Alexis McAlister

I was the girl no one looked at twice. Until they saw me. My whole life, no one has had my back. My parents are dead, my adoptive mother is a drug addict, and the mean girls on campus mock me for my scars. So when I end up desperate for money and out of options, I agree to sell the one thing I have left: my innocence. On the night I’m meant to give my body to a brutal Russian mobster, three men storm into the room like dark shadows and kill him before he can claim me. When they drag me from the blood-soaked bed, I’m certain they’re going to kill me too.

Some people wear their heart on their sleeve. I wear vengeance like a suit of armor. I’ve got a list with six names on it. Six people who wronged me, who hurt me, who took everything from me. Six people who turned me into the monster I am now. And I’ve crossed off every name but one.

Trauma nurse Aly Cappellucci doesn’t need any more kinks. She likes the one she’s landed on just fine. To her, nothing could top the masked men she follows online. Unless one of those men was shirtless, heavily tattooed, and waiting for her in her bedroom. She dreams about being hunted by one in particular, of him chasing her down and doing deliciously dark things to her willing body. She never could have guessed that by sending one drunken text, those dreams would become her new reality.

It was dark, and in my defense, he was tall, muscled, and smelled like the most tempting sin. I couldn't resist, and the second he touched me, I knew I was never going to be the same. It was a night filled with the kind of intensity a woman could only ever dream of. Nothing could have tainted such perfectness. At least, that's what I thought. Because the delicious man I let rail me into oblivion isn't the perfect stranger I thought he was. No, he's anything but.

Hush, little baby, don't say a word . . . Will Logan choose them? Or will we watch them burn together? It's time to f--k with their minds. It's time to finish it all. It's time to paint it all red . . . Monsters don't usually wish for happily-ever-afters.

To understand the monsters in the world, you have to get inside their heads. It's a dangerous place to be, especially when you start to empathize and lose your own sense of morality. But that's never happened to me . . . I've never felt conflicted on any case. Right is right and wrong is wrong. It's simple. Black and white. There's no such thing as a gray area. But f--k this case. I don't even know what side I'm on anymore. I don't understand how this town can continue to function without breaking under the weight of all the lies they've spun and lived.

Logan Bennett makes me want to have a future not tainted by the constant hunger for revenge. Doesn't mean I can stop. Doesn't mean I want to stop. It just means I want more . . . one day. But how do you make a good man love the monster inside you without stripping his soul away as well? He is all the best parts of me right now, resurrecting bits of my heart I forgot could even exist. He makes me feel something other than cold.

I've had tunnel vision for one main goal for so long, that I forgot there was a whole other world just outside. Until Lana. She's everything I never expected, and I love the fact I can never guess her every move or reaction. It's part of the reason I keep falling. But I also know she shuts me out, hides things from me she feels she can't share. One day, I hope she trusts me enough to share. It isn't until my job puts her at risk that I realize just how fierce she is, but it doesn't stop me from doing all I can to protect her.

I didn't expect him. I didn't want to fall in love. But I can't let him go. Logan Bennett makes the world a safer place. He's brilliant. He's a hero. He locks away the sick and depraved. But while he's saving lives, I'm taking them. Collecting the debts that are owed to me. Ten years ago, they took from me. They left me for dead. They should have made sure I stayed dead. Now I'm taking from them. One name at a time.

They captured me, broke me. Molded me into their perfect weapon. They made me murder and seduce strangers. Until a hitman killed my captors and set me free. LeroiI rescued a girl from a basement thinking she was innocent, but I brought home a serial killer whose darkness borders on insanity. Now, I need to tame her murderous instincts before I become her next victim.