Even when Ethan and I were in the early, just-discovering-each-other’s-good-bits phase back in our teens, I’ve never been what one might call lusty. Maybe sensual on a good day, when I have the right lingerie and am having a good hair day. But it’s never been electric. I’ve never wanted to lose myself in another person.

Not just any other person. Paul. The one guy I absolutely, positively should not want. But I do.

The fingers in my hair tighten, tilting my head back as his lips move from my mouth to my jaw, his teeth grazing there just before his mouth moves down to my neck.

I shouldn’t let him. I really shouldn’t let him.

But instead of pushing him back the way my brain demands, I hear myself moan as my fingers move helplessly on his shoulders. He sucks on the sensitive flesh beneath my ear before pulling back just enough to stare down at me.

“Tell me to let you go,” he says.

I open my mouth to do just that, but no words come out. Not when we’re chest to chest, hip to hip, and the skin on my neck is still damp from his kiss.

His eyebrows go up in smug realization. “No?” he asks, his voice husky as he bends down and nips my earlobe. “You like this?”

I gasp as his tongue finds my ear.

“What about this?” His hand moves from my waist to my breast, and the thin fabric of my T-shirt does nothing to disguise my response.

He smiles against my neck, and I hate him then. But not as much as I hate myself, because I don’t push him away.

I let him slide his warm hand under my shirt to palm my breast, hot skin against hot skin. I let his other hand release my hair so that both hands are on me, his thumbs moving over my ni**les as I do little more than pant.

And then, God help me, when his mouth returns to mine I kiss him back like I’m starving.

“You want me?” he asks against my mouth. “You want my hands on you?”

Little alarm bells are going off in the back of my head. There’s no warmth in his words. No kindness, or even desire. He’s playing some sort of cruel game in which my body is definitely the playing board. And I’m a willing participant.

Paul’s hand slides down my stomach, moving under my shorts before resting against the thin, damp fabric of my panties.

His breathing is harsher now, and I know he’s testing his own limits.

My fingernails scrape lightly at his wrist, reason demanding that I push him away. His fingers move, brushing against me, and my head falls back helplessly.

Paul’s breath is hot and fast against my neck as one finger slides its way under the elastic, finding me hot and slippery.

“Christ,” he mutters.

Another finger joins the first, and I’m still gripping his wrist, but this time with no intention of pushing him away. His fingers toy with me, experimentally at first, and then more confidently as he figures out what makes me squirm and gasp.

My orgasm is upon me embarrassingly fast, and he seems to know it, because in those last seconds he pulls me close with one arm, the pads of his fingers moving faster and faster against me until a hoarse cry rips from my throat as I shatter.

As I ride through the aftershocks, I start to lean into him, just until my legs stop shaking and I catch my breath. But he pulls his hand out of my shorts and steps back before I have the chance. I still can’t think straight, so it takes me a second to register what’s happening.

Paul wipes his hand—that hand—against his boxers with a sneer. “Well, that was easy. Makes one wonder who’s working for whom.”

There’s a dull roar in my ears. Oh my God. This isn’t happening. I am not being flat out rejected by the guy I just let finger me. A guy I work for.

He reaches for his glass, taking a long swallow of his drink as though nothing happened.

The realization feels like ice water in my face: he doesn’t want me. He never wanted me. I let myself think this was a midnight liaison driven by animal attraction, when really he was making a point in the cruelest, coldest way possible.

“You’re a monster,” I whisper.

He turns to face me, his expression betraying nothing. “You expected anything else?”

“Why?” I ask, trying to keep whatever pride I have left, lifting my chin and meeting his eyes.

Paul shrugs, and his indifference is worse than the sneer. “I was bored. You were begging for it.”

I close my eyes. The truth of his statement hurts worst of all. I did beg for it. I absolutely should have pushed him away, and I crossed more lines than I care to think about at the moment.

But I’m not the only guilty party. I open my eyes again, searching his face for even a tiny bit of remorse. Nothing. Maybe he really is as dead inside as he looks, as he wants everyone to believe. Maybe I’m doing little more than babysitting a statue with a sadistic streak.

And yet . . . who was that guy who was so obsessed with my running technique that he forgot he was supposed to be injured? Or the guy who shared his billion-dollar whisky with me while we read by the fire? Or the one I coaxed into conversation over dinner?

There has to be a human being left under the cold savage. I just don’t know how to reach him . . . yet.

I take a deep, shuddering breath, not caring that it betrays my nerves, and take a step backward, then another, my eyes never leaving his. Letting him know that I’m not running away, that I’m not leaving his house just because he played my body like a fiddle and then mocked me for it.

For the first time in my life, I feel myself acting entirely on instinct, and although it feels an awful lot like playing with fire, it also feels oddly right.