Blake Sanders thought he left his Midwestern past behind when he went to UW on a basketball scholarship more than 20 years earlier. But Keely Radcliffe drags it back into the present when she shows up on Blake’s stoop one morning to ask for his help.

Back then, Keely’s sister was killed in a lab explosion on a university campus in southern Illinois. Blake’s best friend Perry Langford was arrested and convicted of murder for setting the charge, but Langford always maintained his innocence, claiming someone else blew up the building. Not even Blake knows what really happened, and he was there, a secret he’s kept all this time. Now Langford is out of prison, and he’s gunning for all those he holds responsible for his 20-year stint in stir, including Blake.

A week later, Blake’s cop friend Charlie invites him to a backyard barbecue at his folks’ house. Masked gunmen burst in on the festivities before the two of them can even open a beer. Charlie and Blake manage to hold off the marauders, but Charlie is wounded, and when the smoke clears Charlie’s parents have vanished.

Twenty-year-old Camryn Bennett thought she knew exactly where her life was going. But after a wild night at the hottest club in downtown Raleigh, North Carolina, she shocks everyone-including herself-when she decides to leave the only life she’s ever known and set out on her own. Grabbing her purse and her cell phone, Camryn boards a Greyhound bus ready to find herself. Instead, she finds Andrew Parrish.

Sexy and exciting, Andrew lives life like there is no tomorrow. He persuades Camryn to do things she never thought she would and shows her how to give in to her deepest, most forbidden desires. Soon he becomes the center of her daring new life, pulling love and lust and emotion out of her in ways she never imagined possible. But there is more to Andrew than Camryn realizes.