He sucked in a breath that made all his stomach muscles contract in a delightful way as I bent forward and ran the tip of my tongue all along every hot and hard ridge of his cock. He groaned and bent forward a little so that he could thread his fingers through my hair as I took him all the way into my mouth and hollowed out my cheeks. I sucked on him and swirled my tongue around the plump head. He grunted my name as I took him deep enough that the short, golden hairs of his happy trail tickled my nose. He tasted musky and strong on my tongue and all I wanted to do was undo him the way he had just done to me.

His fingers pulled harder and he started to move with less care as the tip of him hit the back of my throat. I used the edge of my teeth carefully and forced him to spread his legs just enough that I could get my hands between them and around his tightly drawn up sac. I tickled him on the outside in much the same way he had tickled me on the inside, which was apparently too much for him to take because he pulled away with a jerk and toppled me back onto the bed in an ungraceful heap.

He forced my legs up around his sides, looped my arms back around his neck, and sank into me with a satisfied sigh. He gazed down at me like I was the only girl in the world and then lowered his head so that his lips were resting right next to my ear as he started to move in and out of me at a furious pace.

“I was without this for too long. As much as I like that pretty mouth, I like being inside you a hell of a lot more.” Well, that was good to know.

I gasped as he bit down on my earlobe and used the hand that wasn’t holding his weight off of me to twist and tug at one of my overly sensitized nipples until it just hovered on the edge of being painful. The way he moved, the force with which he took me, made it clear this wasn’t about makeup sex or even about reconnecting after months apart. No, Asa was marking me, making me his, and it was imprinted on every thrust of his hips, every sting of his teeth as they scraped across my neck. He was letting me know that this was it, and it made my heart and body so deliciously happy.

I felt my inner walls contract around him, trying to hold him inside as he moved within me. I could feel how wet I was around his hardness, could feel every little internal flutter along his shaft as he pounded into me. My hips automatically lifted up to his, trying to match the fervor with which he was loving me. He was filling me up with emotion and his impressive erection. All of it felt so good I wasn’t sure I was going to survive any more of his attention. Not that I was ever going to ask him to stop or go easy on me. I liked that he was rough. Liked that along with all the pleasure there was the occasional bite of discomfort. It reminded me that Asa was never going to be like any other guy and that being with him was always going to mean I needed to stay on my toes. He wasn’t an easy man to love, and frankly that was one of my favorite things about him. No one would ever meet my needs the way he did, and he proved it by sinking one of his hands into the hair at the base of my neck and giving it a tug that wasn’t at all gentle.

I couldn’t do much with my hands, so I had to hold him to me with my eyes. I refused to look away. I watched everything. I watched the way desire and passion made his eyes go hazy. I watched the way he watched me. I watched the way it made him smug and satisfied when he could see that I was once again close to falling over that edge of completion only he had ever been able to bring me to. I watched the love that shone out of him for me when I broke, and then I watched him drown in the love I had for him as he followed me over a split second later. He collapsed on me with a groan and buried his face in the curve of my neck where it was tender from his nipping at the skin there.

I rattled the handcuffs over his head with a little laugh. “I’m ready to be able to touch you now.”

He pulled out of me, which had us both gasping at the sexy glide, and rolled so that he was sitting next to me. He shoved his hands through his hair and grinned down at me. “Not sure I would have lasted for more than a minute if your hands had been free, Red. Where is the key?”

I had put it someplace where I absolutely wouldn’t leave it behind or forget it. While playing around like this with Asa was fun, there was no way I wanted anyone outside of this room to know that my cuffs had been used for anything other than hooking up a criminal. I directed him to the pocket in my purse where I had stashed the key, and it only took him a minute to set me free. The skin underneath the cuffs immediately started to tingle as a rush of blood began to flow back to my hands, and Asa picked up each wrist and put a kiss on my pulse. It made my heart flutter and the way he smiled against the skin touching his lips made me think he could feel it.

“So this is us, Royal. Me and you from here on out, and I’m not letting you go again.”

I reached out a finger and ran it across the arch of his eyebrow. “You get one secret, Asa. Everything else is mine. I’m not going to bring it up because I’m going to trust you and believe that you wouldn’t keep something from me that I absolutely need to know in order to make this relationship between us work. I’m not going to ask about it, but this is the one and only thing you get. The rest is all mine.”

He was a man with a past. He was a man with a promising future. He was a man that had a lot to give right now, and I needed to know that he was willing to share all of it with me. I didn’t care if that made me seem greedy or unreasonable. I was asking for it all.

“You can have everything I have to give except for that.”

I let my finger trace over the slope of his nose and down so I could outline his mouth with the tip of my fingernail. He didn’t need to know that I had a pretty good guess what that big secret was. I didn’t need all the details. I just needed him.

“Then this is it. Me and you from here on out.”

He fell onto his back and pulled me over him so that I was draped across the hard planes of his chest. “The cop and the criminal. Who would have ever seen that coming?”

I traced a heart next to where his was steady and strong under my cheek. “I saw it from a mile away. It just took a little bit of time to get you to look in the same direction … and you’re a reformed criminal.”

He chuckled and twirled his fingers through the long ends of my hair where it wrapped around both of us.

“I stole your heart, didn’t I?”

I rubbed my cheek on the rock-hard muscle that made a surprisingly good pillow. “I stole yours first, Asa.” I let my eyes drift closed as he continued to pet me and rub his hand up and down my spine.