“I know,” I said, and I did. It was crazy, but I trusted him. For whatever reason, I trusted him implicitly. “It’s just, uh. I don’t really do things like this. You know. Ever.”

His mouth quirked. “I don’t either.”

“We’ll just have to be clueless and awkward together, then,” I said, and we looked at each other, smiling, laughter bright in his eyes. Then his smile faded, and he bent down to kiss me.

Our kiss in the elevator, for all its heat, had been tentative, exploratory. There was no hesitation in him now as he claimed my mouth with his. He moved on top of me, bearing me down into the mattress with the weight of his body, and I felt his erection against my hip, a hard, hot ridge.

God. Even just the press of his body against mine turned me on.

I was in infinite amounts of trouble.

His tongue slid against mine, urgent, claiming. I stopped trying to play an active role in the kiss and just lay there and let him take over. I felt like I was dissolving into shards of light. I let go of the sheets and instead slid my hands over his shoulders, feeling the play of muscle beneath warm skin. He was strong, and his muscles tensed and released beneath my touch.

He kissed down the side of my neck, his stubble scraping against my skin and sending shivers running along my back, and then he bit down and sucked, marking me. I clung to him, abandoning myself to the sensations running through my body. There was no room for thought or speech. I was electric, finally alive.

Then he pulled away from me and sat up. I frowned, worried that I’d done something wrong, or that he’d changed his mind, maybe. It wouldn’t have surprised me if he’d changed his mind.

Instead, he chuckled. “What a frown,” he said. “Regan, I’d like to be upfront with you. I have... particular preferences, when it comes to sex.”

My head felt like it was stuffed with cotton. It took me several long seconds to parse what he’d said. “You like being in charge,” I said. I knew that already. I didn’t know why he was acting like he had some sort of horrible secret.

His eyes darkened, his pupils dilating. “Good girl,” he said. My favorite words. I wanted to be good for him; I wanted to be so good, I wanted to do whatever he wanted, whatever he desired. “I want you to be mine tonight. I want you to do whatever I say.”

It sounded scary, but also incredible. He was holding a door open for me; I had to decide if I wanted to step through. I hesitated, the words caught in my mouth. I’d read the books. I knew how this worked. “Don’t I need a safeword?” I asked.

He laughed. “You read that book, didn’t you? You can just say ‘no.’ Will it make you feel better to have a safeword? You can use ‘sassafras.’” He traced his fingers along my jawline. “But I don’t think you’ll want to.”

“Will it hurt?” I asked.

“You sweet thing. No, it won’t hurt. I have no interest in hurting you. I just want you to obey me completely.”

I was going to come in my panties before he even touched me. “What do you want me to do?”

He exhaled, a long breath of air. “I’m going to leave the room. I need to get a few things. While I’m gone, I want you to take off your clothes and kneel on the bed on all fours.”

“What things?” I asked.

“You’ll have to wait and find out,” he said. He gave me a kiss, deep and heated, and then stood up and walked out of the room with a purposeful stride.

Alone, I climbed off the bed and stripped off my clothes: my blouse, my skirt, my tights, my bra, and the lacy thong Carter had given me, with the vibrator still tucked inside. I let them all fall to the floor, wrinkles be damned, and knelt on the mattress, facing the headboard and balancing on my hands and knees. Naked, the air in the room was slightly too cold, just enough to make my skin prickle. And more than that, I was exposed. Carter could come in at any moment, and I was ass-up on the bed, helpless, and he would be able to see how wet and pink I was, how eager for him.

It should have been humiliating, but instead, it just made me that much more desperate for his touch.

I waited. I lost track of time, my mind occupied with fantasies of what he would do, how he would touch me, whether he would make me beg. I wanted to beg. I wanted to be completely debased. I wanted him to own me.

I didn’t know where these thoughts were coming from. A month ago, this kind of relationship was something I’d read about in a few smutty novels—not something that people actually did. But here I was anyway, stripped bare in a billionaire’s bedroom, about to let him do things to my body that most people only saw in expensive porn.

I heard the door open, and turned my head to see Carter coming into the room, his hands full of fabric. I didn’t asked him what it was. I could guess.

He stopped at the foot of the bed and looked at me. His gaze was like a physical touch, running over my exposed body, making my nipples harden and my pussy throb with renewed heat. Anticipation formed a sweet knot in my belly, the kind of feeling that I imagined people usually referred to as “butterflies.” I wanted him more than I’d ever wanted anything in my entire life.

He came around the side of the bed and sat on the mattress beside me, resting the cloth in his lap. “You’re ready for me, aren’t you?”

I swallowed. I didn’t see any reason to deny it. “Yes,” I said, and then, testing how it would sound, “Please.”

He ran one hand down my back and over the curve of my ass. “I want you to hold onto the headboard. Don’t let go until I tell you that you can.”

“What happens if I let go?” I asked. Would he punish me?

“I’ll stop,” he said. “And you’ll go home, and we’ll never do this again.”

I swallowed. That wasn’t the sort of punishment I’d been imagining. I was thinking of some spanking, maybe. What he said sounded worse. “I won’t let go,” I said.

“I know you won’t,” he said. “You’re a good girl, and you want to make me happy.”

He was right, and I didn’t understand how he knew everything I was feeling. I wanted him to be happy with me. I reached my arms out and took hold of the slatted headboard, wrapping my fingers around two of the wooden bars. They were smooth and rounded, some sort of wood that I didn’t recognize. Mahogany, maybe. Or something fancier than that, some kind of rare rain forest wood that I’d never heard of.