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Tattoos for days. Deeply tanned, Mediterranean skin, with a shadow on his razor-sharp jaw, and dark,perfectlytousled 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 besomeperks 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 exactlydomafia 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 floorsabovemy thirty-eighth-floor apartment, that now blocks part of my view of the river.
Hisglass 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 absolutelynobusiness 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 theenemy.
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 andalsoa 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 getdressed, Neve,” my younger sister sighs.
