Fenbrook Academy, but a life spent playing the cello has left no time for anything else. At 21, she's still completely inexperienced in love...and sex. All alone and under intense pressure to succeed, she's almost at breaking point. Then a brutal crime threatens to destroy all her dreams forever.Her only hope of graduating is Connor Locke: tattooed rock guitarist, Irish bad boy and soon to be Fenbrook's most notorious drop-out, if his grades don't improve. Somehow, Karen has to convince him to team up with her for a duet. She doesn't expect to be drawn to him by a raw sexual heat...or, as the weeks pass, to fall for him completely.As the two rehearse, the tension between them simmers...and explodes. Suddenly, the ultimate good girl finds herself being very, very bad. But when their pasts conspire to rip them apart, can even their intense love win through?This New Adult Romance is recommended for readers 17+ due to adult themes and sexual scenes.An extractAt that moment, someone opened the door from the outside and I went stumbling backwards--right off the edge of the top step. Dragged down by the cello's weight, I fell with a surprisingly loud scream, my head heading for the sidewalk--I snapped to a halt, the cello case pressing hard into my back. I was lying in mid air, face up, feet skittering at the top step. Almost all of my weight was held by one shoulder strap, stretched out in front of me and anchored by....I followed the strap with my eyes. A fist, grabbing the nylon. A strong wrist, skin almost as pale as mine. A cracked leather jacket. I got all the way to the shoulder and his tight, powerful frame before it clicked.Oh no.....I looked up into his face. Blue-gray eyes, like a lazy summer's day that's darkening into a storm. Hair cut short and messy, glossy black against his pale skin. And the lips--those soft, full lips that had been the downfall of so many Fenbrook girls in downtown rock clubs or at drug-fueled parties. Even now, they were twisting into a smirk.Connor Locke."I seem to have you helpless," he told me, and his broad Belfast accent made it sound at once both innocent and absolutely filthy. The actors who'd been coming to help reached the doorway and stopped there, smiling."Would you like me to lay you down on your back?" he asked, at least partially for their benefit. "Or should I pull you up against me?"I closed my eyes, feeling myself flushing even more than before. When I opened them, he was still holding me up. It felt like he could have held me there all day, if he'd wanted to."Up," I said quietly, and he hauled me slowly upwards. As promised, he didn't step out of the way, so that when I had my footing again on the top step I was right up against him, our faces inches apart. He was wearing some scent that made me think of big, cold skies and icy rocks.                         

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