Velvet Chains

They call me untouchable.

They call me beautiful, ethereal, cold. A goddess in red carpets, a devil in silk. Every whisper about me is dipped in envy or desire-but no one really knows me. They see a version of me on screens, in magazines, on the glowing stages of award shows. But me? The real me? She's buried deep, underneath the diamonds, the studio contracts, and the rehearsed smiles.

I play their games because I win them. I let men grovel and women fawn, but I don't care for either. Fame doesn't excite me. Money doesn't tempt me. Love? That's for people who don't know better.

And then I met him.

At Velvet-that opulent, suffocating cage of a nightclub. Where secrets are spilled like champagne and morals are left at the velvet rope.

He was the bouncer.

The bouncer.

Not a producer. Not a fashion mogul. Not some Harvard-educated billionaire with a jet and a yacht. Just a man-tall, broad-shouldered, arms like a Greek statue, and that cocky glint in his warm brown eyes that said, "I know you think you're better than me-and I don't give a damn."

His name is Caliver Nuevez.

Half Mexican. Half Filipino. One hundred percent walking trouble.

And somehow, impossibly, I couldn't stop thinking about him.

This isn't a love story, not the kind you're used to. It's a war. A war between who I was before him-and who I became after.

Because when a woman like me falls for a man like him...

Everything burns.