“Tate,” I breathed, I was about to come but before I could, he pulled out so I cried, “Tate!”

“Not yet,” he muttered, flipped me over, spread my legs then his mouth was on me.

He was good at this because he had a variety of speeds and levels. He could go slow and be gentle or he could go fast and be hungry. It usually started with one and then moved gradually (and never fast enough but definitely good enough) through the rest.

The beard helped. Loads.

He was at his top speed, his most voracious, his hands cupping my behind, holding me to him when I gasped, “Tate.”

He knew what that meant and his mouth was gone.

“Baby,” I begged as his body came over mine, his hands lifting my legs to throw them over his shoulders.

“Wanna watch,” he murmured and then he was inside me, his hands in the bed giving him leverage to pound deep.

“Oh my God,” I whispered as it came over me and I watched his head tip so he was looking at our connected bodies.

“Your pu**y, baby, Jesus, so f**kin’ sweet,” he whispered back.

“Oh my God,” I repeated as it washed in on a tidal wave, his head came back up and his eyes locked with mine.

“That’s it, Laurie,” he muttered but I closed my eyes, my head arched back, my back arched up, my legs tensed, my calves digging into his shoulders and he kept thrusting, hard and deep.

“Don’t stop, Tate,” I pleaded, still coming.

“Fuckin’ hell, baby.”

“Don’t stop,” I whispered and he didn’t, not until I finished and he did too.

He slid my legs off his shoulders, wrapped them around his waist and then gave me his weight.

His mouth was at my ear, his hand curled around my breast when he stated, “Oh yeah, Ace, make up sex with you is hot.”

I’d had a very, very good orgasm but, nevertheless, that was when I belatedly remembered her was a very, very big jerk.

“That was good-bye sex,” I announced. “I’m moving back to Carnal Hotel.”

His head came up and he looked at me.

“No you aren’t.”

“Yes I am.”

“No. You aren’t.”

“I am!” I snapped.

“Told you, Lauren, you keep igniting for me like that, I was gonna chain you to the bed. You try to check back in that f**kin’ hotel, I’ll do it right now.”

“That’s against the law,” I informed him acidly.

“How you gonna tell someone when you’re chained to my bed?” he asked.

“You aren’t chaining me to the bed!” I cried loudly.

“You aren’t moving back to the hotel.”

“It’s home. You’re back in your house, Buster doesn’t need me anymore. And, might I add, you’re a jerk so I don’t want to be here anymore.”

“You wanna be here.”

“Do not.”

“Babe, when you were on your knees, took everything I had not to go back to my calves you were f**king me so hard. You wanna be here.”

“See!” I cried. “Jerk!”

He smiled. “Babe.”

“Get off.”

“You’re not goin’ back to the hotel.”

“Off!” I shouted and bucked.

His mouth came to mine, his teeth nipped my lower lip and my body stilled because this was a surprise move, it felt good and, I was so angry, I didn’t want it to feel good.

“I was a dick,” he stated.

“Yes, you were.”

“I admitted it. Now stop bein’ pissed.”

“And what?” I asked. “You just get to be a dick and then admit it and I have to get over it?”

He grinned and answered, “Yeah.”

“Tate –”

“Ace.”

“I’m going back to the hotel.”

His good mood fled from his face and he said, “No, Lauren, you aren’t.”

“But –”

“You need your own space for awhile, get an apartment in town. But you aren’t movin’ back into that hotel.”

“But I –”

“Jesus, we’ve had this conversation before,” he muttered.

“So?” I asked.

Tate tried a different tactic. “You want, I’ll take you down, you go into a room and I’ll show you how easy it is to pop a lock or pick one.”

“The doors have chains,” I reminded him.

“Then once I pick the lock then pop it, you chain it and I’ll show you how easy it is to pop that.”

“Ned and Betty will be right next door.”

“You’re here, I’ll be right beside you. I’m bigger than Ned, I got more than one gun, I keep one close and I know how to use them. That compare?”

I hated it when he was right.

I didn’t tell him he was right. I changed the subject.

“You keep a gun close?”

He reached beyond me, opened a nightstand and came back with a gun, the butt of it resting against his palm, his ring and index finger curled around it, the other three fingers splayed wide. The natural, casual way he held it made my breath catch because, firstly, I wasn’t certain I’d ever seen a gun except my father’s hunting rifles and secondly, the natural, casual way he held a weapon freaked me out.

“Oh my God,” I breathed.

He reached beyond me again, I heard the thud of the gun hitting the nightstand and then he was back.

“No hotel,” he declared.

“I –”

“And stop bein’ pissed,” he went on.

“Tate, you were a jerk.”

His hand came to the side of my head and his face got close.

“Yeah, I was, baby, and I’m sorry. I gotta go get my kid, done nothin’ but talk to him on the phone for over two months and he’s meetin’ you. Got a lot on my mind and blinds were just one thing too many. You’re in my house and it ain’t in a gated community. It doesn’t have a pool and it doesn’t butt a golf course. You grew up on a farm but you became a woman that doesn’t belong here and right now, it f**kin’ kills me to admit it, I gotta focus on Jonas and I can’t afford to get you the goddamned blinds you want.” His words made me blink but he kept talking. “So, yeah, all that built up, I lost it and I was a dick.”

“I don’t belong here?” I whispered.

“No, babe, clue in,” he answered. “High-class.” His thumb slid across my cheekbone. “Look around you. Not high-class.”