"I'm ruined in the best way..."
TRISTAN
This is a tough town.
A sheltered college girl like Cadence Gentry doesn't belong here.
She's got a job teaching at the high school and I can tell she has all these hopeful fantasies about being the bright light everyone in Emblem has been waiting for.
She hasn't yet figured out that she'll get eaten alive.
I want her as much as I want to mess with her.
Cadence will see me as a project, a version of some wayward kid in her classroom that she can tame and domesticate the way her sister has house-trained my brother.
I can't freaking wait to see her try.
In fact it's all I can think about...

CADENCE
By the time I finished college I had big plans.
I would move to Emblem. I would teach at Emblem High. I would see past the crime and poverty that the town was infamous for. I would make a difference in the lives of the kids who lived there.
Tristan Mulligan never figured into those plans at all.
He was a local criminal and former gang member who mocked everything I cared about, provoked me at every turn and kept me up at night with hot fantasies about how good he'd feel.
I knew better than to start something with him.
I did it anyway.
Tristan might shatter my heart. He might destroy my future. And there's something dangerously explosive about the way we are together.
You can warn me about him all you want.
Everyone else has.
I haven't listened yet.
Whether I'm ready to admit it or not, I'm already his.

**Tristan is the first story in a brand new series of interconnected stand alones from NYT and USA Today Bestselling Author Cora Brent.**