Everything falls away.

He kisses me gently the first second, and then without apology, deeply, like the revving of a rocket engine, followed by the launch into space, and then I’m in a galaxy of pure bright stars and endless night, lost and weightless, warmed by a sun I cannot see, his mouth a hungry vortex, a delicious black hole, sucking me in.

He holds my face in one hand, doing the most wicked things to my tongue until he tears his lips away, glancing at my mouth.

He looks at my kissed lips as he slips his hand beneath my skirt, touching the bare skin on the inside of my thigh. His fingertip touches me over my underwear—trailing a feather-like path across my wet sex.

It’s a ghost touch—barely there, but it causes a shudder to run through me.

I moan, and his forehead hovers above mine as we both pant and brush our lips across the other’s. Matt licks my bottom lip, then inside my mouth before he retreats.

He sets his face on mine and smells my neck. He groans again and kisses me, tongue plunging heatedly inside. Pulling back seconds later.

“Are you torturing me?” I gasp, so aroused my whole body is shaking.

He’s breathing hard, his chest expanding with each breath. “If I’m torturing you, then what I’m doing to myself has no name.”

“You’re unobtainable, Matt.” I look at his GQ-cover face. “Matt Hamilton. You’re so unobtainable you’re like a poster, something I can look at but not touch.”

A dark look settles in his gaze as he leans forward again.

I’m thoughtless, mindless as he presses his lips to mine. A kiss with just one flick of his tongue. So perfect and so right, I forget that it’s wrong. I inhale, and he inhales me through his mouth.

I groan his name this time.

“Matt.”

It cannot work. It won’t work. The scandal it would cause, the way it would ruin everything that he—that we—are so methodically working for.

“I’ll find a way to get you alone with me. I want to spend time with you. I want to feel more of you,” he rasps, kissing my earlobe, his breath hot and haggard on my skin as he lets his fingers trail up and down my thigh, beneath my skirt.

His fingers sweep across my panties again—eliciting another mewl from my lips.

“I’d like that,” I moan when he rubs my nub a little.

He looks down at me with primal possessiveness, watching me catch my breath and moan as he rubs harder, when a new group of people walk into the monument.

He clenches his jaw, then smoothly pulls his hand away. I breathe, “Is this a mistake?”

“It won’t be.” His voice is firm. Eyes flashing and determined as he lifts his head to scan the crowd. “Let’s go,” he says gently, taking my elbow and guiding me.

We head back to the car in silence—his hand on the small of my back as he guides me into the backseat. His touch searing—reminding me of where else his fingers have just been.

Matt

I usher Charlotte into the car, and Wilson shoots me a look through the rearview mirror when we settle in. I shoot one back that tells him to save it.

I close the partition between us, and my gaze lands on Charlotte.

She sits quietly in the back of the car, and I can’t fucking shake off the taste of her in my mouth. My heart is kicking into my rib cage, my body wound up with desire. The feel of the damp spot I caressed between her legs is seared on my fingertips.

I might excel at being in control and I may feel protective of her, but I’m a man. I have instincts; I have needs. And those needs have been building up, every day looking at her, every night thinking of her, and right now I just damn well need her. I want to taste her mouth again. I want to taste every inch of her until we both drown in pleasure and then, I want to do it all over again.

I study her lovely profile and god, she’s so beautiful.

“Should we forget what happened?” she asks, bringing her eyes to mine.

I smile, shaking my head no.

“No,” I tell her, my voice thick.

I reach out and gently seize the back of her neck, pulling her to me, unable to resist crushing her lips beneath mine.

As I feel her sag, I rub my tongue along hers, coaxing her to let go as I use my other hand to run it up her side, around her waist and to her back, pulling her flush so her breasts are crushed against my chest and the only thing between me and feeling those lush little nipples is our clothes.

She’s soft all over and god, she smells as good as she feels.

I groan at the thought of having her beneath me, wanton and wild. As things get heated and I’ve got her breast in one hand, her nipple puckered under my circling thumb, our panting breaths become audible in the back of the car and I kiss her lips, then go to town with the skin on her neck and jaw. I trail a path to the back of her ear, where she quivers and seems to go even crazier with desire.

We’re both out of control, an urgency to our kisses, our movements, our need.

I slip my hand under her skirt and ease her panties aside, easing my middle finger through her opening. She jerks and her fingers sink into my shoulders, her breaths blasting out of her lips and into my mouth.

“I want you,” I tell her, dipping my tongue into her mouth as I pull out my finger and insert it back in, feeling her shudder from the pleasure. “I mean to have you writhing in pleasure like this,” I promise.

I ease back and look down at her, and Charlotte inhales sharply as I stroke my finger along the outside of her folds, now slick and wanting me.

I smile and rub the pad of my thumb of my other hand along her lower lip, pulling it apart from the top.

I groan when her breath catches, getting one last taste of her and one last feel of her sex clenching around my finger as I drive it inside.

I’m playing with fire and I don’t care.

This girl does things to me, from the way her hair smells to the way she moves right now as I move my finger. I’ve never wanted to take a woman the way I want her.

When the car stops, I hold her small face between my hands, ease back, and lower my forehead to hers, my gaze hovering before hers as I look into her glazed, lust-filled eyes. “I’ll find the right time for us. Let’s keep our head in the game. For now,” I rasp.

A quivering smile appears on her lips, then she gets out of the car and into her apartment building. I press the mic button.

“Wait until she’s safely inside,” I tell Wilson. “And don’t even say it.”