Page 1 of Carnal Urges

ONE

SLOANE

I open my eyes to find a man leaning over me.

He’s dressed in a black Armani suit. He has jet-black hair, a hard jaw, and the most beautiful blue eyes I’ve ever seen. They’re surrounded by a thicket of lashes, long and curving, as dense and dark as his hair.

I’m intrigued by this handsome stranger for about two seconds, until I remember that he kidnapped me.

I should’ve known. The hotter a man is, the faster you should run away from him. A beautiful man is a bottomless pit your self-worth can disappear into and never be seen again.

His deep voice softened by a lilting Irish accent, my captor says, “You’re awake.”

“You sound disappointed.”

The faintest of smiles curves his full lips. I’m amusing him. But the smile disappears as fast as it came, and he withdraws, settling his muscular frame in a chair opposite me.

He regards me with a look that could freeze molten lava. “Sit up. Let’s talk.”

I’m lying down. Sprawled on a cream-colored leather sofa in a narrow room with a rounded ceiling, my bare legs and feet chilled by the dry, cool air.

I have no recollection how I got here and no knowledge of where “here” is.

I remember only that I was going to visit my best friend, Natalie, in New York City, and the moment I stepped out of the car in the parking garage of her building, a half-dozen black SUVs with tinted windows roared up, and this blue-eyed devil jumped out of one of them and snatched me.

There was also gunfire. I do recall that. The burnt smell of gunpowder in the air, the deafening roar of the shots…

I sit up abruptly. The room starts to spin. There’s a sharp ache in my right shoulder, as if I had been hit there. Fighting nausea, I take several deep breaths, one hand pressed to my churning stomach and the other to my clammy forehead.

I feel sick.

“That’ll be the ketamine,” says my captor, watching me.

His name swims into memory: Declan. He told me that right after he shoved me into his SUV. His name and that he was taking me to speak to his boss… in Boston.

Now I remember. I’m on an airplane headed to see the leader of the Irish mafia to answer some questions about how I might have started a war between his family and the Russians. And everyone else.

So much for my fun New York vacation.

I swallow several times, willing my queasy stomach to settle. “You drugged me?”

“We had to. You’re surprisingly strong for someone who dresses like the Tooth Fairy.”

The comparison irritates me. “Just because I’m girly doesn’t mean I’m a little girl.”

He lets his gaze drift over my outfit.

I’m wearing a hot-pink layered tulle miniskirt by Betsey Johnson that I paired with a short white denim jacket and a white tee underneath. I bedazzled the jacket with rhinestone butterflies because butterflies are beautiful, kickass symbols of hope, change, and self-transformation, and that’s exactly the kind of positive fucking energy I’m all about.

Even if it is girly.

His tone dry, Declan says, “Evidently. That right hook of yours is impressive.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean what you did to Kieran’s nose.”

“I don’t know a Kieran. Or his nose.”