Intoxicated by Cynthia Dane

They’re two of the city’s most toxic, unlovable people. Clearly, it was meant to be.

DREW BENTON: Call me what you want. A rake. A cad. A professional heartbreaker. I’m all those things and more. A man who’s hired to ruin the women who have broken your lives and taken you for everything you’re worth. If you’re a man of means and have a vendetta against your vindictive ex? I’ll become her worst, most charming, and devilishly sexy nightmare. So when I get a call to hop down to Portland and check out Stumptown’s own resident succubus, I don’t think twice. I did not expect to meet my match.

Cher Lieberman isn’t just a gorgeous girl with chameleon-like charm and fangs full of venom. She’s responsible for half the broken hearts in Portland, and she thinks I’m her next target. Little does she know, I’m both playing her – and falling in love with her.

CHER LIEBERMAN: I know what they call me. A lone wolf. A wily minx. A piranha prowling the rivers of Portland and getting off on making men cry. Half this town has been my lover, and I have no shame when I say I don’t miss a single one of them. I don’t need love. It doesn’t need me. All I need is enough money to live my life in independent bliss. Not my fault God gave me the body and brains to destroy half the rich fools in this city.

But there’s something different about Drew, isn’t there? I know he’s the heir of a vast and old fortune. I also know he’s never had a girlfriend for more than a few weeks. He thinks I’m a puzzle to be solved? A personality disorder to be diagnosed? He should take a look in the mirror and figure out his own problems, like why he treats women like they were born to please him.He’s different because he does something to me. Something no other man has. As I play his games and up the ante around every turn, I realize that the pounding in my heart isn’t just meeting the beat of my loins. It’s love, ain’t it? And there’s no greater fright than that when you were not born to love.