Page 169 of Monstrous Urges
The “deep down” part always wins. Always.
Or, at least it does with me. Which might say more about me and my own self-control…or lack thereof.
No. It’s definitely easier to go ahead and blame my new neighbor across the street. Let’s go with that.
I mean, he’s the one that keeps walking around naked in a penthouse made out of fucking glass.
Mark Twain once said, “There is a charm about the forbidden that makes it unspeakably desirable.” But, smart as he was, it’s clear Mr. Twain never had the neighbor I do. If he had, I’m pretty sure he’d have taken a whole lot of the whimsical “charm” out of that statement.
And sure enough, despite my best—or, okay, let’s be real, mediocre—efforts, soon enough, my gaze shifts from the notes in front of me to the man across the steel canyon from me.
Sweet Jesus.
He’s a freaking god. Tall and lean, and as muscled as a superhero. Shoulders and arms built to take away your ability to speak. Chiseled abs and those grooved hip-muscle things that I don’t even know what they’re called but they seem to be evolution’s way of making even smart women go fucking stupid.
Tattoos for days. Deeply tanned, Mediterranean skin, with a shadow on his razor-sharp jaw, and dark, perfectly tousled 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 be some perks 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 exactly do mafia 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 floors above my thirty-eighth-floor apartment, that now blocks part of my view of the river.
His glass 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 absolutely no business 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 the enemy.
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.