Fuck. Me.
He’s doing it.
Again.
I tell myself not to look. I tell myself to keep my eyes on the book and the study notes in front of me, because NYU seriously does not care what my last name is, and they’ll have no issue failing my sorry ass from my government and public policy master’s program if I don’t focus.
I tell myself it’s high time I bought some fucking curtains, so I can avoid this…distraction…since it’s clearly shaping up to be a frequent thing.
But the problem with telling yourself not to do something that deep down you really want to?
The “deep down” part always wins. Always.
Or, at least it does with me. Which might say more about me and my own self-control…or lack thereof.
No. It’s definitely easier to go ahead and blame my new neighbor across the street. Let’s go with that.
I mean, he’s the one that keeps walking around naked in a penthouse made out of fucking glass.
Mark Twain once said, “There is a charm about the forbidden that makes it unspeakably desirable.” But, smart as he was, it’s clear Mr. Twain never had the neighbor I do. If he had, I’m pretty sure he’d have taken a whole lot of the whimsical “charm” out of that statement.
And sure enough, despite my best—or, okay, let’s be real, mediocre—efforts, soon enough, my gaze shifts from the notes in front of me to the man across the steel canyon from me.
Sweet Jesus.
He’s a freaking god. Tall and lean, and as muscled as a superhero. Shoulders and arms built to take away your ability to speak. Chiseled abs and those grooved hip-muscle things that I don’t even know what they’re called but they seem to be evolution’s way of making even smart women go fucking stupid.
Tattoos for days. Deeply tanned, Mediterranean skin, with a shadow on his razor-sharp jaw, and dark, perfectly tousled hair.
It’s like living next to a goddamn Avenger who models for Armani while he’s not busy saving the world from Thanos. No wonder he seems to have a problem with wearing clothes.
Heat floods my cheeks as I glance across the chasm between us. The morning light streams right through his penthouse, which is another annoyance.
Two months ago, my place was a dream apartment. A modern, light-filled loft at the top of a thirty-eight-story building. So high up that I didn’t even have neighbors who could see into this place.
Is it more than a little ostentatious? Well…yeah. It’s a thousand square feet of modern glass and steel on the West Side overlooking the Hudson. Was it absurdly expensive? Also, yeah. But there’s gotta be some perks that come with being a Kildare to offset the downsides.
Issues making friends my entire life because my family is the Irish Mafia? Check. Problems having any sort of romantic relationships, for the same reason? Check and double check.
Aimless, drifting, utterly unsure of what I want to do with my life, because what exactly do mafia princesses do all day?
Check and fucking mate.
For the last year, I’ve been throwing myself into this government and policy master’s program at NYU. But after that? Who knows. For now, I’m at least finally living on my own.
But life still sort of feels just like something I’m drifting through.
Truth be told, I was pretty sure my uncle Cillian was going to shut down my plans of finally moving out of the main family house and into this place. Especially with all the violence and upheaval in the last few months as the fighting between the Irish Kildare and Greek Drakos families escalated to world-war-three levels.
But my dream apartment and the building itself are incredibly secure and easy to defend. Especially when there’s a rotating crew of four Kildare guys constantly guarding the lobby—much, I’m sure, to the chagrin of the other tenants.
Yet that whole “dream apartment” thing quickly lost some of its luster when they completed construction on the building across the street, next to mine. The building with the double-height glass penthouse that rises two floors above my thirty-eighth-floor apartment, that now blocks part of my view of the river.
His glass penthouse.
The man with the god-like body and the aversion to clothing. The man with the sensual tattoos and the swarthy, lean look of a Trojan warrior.
The man I have absolutely no business gawking at and thinking these sort of sinful thoughts about. Not just because it makes me a spying creep. But because he’s a man I should have every reason in the world to hate.
He’s not just my neighbor.
He’s the enemy.
But try telling that to my under-satisfied libido and clenched thighs.
At last he moves from where he’s been standing at the windows staring out at the Hudson with a cup of coffee in his hand and, mercifully, disappears from view.
Finally.
Distraction gone, I manage to pull my attention back to the study notes in front of me. Nina Simone croons over the sound system as I lose myself in the books. But a handful of minutes later, movement at my peripheral vision drags my eyes back up again. He’s back. And wonder of wonders, he’s dressed—in an impeccably-tailored dark suit. I yank my eyes back to my notes, then back to him.
This time, he’s finally gone.
I exhale slowly, swallowing as I drag my attention back to my government policy books. I don’t have time for these distractions. Not when I’ve got two weeks of notes to memorize and also a Kildare family meeting in…
I glance at my phone and groan.
Shit. In, basically, now. As if on cue, the buzzer goes off for my front door. Sighing, I close the books and pad across the living room. I glance through the peephole out of habit. Then I grin and open the door wide.
Eilish’s brows furrow as she looks me up and down.
“Neve, what the fuck. We’re going to be late, and you’re not even dressed?”
My brow scrunches as I glance down at myself.
“You need to get dressed, Neve,” my younger sister sighs.
“I’m dressed!”
“Those look like pajamas.”
“So? They’re comfy.” I raise my gaze past her to the tall guy standing behind her. “Cas, back me up here.”
But Castle just shakes his sandy blonde head and lifts a muscled shoulder apologetically.
“Cillian wants you dressed properly, kid.”
I roll my eyes at the word kid, but I let it go. Castle’s been Eilish’s and my—I suppose the word is “bodyguard”—for the last ten years. Growing up, all of our friends drooled over the six-and-a-half-foot tall, built-like-a-quarterback shadow that was always with us. That, or they were sure one of us was going to get scandalously tangled up in some steamy, x-rated tryst with him.
But, no way. No way to an “eww” degree. Yes, Castle is ridiculously handsome. But to Eilish and me he’s always been the older brother we never had. And we’re the perpetually annoying-but-loveable kid sisters he never had.
Which is why he can still get away with calling me “kid” or doing annoying big brother-type shit like messing up my hair even though I’m twenty-four.
I stick my bottom lip out, giving Castle my best puppy-dog eyes.
“But Caaaastle—”
“Enough with the waif eyes. Go get changed, Neve,” he grunts. “Your uncle isn’t exactly one to mince words, and he wants you dressed up.”
“But why? What’s this meeting even about?”
Eilish shrugs. “Beats me. Bet it has something to do with your new neighbor, though.”
Annoyed as I am to be forced to give up my sweatpants and hoodie, I know Castle well enough to know there’s no way he’s budging on this. And I know my Uncle Cillian well enough to know that one, there’s no wiggle room here, but more importantly two, there’s a reason he wants us looking sharp. Even if I have no idea what that reason is.
I root around in my disaster zone of a bedroom, stripping out of my hoodie and sweats and pulling on clean underwear and clothes. Five minutes later, I emerge in a green puff-sleeve top, black jeans, and heeled black boots, shoving my long red hair up in a loose ponytail.
Eilish, predictably, rolls her eyes.
“That’s dressed up?”
“I could go back to my extensive sweatpants collection, if you prefer.”
Eilish sighs, reaching up to smooth the single errant lock of blonde back behind her ear. She’s right. I’m still fairly casually dressed. Especially next to my princess of a little sister, who looks like a modern-day blonde Jackie-O in a pink Chanel jersey dress and heels, her hair and makeup immaculate. At nine-thirty in the freaking morning, no less. So sue me, this is the best I can do.
Finally, she grins as she rolls her eyes again.
“Okay, okay, fine. C’mon. We shouldn’t be late.”
“Hey, I’m not the one getting bent out of shape about the dress code.”
I glance to Castle for at least a chuckle. But he’s looking even more grim and stoic than usual.
“What’s up with you?”
He shrugs, turning away.
“Just don’t want to be late. C’mon.”
I frown. “Cas, seriously, what’s up?”
There’s a glint in his eye when he glances back at me for half a second. But still, he gives nothing away.
“Let’s get where we need to go, kid,” he murmurs quietly.
I shoot Eilish a puzzled look as we follow him out the door. But she just shakes her head and gives me an “I have no idea” face. Given that my sister is incapable of being anything but cheerful, talking shit about anyone no matter how terrible they are, or lying in any capacity, it’s clear she’s also in the dark.
Twenty minutes later, Castle is pulling the white armored Range Rover up to the curb outside O’Bannon’s. The midtown Irish pub has been our uncle’s temporary center of business and war room since he moved to New York from London a few months ago, after the petty scuffles between the Kildare family and the Drakos family turned into all-out war.
After things went nuclear, when the Drakos family lost Vasilis, their head of operations in New York, and we lost Declan, the head of ours.
Declan, as in, my father.
The side door to O’Bannon’s, which leads up to the second floor where Cillian’s been holding court the last few months, is guarded by four Kildare men with not-so-hidden bulges of sidearms under their dark jackets. One nods stiffly at Castle and goes to open the door to the bar for us, when suddenly there’s the sound of a car screeching to a stop at the curb behind us.
The hairs on the back of my neck start to prickle as I slowly turn to frown at the black Escalade. And when the back door opens, and a man in a dark suit with pure malice on his face steps out, my heart leaps into my throat.
“RUN!” I scream as I grab Eilish’s arm, whirling to bolt into O’Bannon’s before the bullets start flying.
Because I know damn well who the man who just stepped out of the SUV is. Hades Drakos: a dangerous, certifiable psychopath and second-in-command of the Drakos family. Basically, public enemy number two if your last name is Kildare.
As I yank my sister towards the door, I realize something odd: the guards aren’t launching into action. Castle himself is just standing there, glowering at the second-oldest Drakos brother as he grins savagely at me.
“Cas?” I hiss hoarsely, my pulse thudding. Clearly, Eilish is just as out of the loop as I am, because she’s still cowering behind me, shaking.
“It’s okay, kid,” Castle mutters quietly. He glances behind me, his look softening as it frequently does when it comes to Eilish. Which is totally understandable. I’m the sister with a chip on her shoulder and an axe to grind. Eilish is the sweet one. The one who’s arguably way too soft for this dangerous world that we live in.
“But that’s—!”
“Boo,” Hades chuckles thinly, winking at me in a way that sends a shiver up my spine. He rolls his muscled shoulders, the tattoo ink that curls up from inside the collar of his dress shirt rippling as he buttons his jacket.
“Well, Pillow Fort. Can we go inside now?”
The creases in Castle’s brow deepen as he squares off with Hades.
“It’s Castle.”
“I really don’t give a shit. Are we doing this or not?”
I frown as I turn to Castle again.
“Doing what, Cas? What are we—”
“Open the doors.”
I stiffen at the deep, powerful voice that rumbles behind me. A voice that causes a tingling sensation to creep over my skin, electrifying me as deeply as it scares me. The feeling grows and throbs deeper and warmer, until I can feel my cheeks reddening as something wicked pools between my thighs.
I turn, and my core clenches tight.
It’s him.
My neighbor. The forbidden distraction. The man with the god-like body built for sin who I have no business fantasizing about, but God help me I do.
Because my neighbor isn’t just eye candy.
He’s Ares fucking Drakos, the brand-new king of the entire Drakos family.
I’m vaguely aware of more people getting out of a second and a third SUV that pull up behind the first—the other siblings in the Drakos family, and various other guards. As the seconds tick by, and as Ares’ piercing, dark-eyed gaze continues to stab right into me, the question of why he’s here fades into the background.
And the question of why he’s looking at me like he’s trying to figure out how to swallow me in one bite comes to the fore.
“Inside, all of you,” he growls quietly, his voice filled with unquestioned power. Two of his three brothers—Hades and Kratos—and his sister Calliope glance at me with slightly raised eyebrows as they file past me into O’Bannon’s. Their guards and the Kildare men follow.
Castle clears his throat, taking Eilish by the shoulders as if to escort her inside. I know I should go too. But somehow, I’m stuck. It’s as if my gaze is bound to Ares. Or as if his gaze has me pinned to the very pavement beneath my feet.
We’re on a busy New York sidewalk. And yet, it’s as if we’re suddenly in a bubble of silence. As if the entire rest of the world fades away to a low hum, until I can actually hear my throat tightening when he starts to walk towards me.
I shiver when he stops right in front of me, looming over me. I want to sneer at him. Or spit on his fancy shoes. Or worse. But all I can do is purse my lips and glare at him.
Ares smirks down into my eyes.
“They haven’t told you yet, have they?”
I swallow.
“Told me what?”
One of his dark brows raises in amusement.
“Never mind. You’ll find out soon enough. You know who I am?”
“Of course I know who you are.”
“I mean, apart from being your neighbor.”
I stiffen, desperately trying to swallow back the heat from my face.
“Neighbor?” My voice cracks. Not badly, but enough. “I hadn’t realized.”
The dangerous and lethally-attractive man looming over me smiles ruthlessly, coldly.
“You don’t recognize me?”
“I—I guess not.”
“Would it help if I took my clothes off?”
Dear. GOD.
My face turns as hot as the sun as I pray for a sinkhole to open at my feet.
“I—I—”
“The meeting is about to start.”
He lets his lips curl slightly, giving me the faintest flash of white teeth. Then, without blinking, he starts to move past where I’m still glued to the sidewalk.
He pauses right next to me, and my breath sucks in as he leans down, so close I can smell the woodsy, elegant scent of his cologne and feel the heat of his breath in my ear.
“Oh, and Neve…” he growls quietly. “Peach isn’t your color.”
My brows knit as I start to turn towards him in confusion.
“I’m not wearing—”
Oh God.
Yes, I am.
My mind flashes back to rooting around in my light-filled bedroom as I yanked off my hoodie and sweatpants. Where I pulled out the green top and black jeans…
After putting on the laundry-day pair of peach-colored panties.
I’m not the only person spying on their neighbor.
Son of a bitch.
Ares clears his throat, straightening up and buttoning his jacket as I melt into a puddle of mortification.
“See you in there, princess.”
