Melanie. We fucked before he left town.

We fucked before he left town.

Straight from my parents’, he followed me to my apartment, up the elevator, to my door. I stood there, starting to say goodbye. He slammed my mouth to his, scooped me up, and took it from there to the bedroom.

He threw me to the bed and ripped my clothes off, then his. My body trembled and my breaths shuddered out of me as he dropped over me.

He held me down, one hand on my shoulder, the other on my hip, and fucked me hard. I screamed and twisted, raking my hands down his back.

“Look at me.”

I tried, moaning.

He slid his hand up my back, under the fall of my hair and held me by the skull, tipping my face up. “Say you love it,” he commanded. “Say you fucking love it.”

“I love it,” I moaned.

His mouth crashed down on me and he gave me the kiss of a lifetime, the fuck of a lifetime. When he peeled our mouths free he slowed his pace and said again, huskier, “Look at me,” filling me to the hilt with hot, pulsing live flesh.

I looked and he looked back at me, greedy, strong, driving over and over inside me. Not holding back. Every move telling me he needed this as bad as me.

My climax took me over like a storm. With every shudder that passed through me, another, deeper one ran through him until we were both panting and undone. I clasped my thighs and arms tighter around him, holding his hard, heavy body to mine, keeping him a little longer inside me.

I didn’t want to let go. My face was wet again from my orgasm but all of a sudden I felt like crying an ocean.

I’m afraid of what he makes me feel, and of the reality of my circumstances.

I’m afraid that I will owe all this money and have had no buyers for my Mustang, and when my time runs out three days after my birthday, a dozen angry mobsters will come knock on my door and nobody will be able to help me. Nobody will be able to stop them. Not even him.

I don’t know what I’m going to do. I don’t know what to do. But nobody makes me feel as emotionally vulnerable and as physically safe as he does when he holds me.

The fact that he came to brunch, unexpectedly, told me more than all his warnings have. He exhaled in my neck and rolled us to a more comfortable position, where he kept me to his side, and I felt strange emotions swamp me.

Don’t be needy, I told myself, but I felt like an imposter. I still heard myself whisper, “Everything my parents said . . . don’t believe it. They just think I’m perfect, but I fake it.”

I eased away from him and clutched the sheet around me.

He sat up in bed. “I know about faking it.”

“My life came at a very high price and it’s just hard to live up to it.”

Instantly he reached out and set a hand on my shoulder, tracing a circle on my skin with his thumb. “My life has come at a high price too. Every day of it.” He brushed one lone tendril of hair back from my face, our eyes locking. “So many days trying to find some fucked-up meaning in it.”

The revelation left me breathless, and I waited and waited and waited for more, saw there was more in his eyes, but he got up and grabbed his clothes.

“I’m glad to be wanted here, Melanie,” he said, shooting me one of his many winning smiles.

When he started getting dressed, I turned away to the window and clutched my arms around my stomach, trying to ease the ache there. Ugh. Hate that he’s leaving again. Hate that this could be goodbye.

I wanted to ask if I’d see him again, but before I could, he spoke from the door.

“Stay safe, princess.”

I forced myself to answer, “Bye, Greyson.”

How can I know so little about someone and yet need him so much?

He hasn’t called, but this Monday morning I got another kind of call, and with it, an offer for my Mustang.

I ask Pandora as we settle in the office, “So what do you think, is it a good offer?”

Her answer is to ask me why I am selling my car.

Fuck. I try to think of anything but the truth, that it needs to go and I probably need to sell everything but the shirt on my back, and even then the math may not add up, but I just can’t tell her. “It’s impractical.”

“Dude, you live for the impractical.”

“It got flooded! It squeaks now.”

“Which is cute considering you squeak too.”

“Urgh, you’re impossible.”

“Melanie . . . stop buying shit and you wouldn’t need to sell your car. See this shirt? I do something that’s called washing it three times a week. I only need a couple of these and that’s it. See these boots? They’re my signature. I don’t need another pair of shoes.”

“This is not a shopping problem, it’s a different kind of problem.”

“What, like an addiction?” Her brow wrinkles with concern.

“I want to sell it, that’s all,” I mumble.

“Want to sell, or need ?” Perceptive dark eyes suddenly probe into me in silence. “I have an idea. Sell the necklace your boyfriend gave you.”

“Pfft! Don’t think so!” I wave that off with one hand, then I become somber. “I want to sell my car, and I need your advice. Is that a good offer, Pan?”

“I’m a fucking decorator like you, I don’t know shit about cars. Ask your dad. Hell, ask your precious boyfriend.”

“You know what? I will! I will ask him right fucking now! He will be delighted to hear from me.” I pull my phone out. “He even came to brunch.”

“Wow, you dragged him off to your parents’. Really,” Pandora says, then she clucks at me in warning.

“Oh, bug off, Maleficent!” I angrily cry, slapping her with a client’s newly upholstered pillow I was checking for quality.

I’m not going to tell her shit anymore.

I won’t even explain to her the complexities of two single people doing . . . what are we doing?

We’re having sex, that’s what we’re doing.

But I don’t want it to be just sex.

I don’t know how many secrets Greyson keeps, but he has a secret room, and he refuses to talk on the phone near me, both of which are odd. Still, I have a secret of my own, so it’s not exactly fair to feel this way. I would love to tell him, and only him, about mine. Yet at the same time I pray he’s the last man to ever know.

How to relate to a guy you’re dating or sleeping with or whatever, a guy whose respect and admiration you want, that you asked—that you begged—a group of mobsters for more time because you owe them more money than you thought you had? How to tell him that they lifted your skirt and told you they’d give you an extension—of their dicks—if you didn’t pay on time.

I want to puke remembering the night in the alley. I could never tell this to anyone out loud.

I check my text messages. He was the last who’d texted me. Eons ago when he visited my apartment, and I asked who was coming to visit, and he’d said Me.

I tell myself I don’t want to go through all the guessing games again. If he wants me, he wants me. Right?

But my cardinal texting rule niggles at me. Nowadays relationships are so much more equal.

I slowly inhale and text him, Will you be in town this weekend?

And to my surprise, he answers right away.

Yes.

My heart starts thundering. I text back, Any plans?

I planned to look up my princess.

Gahhhh. I love that too much.

She wants to cook you dinner. Will you come?

I will. And so will you.

I grin in delight. Sexy cad.

8 pm Friday?

I could not be happier when I tell Pandora, exaggerating, “He’s coming into town this weekend just to see me.”

“Yoohoo for you.” She sounds bored.

♥ ♥ ♥

DURING THE WEEK, I bury myself in work and in getting some of my personal belongings shipped off to an eBay store so I can liquidate, and fast. My closet suddenly seems huge since I only kept one pair of sneakers, one pair of pumps, one pair of sandals, one pair of Uggs, and one pair of rain boots. I also went down to only three pairs of slacks, two pairs of jeans, a small assortment of tops, and the most basic dresses. My accessories were the most difficult to part with. But I kept the most colorful ones to ensure I could continue wearing three colors daily, even if the splashes of color mostly come from my accessories.

On Friday afternoon, I go splurge at Whole Foods because I’m not cooking cheap food for Greyson—I just couldn’t. So I bring home a brown bag full of healthy and fresh items, slip on the only apron I kept—a frilly yellow one from Anthropologie—and I cook a homemade dinner for him because it just seems like a nice “welcome home” thing to do.

Menu-wise I went for arugula and pear salad with goat cheese and a light vinaigrette, my special pasta pesto, a loaf of homemade bread, and apple tarts dusted with cinnamon for dessert.

I’ve always done my best thinking when I’m cooking. This time as I’m chopping and prepping the food, I think of how I’m slowly beginning to recognize my own needs, as a woman, needs I’d never realized were not being met by sleeping with a dozen different guys, needs that couldn’t possibly be met until you make a real connection—scary, powerful, inexplicable—with someone. Someone you least expect. Greyson’s face haunts me—serious, smiling, thoughtful. I can’t stop recalling and replaying his different kinds of smiles. The smirky one, the sensual one, the indulgent one, the sleepy one, the flat one he gives Pandora, and the one that’s almost there, but not quite, as though he won’t give himself free rein to give in to it . . .

I love that best.

Because it feels like I’m pulling it out even when he doesn’t want me to. Like he’s yielding something to me he didn’t plan to give me.

“Something smells good around here and my bet is that it’s you.”

My blood soars when I recognize the warm, smooth voice behind me. Somehow, Greyson got inside and crept up on me! Without making a single noise. And now he slides his big arm around my waist and spins me around, the move placing over six inches of bad boy with his lips only a hairbreadth away from mine. My senses reel as I absorb his nearness and slide my hands in a fast, greedy exploration up his thick arms.

“Hey,” I gasp, “I—”

He kisses me for a full minute.

A minute and a half.

Our lips moving, blending, my knees feeling mushy because his kisses are better than anything I’ve ever had. And now I can’t think or talk or hardly stand on my own two feet.

He pulls away and I feel myself blush at his heated appraisal. “I like this,” he whispers and signals at my apron, and the delighted light in his eyes makes me feel like I just won top prize on Iron Chef—and he hasn’t even tasted my food yet.

“You’re going to like it even more when you realize I plan to feed you dessert myself,” I whisper. His dirty mind seems to get the best of him, for he looks instantly ravenous. Laughing, I urge him down on one of the two stools at the end of the kitchen island. “It’s not what you think, it’s actual food!”

“Are you taking this off for me?” He tugs the sash of my apron.

“Maybe if you finish your food like a good boy.”

He chuckles, a rich, full sound, his grin devastating, taking over my brain. “You like it better when I’m bad,” he points out.

Biting back my grin, I pull out the pasta dish with a glove, aware of him noticing that I’m only wearing a short dress under my apron—maybe he can even see I’m wearing no panties. The thought sends a tingle through me.

There’s a silence and a creak of the stool as he leans back, kicks off his shoes, and there’s a confused, almost amused tone to his husky voice when he speaks to me, rubbing his jaw as he watches me wind around the kitchen. “I keep wondering what you’re doing all the time.” He pauses, then, his voice lower and thicker than ever, “You miss me?”

“What kind of question is that?”

He gives me a roguish grin. “One I want to know the answer to.”

I return the grin with one of my own as I serve us both, and when I set down his salad and pasta, he clamps his bare hand around my wrist. “Do you?”

Our eyes meet, and he gently stokes a growing fire in me as he rubs his thumb along the inside of my wrist.

“Do you?” he asks, softly.

“Yes,” I whisper. I trail my free hand across his jaw and impulsively lean over to kiss his cheek. Adding, near his ear, “A lot.”

He watches me like a predator as I go take my seat on the stool across the island.

We smile at each other, those smiles that seem to spread our lips simultaneously; from the moment we met it’s always been like that. I notice, at last, that he’s brought wine, and I watch as he pops open the bottle, searches my cabinet for glasses, and comes back to pour a glass for me, and another for him.

We clink glasses, smiling, and before he drinks, he murmurs, “To you, princess.”

“No, to you,” I counter, taking a sip.

“You like going against me, don’t you,” he purrs, still swirling and sniffing his own glass.

I laugh and suddenly I feel like the sexiest thing in existence as I start to eat. As if my every move is meant to entice him, excite and exhilarate him.

Not even my breaths escape his notice.

I feel him look at my fingers, my bare arms, my bare shoulders, my lips. I fork some salad and watch him tear off a piece of bread and stick it into his mouth. We sip quietly, watching each other, savoring each other’s company. The look of each other. The energy of each other. I’m a decorator who believes in feng shui. I believe in yin and yang. I have never felt such a yang to my yin. Ever.

“Do you like the meal?” I ask him.

“Am I the first man you’ve cooked for?”

I narrow my eyes, sipping a bit of red wine for courage, but there’s no cure for the nervous spinning in my stomach. “Truth? Yes. You are. So think very well about your answer,” I warn.

“Every spoonful was as delicious as you.”

I smile. “Really?” Feeling insecure, I check his plates and notice he’s wiped them both clean.

He edges back, and his gaze drops from my eyes to my shoulders to my breasts. “I’m ready for dessert.”

“Wait, mister, I’m not finished. I have some actual dessert that’s not me, you know!” I twirl some pasta onto my fork a little faster and ram it into my mouth, licking some pesto off the corner of my lips.

Greyson watches me intently, and he looks so big, dark, and sexy in my apartment, I’m not accustomed to the deep little pangs of longing springing up inside my chest.

“How was your week?” he asks.

A flash of feelings stabs me when I remember all the nights I’ve lain in bed, more frightened than I want to be, and more lonely than I’ve ever felt in my life. Maybe it’s because I know who I want to be with right now. Maybe it’s because I feel vulnerable and scared.

“Actually, good,” I lie. “I wanted to ask you. I got an offer for my car.”

“You’re selling your car?”

I gaze at him in despair and notice the sudden grim set to his mouth. “Yes, I’m selling it.” I get up and go get his empty plates as I tell him how much I was offered. “Do you think it’s a fair price?”

He’s silent as I carry his plates to the sink, tracking me with his gaze as he asks me, “Why do you need to sell it?”

I can’t help but notice he looks more than a little curious. He seems determined.

So I try going for lighthearted, including adding a casual shrug to my explanation. “Just have my eye on something else.”

One dark eyebrow goes up, followed by another, and then an achingly slow, clearly smart question. “Another car?”

He’s not buying it.

I wrack my brain for something to say that will be as far away from the truth as I can, until he speaks, sighing as though I wear him out, “They’re low-balling you. Don’t sell your fucking car, princess, not for that, not for anything.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” he grits out, “you need your car.”

“Not to go to the office,” I lightly counter, “and I can hitch a ride with friends to go out during the weekends.”

When he continues looking displeased, I feel instantly suspicious. “Why are you so protective of my car, Greyson?”

After a rather interesting silence, during which my heart melts in my chest, I answer for him. “Because thanks to that fucked-up car, I hooked up with you.”

He hikes up one big shoulder in an angry shrug. “That car is you. It doesn’t go with anyone else.”

I feel giddy thinking he might feel protective of the spot where we met, but I’m also sad that I can’t explain to him that no matter how attached I am to that car, I’m more attached to myself. “My buyer is a young eighteen-year-old, she’ll have as much fun with it as I have.”

When he speaks again, his voice carries a unique force, almost like a command. “Nobody can ever have as much fun as you do. You are fun, Melanie. And life. And so is that crazy, sweet little blue Mustang.”

I bring my hand up to stifle my giggles, because he’s being terribly cute and protective, and when he scowls, I tell him, “I think it’s adorable, Greyson.”

“That word and I don’t go together, princess.”

“It’s adorable. You’re adorable.”

He stands as though he’s going to make me pay for that. I run toward my room, laughing, and say from the door, “Greyson, I know this will break your tender heart, but I really need to sell my car. I’ll just ask for a thousand more. What do you say? God, even that scowl you’re wearing is adorable.”

He throws his head back and laughs—the sound rich and deep—and when I realize he won’t ever get the direness of my circumstances, I excuse myself to the bedroom for a moment and call the interested party to ask for one thousand more.

The girl tells me she’ll talk to her dad and let me know. When I come back out, Greyson’s standing with his arms crossed, looking at me with the kind of look a man wears when he doesn’t know what the fuck to do with you.

“I counteroffered,” I explain, once again the word “adorable” whispering through my hair as he rubs a hand through his own in frustration.

“Ahh, princess. Really. I can’t even . . .” He shakes his head in obvious frustration.

“Greyson, it doesn’t matter!” I cry. “Even if the car is gone, you’ll always be both my and my Mustang’s hero, you know.”

Somehow aching to appease him—hey, his volatile energy feels like a tornado in the room—I approach him and brush my hand through his mussed-up hair as I try to smooth it out again, loving the softness, which is just about the only thing soft on his hard head. He growls and catches me by the waist, surprising me when he drops his head and sets his nose between my breasts and kisses my cleavage with fierce tenderness.

“If you weren’t going to listen to me,” he murmurs, his voice muffled by my apron, “why ask me?”

“I like knowing your opinion.”

“Show me you like it by proving you’re listening to me, Melanie.”

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, rumpling his head playfully as I try to make him be happy again. The pleaser in me just can’t take his displeasure. Not his. “I’ll make it up to you.”

“Hmm.” His eyes glow like torches all of a sudden. “Make it up to me by telling me how you’d like to spend your twenty-fifth birthday,” he proposes.

A moment’s hesitation settles between us. What would he say if I told him I wanted to spend the day with him? Doing nothing but him all day? That I want him to tell me about his life, his family, that I just want to be with him because, lately, that’s when I’m happiest?

Prying free of his hold and forcing him to settle down on his seat, I bring over the cinnamon apple tart on a plate, then I boost myself up to sit on the island counter right in front of his seat. Using my lap as a table, I set my bare feet on his thighs and lift a spoon to feed him dessert.

“Where did you spend your twenty-fifth birthday?” I ask, spooning a little of the tart into his mouth.

He eats every spoonful I feed him, and the act is not as hot and sexy as I’d imagined it to be; it’s ten times more so. Because of those eyes. The way they watch me feed him like some predator biding his time for the real meal. “Probably drunk. Nowhere memorable. You braid your hair when you cook too?” he asks gruffly, tugging at my knot as I feed him another spoonful.

Something intensely intimate flares between us. Every second, he’s unlocking both my heart and my soul, and there’s no stopping the barrage of emotions overtaking me. Longing, tenderness, want, hunger, need, fear, happiness.

“It’s to keep my hair on my head and off my plates,” I tell him.

“Ahh,” he says, eyes twinkling as I bring up another spoonful of tart to his mouth. Watching as his tongue takes the spoon and runs around it teases all my senses. A buttery sensation flows across my thighs as I watch how his lips close over the spoon, how he savors it, how he watches me as he eats his tart, his eyes bright and hungry and brilliant like a bastard who knows I’m wet and ready for him. I feel like he’s baking me on the inside just like the oven baked my pie. As he takes the last bite, he tugs the tip of my braid and runs it under my chin, caressing me down my throat, and then . . . into my cleavage.

An instant flood of heat pools between my legs, pussy gripping greedily to feel him inside me again. Why is everything he does so fucking hot? My heart is racing and my brain is screaming—touch him! Kiss him! Straddle him and feel him, show him you want him! Make him want you back, just like this! Make him want to STAY!

But I don’t move because I also really crave, I really need, for him to make the first move. So I boost myself down and whisper, “I should clean up.”

With a low, unexpected groan, he clamps his hand over mine and forces my hand down against his erection—pulsing between his legs and as hard as I’ve ever felt it—then he turns his head and takes my mouth in a quick, heady kiss that tastes of cinnamon and apples and him. “Princess, I’ve been like that for hours. Hours. Since I boarded the damn flight on my way here . . .”

“If you’ve been like this for so long, then you can give me ten minutes to clear this up so I will have nothing else to do the rest of the night but you,” I seductively whisper, then I giggle happily when he warns, a thick, raw lust roiling in his eyes, “Five minutes.”

“It’s not a race,” I counter, and then, purposely, secretly, I start moving more slowly to entice him. He watches my every move, making love to me with his eyes as I start cleaning up the rest of the table. Playfully, I slap his hand away when he tries cupping my butt. He chuckles as I carry the plates to the sink, and I’m so affected by the rumbling sound, I can’t quell the pulsing throb in my body, begging me for his fingers, his lips, his teeth, his tongue. He’s been hard for hours but he doesn’t know I’ve been wet and achy for just as long.

He helps me take the rest of the plates to the sink, and the gesture, along with his overpowering nearness, keeps me on edge. As he finishes clearing the table, I start to wash, our fingers brushing, our bodies connecting in so many points, every one of them sizzles across my nerve endings.

When I’m washing the last plate, he stands behind me, his body a wall of brick, his palm rubbing my butt as he starts kissing the back of my neck in the most breathtaking way. “It felt like coming home for the first time in a long time tonight, Melanie,” he says, and I can detect the rasp of gratitude in his voice.

“No girl cooked for you before?”

I’m amused and laughingly turn, but when I look into his eyes, my amusement vanishes.

There’s something very serious in his eyes, and very, very tender.

His jaw looks squarer from the force of his hunger as he reaches out to unhook the apron from my nape, letting it fall to my waist as he undoes the knot at the small of my back.

“Nobody has cooked for me for thirteen years,” he says, knocking the wind out of me with what I see roiling in his gaze. Hunger, but not only of the physical kind. Hunger to be nurtured, taken, accepted.

I know this hunger. I hunger for the same.

Watching me like I’m all the acceptance he’s ever wanted, he laces both his hands through mine and backs me toward my bedroom.

My pulse thunders as he backs me inside, letting his thumbs trail along my face. When he kisses me, his kiss is such velvet, I feel like I could fly. His body presses close to mine, filling me with yearning. I close my eyes when he dips his fingers into my braid and slowly unwinds it. I shake my hair out and run my fingers over it, and he sinks his fingers in with mine as though curious as to how I do it. I close my eyes and feel him awkwardly but very tenderly use his hands to unravel all of my hair.

Do you ever want someone to look at you, but see only the good? This is me with him. I don’t want him to see that I’m a mess inside sometimes. I’m trying to be the perfect girlfriend. And I know that he’s trying to be the perfect boyfriend too. I guess it’s not fair. I want him to see only the good, but I want to see all of him. Even the bad. As we kiss for a while, we talk about memories from his childhood, his uncle named Eric, how they went hunting all the time at a Texas ranch. We talk about my ballet lessons growing up, my embarrassment when I fell at my first recital. We talk tonight. But I want to know more, every piece of the puzzle that is him.

He doesn’t mince words and he tells me what he likes about me and how much he wants me. And I still want more, but our kisses are getting heavy, so heavy I can’t breathe right anymore. He’s taken off his shirt and is now in only his slacks, while he’s pried off my apron and left me in my skimpy little dress.

I suck on his nipple ring. God, how I love this ringed nipple. The groan that follows my sucks. I love how the other nipple puckers in response as I stroke it with my fingertips.

“You wear a scar and yet I can’t ever imagine you being broken,” I whisper as I rub my hands up the muscled grooves of his chest, paying extra attention to the long, textured slash of his scar. I really value scars. The story they tell. The meaning they wear.

“My scar,” I say, then I hesitate before murmuring, “Do you know what it’s for? It’s because I needed a kidney when I was young.”

Shocked at my own revelation, I ease back, protectively curling my arms around myself. “Melanie, come here,” he commands, a spark of some indefinable emotion in his eyes. I take one step to him, and he slides my dress off my shoulders, down my waist, and to the floor.

I’m so exposed . . .

I stare at my feet, feeling myself go red unexpectedly. I’m not wearing panties and I didn’t cover my scar.

Greyson exhales, a long and slow sound as he takes in my nakedness, then he clenches my waist in one hand and tugs me closer, his voice low and breaking with huskiness. “You, princess, are nothing but perfect.”

“Do you realize I haven’t ever talked to anyone about it?” I whisper.

He fingers the scar on my hip bone, tracing it with one blunt fingertip. “I see the pills you take for this every morning.”

“They’re so my body doesn’t reject it. But since she was my identical twin, my dose is minor. My body . . . accepted it almost as if it were mine.”

Impulsively, I lean over and set my lips on the deeper, more jagged cut near the bottom of his rib cage. “Now you tell me how you got this?”

“Long time ago,” he touches my hair with one hand, “my brother . . . my stepbrother got into a fight. Had to pull him out of there and got a souvenir. It’s nothing.”

Dragging my lips up his scar and toward his neck and those thick tendons I really like and the Adam’s apple that makes his voice rumble the way it does, he tilts my head up by the chin and looks at me, smoldering eyes trailing down to my tits, my abdomen, my perfectly waxed pussy, and the way he looks at me as if he’s photographing me in his mind sends a dizzying current racing through me.

“I want to be in you, to lose myself in you.”

His energy feels as hot and erratic as a summer storm as he lifts me up and carries me up to my bed. He starts kissing me in the darkness, cupping my head and feeding only my mouth for long, heady minutes.

Then he’s touching. My breathing goes with every pull on my nipples. The cup of his palm on my sex. I moan at the press and roll of his mouth over mine, and the addition of his thumb sliding behind me, slowly killing me as he caresses my little ass. “Oh god, Grey,” I gasp when his free hand slips down my abdomen, lower, and lower, while his tongue takes mine. I part my thighs with a sigh, and he strokes me open, my folds slick under his fingers, and suddenly everything is gone. My debt. My dreams. My work. My to-do list. It’s all gone except for Greyson’s mouth and hands in me, the gentle abrasion of his stubble against my jaw. His breath going as fast as mine.

“You smell as good as you feel.” His gruff whisper is hot against my mouth. His body trembles with unleashed power. I can see, even in the dark, the sheer, raw, aggressive beauty under the polish. I love the way the walls drop when he fucks me. How he peels layers of me away until I’m vulnerable and shaking. How he’s as lost in what he does as I am.

“Say something wrong to prove this isn’t happening,” I whisper.

“I don’t think so, I don’t feel like ruining tonight just yet.” His gruff voice resonates with lust as he looks at me, his eyes glittering, fierce. Engulfing.

“Fuck me hard.” I gasp for breath as his tongue swirls wetly over my skin and he dips his middle finger into my folds, stoking, gathering my juices.

“Wet, tight, and ready,” he rasps in undisguised pleasure, his chuckle dark and throaty as he presses two fingers in me.

The need for him builds and twists along my nerves, tangles in my every muscle. My heart beats furiously in my chest as he suckles one of my nipples, and when he fingers both my pussy and my back at the same time, I scream.

Hot sucking motions rock through me as I jerk my hips to his hands, my fingers burying in his hair as my body grips his plunging fingers, terrified of losing them.

“Say you want me to fuck you, long and hard and everywhere,” he says, his face twisted into a mask of pleasure as he watches me.

“I want you to, I need you to fuck me everywhere,” I plead. “Only you. Please.”

“Here?” Face raw with desire, he caresses the outer rim of my ass with his thumb again and teases the tip back inside.

I bite back another scream of pleasure. “Greyson, I want this with you.” I lick my lips as my body tightens involuntarily, a sheen of perspiration already coating our bodies, we’re so hot. “You know how much I want this with you.”

“It’ll take us over the edge, Melanie. Over the fucking edge, are you ready to go there with me?” he warns, his tongue rasping into my ear. My flesh melts as he starts dragging his mouth down, sucking my breasts until I arch and gasp, then lower, trailing a hot, swirling path down my belly button, to my bare sex. “First I want to taste you until you’re ready to convulse, princess.”

He sucks my clit into his mouth and I groan in delirium. “Oh god.”

“God can’t help you, baby, but I can.” He blows air over my clit in the most seductive way. “I want to kiss this sweet cunt, taste it, suck it.” He takes it lightly between his teeth, then gently sucks me. Fire courses through my veins as he spreads his hands open on my thighs and opens my pussy lips wider for his tongue.

“Greyson . . .” I cry as pleasure bursts through my veins, my body spread open for his kiss, my hands fisting on the sheets.

It feels somehow like he’s rewarding me because I cooked for him. But also like he’s claiming something from me. Like he’s claiming me. Every inch of me. When his thumb penetrates there again, I’m thoughtless, only groaning and mewing and whimpering and pleading, my hips jerking upward and backward.

“Are you ready for this, Melanie?” His eyes are dilated, but sharp and assessing as he studies me.

I squeeze my eyes shut and grind out, “Yes, please!”

He growls deep in his chest and bends over. His tongue flicks over my clit, then into my sex, probing and pushing into me. My senses open like floodgates. The tip of his thumb goes inside my backside, deeper, stimulating little nerves I never even knew I had.

Shock resounds on my body as he plays with my ass, thumbing me as he uses his other hand to hold my hips down and control the angle of us, how close we are, how his lips pleasure my wet, aching sex, every sinew in my body craving him like nothing . . .

Him.

Him.

Him.

He lifts his head, his lips wet with me, and he’s the most beautiful living thing I’ve ever seen.

“I want to fuck you bare,” he murmurs as he fiercely meets my gaze and slips two long fingers into my pussy, using them to part me. “No condom. Just you and me, Melanie.”

Feel him in me? Flesh to flesh? Nothing between us?

My throat hurts as waves of lava flow through me, and I nod hard. “I’ve always been safe . . .”

I see a flash of something dark and haunting in his eyes. “I’m not safe, princess, but I’m clean and I want you bare just as soon as I get a lab to prove it to you. Would any other form of birth control interfere with your antirejection medications?”

“I . . . no, Grey.”

“You sure?”

The genuine concern in his eyes only makes me need him all the more. “Yes! My doctor had once mentioned I could use a low-dose oral contraceptive if I needed to.”

His expression twists with some fierce determination, as if us doing this will mean some sort of commitment for us. I sense he needs to take me, to take me fiercely and in ways he’s never taken a girl before.

“Come here,” he says, grabbing me by the hair. “I want to kiss you hard, but fuck you harder.” He slams his mouth down, and adds, into my mouth, “But first things first.”

Whimpering as our bodies grind naturally as we kiss, I run my hand up his face and slip my fingers into his soft, thick hair, and I hear myself whisper his name against his jaw. His body trembles with unleashed power. “Say it again.”

“Greyson.”

“Now go up on your knees and elbows,” he says in a roughened whisper.

Oh, god . . . it’s really happening.

Tremors seize my entire body. There is no man I would trust more to do this with. No man I’d ever really wanted to do this with. And I want him to take every part of me, fuck every hole in me with his cock, his fingers, his tongue. He slips his fingers over my folds again, testing my pussy first, dragging the moisture up the crack of my buttocks.

“The wetter you are, the easier this is for me to thrust in.”

“I’m so hot. Grey, the way you looked at me when I was feeding you was foreplay enough.”

“Melanie, look at what you do to me.” He rubs the head of his enormous erection between my ass cheeks and presses the mounds together so I feel the friction. I feel every pulse in his long cock, how hard and throbbing he is. He uses the swollen head to spread my pussy juices up to my ass and teases me with them. I’m quivering on my elbows and knees. Quivering.

“Greyson . . .” I moan. The anticipation is killing me, the feel of him so close, but so far. The scent of him dizzying me, while my eyes can’t see him and feel starved.

“Shh, baby I want this more than you do,” he croons behind me as he strokes a hand down my spine, caressing every dent of my backbone. “I fantasize about it. I fantasize about doing this with you. To you.”

I hear the ripping sound of a condom and lick my lips, staring at the wall in front of me with blurry eyes, my body throbbing for his, my pussy thrumming jealously.

“Will it hurt me?” I breathe fast and shallow as he presses the crown lightly into the rosette of my backside.

“Maybe . . .” he taunts as he trails his long, blunt fingers up my spine again before seizing a fistful of my hair and pulling my head back to whisper in my ear, “Or maybe not. With you and me, there are no givens. No rules. Just what we want. And I want every inch of you. I want what you’ve given no one. This fuck is mine.” He sweeps a hand to squeeze my breasts, pinching the sensitive tips of my nipples. Arrows of pleasure singe me, both my pussy and the place I want him to penetrate clenching tight in response.

“Just take it, Grey,” I gasp.

His thick answering murmur feels like a caress to me. “You bet your ass I will, princess. You don’t tease a man about wanting a thick, long dick up your lovely, tight little butt without getting what you’re asking for. Loosen up now, I’m lubing up.”

I mew as he presses his thumb into me, and then . . . something thicker, so much larger, so much harder. Deliciously creamed up and pushing into me.

“Push back against me, baby, that’s it, fuck that feels good, princess,” he cooes, softly, as he advances inch by inch, stroking a hand down my abdomen to caress my pussy.

“Oh god, Grey!” I scream, and I turn and bite down on my own arm, moaning as he stretches me so much it’s almost painful, but it’s too pleasurable to be painful and I like it too much, the way he does it slowly, the way he caresses my swollen sex to wet and prepare me, the way he leans over and starts to graze his teeth over my nape, primal, like a werewolf wanting to bite me.

I’ve never felt so full, so aroused, and so emotionally vulnerable. I’m panting to get the words out . . . “Please, Greyson. Move. Fuck me.”

He grabs my hips and eases out, and he says something that shoots a new heat like a lightning bolt through me. “As you wish.”

As you wish.

My favorite movie; and he knows it.

The words, in that movie, mean so much when Westley whispers them. He whispers them right now as I give him my only fantasy.

By the time he starts up a slow, careful rhythm, I’m emotionally unwound and physically unraveling. Tears stream down my face, of pleasure, happiness, and the complete barrage of sensations he fills me with.

There’s a bang on the door, and my body tightens and quivers in reaction, shaking and waiting as I hold myself utterly still. He keeps his pace and remains thrusting, pulsing in me when he stays inside, easing in and out with improved ease every time. His hands tremble on my hips, and I can feel both our bodies straining, our breaths jerking out of our lungs.

“Hey, Romeo, will you answer your goddamn phone!”

Whoever is shouting outside the door is yelling L-O-U-D.

Greyson groans softly but doesn’t stop, and my pulse is thundering in my veins, my heart on the verge of exploding. Oh god please not now.

“Hey, ROMEO!”

Greyson rubs my pussy, breathing hard in my ear, whispering, “I’m not answering Derek until you come. I’m not pulling out of you until you twist and thrash, right now, in orgasm. Now what do you say when I tell you to come, Melanie?”

I moan as his sexy voice spills through my body, the pleasure so absolute I can’t breathe, think—I can only feel taken and plowed and full and his.

“I don’t know,” I moan.

“What do you say to me, princess?”

He rocks his hips again, gently, as he circles my clit in delicious rubbing circles with two fingers, and I sob As you wish and when I turn my head and he French-kisses my mouth, slow and headily, I come, harder than ever, every piece of me shattering, body, mind, soul, heart, crying softly as I feel him jerk powerfully inside me. He clenches one arm around my waist and pins me to his body, exhaling hard as he comes with me.

When it’s over, we don’t move.

The pillow is wet and I’m quietly sobbing. Greyson pulses, alive, inside me, and I don’t want to lose him. Still in me. Pulsing in the most delicious way. Still somehow hard. I groan when he pulls out and rolls to his back, reaching out to grab my face, searches for any hint of discomfort on my face.

“These tears. Good or bad? Good or bad, baby?”

“Good,” I croak, rubbing my cheek dry with his palm. “Was it good for you too?”

“God, good’s not even a word for it,” he says tenderly, then he takes the rest of my tears with his lips, his eyes all liquid as he kisses my nose, my mouth, in some quiet male gratitude over what I just let him do to me. Over what we did, together.

I’m shaking a little, and he murmurs, “Stay here, princess.” He stands to get rid of the condom and clean up, then he comes back and pulls me against him, brushing my hair behind my ears, his big body cradling mine. “That live up to how you imagined it would be?”

My chest is so full that I’m certain I’m going to burst. “Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined a guy like you or how you make me feel.”

“Princess, the kind of shit between us isn’t normal.” His lips press grimly together for a moment, his eyes darkening. “The way you invade my thoughts sometimes doesn’t sit too well with me, Melanie. In my line of work distractions don’t go well.”

“Is that what I am?”

“A distraction? You’re my fucking obsession. Not even a fantasy anymore. You’re going to be the death of me, princess, and I don’t give a shit anymore. I just don’t want to be the death of you.”

Fierce, glimmering eyes hold mine as I process his words.

Someone knocks on the door again. “Hey, BOSSMAN! Code 104. Repeat one-oh-four!”

He clamps his jaw as he seems to recognize what that means, then he stands with a vicious growl and slams a fist to a wall.

I swallow and roll to my back, my chest heaving as I try to recover. “Is that Derek? Is he drunk?”

Greyson grabs his clothes and this time yells out his frustration as he smashes his fist into the wall as he passes.

He comes out from the bathroom and slips into his slacks and a clean white button-down shirt but doesn’t even bother to close it as he heads to the door. He slams the door behind him, and I lay here, trembling, exhaling hard.

What we did was . . .

Oh god.

I leap off the bed and go to the bathroom, clean up, splash some water over my face, then I slip into something old and comforting. A T-shirt that I pull out when I’ve had my worst days.

It seems my sixth sense is right.

Grey comes back and grabs my forehead and sets a quick kiss there, then looks at me with liquid hazel eyes, warm and apologetic as he kisses my eyelids. “Go to sleep, I’ll be back as soon as possible. Derek will be here in case you need anything. He’ll drive you anywhere, keep an eye on you for me.”

I think I make a noncommittal movement of my head, but when he leaves, I scream into my pillow over our ruined evening.

I’m not hungry, but I’m an anxious eater so I have some cereal, then I watch TV as I try to calm down my raging senses. I reorganize my drawers. I even stop and turn the locks of all my windows and doors when the familiar fear starts creeping in. It’s late when I fall asleep in bed, waiting for him to come back.

But in the morning, Greyson calls to tell me he’s got things to take care of and he won’t be coming back anytime soon.

♥ ♥ ♥

PANDORA IS HAVING a field day with this; I should’ve known better than to mope at the office.

“He leaves in an unspecified emergency,” she’s telling me as we walk to work with our Starbucks, “he gives you diamonds like on the second date. Who does that? Guys who have mistresses, that’s who. Guys who can’t parade their girlfriends freely across town because their wives will find out.”

“Wow, you’re bitter, girl.”

“Imagine if he does have a mistress! You just had anal with the guy.”

“I would not change it for anything, anything.” I sip my coffee and it’s so hot, I almost scald my lips and have to blow air through the slit. “Look, he was called away but he’ll be back. I know he will.”

“When? Your birthday’s this weekend.”

“So? Who cares about my birthday when . . .” My voice drops, and I whisper, “He’s the One. He is so the One that when I’m with him, I feel like pinching my own arm to see if it’s real. And yet in all this time, Pandora, not once have you been happy for me. Why? Why are you being such a fucking party pooper?”

Pandora stops walking in the middle of the sidewalk and just gapes at me.

Which forces me to come back and plant myself at her side to explain.

“You’ve said every bad thing you could think of and then some,” I remind her. “You want me to talk to you and want to be encouraging, but guess what? All you make me want to do is not tell you shit because you judge and you judge harshly, Pandora. Nobody likes being around people like you.”

She blinks, then scowls and starts walking again, her face downcast and her voice apologetic. “I’m sorry I’m not Brooke.”

“I don’t want you to be Brooke, I want you to be happy for me,” I clarify. “Or at least, like, only half as mean!”

“Bullshit, you want me to be Brooke, and guess what?” She stops and grabs my arm so that I stop with her, looking at me with eyes that glow fiercely with determination. “I’m sorry I can’t be like your best friend forever but she’s fucking gone, Mel. So text her all you want and wait two hours for her to answer because she’s too busy with a real man and a real baby and a real life! I’m the only real friend you’ve got right now and I’m trying to watch out for you.”

“Thank you for watching out for me, but what you say hurts me and you don’t realize it. It hurts my optimism. It fucks up all the hope I have for us—for me and him. Did you know that I feel awful every Monday when he leaves? Did you? I have this strange paranoia that I’m never seeing him again and every Monday at the office you only make me feel worse. Like I’m not worth him returning to.”

I wait for her to answer, but she doesn’t answer, so I go on, “I get what you’re trying to protect me from, but it’s too late, Pan. I’m already falling in lo—”

“Shit, don’t say that! Don’t. Fall.”

I plunge my fingers through my hair, close to pulling it off at the roots. “God, please, for your own health, tell me the name of the guy who made you like this!” I beg her.

She hesitates, scowling down at the sidewalk for a moment. “Look him up in the Guinness Book of World Records under World’s Greatest ASSHOLE,” she mutters.

“Just tell me his name so we can go make a voodoo doll for him or something!” I cry.

She groans and clutches her stomach. “I can’t. I can’t say his name.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s fucking everywhere and it drives me insane. Insane! I won’t speak it. Ever.”

“Pan,” I say softly, but she shakes her head.

“Look, I’m sorry for spoiling your fantasies, but I’m being realistic here and you’re going a thousand miles an hour, Melanie. You meet the guy, you get jewels. He tells you his driver is here for whatever you need and the dude is following you—” She signals to where Derek is clearly driving around the block. “You have kinky, wonderful sex, then he disappears. And you don’t question this? You meekly wait for a call? Where’s the Melanie I know? The Melanie I know has ants up her butt and she wouldn’t take orders from some dude she just met. Your birthday is two days from now. For the first year in your life, you have nothing planned. You have to celebrate. Period.”

“I’m saving this year, all right? Next year I’ll blow the roof off the house, but not this one, so bug off.”

We both become morosely silent as we ride up in the elevator and head to our desks, and that’s when Pandora informs me in her typical monotone voice, “Check your text. Your BFF is not happy about no celebration happening. We’ve just been sent tickets.”

“What?” Confused, I pull out my phone and see Brooke’s message.

Mel!!! Come to Denver! It’s your twenty-five years, I want to see you, and Pete’s already taken care of tickets for both you and P.

I gasp, then blink three times and swing my chair around until I’m staring at Pandora. She’s smirking, the closest she gets to grinning. “Brooke got us tickets! PLANE TICKETS! We’re going to see Brooke!” I cry.

“Yep,” Pandora says, nodding and nodding.

Grinning, I text Brooke: Holeeeeee sheet! Thank you! I miss you so much!

Brooke: I miss my BFF and Pandora told me you’re having man troubles.

Me: Sort of. I’m just terribly confused and terribly hooked on him and worried that he’s not. I need my BFF! I can’t wait to see you.

I tuck my phone away and grin at Pandora.

“Yeah, I know, you love the hell out of me,” she mumbles.

“Well, I do,” I say. “I love you and Brooke so much. Are we watching a fight?”

“Of course, ninny! Who do you think paid for our tickets?”

Smiling at that, I turn back to my computer and absently stroke my diamond necklace, and suddenly the feel of Greyson’s diamonds under my fingers makes my heart wrench with new pain. A fresh, wild hope claws at my insides as his words come back to tease and torture me.

Melanie, when you’re waiting for me to call, look at these stones and know for certain that that phone will ring.