I tremble. “Yes,” I say, dizzied with want.

He gives me a smile that sends my pulse racing, his hand lingering on my face for a second longer, then he shifts my car into gear and pulls us into the rainy streets. The air between us crackles in the silence.

The only audible sound outside is the rain and thunder. The inside of the car is dominated by his breathing. His breaths are deep and slow, but mine are fast and nervous.

He smells . . . like a wet forest. With a touch of leather. His eyes are on the road, but I’m only aware of him. The way his chest expands his wet T-shirt. His shadowed profile and how the city lights flicker across his face as we pass. His wet jeans clinging to his hard thighs. I think we both know we’re going to do it.

We’re going to have our hands all over each other in minutes, and the knowledge is causing havoc in my brain. I feel like some little sex gremlin in me has just emerged. I have a thing about man ni**les and his man ni**les are poking deliciously into his white T-shirt and his jeans are . . . god, his jeans are straining to the breaking point. He wants me. He wants to do me. This amazingly beautiful man who makes me cross-eyed with wanting.

“You always this quiet?” he asks me in a strangely thick voice, and I jerk my eyes to his face; that smile on his face really gets to me.

“I’m s-su-suppper-super c-ccold.”

He signals to a tall hotel that I know is expensive even to dine at, but he doesn’t seem to mind pulling into its driveway. “Seems the closest place where we can get dry.”

“Yes, it’s perfect,” I say, too eagerly.

I’m into perfect things, beautiful things, things that are lively and fun. My parents as a couple? Perfect. I’m usually picture perfect myself. But tonight? I slide a hand down my hair as we cross the lobby and I can’t imagine what I look like. Wet rat seems like a good bet. Why why why do I look like shit right now?

While he asks for room keys at the front desk, I examine his butt in his jeans, the fit of his clothes, and I can’t seem to quell the flutters.

As I squish my way into the elevator along with a bunch of other people, I rub my arms and try to stop my teeth from chattering. He smiles at me across a couple, and his smile lights a spark of mischief in me and I smile back.

I follow him into the room and then into the huge marble bathroom. He takes his turtleneck from my cramped hand and hangs it aside, then, without warning, he reaches one hand to his T-shirt and pulls it off with one yank that makes all his muscles ripple. “Take off your shoes,” he murmurs. I unclasp them and kick them aside.

When I straighten, my breath almost chokes me when I see his bare chest. Corded arms, every possible muscle in existence marked. There’s a thin line of hair traveling down his navel into the waistband of his jeans. Ripped abs, thick throat, and those lips, kissable and beautiful lips. God. He has a scar—a big one on the left side of his ribs—and a wave of sympathy washes over me, then I notice he’s undressing me.

My pulse jumps in excitement and my ni**les peak. “What’s a girl like you doing in a place like that?” he asks with his eyebrows drawn low over his eyes, and I start trembling as he peels off my shirt.

On impulse I reach out and touch the scar on his chest with one finger. “What happened to you?”

He unzips my skirt and as he pulls it down, he leans over and catches my earlobe between his teeth and tugs playfully. “You know curiosity killed the cat, don’t you, little kitten?” he murmurs in my ear, urging my arms up so he can pull my shirt off.

I smile drunkenly and open my mouth to answer, and he kisses me. He takes me by surprise and I grab his shoulders to brace myself, shocked by my own responsiveness to his hot, silken, wild mouth. My own hunger unleashes in a torrent. His lips push mine open, hungry. I moan and bury my hands in his wet hair so he doesn’t stop kissing me, and I rock my h*ps as his tongue pushes inside. Shivers of desire race through me as he leans over me, eating me with his mouth as my head falls back and a noise of pleasure purls out of my throat.

I shudder as I beg him to please touch my ni**les.

“You’re drunk,” he whispers as he looks down at me in only my underwear, his eyes wild with heat as my ni**les almost poke into the air.

“Only tipsy,” I whisper, almost a moan. “Please don’t stop, I ache all over.”

With a notable clamp to his jaw, he reaches up and I feel his gloved hand sifting through my hair—then he looks at me, his eyes flashing as he seems to actually remember he’s wearing gloves.

He peels them off, one by one. “Are you certain?” he says.

A frisson runs through me when I see his hands. Strong, big, tanned. Oh god. Suddenly I feel those hands on my waist and he lifts me up to set me down on the marble slab, easing his body between my legs. “You certain?” he insists.

He looks intently at me as he begins tweaking my ni**les, and I can almost see the rigidness of his self-control there, that if I say no, he will stop, but I nod, then he groans and pinches my ni**les in the most delicious way as he bends over, fitting his lips to mine, hard this time. Superhard. His tongue plunging, twisting, hard and hungry around mine, bolts of pleasure shooting from my ni**les to my toes, my mouth to my sex. The marble slab beneath me, the room, the hotel, everything falls away until it’s only hot, powerful, wet lips moving mine. Tasting me. Hands fondling my br**sts, running down my sides. My thoughts spin, his kiss and touch rousing my passion like nothing ever has. My hands smooth up his damp chest and when I touch the metal of a piercing on his left nipple, I almost die.

“Oh god,” I gasp, the intensity overwhelming as my bum aches from the cold of the marble. “Take me to bed.”

He carries me to the room, throwing me to the bed like he means business. He flexes his hands at his sides as he jerks off his jeans and pulls out a condom packet. Oh god. His hands are huge, and tanned, with long fingers. A scar in his palm. I really want them on me. In me. He pulls down my panties, unhooks my bra.

“My name is Melanie,” I breathe, edging back on the bed as he strips me.

Naked. He’s moving with a predatory grace that sends my heart crashing into my rib cage and a flood of need between my legs. He whispers, “My name is Greyson, Melanie.” He puts my hand on his and starts kissing me as we work a condom on him, and I can feel his heartbeat throbbing under my hand.

I love the way he keeps kissing me, our hands touching his hardness, huge, thick, pulsing, as we get the condom on him, a pool of need gathering between my thighs.

He slips a finger into my pu**y and watches my eyes roll back. “I f**king want in you,” he murmurs, kissing my throat. He turns his head to muffle my gasp and takes my mouth. “I’m going to give you the f**king of your life, princess.” His wet tongue slowly drags along the shell of my ear. “I’ll suck on you until my jaw hurts.” His low voice drives me so crazy I can feel pebbles rise up on my nape as he cups the back of my head and starts kissing me again. “Make you come as hard as you can come.”

He makes me so wet, my body starts bucking as he keeps sucking my br**sts, making me pant.

I slide my arm up the coiled muscles of his chest. I rear upward and move my head to the source of his breath and whimper in the only way I know how to make him think about kissing me. He does. He gyrates his h*ps and presses against my hip bone as though he needs the contact, and makes a soft growling noise as he slips his hand between my legs.

I want him so much, I hurt.

I spread my legs wider apart and moan as he takes me. I squirm as my body begins tightening.

“I’m going to come,” I moan softly. “I’m sorry . . . I can’t . . . you feel too . . . good . . . I can’t . . .”

“Come,” he rasps, “it’s all right, we’ll do it again in a bit . . . come . . .”

Pure red-hot ecstasy radiates through my body, my knees falling open, my emotions whirling and skidding, my body clenching and clasping and unclasping his, his thrusts shooting currents through me until I do what his sinful body is making me do, and I come like a rocket.

I gasp from the force of my orgasm, twisting and arching beneath him. He pushes in as deep as he can go, and I shudder uncontrollably and whimper in gratitude every time he’s seated fully inside me, making me feel . . . the opposite of lonely. The opposite of sad or empty. And when my cl**ax subsides and he’s still there—every thick, hot, hard inch of him snugly in my grip—my eyes flutter open, and I see him looking at me, with that look, wild, hungry, almost proprietary, but also strangely reverent and gentle as he starts to move in me again with expert precision, our eyes clinging, the way he f**ks me gently now making little stars dance across my vision as another delicious cl**ax builds and builds.

I don’t expect to but I come again. Hard. If possible, even harder, because the walls of my sex are sore and sensitive, and my cl*t throbs every time his h*ps ram up against mine—and the pleasure grows exponentially until it’s slicing me open in a pure burst of pleasure. My nails rake into his skin. I scream his name, almost scared from the intensity. He muffles my cries with his mouth, and this time he snakes his tongue around mine and cuts off his name to Grey. He groans as if he likes to taste his name in my mouth, his muscles are flexing against me as he goes off, his chest brushing against my br**sts as he comes with me.

When his shudders subside after mine, he rolls to his back and, because he’s still inside me and has both arms around me, I end up coming with him. We lie in breathless silence for a moment, tangled and not even caring about whose arm is where, or whose leg is hooked between the other’s. I am so absolutely dazed, f**ked, and blown the f**k away, I almost expect to see pieces of me scattered across the floor.

After a couple of minutes, I let out a noise of protest, wanting to get up. He releases me, allowing me to tiptoe to the bathroom to clean up. He follows, knotting up the condom, and as I wash my hands he comes up behind me to take the soap and wash his hands along with mine while our gazes meet in the mirror. I see my reflection and . . . no, I don’t look like a wet rat. My cheeks are flushed pink, my hair is bed mussed, and when he smiles at me and cups my breast from behind, I’m done for. “Come back to bed so I can make you pant a little more,” he whispers, into my skin.

“I don’t pant,” I say, taking his hand, the one on my breast, and pulling him out to the bedroom with me.

“You pant, moan, yelp, and now you’ll do it all over again for me.”

“I didn’t do that!” I say as I drop back down, and when he crawls over me, I feel perfectly sober. I’m not even tipsy anymore. I know I will remember every inch of the way his face looks, intent and ravenous, and as he starts playing with my br**sts I start panting as he trails his fingers along my rib cage, circling my bellybutton, watching me with a smile that tells me he knows exactly what he’s doing. I smile back, because bad boys will always be the end of me, and I touch his nipple ring, feeling his erection thicken against my h*ps as I raise my head and start quietly sucking him. I know how to play these games too, my sexy sex god, I think. “Now who pants,” I murmur playfully.

“I think you’re hot as f**k,” he says as he rolls over and brings me with him, pressing my head to his nipple ring as though he wants me to suck harder. His big body shudders with pleasure, and desire pools between my thighs as I keep tugging with my teeth and using my tongue, feeling him swell hard and pulsing against me.

The entire night we play with each other, teasing, tasting, fondling, f**king.

Every touch, every whisper, everything I share of myself with him feels so right; like an electric wire plugged into the right socket, I feel a new life force flow in me, almost euphoria.

During our heated make-out sessions, I find him looking at me through thick dark lashes, a playful curiosity glimmering in his eyes.

He asks about me as if he truly wants to know, and I feel like we’ve known each other before . . . in some dark, forbidden place.

When he kisses me heatedly on the mouth during another make out, I come at him with the intensity of a natural disaster, and this may be what this is, but there is no stopping me, no stopping him, it seems, from having and undoing me.

Around five a.m. his phone rings for the third time. We’re still kissing with lazy intensity and my lips feel raw and red and swollen and my br**sts are deliciously sore but I’m still begging for more. Growing exasperated with the buzzing, he finally answers gruffly, “This better be good.”

I flip over to my stomach to give him room to talk and quietly study his profile. His eyes and one of his hands stay on the curve of my ass as he speaks into the receiver.

As he discusses what I think is business in a low, gruff voice I can barely make out, I memorize the grooves of his abs, trailing my fingers along his stomach. I edge toward his lap and, as he keeps squeezing my ass in one big hand, I kiss his hard c**k and lick up the wetness, which makes him squeeze his eyes shut for a moment and exhale roughly.