Sinful Hearts: Chapter 1

“Whatever you do, don’t fuck him.”

‘Pardon?” I sputter.

Taylor’s comment catches me off-guard, spiking my heart rate and bringing a flush to my face. I quickly tuck the last strand of my white-blonde hair into the black leather and lace mask before I turn to face her.

My boss smirks wryly as she finishes adjusting her own mask. Hers is a far simpler gold and matte black piece that just hides the top half of her face—as opposed to mine, more hood than mask, which covers that plus my hair, all the way down to the nape of my neck. Oh, and it has cat ears. I look like some kind of kinky feline Fifty-Shades-themed bank robber.

What is my life right now?

“Dante. Don’t fuck him.”

Taylor finishes checking herself in the floor-length mirror of the sumptuous blood red and gold private dressing room. We’re both dressed similarly, in what I would consider revealing black cocktail dresses. But Taylor’s assured me—or maybe it was more of a warning—that what we’re wearing is downright conservative compared to what we’ll see once we step out of the private room and dive into the belly of the beast that is Club Venom.

Given that Club Venom is an actual, honest-to-God , and she’s a member, I’m inclined to believe her.

The difference between us is, Taylor seems to be completely comfortable walking into New York City’s most infamous private playground for the dark and deviant. A place where the rich, powerful, and dangerous come to play.

Meanwhile, I feel like I’m standing on the edge of a skyscraper, about to try BASE jumping for the first time. Blindfolded.

My pulse hums in my veins. My mouth feels dry. Sweat slicks the small of my back.

“Elsa.”

I flinch, realizing I’ve been staring wide-eyed at my reflection in the mirror. My gaze flicks over to Taylor to find her smiling.

“Hey, I’m just kidding.” Her brows knit. “Probably. It’s just that Dante has a certain…

, as you might be able to guess.”

“One that I’m sure has nothing to do with his reputed mafia connections, wealth, good looks, and the fact that he owns this place.”

Taylor grins, taking a sip of the champagne that the staff opened for us when we were ushered in here to get ready.

“Ah, now there’s the sharp legal mind I hired you for.”

I grin back, taking a bigger gulp of my own champagne than perhaps I should. But it calms my jangling nerves, at least a little.

“To be clear, I don’t actually think you’d screw a potential client, Elsa. I just want you to be prepared. He’s a bit of a charmer…” she frowns. “Okay, he’s of a charmer. And given that he’s…”

“Outrageously good-looking?”

She chuckles, but even though she turns away, I can spot the slight hint of pink in her cheeks creeping down from under the mask.

I like having Taylor as my new boss. Or at least, as one of my new bosses, as of ten months ago when I took the plunge and moved across the pond from London to New York for the coveted partner position at Crown and Black.

Taylor Crown is the “Crown” in the wildly prestigious New York City law firm, and the “Black” is actually two brothers—Alistair and Gabriel. They’re both great, too. But it’s Taylor who’s really taken me under her wing.

We’re here tonight for our first official sit-down with Dante Sartorre, the majority owner of Club Venom and Crown and Black’s newest potential client. It’s not lost on me that two women in slinky black cocktail dresses with plunging necklines suit Dante’s playboy reputation at better than, say, Gabriel or Alistair—or any other man, for that matter. But that’s the game, and I understand completely.

It doesn’t make me any less freaked the fuck out to walk out there, though.

The nerves, though, aren’t because Club Venom is a kink club catering mostly to New York City’s dark, dangerous, and powerful. They’re not because I fully understand that Taylor choosing me to come with her tonight is a big deal, and I want to impress her.

The nerves are because I’m not merely here for work.

I’m also here on a mission. But I’m the only one who knows that.

Taylor takes a deep breath, glancing over herself once more in the mirror before turning to me.

“Ready?”

“Absolutely.”

She frowns a little, her eyes lingering on my Michelle Pfeiffer Catwoman mask.

“You know, they’ve got other masks you could borrow.”

My brow furrows. “Oh. Is this one not—”

“Oh, I mean, it’s more than fine. For this place?” She smirks. “Trust me, you look fantastic. No, I meant, are you going to be comfortable in it?”

I mean, it’s an S&M black and gold mask with cat ears made from leather and lace covering basically my entire head except my chin, cheeks, and mouth.

“Comfort” isn’t exactly its main design function.

Everyone in this club, patrons and staff alike, will be wearing masks. But for the reason I’m here—beyond the business meeting with Dante Sartorre—I need mine to hide who I am completely, with one hundred percent certainty.

Whoever I pick tonight can know who I am. I understand that in a city of ten million people, my chances of being recognized are next to zero. But I want it to be zero. That’s the whole point. That’s the only way I’ll actually be able to go through with this, not to mention how I’ll keep my nerves from spilling out all over the floor like raw spaghetti.

Complete and utter anonymity.

“I’m good!” I smile with an eagerness and ease I don’t remotely feel. “I kind of like it, actually.”

Taylor grins, arching her brow as her gaze rises. “The ears are a cute touch. All right, shall we?”

“Let’s.”

As Taylor finishes her glass of champagne, I turn and pull my phone out of my bag. I send a quick note to my sister Nora, reminding her that I’ll be home late from my business meeting. She sends back a thumbs-up emoji followed by a gif of Juno Temple from smugly smirking with the caption “you’ve totally got this”.

I grin and start to tuck the phone away when it suddenly buzzes again. This time, when I glance at the message, my smile vanishes, and a cold, black dread burrows into my heart.

The text isn’t from Nora.

It’s from .

I stare, nauseated, at the text from the man I hate and loathe.

The man who seemingly has followed me all the way to New York.

The man whose disgusting and bone-chilling threats have increased exponentially over the last few weeks, to the point where I’ve decided to do what I’m going to do tonight, to be rid of him once and for all.

Leo thinks he has power over me. But tonight, I’m going to shatter those chains he thinks he’s bound me with.

Because tonight, I’m going to fuck a stranger.

Tonight, at twenty-six years old, I’m finally going to lose my virginity.

At a sex club.

“Just be sure to leave that here,” Taylor says. “There’s no phones allowed in the club.”

“Oh, of course.” I quickly close the phone and shove it back in my bag. “I’m guessing that’s part of the reason a man like Mr. Sartorre prefers to have business meetings here?”

She smirks. “Ding ding ding. All right, game faces on. Remember, the fact that he’s even offered this meeting at all speaks volumes. He to work with us. We just need to show him exactly how much easier his life will be when he does.”

I nod, swallowing back the hammering in my heart. No problem. I just have to help my boss secure a new client with mafia connections who probably represents close to twenty million dollars a year in billable hours, and then for bonus points go find a stranger to unknowingly take my virginity and free me from the chokehold Leo has on me.

No big deal.

Outside the private changing room, two black-masked staff in suits hand us two more flutes of champagne. Then two masked women in flimsy, see-through black gauze cocktail dresses approach, each holding a matte black suitcase. They hold them up and open them, revealing two matching collections of elegant wristbands in varying designs and color combinations.

I glance at Taylor, who just smiles.

“It’s the club’s kink designations.

My face burns hotly, my eyes widening at the various bands.

“They all signify different…

,” Taylor explains, clearly slightly amused at my own flustered state. “And your preferred role. The red is sadomasochism. So red with black lines across it signifies a Dom. Red with gold lines, a sub.”

I swallow thickly, feeling my pulse thud.

“Uh-huh.”

“The green is—” Taylor clears her throat, eyeing me. “You know what? Let’s just make this easy for both of us. We’re here for business, so let’s go with the white and gold. It means you’re a voyeur only.”

“Oh, cool.”

I cringe at my own flustered awkwardness. Mercifully, Taylor doesn’t push it as she reaches for a white and gold band from the open briefcase in front of her. I pick an identical one from the case in front of me, slipping it onto my wrist with a shiver.

“Elsa?”

I glance at Taylor.

“Relax. I didn’t bring you tonight because I thought you had an extensive background in sex clubs or knowledge of the kink lifestyle,” she says with a reassuring smile. “I brought you because you’re the most promising and brilliant young attorney I know. Okay?”

I exhale, letting a little of the tension out as I force a calmness to my smile that I don’t feel.

“Thank you.”

She nods, putting a hand on my shoulder as she leans close. “For the record, I’m only a member here because it’s where clients like to meet. Don’t worry. This isn’t my scene, either. We’re here for Dante, nothing more. So let’s go out there and kill it.”

The pep talk definitely helps my nerves. So does knocking back the rest of my champagne in one gulp. Then, wristbands on, we follow our two masked guides further down the hall. The music grows louder. A murmuring din of people talking washes over me. But when it begins to be punctuated by gasping moans of female pleasure, my pulse jumps and my skin tingles.

Then we step out into the main room, and my jaw .

It’s like something out of . Or a Roman orgy.

.

The room is opulently decorated, full of couches and chairs for the elegant, masked onlookers. More guests talk amongst themselves by two cocktail bars along the sides of the room. But the main focus—and it’s impossible to focus on it—is the writhing, thrusting, moaning and grunting mass of bodies tangled in extremely creative ways across the large beds and couches in the center of the room.

A gorgeous, dark-skinned woman, utterly naked but for her wristband and a gold and black mask, gasps in ecstasy as the muscled man bending her over the arm of the couch rams into her. When a second man tangles his fingers in her long braids and guides her mouth to his rock-hard cock, my eyes bulge and my face turns the color of the blood-red hallway we just walked through.

Beside them on the same couch, two blonde women with gravity-defying breasts ride a tattooed, Italian-looking guy who is lying on his back—one of them bouncing up and down on his dick, the other grinding her pussy against his mouth. Another couple fuck on the floor like it’s an Olympic event and they’re going for gold, and a foursome on an oversized bed behind them tangles in ways that I wouldn’t have thought logistically possible, like an X-rated game of Twister.

I’ve seen sex before. It’s just that I’ve never, well, sex before. Not really. Not like this. I mean, no, I might have never gotten around to doing it myself. I’ve watched plenty of online porn, though.

But watching videos and watching…

…right in front of me is like going from a tricycle to a Harley. And very quickly, my anxiety about what the actual fuck I think I’m going to do here tonight skyrockets.

“It’s a bit of a shock the first time,” Taylor murmurs quietly next to me. She turns to arch a brow, smiling. “Are you okay?”

“Oh, yeah, no, of course,” I shrug as casually as I can. “It’s just sex. Everyone has it, right?”

Taylor smiles. “Ex ly. Ah, here he is. I’d recognize those shoulders anywhere.”

I turn from the orgy in front of us, following her gaze to the tall, powerfully built man in his mid-thirties striding across the room toward us. He’s wearing an impeccably cut dark suit, clearly custom tailored, and even with the gold and black mask covering the top half of his face, it’s obvious he’s extremely handsome.

“Ms. Crown,” he growls in a low baritone. “Welcome to my humble playground.”

Taylor gives him a cool, professional nod and handshake. But when he brings her hand to his lips and kisses the back of it, I can see her cheeks heat.

“And you must be Ms. Guin,” he purrs, turning his dark eyes to me. I shiver as I take his hand. Mercifully, he doesn’t kiss mine.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Sartorre.”

He smirks, glancing at Taylor and then back to me. “Please, just Dante. It’s a little difficult to be so formal with all going on ten feet away, isn’t it?” He nods his chin at the live-action porn movie writhing and moaning behind us. My face heats as something wicked pools in my core.

Dante clears his throat, clasping his hands together as he turns to Taylor. “Slight change of plans. I appreciate you bringing additional talent from your firm tonight. But I’d prefer to hammer out the details of our arrangement between just the two of us.”

Taylor arches a brow. “Oh?”

“I can assume that the business I would be bringing to your firm would get me a named partner as my personal attorney?”

“Of course.”

“That named partner being you?”

Taylor nods her chin. “Certainly, if that’s what you’d like.”

“It is. And I’d like to start now. I’m prepared to sign our contract here tonight.”

Taylor turns to glance at me, then back to Dante. “Would you give the two of us a moment?”

“Not a problem,” he smiles widely.

Taylor smiles as she pulls me aside. “So, plot twist.”

“Do you want me to insist on joining?”

She shakes her head. “No, I’m fine. Trust me, I can handle a man like him. I’m just sorry to have dragged you out tonight for nothing. Please, feel free to leave.”

When I nod, she turns back to Dante. “Well, lead the way.”

He grins an unapologetically wolfish and hungry smile at my boss before turning to me. “Please, Ms. Guin, stay and enjoy yourself. Play, or just watch…” he grins at my white and gold wristband. “Club Venom exists to let your wildest desires come true.”

He turns to Taylor, extending an arm that she loops hers through. They start to walk away toward what looks like a private room, when Taylor glances over her shoulder to arch a questioning brow at me.

I mouth “I’m going to go” with a jerk of my thumb, and she nods with a smile before she and Dante disappear through the guarded door.

My pulse thuds.

My skin tingles.

This is going better than expected.

My original plan for the night, which I went over as meticulously as if I were planning to storm of the beaches of Normandy, was…complex. It involved arriving with Taylor, doing the pitch meeting with Dante, and then with Taylor. At which point, I’d make up an excuse of wanting to wait for my own ride, stall until Taylor was gone, and then re-enter the club alone. But now that Taylor’s busy, well, I guess I’ve fast forwarded to the alone part.

As a guest, I have full access to the club for the night. Which I very much planned to use in my master plan to find a stranger, lose my virginity, and thereby break Leo’s hold on me and shatter his fucked-up interest in me.

I’ve been his pawn for too long, no matter how well I’ve avoided him. That ends tonight.

But first…Christ, I need another fucking drink.

Shivering with heat, I pull my gaze from the lurid scene playing out before me and make my way to one of the bars.

“Double vodka and soda, please,” I blurt to the bartender. When he brings it, I suck half of it down quickly before I turn to let my eyes slide around the room, heart pounding.

It’s no big deal. Or at least, it doesn’t have to be. It’s just sex, and like I just said oh-so-airily to Taylor, everyone has it.

.

But that changes right now.

I chew on my lip, my gaze sliding across the room and finally landing on a built, older, bearded man. He seems to feel me looking at him, because he turns and arches a dark brow behind his mask. A hungry smile curls the corners of his lips, and I blush.

But then my eyes drop to the band on his wrist: red, with black lines. According to Taylor, that marks him as a sadistic Dom.

I shiver. Yeah, that’s going to be a no. I mean, I enjoy watching hardcore stuff online. But who knows hardcore this particular stranger wants to get. And when his gaze narrows darkly and dangerously, and his smile turns downright cruel and hungry, my mind is made up.

No fucking way.

Kinky sounds intriguing. Rough sounds exciting. Getting hogtied, ball-gagged, and flogged while this guy drips candle wax on my vagina sounds like jumping into the deep end when I don’t even know how to swim.

I shake my head, shivering again at the way he glares at me before he too looks away for other prey.

My eyes land on a tall man with short, buzzed hair and a clean jaw, with tattoos on his neck. The mix of clean cut and dangerous catches my interest, and I blush when he turns to grin and raise his glass in my direction…

…Until the brunette I didn’t realize was on his arm turns to grin at me as well, curling a finger at me.

Well, more than I’m willing to take on.

Shaking my head, I sigh and turn back to the bar, realizing I’ve somehow finished my drink already. I’m in the middle of ordering another when suddenly a laughing voice cuts through everything and instantly sends my stomach plummeting to the floor and my heart rate through the roof.

It’s a voice .

“Well, I should. I come here often enough.”

I swallow, my face turning white as I slowly slide my head around. His back is to me. His face is partially covered. But when he brings his hand up to shove his fingers through his long, dark hair, and I see the tattoo on his wrist and back of the hand that I’ve seen dozens of times—including earlier —I know damn well who it is.

For one frozen moment, I consider running. Or at least slinking away and hoping to God and everything else that is good and holy that I can get out of there and change back into boring, buttoned-up, straight-laced Elsa before he realizes it’s in the scandalous black dress and the S&M kitten mask.

There are a million bars in New York City. Tinder is a thing. It’s not like it would be remotely difficult for me to get laid the very second I wanted to. But the entire point of doing this at Club Venom tonight was anonymity.

And now here I am a foot away from a man whose family , whom I see several times a week, for fuck’s sake.

A man who is as arrogant, cocky, and smug as he is outrageously gorgeous.

A man who is a dangerous, murderous criminal. No “allegedly” about it, despite what I say during office hours.

A man with dark hair, tanned skin, piercing ice-blue eyes, and a jawline sharp enough to cut glass. A man with a body built for sin, carved out of marble, a testament to the hours he’s poured into working on it in boxing gyms and at the underground fights he’s known for.

A man who’s known for his endlessly revolving door of women.

Hades Drakos, the dark crown prince of the Drakos Greek mafia family.

I scowl at his back, and a shiver teases up mine.

Though I’m a partner at Crown and Black, in my spare time I moonlight as the Drakos family’s unofficial attorney. Ares, the oldest brother and king of the empire, is professional and courteous in our dealings. Kratos, the third Drakos brother, is also fine in my books, and Calliope, the baby of the family, is a sweetheart with a fantastic sense of humor.

But Hades? Hades is the fucking devil himself.

He’s made it his apparent mission in life to be a thorn in my side. A pebble in my shoe. A constant, needling presence, always looming just out of sight, ready to fuck up my day.

He’s arrogant. Reckless. Cocky beyond measure. And aware of his looks and their effect on the opposite sex. He’d be a harmless, clichéd, trust fund fuckboy brat playing at being a gangster if he wasn’t, well, .

Viciously ruthless.

Dripping in violence and dark energy.

And the thing is, I could ignore all of those things. After all, it’s Ares, not Hades, whom I officially report to. And Hades could be just one more sinfully good-looking if jaw-grindingly annoying and cocky man one could observe from a distance, and then forget about.

Except for the fact that I am wholly incapable of actually the second part.

I can’t forget about him. I can’t ignore him. And despite how very, As much as I want to pretend he doesn’t even exist, I simply can’t. He’s the central character in every single dark fantasy I have once the lights go out at night.

It’s bullshit.

It’s completely unfair.

A full-body, malignant, systemic takeover with no known cure.

Hades is living proof that what the mind wants and what the body wants are in alignment. Because he makes me want to scream and tear my hair out. But he also makes me want to scream , while pulls my hair.

“I know who you are, you know.”

I flinch, ripped from my stewing, stormy thoughts by a woman’s voice. She’s on Hades’ other side: brunette, model-tall, tits for days, gorgeous, and dressed to fucking in a little red number that makes what I’m wearing look like a nun’s habit.

“Do you, now?”

She giggles, slapping a hand against his chest. I scowl.

“Of I do, Hades,” she gushes coquettishly.

I roll my eyes under my mask.

“Ahh, but I don’t know you. Perhaps we should change that.”

She grins widely. “I don’t think my boyfriend would like that very much.”

“I don’t think you care, though, do you?”

She explodes in a frenzied giggle that makes my jaw grind.

“You’re so ,” she gushes, slapping his chest again, and this time leaving her hand there.

I roll my eyes again, turning and slugging down three huge gulps of my second vodka soda.

“You know, you had a thing with my friend once.”

“Did I really?” Hades growls, shoving his hair back from his face again.

“M-hmm. Krista Pryce. She said you literally redefined sex for her.” The girl giggles obnoxiously again. “She also said you had a magic dick, not to mention huuuge.”

My face heats as my lips purse. Jesus Christ, some people have no boundaries.

I make a face, turning away to slug down more vodka. This was a big mistake. I should leave before Hades recognizes me and makes it his mission never to let me forget about that time he saw me dressed like a literal sex kitten at a fucking kink club. Or at the very least, I should leave before this chick starts blurting out more details about Hades than I have any need to know.

Something dark bubbles under the surface of my skin, and I grit my teeth.

Yeah, that’s it. I’m leaving.

I swear I’m about to. Really.

Then suddenly, something clicks.

No.

.

I try and shove the thought away, but it’s already sunk its claws into me, and they’re holding on tight.

Slowly I turn back to let my eyes drag over Hades’ broad shoulders and muscled frame beneath his tailored black suit.

I swallow thickly, my pulse thrumming just below the surface.

He might be an arrogant dick and a pain in my ass. Well, no about it, he is. But like it or not, if the rumors and tabloid stories are to be believed, the man standing right in front of me is undeniably something else as well: God’s gift to the female orgasm.

.

Shut up, brain. Maybe it’s a genius one.

I came here tonight for a very specific reason. But it doesn’t have to suck, right? No pun intended. I don’t to get whipped and chained up by the creepy bearded Dom. I don’t to mix losing my virginity with experiments in my own sexuality with Mr. and Mrs. “three is a delightful crowd” over there.

If the whole point of the evening was, and is, to get this over with already…why do it with a man like Hades, who obviously knows what he’s doing?

If you’re going to learn how to drive, it might as well be in a Lamborghini, right?

?

I ignore the worried voice in my head as I turn to the bartender and order two shots of vodka, chilled. The first goes down easily, and I can feel it doing its job already as I feel myself loosen up.

I’m wearing a mask. My distinct white-blonde hair is covered. And this has got to be the last place on earth Hades would ever expect to find buttoned-up prim and proper Elsa Guin, attorney-at-law.

There’s my voice, of course. The London accent could give me away pretty quickly. But I have a solution for even that.

“Jolene” is a twangy-voiced character I made up to amuse Nora with when we first moved to the States—an American southern gal modeled entirely on the incredible Dolly Parton, hence her name, a hat tip to the song. I’ve gotten frighteningly good it, too.

I take one more breath, still feeling like I’m standing at the edge of a cliff, trying to decide if I’m really going to jump or not.

But I already know I am. I have to.

I won’t be anyone’s pawn anymore. This is my choice. My power, taken back.

.

In one motion, before I can second guess myself or chicken out, I slug back the second shot of vodka, grab Hades’ jacket, and yank him around to face me. His brow furrows, his gorgeous, sinfully dangerous icy-blue eyes stab right into me.

But I don’t give them any time to do their damage. Instead, I grab his tie, rise up on the balls of my feet, and yank his mouth down to mine.

And the whole world disappears.

All of it. The music, the people, the anxiety, Leo and his threats, the orgy, even the girl huffing behind him before she stalks off. It all fades away until all I know is the feel of his perfect lips crushed to mine.

The thrill of his hand as it suddenly comes up to grip my jaw possessively. The citrus and whiskey taste of his tongue as it shoves its way past my lips to dance with mine. The hair-trigger effect his other hand sliding over my hip has on the heat pooling between my thighs.

I have no idea how long I kiss him for. A minute? Three hours? Forever? But when he pulls away, something hooks into us. Something that sizzles and ignites as his eyes scorch into me like blue flames.

“That was a nice appetizer,” he growls quietly, his grip tightening on me in a way that sends my pulse skipping and my makes my legs quiver.

“What’s the main course, darlin’?” I purr in my southern drawl.

I takes everything I have not to gasp, or maybe to pull away and , when I see the dark shadow slide over his eyes, turning the ice blue to the color of a vicious hurricane.

“

,” he snarls darkly. “Right the fuck now.”