“Why?”

“For giving up on a man who looks at you the way Marco does. I thought Braden could be all brooding and possessive with a single look, but Marco is in his own league.”

My heart skipped a beat, causing an unpleasant flutter in my throat. “What?”

Liv nodded her agreement. “Hannah, the look on his face when you were talking to Dylan… oh, my God, he couldn’t take his eyes off you.”

“It was hot,” Joss added. “Possessive. Hot.”

“Tender too. Sweet. Kind of adoring.” Liv sighed.

Joss smirked. “Best. Look. Ever.”

With my heart now banging away in my chest, I threw them both a dirty look and said determinedly, “You won’t deter me with talk of hot expressions. Marco and I are over.” Now if the rest of me could just get on board with that, life would be fantastic.

I didn’t know what to expect from Marco in his attempts to win me back. I guess I expected much of the same treatment as before – unexpected appearances in all the places where I spent my spare time.

A slow seduction.

However, he threw me off guard with his next move. So much so, it tripped me up completely.

I gathered from one of my second-year boy’s comments on his essay for A Midsummer Night’s Dream that he wasn’t enjoying our current lesson plan. I think it was the “Puck is a wanker” comment that really tipped me off.

I underlined the comment with a red pen and wrote in the margin beside it, “Give examples to explain why you reached this conclusion.” We would discuss in person his inappropriate use of profanity to express himself. We did that on a weekly basis, so that was nothing new.

Feeling an ache in my upper back from sitting on my living room floor marking essays for the past two hours, I pulled my shoulders back and sighed in satisfaction at the soft crack of my bones. Grimacing, I looked at the clock. It was almost nine. I should really get up before my arse fell asleep, but I had only a few more papers to mark before I could say I was caught up.

The flat was so quiet that my heart jumped right into my throat when my doorbell rang. Not my building door buzzer. My front doorbell.

Wondering who it could be at this time of night, I cautiously walked out into the hall toward the door on my tiptoes. Feeling weirdly skittish, I nervously put my eye to the peephole. Looking very far away in the small circle of glass was Marco.

“What the hell?” I whispered.

He knocked. “Hannah?”

I felt confused and wary, but at the same time I felt relieved that it was Marco on the other side of the door and that I was safe.

Upon opening the door I parted my lips to ask him how he’d gotten into the building, but the question was swallowed as he crushed his mouth down on mine, wrapped an arm around my waist and pushed inside. I clung to him in surprise, hearing the slam of my door behind him.

Then, just like that, the taste, smell, and feel of him overwhelmed me and I was kissing him back.

My feet left the ground as he lifted me, only to plant my bottom on top of the sideboard in my hall. He pressed himself between my legs and I instinctively wrapped them around his hips. His kiss was demanding, hard and drugging, and all rational thought fled as I kissed him back with equal fervor. All my body knew was that it had missed this.

All my soul knew was that it craved this.

Marco broke the kiss, pulling back only to grab the hem of my baseball shirt in his hands and yank it upward. I lifted my arms, helping him out. My top went flying behind him seconds before his nimble fingers made quick work of my bra.

Despite the fire between us, I shivered, my ni**les turning to hard pebbles that drew a groan from deep in the back of Marco’s throat. He cupped my br**sts and I arched my back with a sigh as he kneaded them, his touch shooting darts of liquid heat straight through my belly and down between my legs.

The sensation increased when he pulled gently on my hair, arching my neck and back further and lifting my br**sts closer to his mouth. He bent his head, his hungry eyes on my low-lidded ones. I shivered again, this time in anticipation, and a smirk of satisfaction quirked his lips before he dropped his gaze and closed his hot mouth around my left nipple.

I whimpered at the molten pleasure that rippled through my lower belly and I clutched the nape of his neck with one hand while the other caressed his upper back. He sucked hard, causing a sharp streak of pleasure/pain, and then he licked the swollen nipple before moving on to the other.

Wanting the feel of his hard muscles and smooth skin under my hands, I started pulling on the long-sleeved T-shirt he was wearing.

He got the hint and jerked back impatiently to remove it. He’d barely dropped it to the floor when I clutched him, yanking him back to me, our kisses hard, hurried, and hot. With one hand I caressed his strong back, with the other his sculpted chest before sliding it down over his hard abs. At the feel of his abs rippling under my touch, arousal pulsed between my legs.

Mind reader that he was, he took his lips from mine to ask breathlessly, roughly, “You wet for me?”

I looked directly into his lust-fogged eyes with my own lust-fogged eyes and whispered, “I’m one touch away from coming.”

His eyes flared. “You’ll come with my mouth,” he promised.

My belly squeezed deep down low and I knew I was more than wet now. I was soaked. I was always turned on for Marco, I always wanted him, but I couldn’t remember ever being this hot and desperate to have him. As he pressed hot kisses against my jaw, my neck, his tongue flicking against my skin as he did so, I rubbed my thumbs over his ni**les, scored my nails lightly down his stomach, and panted with excitement when he started unbuttoning my jeans. I stopped touching him momentarily to brace my hands on the sideboard at either side of my hips so I could lift my bottom to allow him to pull my jeans off.

My underwear quickly followed and, completely unabashed, I delighted in the way he pressed my legs apart to stare at me.

There was a primitive need etched into his taut features and it spoke to whatever echoing primitive need there was in me. My heart was racing so hard, I was panting in expectation, my br**sts rising and falling as I tried to catch my breath.

“You promised your mouth,” I said softly, barely sounding like myself.

My voice pulled him out of his intense perusal of my body and suddenly he was kissing me again. He gripped the backs of my knees in his hands and wrapped my legs around him so his jeans-covered erection pushed between the folds of my sex, brushing my clit in a way that made me spasm deliciously. I wrapped my arms around him, my sensitive br**sts crushed against his chest. He continued to kiss me, our desperation building in that kiss, in the way he stroked my naked back and the way our hips undulated together.