The first book in the brand new Pretty Poison MM trilogy will be out on 27 February.
Expect high heat, morally grey characters, forbidden attraction, class division, and falling for the wrong man.
Not sure it’s for you? Then have a sneak peek at the full chapter one right now!
Chapter One
Tristan
“Mate.” I slumped against the taxi door, watching Benji raise his black Amex to his nose and sniff a line off the corner of his inheritance. “We’ve been in the car five fucking minutes.”
Benji’s pupils blew wide, grin brighter than Soho’s Strip. “Pre-game, darling. You think I’m stepping into East London sober? Their drink measures are barbaric.”
“How would you know?” I arched an eyebrow.
He answered by snorting another bump.
“You’re going to end up dead in a gutter.” Zara, opposite him, checked her lip gloss in her compact, then snapped it shut. “And I’m not carrying you home.”
“Course you would.” Benji wiped his nose. “You’d sell the story to the Mail first. Exclusive rights. ‘Tragic Guildhall Star Overdoses in Dalston’. Front-page material.” He winked, as if that was his life goal.
It probably was.
We laughed. Even Henry. Though his came out thin, tight, already over it.
Outside, London staggered past the window looking exactly how the night felt: half-cut, mascara-smudged, spilling sins across wet pavements. Neon bled into the rain-slick glass until the city became a blur of grime and light. A place where anything could happen and usually did. And we were here to take what it offered. Why wouldn’t we? We told ourselves we could afford the damage. That was a lie that came free with money. And as our cab curved east where the glass towers thinned into council blocks, old warehouses rose from the dark, gutted and reborn as temples of bass and strobe light, this night threatened to slip outside of our usual curated chaos.
I could already tell.
But this detour was on me. I’d dragged us out of the champagne bubble of our usual haunts and into borrowed grit, following a glowing icon on my phone, Ollie’s name pulsing beneath it. My boyfriend. Two years. The man I’d turned down the golden inheritance of the Hale-Fitzroy tradition for — Harrow to Oxford, law polished and predestined — finishing my Bar training and then choosing a Master’s instead of applying for pupillage, to stretch the time we had together. As if proximity could rewrite the script my family had already written for me. And that man I’d taken the hits for? He’d sworn he was working late.
Working. Right.
I should’ve guessed then.
Ollie never had to work a day in his life. Whilst he wasn’t the level of elite that this private taxi had in its back seats, his father still ran a private equity firm with fingers in every pie worth tasting. Property developments, security contracts, even whispers of defence deals. Old money turned new power, an empire crushing people while looking charitable in the press. And occasionally, Ollie played at being useful, shadowing board meetings or visiting the offices, but that was theatre, not necessity. So why his location pinged here, in this part of the city, a place his father’s tailor-made suits and hand-stitched footwear never touched, where the only equity was measured in bruised knuckles and counterfeit pills, was something I wanted to find out.
I’d always been a bit too intuitive for my own good.
Zara frowned at me. “You alright, Tris? You’ve gone awfully quiet.”
I nodded. Said nothing. And I could feel Henry’s eyes on me, assessing how much of this I could take.
But Benji handed over a bottle of Macallan Rare Cask, a whisky meant for mahogany studies and crystal tumblers, not sloshing from sweaty hands in the back of a taxi, ridding us of any thoughts as to how this might ruin us. That was Benji, though. Chaos stitched into couture, grinning as though money bought immunity from consequences. Guildhall School of Music and Drama’s golden alumni, a trust fund wrapped in sequins and anarchy. He was exhausting. Impossible, most of the time. But he was mine. As were the other two in the car. The people who’d learnt how to catch me when I tipped too far. Who knew my tells, my silences, the precise moment charm became collapse.
We’d all grown up cushioned, yes.
But cushions still bruised when you fell hard enough.
I tipped the whisky back, letting the fire roll through my chest, a heat fierce enough to keep my doubts at bay for a few more heartbeats. The bag came next, a casual flick of Benji’s wrist, as if passing sweets at prep school. I took it but slipped it into my pocket. I had no intention of using it. Cocaine was a sometime indulgence. Ollie’s indulgence, really. For those nights he wanted to keep going—keep me going—until dawn turned sickly and unrecognisable. Tonight, though, I knew powder wouldn’t be my friend.
Not where this night headed.
Zara bent forward, dark hair tumbling down to her knees as she, elegant and unapologetic, took her line clean. Henry winced. Not in disgust, but the way he always did when things tipped from reckless into unsafe. He had the same expression my father wore when I’d told him I wasn’t joining the family counsel and instead doing my master’s in criminal justice. Though, unlike my father with me, Henry slid his arm around Zara. Dutiful. Automatic. And he, of course, shook his head at Benji’s offering. He didn’t need coke to stay wired. Surgical rotations and med school case notes kept his perfect little mind busy. He was rehearsing his destiny where he’d be saving lives, ticking boxes, becoming exactly what the world expected of him.
I didn’t need to rehearse mine.
I‘d been given my script early on.
“Oh, cheer up, you grumpy sausage.” Zara slapped my knee, nails flashing scarlet, before dropping her head back onto Henry’s shoulder. “You’ll see; it’s nothing. Ollie’s halo will still be polished when we arrive.”
Of course she’d say that. Zara was the reason I’d met Ollie in the first place. At one of her parents’ parties, all chandeliers and champagne flutes, thrown in some desperate attempt to prove they belonged on cash row with the rest of the elite. Because Zara was money, yes. But money with edges. Her parents had built their empire on high-end members-only clubs. Sex parties dressed in velvet. Old scandal packaged as luxury. She wore it well, but it clung to her, faintly gaudy against the backdrop of Mayfair polish. And even though I was fairly sure she and Henry were fucking, though Henry wouldn’t admit it, I knew she couldn’t stick. See, my bestie came from higher prestige than all of us put together. His family brushed against royalty. Distant titles, ancestral estates, all the dull grandeur making him believe he’d been born to ride in luxury vehicles with unblemished leather.
Zara was the Mercedes he’d drive until the Bentley finally came home.
I arched a brow at her and raked my fingers through my sandy-blond hair, making sure the effortless look still looked as though I hadn’t tried too hard. I checked the cab window. Still holding together. The hair, that was.
Me? Not so much.
Zara laughed. “Darling, you look absurdly good. As always. He’ll take one look at you and remember exactly what he’s throwing away by being such a…” She waved a hand. “…wally.”
“Mm.” I turned my gaze to the window, to the gentrified stretch of East London where my boyfriend’s location pulsed on my phone and couldn’t quite manage to believe her.
Because it didn’t matter how I looked.
I, Tristan Hale-Fitzroy, had leverage. Money in my pocket, and a trust fund worth a hefty five million waiting for me in eight years’ time. That was the unspoken security that came with my surname. If that wasn’t enough to keep Ollie tethered to me, then my cheekbones and charm certainly wouldn’t be.
I caught Henry’s gaze, and it was obvious. He knew. He always knew more than me, and I suspected he was half the reason we were here at all. Henry had never liked Ollie. Said he was rude. Uncouth. Brash. And yes, he could be. But that was theatre. Ollie’s favourite trick. Pretending he hadn’t been born with a silver spoon welded to his tongue.
I’d found it charming once. That little play at grit.
But when Ollie came, it was still to the rhythm of God Save the King. No matter how much he postured, he was a posh patriot at the core. And for a while, that contradiction had appealed to me. It was rebellion dressed up safe. Rebellion without ever having to risk anything real. The kind I didn’t have the balls to chase on my own. And for two years, I’d taken him along to all my family dinners, the Mayfair parties, networking events where he glad handed his way to wherever he wanted, with my father eventually forgiving my rebellion at shelving pupillage for a year to play at being a student again, because Ollie had fitted right in.
Better if he was female, of course.
But even the Hale-Fitzroys knew money couldn’t buy everything.
The cab rolled to a halt, and I leant forward, peering out of the window. It wasn’t West End’s velvet ropes and glass facades awaiting our mischief. No, it was a club squatted in the shell of an old warehouse, all corrugated iron and graffiti tags. A queue curled along the wall, bodies pressed tight, shivering in micro-dresses and polo shirts, vapour rising like incense. Bass thudded through the brickwork, rattling windows painted black to keep the world out, and the door was a slab of steel guarded by men in bomber jackets, checking IDs with bored menace. No chandeliers, no champagne buckets waiting on ice, no VIP entrance.
This was sweat, smoke, and the promise of debauchery.
And Ollie was in there somewhere, choosing this over me.
“Off we go, fellows!” Benji shoved the door open as if he owned the street, which wasn’t far from the realm of possibility, then promptly fell out onto the pavement. But he got up, brushed himself off, and pointed. “Into the club!”
Zara laughed, tottering after him, and Henry, ever the weary parent, tugged her skirt back into place and followed. I gave the driver a nod, already charged to the account, naturally, then stepped out into the cold, breath fogging in the glow of streetlights. Benji lurched up to the first bouncer, slurred a greeting, and slid a wad of notes into the man’s pocket. The door swung open. East London still took cash as currency, then.
West London ran solely on names.
Our names.
And as such, we spilt into the club in a mess of perfume and bravado. Zara hooked her arm through mine, dragging me through the array of bodies. It was a furnace. Sweat, smoke machines, strobe lights pulsing to grime tracks rattling the walls. Shots slammed onto the bar before I could blink, Benji shouting for tequila, Zara squealing, Henry protesting but downing one, anyway.
I drank because it was easier. Letting the liquor scorch my throat, blur the edges until the panic climbing my ribs dulled into something I could stand. Tequila, vodka, whisky. I didn’t care what burnt, only that it did. Zara kept pressing glasses into my hand, and Benji squared up to a group of lads, loud and reckless, auditioning for the next role in his endless charade of a life. But Henry stood rigid at my side, as he always had since we’d first bunked together at Harrow, one hand buried in his trouser pocket, the other clamped around his glass as though the place itself might stain him.
“I don’t see the appeal.” Henry leant closer, not bothering to raise his voice above the din. He was far too well-bred for that.
I followed his line of sight. The dance floor was a mess of bodies, mostly men grinding against each other, sweat slick, shirts half-unbuttoned. A few women too, flashing bright nails and louder laughter, making space for themselves in the press. Not a full gay bar. Not like the places I’d sometimes sought on my own pre-Ollie, but rainbow enough to set Henry’s jaw tight. Straight-laced Henry, still unsure why his best mate from Harrow hadn’t treated bumming as the rite of passage it was for most of our set but had carried it into adulthood.
Enjoyed it, even.
“You didn’t have to come.” I glanced down at my phone, Ollie’s dot pulsing steadily on the map. Right here. Like a second heartbeat.
“Of course I did. If there’s a chance to witness the downfall of Oliver Montgomery, I want front-row seats.” Henry’s nose wrinkled at the sight of men tangled together, mouths and hands everywhere. “Though perhaps they’ve a VIP section? Somewhere less… sticky?”
“I wouldn’t recommend the back room.” I scanned the crowd. Lights strobed across strangers’ bodies, smoke and spilt spirits thickening the air until it clung to my skin. The bass rattled through me, hard enough to make my teeth ache.
“Why?” Henry asked, all ignorance and naivety. “Do they water the drinks down back there?”
I snorted. “Not exactly.”
“It can’t be any worse than this.” Henry lifted his glass, took a sip, and hissed. “Haig. Christ. We’ve descended straight into slum city.”
And in that instant, I couldn’t have agreed more as my usually polished floor dropped right out from under me.
Because there he was.
Ollie.
My Ollie.
Except he wasn’t mine. Not then. Maybe not ever.
Ten feet away, swallowed by the chaos of the dance floor, mouth locked to another man’s, Ollie fisted his hands in a stranger’s shirt, doing a wonderful job of proving how all my privilege, all my money, and the status I’d been raised to think mattered, didn’t buy loyalty. Didn’t buy monogamy, either.
Or anything else worth a fuck.
My chest hollowed. The tequila turned to acid. The noise fractured into silence so sharp it rang in my skull. The life I’d built, the future I’d moulded around him, splintered under the strobe lights bright enough to illuminate every lie I’d told myself.
Two years.
Two fucking years of restraint. Proving I could refuse the path laid out for me without burning it down. Of making myself acceptable to my father and useful to Ollie. Two years of standing perfectly still between who I was meant to be and who I wanted to become. And he did this.
Though in that moment, I wasn’t sure what gutted me more. That my friends were here to witness my downfall, or that Ollie, smug bastard, was doing the very thing I never had the courage to. Breaking the rules. Getting dirty. Living without apology. He was out there taking what I’d only ever dreamt of. Milling with those totally unworthy of us. Slumming it. Getting a bit of rough and finding out if cheap tasted better.
And fuck, I hated him for it almost as much as I envied him.
“Oh, Tristan…” Zara’s voice dropped, all edge gone. “We could pretend we didn’t see it?”
Henry closed a hand around my shoulder. “Tristan?”
He didn’t smile. Even if some part of him might have felt vindicated, he didn’t reach for humour. Not now. Not over this. He’d save the commentary for later. The quiet observations about Oliver slipping a rung or two down the ladder by betraying me. But for now, Henry stayed exactly where he was. Firm. Grounding. Holding me upright without making a spectacle of it.
It was Benji’s laughter splitting the air as he clambered onto the railing, theatrical as ever, reminding me a betrayal had occurred. “Ollie! Yoo hoo!”
Ollie broke away from the stranger long enough to glance up at me. And I wish I could say there was regret there. Shock. Guilt. Even a hint of shame. But no. What I caught in his eyes was colder. Flatter. Exasperation. As if he’d expected to see me there and was bored with it. I guess in hindsight, had he wanted to remain covert, he would have turned his fucking location off.
“Oh, Tris.” Ollie looked out of it. Drink. Coke. Something else. “Guess I got your field study for you.”
The floor tilted beneath me. Then chaos hit. Benji vaulted the railing and onto Ollie’s back with Henry dragging at his sleeve to prevent him, only for Zara to slip under his arm and join the fray. All of them did what maybe I should have done. Confront. Fight. Claim. Not that it was a fight as such. Not in the normal sense. No fists or slurs. Oh, no. This was teacups at dawn and polite exiles from the circle. Tanking reputation was punishment enough for us. Far crueller. But I couldn’t even muster the strength to fling his joint account card at him.
Instead, I shoved through the crush, through strangers and strobe light and bass, until the doors spat me out into the night. Cold air hit like a fist. A sour cocktail of rain, diesel and sweetened vapour to match my state. There, I lurched into the nearest newsagent, bought the cheapest whisky they had, wrapped it in a brown paper bag, and walked on with warmth burning a small trail down my throat. I then turned left into a narrower run of brick, where the alley breathed stale heat and the single orange streetlamp buzzed like an insect. There, I crouched on cold concrete, paper bag between my knees.
Then, because I was a mess, and this was what messes did, I fished out the little bag Benji had passed me in the cab, and in some perversely private way, spilt a line on the back of my hand and lifted it to my nose. I snorted it. Let it consume me. Corrupt me. Claim me. And whilst the poison threaded my veins, the bottle slipped from my hand, whisky spilling down my Burberry overshirt and sinking in.
Fuck it.
I tore the thing off and hurled it aside, not giving a shit about the name stitched into the label. Then I stood, my thin vest clinging damp to my chest, looking as though I belonged in some gilded cage above a dance floor, not hunched in a piss-slick alley.
Somehow, I couldn’t give a single fuck.
Expecting my friends to find me, I stepped out of the shadows, into the spill of streetlight. They’d drag me back inside, laugh it off, patch me together with shots and sarcasm and I could pretend I hadn’t watched my world collapse ten feet away.
I tipped back more whisky while I waited. Let it burn.
Then I leant against the brick wall and glanced across the road.
A man stood there, right opposite me, in the doorway of a shuttered shop, half swallowed by shadow, half carved out in a gleam of neon. Broad shoulders under a dark puffer jacket, buzzed hair catching the weak light, cigarette burning between his lips. He didn’t smile. He stared. Steady and unflinching. As if he’d been waiting all night for someone to appear exactly where I was.
Couldn’t have been waiting for me, obviously.
That would be ridiculous.
But someone like me.
A mess. A vulnerable, drunk, high-as-fuck mess.
Fear crawled my spine, but beneath it something hotter uncoiled, low and shameful. That man terrified me in a way nothing else ever had. Wrapped in gold foil my entire life, I wasn’t used to the gutter. Despite what Ollie had said earlier. I was a typical trust-fund kid. Boarding school at five. Mayfair mansions. Oxford — BA Jurisprudence, top of my cohort. Called to the Bar, then back in a post-grad shared townhouse in the city, paid for by Daddy, because I’d chosen to step sideways instead of forward. A world where danger came dressed in tailored suits and polite smiles. I didn’t know men like this. Men carved hard by life, brutal without apology. My rebellion had always been curated. Safe. Tidy. A dream I could fold away when the lights came on. But when he looked right at me, it wasn’t fear for my safety that had me frozen.
It was fear for my sanity.
Because he looked at me as if he wanted to eat me.
And I wanted to lie down and let him.
The bloke took a drag from his cigarette, smoke curling lazily from his lips, eyes never leaving mine. Then he flicked the butt to the kerb, crushed it under his trainer, and glanced both ways. Not for traffic. No, it was too subtle for that. Checking the coast was clear, perhaps? Then he stepped off the pavement and crossed the street with a slow, unhurried swagger as if the world bent around him.
And suddenly he was there.
Right in front of me. Towering. All menace and masculinity.
Fuck.
Up close, he was brutal beauty. Older than me, though not by decades. Twenty-something, but weathered by a life I’d never touch. I was twenty-three; I’d stake my trust fund he hadn’t yet hit thirty. He wore the years harder, though. Lines cut deep, scarred edges, a face carved for intimidation. Fierce. A man I’d usually gaze at from a safe distance, admire in secret, knowing full well getting close would wreck me.
“You’re new.” His voice was cut from Hackney asphalt, rough-edged, grating against my polished ear.
“Uh…yeah?” My throat worked. It was true. I was new.
New here, new to this.
New to anything smelling of danger instead of champagne.
He gave a small nod, angled his head, then moved past me, sauntering down the alley, cutting into the shadows, not even glancing back as if he knew I’d follow.
I did. Of course, I fucking did.
Didn’t I say how hot he was?
Besides, the club had already broken me, shattered me down into something small, stupid, and desperate. Because Ollie had been ten feet away, kissing someone who wasn’t me, and I couldn’t go back in there to Benji’s knowing smirk, Henry’s quiet judgment, and Zara’s grating sympathy. No, I had to stay out here.
With him.
He popped another cigarette between his lips, and it hung there unlit. His other hand went to his belt. Casual. Unapologetic. Leather unlooped, metal clinked, buttons popped. And he freed himself as if I’d asked him to. No ceremony. No hesitation. Just the blunt demand, hanging in the sour night air.
And okay, here’s the thing — if I’d been sober, or even remotely clear-headed, I might’ve paused long enough to process the situation. I’d probably have laughed. Definitely would have walked away. Not that I was naïve. Nor some virgin bride or frigid fraud. I’d been fucked and fucking since my first nights at Harrow, testing boundaries in Oxford dorm rooms and Mayfair townhouses. Then I met Ollie. Had two years of monogamy with a man who explored every inch of me as if I were his own personal plaything. A sport he wanted to perfect. Like his rowing.
So no, I wasn’t innocent.
But I also didn’t kneel for strangers in alleys stinking of piss and rot.
I couldn’t explain it. And it wasn’t just the hard, brazen cock, that was more than willing to let me bury the sting of betrayal in its weight, fixing me to the spot. Nor was this me numbing myself to Ollie’s mouth on someone else. Or making up for the two years I’d poured into a man who’d left me gutted on a dancefloor. It wasn’t even the quiet devastation of knowing I’d paused my career path for him, that my father’s disappointment had become permanent, that my mother had probably doubled her therapy sessions on my behalf.
No. It wasn’t any of that.
It was his eyes that had me hooked.
Fierce, velvety-brown, as if beauty had once lived there, but it had been scraped out by weather and war and life too hard for polish. They held me fast. Impatient at my hesitation, too, but steady enough to make escape impossible. And it was them, not his cock, or his bulk, or his threat, pinning me in place. Because when I looked back, deeper than I should have, what reflected terrified me more than anything.
Me, not resisting. Instead, falling.
To my knees, opening my mouth and welcoming him in.
“That’s it,” he drawled, cigarette hanging from his lips as he slipped a hand around the back of my head.
And fuck, yeah, I did it. I closed my lips over a stranger’s cock I knew nothing about except how much I wanted it. Him. This man. I didn’t even care what the punishment would be. If I died from this, it would be a death worth taking. Because the roughness of his palm made my pulse shudder. And I gave in. Not halfway. Not polite. I let everything pour out of me. Humiliation. Anger. Need. Every bit funnelled into the salacious act I’d perfected on expensive sheets and was now giving to a stranger while crouched in the gutter.
The man groaned, low and unrestrained, rawer than anything I’d ever pulled from Ollie’s lips. His hips shifted, breath harsh, smoke and night and sweat rolling off him. He was unpolished. Unashamed. Nothing like the glossy boys I’d grown up around. Every sound he made pinned me tighter, telling me I was exactly where he wanted me to be.
Then he sagged back against the wall, trainers sliding on whatever filth coated the concrete among the takeaway boxes, broken glass, and, Christ, a used syringe glinting in the lamplight. I kept my eyes up. Focused on him. Took him deeper, rolling my tongue around the hot girth, watching his head knock against the bricks as he pushed his cock down my throat to make me gag.
“Fuck…” He screwed his eyes shut, hissing through his teeth, tightening his fist in my hair and suddenly I was grateful for it to be long enough for him to grip, to claim. “Shit…” He jerked his hips, uneven, desperate. “Whoa, whoa—fuck.”
Then he came. Not like he’d meant to. As if he’d tried to drag himself back, pull free before it hit, but couldn’t. Heat flooded my throat, too much, spilling past my lips as he groaned through the tremors, body shaking, voice guttural and ruined. Then he slipped free, cock twitching, a final spatter catching the air before he glanced down at me. Our eyes locked. His were confused, narrowed, assessing. Mine were shame burning hot, but beneath it, the savage thrill of having undone this Hackney brute. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and somehow, God knows how or even why, I smirked.
“Britain’s got talent,” man said, the East End thick in his throat, unlit cigarette bobbing between his lips. It should’ve grated. Instead, it rolled over me like a purr. “Risk taker, eh?”
“Guess you owe me, then?” I shot back, laughter rough and jagged, trying for brazen because if I didn’t, I’d fold in on myself. I pushed up, chest brushing his, daring, or pretending to.
He snorted. Amused. Then tucked himself away with one hand, zipping, buttoning, brisk and unapologetic, and flicked his lighter with the other. Flame sparked, cigarette caught, and smoke curled out, wrapping around us in a haze, as if we’d stepped into some private, filthy confessional. Then he dipped his hand into his pocket, pulled out a fat roll of notes, peeled off two twenties, and held them out.
“Forty, right?”
What?
No, really—what?
I blinked. Probably blinked again. Then stood there like a fucking idiot while he held the notes out.
“You want it or not?” Man waggled the cash.
Did I want it? No. Not the money. What I wanted was tit for tat, his hand around my cock, not this filthy exchange. Though honestly, the second the transaction entered the air, the heat in me faltered, and my cock shrank under the shame of it anyway.
“Fuck.” He took a drag, pulled the cigarette from his lips, exhaled smoke into the space between us. Then peeled off another tenner using the hand he clutched his cigarette in. “Fair play, you were better than the last one.”
He stepped in close, so close I could smell the tobacco on his skin, and slid the fifty into my back pocket, giving my arse a squeeze and my cheek a kiss. I stood frozen. Dumbfounded. Stupid. Too stupid to protest. Too stupid not to realise what he thought I was.
And said nothing.
“Might see ya again, pretty boy,” he called, smoke curling from his mouth, drifting ghostlike through the alley.
Then he was gone, the glow of his cigarette bobbing once, twice, before the darkness of East London swallowed him whole.
I should’ve felt filthy. Humiliated. Fifty quid heavier and dignity infinitely lighter. But all I could think about was him. The danger. The brutality. And the way he hadn’t cared who I was.
It should have scared me.
But it didn’t. It turned me on.
And worse—I already knew I’d crave it.
