I slipped my phone into the back pocket of my jeans and took hold of the axe handle again. Bracing the log with one heavy boot, I rocked the blade back and forth until it came loose and lifted it up for the next swing. It cut straight through, splitting the wood cleanly in two, and I tossed the pieces onto the growing pile. I sat another log on the stump and swung again. Hard.

I could have told her the money was no accident, told her to simply keep it. It’s what I would be telling her in person tonight anyway.

I could have warned her off Sutton as well… suggesting she might do better to avoid the smaller, more scandalous parties he tended to host. It would hardly be a problem to make sure her schedule was filled with enough work elsewhere. I could have told her everything over the phone. She would have listened to me and I knew it. Persuasion was one of my strengths…

I set up another swing, and the sharp crack of wood filled the silence around me. I’d struck far harder than necessary, sinking the blade deep into the stump and sending chips flying in all directions. I stopped and wiped a sleeve across my sweating forehead. Cool as the day was, especially up in the mountains, my shirt was plastered to my back and only added to my growing irritation.

I peeled it off and chopped the remaining wood without the pleasure it usually gave. I stacked the last of it neatly enough, and headed inside for a shower. The ice cold water did little to cool the heat inside me. My cock responded to the pounding of the water the same as if I’d been driving it into sweet, tender flesh.

That undeniable need was the only reason I’d be taking Emily to dinner tonight and I knew it deep down… where the demon inside me lived. That dark part of me wanted to take her a hundred different ways… in a hundred different places… giving pleasure neither of us could even imagine. But it would drive me to use her and leave her too, all in search of the next challenge… the next fucking conquest. And that was something I could never allow…

I gripped my flesh and punished it hard, driving toward a climax that would leave me spent enough to keep my hands off her soft, sweet curves. Not for her sake, I knew, but for mine. I threw my head back, hungry for release and imagined her lush breasts, wet and heaving against my chest. I jerked harder, comforted that at least my selfishness was buying her freedom… from my world, from my secrets. She was too innocent to see the darkness inside me, and I knew I could never do what I ached inside to do…

But nothing would keep me from seeing her again tonight, and wanting what I couldn’t have. I would settle for the look in her eyes and the intoxicating smell of her skin… I just couldn’t touch…

I wouldn’t dare touch…

“Miss Parrish.” I kept my hands carefully behind my back as she opened the door. She was dressed in a thin pink sweater dress and sable brown boots that stopped somewhere up beneath her hemline. I groaned inwardly at the image and the needs that it produced. So fucking much for good intentions and jerking off ahead of time…

“I’d invite you in, but my grandmother isn’t well,” she said, blushing an invitingly attractive shade of pink, and pulling the door shut behind her. “She’s sleeping… and I’d rather not risk waking her. My friend Tammy is staying with her…”

“Then choose a restaurant, and we’ll take our conversation there,” I replied, opening the door to the silver Bugatti and watching as she climbed in. Her dress slipped up her thighs, but still… I couldn’t see where her boots stopped. I felt a shudder of sheer wickedness run deep through my core…

I climbed in beside her and started the engine. “What’s your pleasure…?” I asked her, enjoying the feel of the words on my lips. “Are you craving anything in particular, this evening? I’m more than happy to provide anything you wish…”

I pulled the car smoothly onto the road and enjoyed the pregnant pause between us. Somewhere inside, she understood the tone of my voice, but she lacked the experience… the sophistication to acknowledge it outright. Her innocence was surprisingly refreshing. I felt my heartbeat in my cock and smiled in the fading light. “How about Le Prix?” I suggested, easing into traffic and heading for the coast before she even replied. It was quiet and elegant and overlooked the ocean…

“I’ve wanted to go there my whole life,” she said, her hands clutching at the top of her worn leather bag. “But it’s so exclusive. And I’m not really dressed for it… I’ve heard it takes six months just to get a reservation…”

“You look perfect,” I said, taking her nervous hands in mine, just to calm them. “Don’t believe everything you hear…”

My knuckles grazed her thigh and my body tensed in hard, hot response. Her fucking boots stopped, not below… but just above the bend of her knee.

Fucking hell… was what I thought…

“Just trust me,” is what I said.