When I’m done, I notice a towel with streaks of red and wonder if he cut himself. Shaving perhaps? A wave of protectiveness takes me over. Is he all right? Of course he is, Melanie. That man is about as penetrable as his steel door.

As I grip the doorknob, the steady pulse between my legs continues to throb. By the time I pull the door open and quietly cross the room toward the bed, my heart races at full speed.

I’ve never been to such a luxurious or empty apartment. He’s like some Spartan, with no belongings. I glimpsed his closet and he has the same three shirts, the same three jackets, same three style of shoes. Like some sort of methodical superhero—and as if he doesn’t plan to stay long?

A pang hits me at the thought, but it’s quickly replaced with the bolt of lust I feel at the sight of him. He’s leaning back in bed, one lean arm folded behind his head as he stares out the window.

Oh god, why do I like that so much? Because he’s staring at your building.

The fact that he can see me from here might make me feel protected even when he never calls. Even if he will never look me up again. I need that little feeling of safety and I cling to it.

“Can you see my apartment from here?” I ask. I start pulling down the side zipper of my dress. He turns to me, and a twinkle of moonlight catches in his eyes as he watches me approach. My heart thuds. He has a massive, self-confident presence, and an air of authority that makes my knees wobbly. He’s strong. Magnetizing. Vital. And he fills my whole being with crazy, wild wanting.

“Yeah, that’s why I got this place.”

I know he’s joking, but the words are sober—he’s looking straight into my eyes. “You’d think a player like you would have something better to do than stare out the window trying to get a glimpse of me,” I tease.

“I do more than stare out the window, princess. It involves me taking off my gloves.”

Bastard.

Fucking delicious bastard.

He’s like riding a motorcycle at full speed. He feels like the engine, the ride . . . the wind . . .

I stop by the foot of the bed and I feel a ripple of excitement when I notice the way he watches me, his eyes shimmering like lightning.

“Strip me, or strip for me. Lady’s pick.” He speaks calmly and succinctly, making no move to yank me down on him.

Really now? So confident of this magnetic, electric pull, tugging me to him?

My gaze greedily runs up and down his thick legs, the bulge I’m mad over, up to his chest, which stretches the material of his snowy white shirt in the best possible way. Feeling heavy and warm, my pulse thundering in my veins, I crawl over him, his gaze boring into me with silent expectation.

“I think you’re a bastard. But you’re so sexy in this suit . . .” I whisper as I start working his belt off his slacks, straddling him so that if I wanted to, I could drop my h*ps and rub the most painful spot in my body against that big, delicious bulge on his lap. “And I want to f**k you hard because you made me think you were better, you made me think you wanted me for more than this,” I add. “Asshole.”

He grabs his belt when I pull it free, tosses it aside with a clatter, and then moves like lightning, rolling me to my back, and whipping out my arms to pin them over my head. I gasp, and he smiles. “Caught you,” he rasps, sliding a hand down the inside of my arm. Starting to pant from the delicious weight of his body pressing down on mine, I wiggle my hand free, pull his shirt out of the waistband of his slacks, and start unbuttoning his shirt from the very bottom, hurrying to the top.

He releases my wrist and slowly pushes my dress up to my hips. “You have a filthy mouth, Melanie. Did you know that I can fill it with come, just like that, so the next sound you make is that of you swallowing?”

“Maybe the next sound is you yelling when I bite the head of your thick pink cock,” I breathe and my thoughts scatter when he growls, “Shut up now,” and kisses me. Hard and deliciously.

The actual next sound in the room is nothing but wet, slippery tongues meshing, rasping of fabric as he pulls my dress higher. I melt beneath his mouth, hot and powerful and more ravenous than any mouth that’s ever fitted itself to mine . . . and it truly feels like all we’ve said means nothing, that this means everything.

His scent fills me like a warmth curling in my tummy as he hikes my skirt up to my waist to expose my lacy black thong. The air caresses my bare ass cheeks, and the next second, he’s palming them in his warm hands.

“Are you happy to see me now, Melanie?” he murmurs, his voice low and textured as he uses my ass to draw me flat up against him.

I whimper, I’m so turned on. “Not yet,” I lie.

He brushes his lips across mine, teasing me. “You sure?”

Once again, his lips make a pass over mine, warm, velvety.

My blood feels thick and hot in my veins. Suddenly I can’t think of anything that I want more than this one, one kiss. But I can never let a man like him know it or he’ll break me.

“I’m sure,” I lie again, holding on to the back of his strong neck as I flick my tongue out to run it along the seam of his lips.

That lick proves to be our undoing.

He groans and comes out to play with my tongue with his, his lips closing over mine at the most perfect angle. A shudder runs through us both. It even feels like we groan at the same time, our kiss degrading from slow and sensual to fast and raw. I unbutton the rest of his shirt, my hands trembling from the rush. He grabs the top of my strapless dress and yanks it down to my waist, exposing every part of my body except for where the silk of my dress circles my hips.

When he edges back to look at my not-so-large br**sts, but my rather outspoken ni**les, I’m almost drowning with a sudden shyness.

It doesn’t last long, for he cups the mounds, as if he were holding diamonds in his hands, paying extra attention to the beaded, hard little points at the tip. His thumbs pay extra attention to them, rubbing, stroking.

“You might not be happy yet,” he rasps in my ear, “but these little beauties are thrilled to see me. Thrilled . . . to see me.” When he sucks one into his mouth, an exquisite pleasure curls my toes. My head falls back into his pillow as I moan, low in my throat. He rocks his h*ps to tease me with his erection. I’m teased, tortured, consumed, throbbing. I shudder and start rocking up to him too. God, he’s going to torture me and I know it.

He tugs my dress over my head, then his hands explore my thighs and move onto my taut stomach, then up to tweak my ni**les. My pu**y burns and clutches as I slide my fingers through the parting of his shirt, running my hands up his warm, sculpted chest.

I stroke his scar, then use my thumb and forefinger to tug on his nipple ring. His body contracts with pleasure and I see it. I see how he responds to my touch, so I greedily run my hands up and down his chest, every possible muscle in existence bulging under my fingers.

“You like that?” I whisper.

I don’t even let him answer because my mouth blends into his again as I push him around and straddle him. Lowering my body, I can feel his erection settled perfectly between my legs, straining hot and large against his zipper. God. Edging his shirt aside, I bend over and start licking his piercing, shivering when he slides the tips of his fingers into the elastic of my G string . . . dipping into the lace V.

“Come here, you hot little thing you,” he murmurs as he holds the back of my head and forces my lips to come over his again. The moment his mouth is on mine, his finger is in me. My sex clenches as a moan escapes me and I rock my hips, needing the friction of his hardness against my cl*t as he rubs his finger in me.

He thrusts back like he needs the contact too while the scar on the center of his palm rasps over my ni**les as he cups one. “Juicy cunt, juicy tits, juicy blonde princess.”

When he licks one nipple, I arch and throw my head back, gasping in sweet agony. I grind my h*ps instinctively, wanting more, craving more as we both strain to get closer. He bites and sucks me, then shoves his tongue against the tip of my nipple, making it poke back. I run my hands over his hair, then try to shove his shirt off his massively muscular shoulders.

He pulls his finger out of me and stops me with both hands. “Leave it on,” he murmurs, then he rolls me onto my back and yanks my arms up over my head.

“But I want to touch you,” I breathe, undulating my body against the weight of his.

He pins my arms up in one hand and pulls off his tie with the other, then he wraps it tightly around my wrists. “Tonight, only I touch.”

“Why?”

“Because I say so.”

I can’t suppress my shudder of excitement as he peels off my panties. He ducks his head and flames lick across my body with each open kiss he places on me, and I tilt my h*ps upward as he dips his tongue inside my belly button. I gasp, my body craving him like sugar, like chocolate, like sex. “Please, oh . . .”

He murmurs shhh and opens my pu**y with his fingers, eating me with his mouth. My head falls back and a noise of pleasure purls out of my throat as he starts thrusting his tongue into my channel, rubbing in a way that has me thrashing in absolute pleasure. “God, you make me lose it,” he breathes, tasting me again.

I quiver under him, spine arched, thighs spread open, aching for his touch, his tongue, his closeness. “Greyson,” I say, breathing in deep, soul-drenching drafts. He’s like every boy I made out with under the bleachers, every boy I’ve ever wanted who didn’t want me, everything that was forbidden to me. I groan as he licks a circle around my clit. “Oh god! Grey . . . Greyson . . . please . . . You’re—”

My breaths rasp in my throat when he lifts his head and I see the unmistakable possessiveness in his eyes. He kisses my taut ni**les, then studies me, bound for him, in his bed. Using my legs, I curl my thighs around his hips, urging him closer. “I’ve never begged before, but I’m begging you to touch me.”

“What is it that you beg for, Melanie? I should be the one begging to touch you.”

His hands start dragging up my sides. Sensations so intense, every touch of his fingers crackles over me like burning fingertips. My muscles tense and knot as my body once again heads to that place where only he takes me, where he’s not only fulfilling a physical ache, but he gets access to a place where he can rip my soul open.

Closing my eyes as I feel some moisture burn inside them, I keep my arms over my head, bound by his tie, as he uses his thumb to play with my clit.

He does it harder, deeper, expertly. Our eyes meet, he crushes my mouth and whispers, “I’m the one who doesn’t f**king beg, but I’ll beg for this pu**y,” he rasps as his fingers prepare me, because he’s so big I need to be wet and ready and oh god, I’m so ready.

“Yes . . .” I say, the nearness of my orgasm audible in my voice, then his mouth is on mine again, our tongues making out, slick as he keeps rubbing me, his palm burning hot as he cups me and slides one finger in so deep. I tilt my pelvis, desperate for every inch. When he’s got me lathered up to explosion, he eases back to unzip his slacks.

My vision is blurry from wanting this. He doesn’t even kick his pants off. He shoves them down to his knees, baring his erection, his thick, powerful thighs.

Our mouths roam over each other as he aligns our bodies. “Hard!” I plead as I hook my bound wrists around his neck to keep him close, my lips raining kisses on his jaw. Last night, afraid and dirty and vulnerable, he was all I wanted. All I wanted. “I want you so much. HARD,” I gasp, suddenly vulnerable, shaking, needing.

Hungrily, I nibble on his nipple ring, and he responds with a growling noise and forces me down on my back. “Impatient, hungry little girl.” He grabs his c**k and rolls on the rubber, and he looks as desperate as I am as he starts feeding the head to me. “Is this what you want?”

My eyes roll back from the pleasure and I cry, “Yes, all of it.” He groans when he sees my first tear fall, and when he cups his hands on my face as though to catch them and starts f**king me for real, my body melts into his as the world becomes full of him. Just him. Only him.

He impales himself deeper, and I soar higher and higher. I can feel my ni**les brushing his shirt, his hot breath on my face, his body in mine—and that’s all I know as my world careens on its axis. His hands won’t let go of my face, holding me for his every hard, fast, expert thrust. “That’s right, that’s exactly right, let go for me, let go for me, Melanie, I got you,” he murmurs, kissing my throat.

My br**sts are budded pink at the tips from the scrape of his shirt; I love it. I love his smell, his hands, his voice. “Yes,” I gasp as he thrusts harder, my rhythm completely clumsy now. All I want is more of him, more of him, ALL OF HIM. “Yes, yes.”

He roars, head falling back, veins popping out in pleasure as he starts jetting off and I spread my legs wider apart as he grabs my h*ps and thrusts in harder, watching me lose it.