The first thing I felt was the cold.
Not the cold of the Carrara marble vanity from last night, where I'd sat naked while my own body failed me. Not the controlled, climate-controlled cold of Julian's penthouse, where the thermostat was set to a perfect seventy-two degrees year-round and the air always smelled faintly of lemon and nothing.
This was different.
Gritty. Greasy. Wrong.
His thumb traced the line of my jaw, and I felt the transfer before I understood what was happening. Something slick and dark smearing across my pristine skin. Motor oil. Paint. Industrial solvent. The residue of a life that used its hands.
I should have pulled away.
I should have been revolted.
Instead, I felt my body lean into it.
His hands were rough. Callused. Working hands. The pads of his fingers were mapped with tiny ridges and valleys, scars from tools I couldn't name, layers of grease ground into crevices that soap had never touched. I could feel each individual callus catching against my skin, the friction microscopic but undeniable, like sandpaper dragged across silk. And the smell—God, the smell.
It wasn't just gasoline. It wasn't just sweat. It was a complex, layered scent—hot metal from the welding torch, tobacco smoke that had settled into his clothes and skin, something acrid and chemical that might be paint thinner or solvent. It was overwhelming. Unfiltered.
None of the sterile, lemon-scented void of Julian's world, where everything that smelled like anything was immediately eliminated. This smell clung. This smell announced itself. This smell said I exist, and I don't apologize for it.
My fingers curled around nothing.
I could feel them wanting to reach for my phone—for the burner line in my pocket, for the number that could summon a car, a security detail, Julian. But my hand stayed at my side. Frozen.
My throat had gone tight.
And when his thumb traced the line of my jaw, I didn't pull away.
The grease stain was drying on my skin, pulling it tight. A mark. A brand. I could feel it like a physical weight, like he'd claimed ownership of something I hadn't even known I could still give away. And somewhere beneath the shock and the shame, I felt a spark ignite—low in my belly, hot and treacherous.
I should have been disgusted.
I wasn't.
---
Two hours earlier, I'd stood in my walk-in closet, staring at rows of clothing that cost more than most people earned in a year.
The closet was larger than my first apartment had been. Wall-to-wall carpet in pale cream. Custom shelving in white lacquer. LED recessed lighting that made everything glow. This was where Julian kept me—dressed in investments, draped in assets, wrapped in the physical embodiment of money well-spent.
The Max Mara camel-hair coat hung like armor—pristine, architectural, the kind of piece that announced its wearer belonged to rooms where the air was filtered and the lighting was always flattering and no one ever raised their voice. I'd run my hand over the fabric, feeling the luxury of it, the way it said I am untouchable without speaking a word. Underneath, a white silk blouse. Tailored wool trousers. Understated. Expensive. Safe.
All of it chosen to communicate the same message: I am in control. I am untouchable. I am exactly who I appear to be.
But I wasn't. Not anymore.
"You look hungry."
The text message had burned in my mind all morning, surfacing in the gaps between emails and conference calls and perfectly executed smiles. That photo—my face at the dinner table, pupils blown, staring at the raw steak like a feral animal. The stranger who'd seen me. Really seen me.
Not the Elena Vance who smiled at exactly fifteen degrees. Not the Elena Vance who leaked emotion only when Julian wasn't looking to catch it. The Elena who wanted to rip the world apart with her teeth.
Julian was already at the office by the time I woke. He'd left a note on the kitchen counter in his precise handwriting—each letter perfectly formed, each word chosen with the same care he applied to everything:
Foundation board meeting at 3. Don't be late.
He hadn't even noticed the broken mirror in the bathroom.
Or if he had, he hadn't mentioned it.
That was Julian's way. If something was broken, either you fixed it or you replaced it. Emotional responses were inefficient. Distress was a failure of asset management. The mirror had shattered? So what. Either I'd calmed down enough to function, or I hadn't. Either way, there was work to do.
I'd crumpled the note and thrown it in the trash.
The anger had surprised me—hot and sudden, like I'd reached into my chest and found something burning there that I'd forgotten existed. For five years, I'd been exactly what he wanted. Calm. Composed. Perfect. The Vance Asset Maintenance Manual had been my bible, my survival guide, my prison.
And for what?
So I could sit in a five-million-dollar apartment and stare at a broken mirror and realize I didn't even know what I looked like when I was actually feeling something?
So I could function at peak efficiency while my body slowly forgot how to feel anything at all?
I'd grabbed the coat. The white silk blouse. The Louboutins. No thought—just instinct, like an animal fleeing a forest fire. I'd needed out. I'd needed something that wasn't this. I'd needed—
I still didn't know what I needed.
But the address in the text message had burned in my mind like a brand: 457 Knickerbocker Ave.
Now I stood on a crumbling sidewalk in Bushwick, Brooklyn, staring up at a converted warehouse that looked like it had been abandoned halfway through demolition and left to rot for twenty years.
The Uber driver had refused to drive past the intersection. "You sure this is the place, lady? This ain't exactly—" He'd caught my expression in the rearview mirror and stopped talking, the words dying in his throat.
"This is fine," I'd said, handing him a cash tip that was three times the fare. "Keep the change."
I'd watched him drive away in my peripheral vision, the taillights receding like a lifeboat abandoning ship. And then I'd been alone on a street I didn't know, in a neighborhood where I didn't belong, wearing clothing that announced me as prey to anyone who cared to look.
I'd walked the remaining four blocks in my Louboutins, the red soles clicking against broken pavement, each step a tiny percussion of *wrong. wrong. wrong.* The sound belonged in a gallery, not on a street where concrete crumbled underfoot and graffiti crawled up every available surface like ivy made of spray paint and desperation.
Men in paint-splattered jeans stopped their conversations to watch me pass. Women pushing strollers looked up from their phones. A group of teenagers on a corner went silent as I approached, their eyes following me like I was an alien species—which, in this neighborhood, I was.
I could feel their judgment like physical touches.
And they were right. I didn't belong here. I was wearing five thousand dollars' worth of clothing in a neighborhood where people probably made that much in three months, carrying an arrogance I'd mistaken for confidence.
The hunger drove me forward anyway—like a hook in my navel pulling me toward something I couldn't name but desperately needed.
The air here smelled different.
Garbage and diesel fumes. Wet asphalt from a storm three days ago, still drying in the gutters. The faint, sugary rot of fruit fallen from neglected trees, fermenting in the sun. Underneath it all, something industrial—metal and chemicals, the breath of a neighborhood that had once built things, manufactured things, *made* things, before the money had left and the jobs had disappeared and the buildings had been left to crumble.
None of the sterile, lemon-fresh scent of Julian's world. The carefully curated absence of smell that said *we have eliminated everything unpleasant from our lives, we have curated reality itself, we live in a world where nothing smells unless we have chosen to let it.*
This air was uncurated. Unfiltered. Real.
It made me want to gag.
It made me want to breathe deeper.
I checked my reflection in a shop window—taped-up glass, security bars across the front, the sign inside hand-lettered in Spanish I couldn't read. The woman staring back looked like she'd stepped out of a Vogue editorial by mistake.
White coat. Perfect makeup. Hair that had been blown out that morning at a salon on Madison Avenue, the stylist chattering about galas and benefits and the new restaurant opening in Tribeca while hot air and expensive products had transformed my hair into something sleek and manageable and perfectly, boringly under control.
I reached up and touched my own cheek, as if to make sure I was still there. My fingers came away clean. No grease. No grime. Just the woman I'd always been.
For the first time in five years, I felt something like relief.
My phone buzzed in my pocket—the burner line, the number only twelve people on Earth possessed. Another message from the unknown number. Just an address: *457 Knickerbocker Ave.*
I'd found it.
The building was a former factory, brick walls tagged with graffiti in colors too bright to belong in the natural world, layers of paint peeling from the metal security doors like dead skin. No sign. No indication that anything existed behind those walls except maybe squatters or rats or the kind of urban decay that Julian's foundation pretended didn't exist while writing checks to fix it.
But I could see light bleeding through the cracks in the shutters—blue-white flashes, rhythmic as a heartbeat. *Flash. Flash. Flash.* Like lightning trapped inside a box.
Welding.
I pushed the door.
It wasn't locked.
---
The space inside was cavernous—thirty-foot ceilings, exposed ductwork snaking across the overhead space like metal intestines, brick walls that had probably been standing since the 1920s. The floor was concrete, stained and cracked in places, covered in drops of paint and metal shavings and the detritus of creation.
But all of that was background.
What dominated the room was the light.
Welding sparks flew in blue-white arcs, miniature fireworks that seared themselves into my retinas. *Crack. Hiss. Crack.* The sound was continuous, a violent sizzle like bacon in a skillet but magnified, industrial and somehow alive. Each spark was a tiny star, born and dying in the space between heartbeats.
Through the glare, I could see a figure at the far end of the space, bent over a steel sculpture, a welding torch in one hand like an extension of his arm. He moved with the kind of fluid confidence that came from doing something thousands of times, muscle memory so deeply ingrained that thought was no longer required.
He was shirtless.
The realization hit me like physical force, like I'd walked into a wall I hadn't seen coming.
His back was a map of muscle and old scars, sheened with sweat, bronzed by the welding light. I could see the definition in his shoulders—deltoids, trapezius, the complex geometry of strength. Could see the way his triceps bunched and released as he moved. Could see each vertebra of his spine, visible under skin that had seen too much sun, too much exposure, too much of everything Julian's world never allowed.
Paint stained his arms—sprays of color in blues and reds and yellows, layers of it, like he'd been splattering himself with his work for years. Some of it looked fresh. Some of it looked weeks old. None of it looked like it had been applied with any intention or care. It was just there. Part of him. Like the scars. Like the muscle. Like the complete lack of anything resembling self-consciousness.
He wasn't wearing any protective gear. No apron. No gloves. No mask except the welding visor he currently wore. Just jeans that hung low on his hips, revealing the sharp cut of his hip bones, and work boots scuffed to hell, the leather so worn I could see the texture of it from forty feet away.
I stood in the doorway, frozen.
This wasn't a man from my world.
This was a man from the world that existed outside the glass walls of Julian's empire. Rough. Unapologetic. Dangerous. A man who used his body for a living, who'd probably been cut and burned and bruised a hundred times and kept going because pain was just part of the job. A man who didn't know who Julian Vance was and wouldn't care if he did.
And I couldn't look away.
The torch cut off.
The space went dim, leaving afterimages burned in my vision—purple and green spots where the blue-white light had been. I watched him straighten up, watched the muscles of his back shift as he reached up and lifted the welding mask off his face.
He turned.
Our eyes met across the forty feet of empty space between us, and I felt something in my chest unlatch. A hook I hadn't known was there, pulling loose.
His face was—younger than I'd expected, maybe late twenties. Sharp jawline, shadowed with stubble that was probably two days old. Dark hair that fell over his forehead in sweat-dampened strands, sticking to his temples in ways that salon-styled hair never did.
But it was his eyes that caught me.
Dark. Unreadable. Assessing me like I was a piece of art he was deciding whether to buy or destroy. There was no deference in his gaze. No awe. No recognition of who I was supposed to be—Elena Vance, senior partner at Aura, queen of the Met, wife of Julian Vance, the man who managed more money than some small nations and who could, with a single phone call, reduce this building to rubble and this man to a footnote.
He looked at me like I was a person.
"Let me guess."
His voice was rougher than I'd expected, scraped by smoke or sleep or just the way he lived. Like gravel under tires. Like something that had been broken and healed over and broken again.
"Wrong turn on your way to the Hamptons?" He took a step toward me, and I watched the way his body moved—loose, athletic, completely unselfconscious. No calculation. No performance. Just movement. "Or did your driver drop you off in hell by accident?"
I felt my spine straighten.
Automatic.
The Vance Asset Maintenance Manual kicking in before I could stop it.
*Posture. Chin. The smile that hints at secrets. Make eye contact but don't stare. Project confidence but not arrogance. Be approachable but not available. Be everything to everyone while remaining completely untouchable.*
"I'm looking for the artist who took this photo."
My voice came out smoother than I'd intended, polished and practiced. The voice I used in boardrooms, in negotiations, when I needed to remind someone that despite being a woman in a room full of men, I was the one who would decide whether they got what they wanted. The voice that had gotten a senator to back down, a competitor to fold, a room full of skeptics to believe whatever I needed them to believe.
I held up my phone, the screen displaying that stolen image—my face at the dinner table, hungry and unguarded, staring at the raw steak like I wanted to tear it apart with my teeth.
He didn't even look at it.
A sound escaped him—not quite a laugh. A sharp exhale through his nose, like he'd been punched in the chest and was trying to decide whether to hit back or walk away.
He shook his head once.
Walking toward me.
No performance. Just movement.
The address. The photo. The text message.
"You did take it," I said, my voice steadier than I felt. "You sent it. You wrote—"
He stopped walking.
Ten feet away now. Close enough that I could see individual details I hadn't noticed from across the room—the small white scar above his left eyebrow. The way a single drop of sweat traced the line of his jaw, catching the light before disappearing into the stubble on his neck. The paint splattered across his collarbone.
"Yeah," he said.
One word.
"So?" I demanded. "You think you can just—"
"You gonna sue me?"
The way he said it—not a question. Bored. Like he was asking if I wanted a glass of water.
My chin lifted. "I could ruin you."
"Yeah." He scratched the back of his neck, looking at the floor for a second. "You probably could."
He took another step.
Eight feet now.
"You've got the money," he said. His gaze dropped to my coat, then back up to my face. "You've got the lawyers. You've got the whole..." He gestured vaguely at nothing. "The whole machine."
Another step.
Six feet.
I could feel the heat radiating off his body now. Like a furnace.
"So why's that?" His eyes met mine. "If I'm so beneath you, why are you standing here instead of calling them?"
I opened my mouth. No words came.
"You came all this way." He took another step. "Five-thousand-dollar coat. Louboutins. Makeup like you're going to a gala." Another step. "Here. In this."
Four feet.
The distance felt dangerous now.
"You're projecting," I managed. "You don't know me."
"Don't I?" His lip curled. Not quite a smile. "You think you're the first one?"
"First one what?"
"First rich housewife who got bored and came to see how the other half lives." He shook his head, looking almost disgusted. "You people always think it's a zoo. You think you can just walk in and look at the animals and feel something real for five minutes and then go back to your penthouses."
"That's not—"
"Your leaking again, Mrs. Wall Street."
He reached out, and I flinched before I could stop myself—an automatic recoil, my body trying to protect itself from what was coming. But even as I pulled back, some part of me leaned forward. Some hungry, hollow part that didn't care about danger or decency or the absolute insanity of what was happening.
His hand didn't retreat.
It kept coming, slow and deliberate, until his thumb grazed the line of my jaw.
And I felt it again—the grease transferring to my skin, cold and slick. The rough callus catching on the delicate skin of my face, microscopic ridges dragging across nerve endings that had never been touched like this. Never without warning. Never without permission. Never without the elaborate social choreography Julian's world required, the dance of deference and desire and carefully calibrated signals that said *I want this* while still maintaining deniability, still maintaining control, still maintaining the perfect illusion that nothing untoward was happening.
This wasn't that.
This was a man touching me because he wanted to. Because I'd walked into his space and challenged him and he'd decided to see what would happen if he stopped playing by the rules I'd spent a decade mastering.
His hand didn't retreat.It kept coming, slow and deliberate, until his thumb grazed the line of my jaw.Rough. Like fine-grit sandpaper. The callus caught, scraped—just enough to sting later under hot water. Grease transferred instantly, cool, viscous, clinging like spilled engine oil you can never quite scrub out. It pulled at my foundation, ruined the matte finish I'd paid for that morning.I flinched—shoulders jerking back an inch, the way you do when a stranger gets too close on the subway. Heart skipped. Threat.But my neck arched forward instead.Chased the heat.His palm was warm—shockingly warm, like a coffee mug left out just long enough to burn if you spill it. The warmth spread, threaded through my veins, heavy, insistent. Pulse thudded in my throat, wild, not the boardroom flutter, more like running upstairs in heels after missing the train. Chest tight. Breaths shallow. Uneven.More of his smell hit me. Sweat. Metal shavings. Faint cheap soap that never quite erases the day's grime. Real. Unfiltered. Nothing like Julian's lab-engineered nothing.Heat uncoiled low in my belly—slow, treacherous. The ache you get crossing your legs too tight all day at the office, that unexpected twinge. Wetness gathered between my thighs, subtle at first, warm slickness against lace that rides up when you shift, now clinging, uncomfortable, every tiny movement a reminder.I squeezed my thighs together—trying to stop it. Only made it worse. Friction sparked upward. Sharp. Like brushing a sensitive spot while adjusting your skirt in a meeting.Shame burned—hot cheeks, prickly flush like realizing your blouse is see-through under fluorescents. But it twisted. Darker. Hungrier.Run, my mind screamed. Safe penthouse. Clean sheets. Locked doors.Surrender, my body answered. Hips tilted forward a fraction. Without permission. Craving more of that rough mark. More of being seen.His thumb pressed harder, smudging grease up toward my cheekbone.I gasped—soft, involuntary, raw. Embarrassing. Like moaning in a dream you can't wake from.Nipples tightened under silk, scraping with each breath. Wetness grew, soaked through. Humiliating secret. Knees weakened.I wanted to slap his hand away. Storm out. Reclaim control.I couldn't.My body had already decided. Leaned in further. Silently begged.
The air between us was thick with ozone from the welding—sharp, electric, like the atmosphere before a storm. I could taste it on my tongue, metallic and bright, and without thinking, without any conscious decision at all, my tongue darted out and wet my lower lip.
The taste flooded my mouth.
Metal. Electricity. Him.
My eyes fluttered closed for a fraction of a second, and in that darkness, I felt something inside me crack open. A door Julian had locked five years ago and never opened since. A vault where I'd hidden everything that didn't fit into the carefully curated performance of being Elena Vance, perfect wife, perfect partner, perfect asset.
This was the first time in five years a man had touched me without asking first.
Without permission.
Without calibration.
Without making sure I was okay with it, without reading my body language for signs of distress, without checking in to make sure I was still comfortable, still present, still the person he thought I was.
And it was intoxicating.
"You're leaking again," he murmured, his thumb still tracing my jawline, spreading the grease, marking me. "But not fear, are you, Mrs. Wall Street?"
I opened my eyes.
His face was closer now. I could see the individual striations in his irises, darker than I'd realized, almost black. Could see the way his pupils had dilated, swallowing the brown, leaving only hunger. Could see a single drop of sweat tracing the line of his temple, disappearing into his hairline.
Could see my own reflection in his eyes—wild, hungry, undone.
"You're arrogant," I whispered.
"And you're soaking wet."
The words hit me like a slap, and I felt my face flush with shame—with arousal—with a terrifying mixture of both that made my knees weak. My body was betraying me. My body was choosing this dirty stranger in his crumbling warehouse over the perfect life I'd spent a decade curating. Over the husband who'd never hurt me, who'd never disrespected me, who'd simply stopped seeing me as anything other than an asset to be maintained.
"This was a mistake."
The words came out ragged, broken.
I tried to step back, but my feet wouldn't move. Like they'd decided without me, like they'd been welded to the concrete floor. Like some part of me—a hungry, desperate part—refused to let this end.
"You keep saying that." His hand dropped from my face, and I felt the loss like a physical ache—a cold emptiness where his touch had been, like something vital had been severed. "But you're not leaving. Are you?"
"I am."
"You're not."
"I—"
"Go ahead." He stepped back, raising both hands in surrender, and the distance between us felt wrong now, incomplete. Like gravity had shifted and I'd lost track of which way was up. "Door's right there. Nobody's stopping you. I'm not gonna force you to stay. You're a grown woman, Mrs. Wall Street. You can walk out that door and go back to your penthouse and your husband and your perfect life. Nobody's gonna stop you."
I turned toward the door.
My first step wobbled. My ankle gave—just for a second, just enough to throw me off balance. I caught myself on the doorframe, breath coming sharp, and tried again.
Second step. Better.
Third step.
*CLICK.*
The sound was sharp. Final.
Like a coffin lid closing.
The deadbolt had slid home.
I spun around. Jax stood by the door, his hand still on the lock, watching me with an expression I couldn't read. Predatory. Amused. Something in between that made my stomach drop even as heat flooded between my legs, a confusing, terrifying mixture of fear and desire that made it hard to breathe.
"You came all this way, Mrs. Wall Street." His voice was low now, dangerous. "Dressed up like a fucking ice cream cone in a coal mine. You really think I'm gonna let you walk out without telling me what you actually want?"
My back pressed against the door. I could feel the cold metal through my coat, through the silk, through the skin, like a reminder of exactly how trapped I was.
"I should be terrified," I whispered.
"But you're not." He took a step toward me. Then another. The welding torch still flickered in the background, casting blue-white shadows across his face, making him look half-man, half-myth. "Are you?"
My gaze darted past him, to the workbench against the far wall.
A utility knife lay there, blade extended, catching the light. The steel glinted. Sharp. Beside it, a can of red paint, the lid slightly ajar, the paint inside viscous and dark.
My breath caught.
The paint looked like blood. The knife looked like it could cut through bone.
Jax noticed where I was looking.
He followed my gaze to the workbench, took in the knife and the paint, then looked back at my face. The corner of his mouth curled—not a smile, exactly. Something darker. Something that said he knew exactly what I was thinking, and he was going to use it.
"You see that?" he murmured.
My heart slammed against my ribs, and for a second—just a second—I felt real fear. Cold, sharp fear. This wasn't a game. This wasn't a controlled environment where I could walk away anytime I wanted. I was locked in a warehouse with a man who looked at me like I was meat, with tools that could hurt me. Badly.
No one knew where I was.
No one was coming.
My body should have been preparing for flight. Muscles tensing. Adrenaline flooding my system. That's what happens when you're threatened. That's what your body does to keep you alive.
But instead—
Instead I felt my pulse thud between my legs. Hot. Demanding.
The fear didn't go away. It just... changed. Curdled into something else. Something darker. Something that made my knees weak and my breath come short and my eyes lock with his across the six feet between us. He was going to hurt me. And I was going to let him.
In his gaze, I saw my own hunger reflected back at me.
He saw me. All of me. The mask and the hunger beneath it. The perfect wife and the feral animal. The asset and the woman who'd forgotten how to be anything other than what someone else needed her to be.
And he didn't look away.
I wasn't the hunter here.
I was the prey.
And the worst part—the absolute worst part—was that for the first time in five years, I didn't hate it.