Three years. That’s how long it had been since my mother married Richard, bringing his aloof, mysteriously absent son Maddox into my life. In all that time, he had barely spoken to me. He didn’t live with us—thank God for small mercies, or maybe my greatest curse. He was always away at college, then traveling for whatever shadowy business interests kept him occupied. I could count the number of times I’d actually seen him on one hand. He never said my name. He never even looked at me properly.
And yet, I wanted him. God, how I wanted him.
I was twenty-two now, but the ache had started the moment I first laid eyes on Maddox at nineteen. Tall, broad-shouldered, with dark tousled hair that fell over stormy gray eyes and a jawline sharp enough to cut glass. He moved like a predator—silent, c
