Thank you so much to. .

Cindy Hwang, Leis Pederson, and the entire team at Berkley Sensation.

My wonderful agent, Jim McCarthy.

My friends, online and off, who support me and give me plenty of encouragement and pep talks when the demons who aren’t as good-looking as Darrak show up at my doorstep uninvited. They’re usually much smaller and uglier, and I call them the weasels of doubt.

My fabulous readers who have read my books, enjoyed them, and told me so, which never fails to make my day. I sincerely hope you enjoy this one as well.

My high school typing class and Mavis Beacon computer programs for teaching me to type properly back in the day. My handwriting has suffered greatly over the years, but I can do sixty words a minute on my MacBook, easy as pie.

Being a writer is a dream come true, and I’m thankful for the chance to continue to explore the strange, chaotic expanses of my imagination, where a year later they come out as pretty little rectangles with colorful covers and neat typography. It’s truly amazing to get to do this for a living, and I’m still not convinced I’m not just imagining this reality. It’s possible. I’ve seen The Matrix ten times.

“Would you look at this place? Equal parts lust and desperation. It’s fantastic.”

Eden grimaced. She’d been trying to pay as little attention to Darrak as possible, but it wasn’t easy. The demon was very hard to ignore.

“It’s a singles’ club,” she replied. “What did you expect?”

“This, of course. But it’s even better than I thought it would be.”

“You have a strange sense of what better is.”

A tall man holding a bottle of Corona tapped Eden on her shoulder. When she turned to look at him, he leered approvingly at her. “Who are you talking to, sexy lady?”