. He stood in front of my vanity, rubbing his eyes as he scoped himself out in the cheap mirror I bought from IKEA. He was so tall he had to bend at the waist to see himself. He had a great ass.

"So, are you due diligence-ing any companies today?" He was still fixated on the mirror, tucking back stray hairs that had tumbled out of his messy bun. It was at that exact moment I realized that Jackson was in a deeply committed relationship with himself—and honestly, I wished them the best of luck.

His question reminded me I had a hell of a day ahead of me. I respired out, pursing my lips to keep my exhale slow and even, like an inaudible whistle. Today was the first of a sixty-day due diligence process, which was bad enough as it was. However, this particular acquisition was poised to be a dumpster fire. I had been agonizing over this one for weeks, trying and failing to get reassigned. My trepidation finally came to a head last night when I paused The Shining , rolled out of bed, threw on fishnets and a dress so short it was basically a tank top, and picked up the first guy I met at the bar.

Jackson didn't care about my dread or trepidation though. In fact, he probably didn't realize his question had even gone unanswered until I finally said, "One. But I can't tell you about it."

At long last, he turned away from the mirror to frown at me. "Why not?"

In a pointed move, I picked up my old leather work tote and nodded towards the door to my bedroom. "Because if you went and blabbed off to someone about it, you could make both companies' stock prices change because of market volatility and investor panic."

"What's market volatility?" he asked, naively thinking I could explain it to him in the few minutes we had remaining before I needed to kick him out of my apartment—and my life.

"Market volatility is the tendency for stock prices to change as a result of external and human impacts." I oversimplified to a degree that would have made my professors at business school cringe , but it was good enough for Jackson.

He opened the bedroom door for me and motioned for me to pass. "I work at Duane Reade during the day and I bus tables at night. Who do you think I'm going to tell?"

He had a point. And more importantly, even if he did tell someone, I really didn't care. After all, I sold off my Davenport- Ridgeway shares as soon as I wouldn't have to deal with the capital gains taxes. These days, I was in no financial position to be investing anywhere else. Plus, like I told him, I worked to live and not the other way around.

"Fine," I acquiesced. "Do you know Libra? It's a fintech company. Helps people manage their student loans."

At once, recognition dawned on his chiseled face. Naturally. Everyone under the age of fifty knew about Libra. Most of us had it on our phones—a lifeline to save us from our crippling student debt. "No shit. I have that app."

"Well, there you go," I commented, gesturing with my free hand. "This deal has been in the works for a year. Davenport-Ridgeway made a tentative offer for five hundred million dollars to acquire, Libra accepted, and now I have to make sure they are what they say they are. That's what due diligence is."

"That's kind of cool," he mused, even though it objectively wasn't. "Do you get, like, a commission or something?"

"No. It's just business as usual."

We were standing by my front door, far too deep in a conversation about my job that I wasn't even being paid to have. I checked my phone. Late . "Well, this was fun, Jackson. If you're ever in the neighborhood, you should text me."

For the record, he didn't have my number.

We stepped outside of my apartment and found ourselves standing in the dim, peeling hallway with a lightbulb flickering over us in a cliched image of a slummy New York apartment. It was time for the awkward song and dance where we figured out if we wanted to hug or kiss or wave inelegantly before we somehow ended up heading in the same direction to catch the elevator.

But luckily, Jackson tugged his leather jacket over his broad shoulders and saved us from that dreaded choreography by saying, "Actually, the Duane Reade where I work is pretty close to the Libra offices. If you're heading that way, we could split an Uber and make out on the way over."

I almost laughed at the suggestion, but then I realized he was completely serious. And immediately, I realized I was so game .

"Deal," I agreed as I took out my phone and pulled up the Uber app. "Should we request a regular car or an Uber Pool?"