The sound of the radio in the other room slowly pulls me out of my dream. I touch the other side of the mattress, expecting to feel Lucas’s naked, warm body next to mine, but he’s not there. And, just like that, I realize I’m not in my own bed being awakened by a Lucas Ford song on the radio. I’m in the penthouse suite of The Rockford Hotel and Lucas Ford himself is strumming his guitar and singing softly in the other room. How is this my life?

I open my eyes groggily and look at the clock. It’s just after four in the morning. God, my internal clock is totally wacked out these days.

For a long moment, I lie on my back, stretch my body out, and think about the filthy and fantastic sex Lucas treated me to earlier. Damn, that was fun. Raw. Primal. Dirty as hell. The kind of sex I’ve always dreamed of having with a boyfriend but haven’t been able to achieve because nobody’s ever been confident enough to take me as far as I want to go. But Lucas sure did. In fact, he didn’t hold back one bit. God, we were totally in synch, the two of us—no boundaries or limits. And it was unbelievably amazing.

To start things off tonight, Lucas and I had a nice little three-way with my vibrating dildo—and lots of lube—with Lucas claiming my ass while the dildo filled up my cooch. Holy hell, did I have a monster of a gushing orgasm that time. Delicious. Especially when Lucas licked it up like it was whipped cream.

After that—and after Lucas had fastened an itty-bitty vibrating clamp onto my clit—he titty- and face-fucked me like a blow-up doll, demanding I call him “sir” and that I beg him to come all over my breasts—which he kindly did.

But Lucas my master wasn’t finished with me yet, even though he’d already given me the night of my life. While his body recharged, he tied me up again, blindfolded me, and proceeded to drive me wild with his lips and tongue and teeth, not to mention my bag full of toys. Holy mother of God, that was divine.

And, finally, the pièce de résistance… When my slack body was finally spent and my head lolling to the side from complete sexual exhaustion, Lucas untied me and removed my blindfold and took me tenderly into his arms and kissed me like I was the great love of his life. And then he whispered something into my ear no man but Lucas has ever said to me, but which he keeps saying to me like it’s an objective fact. “You’re perfect, Abby.”

Sweet Baby Jesus, I’ve never experienced a more blissful moment than that.

The sound of Lucas singing softly in the living room of the suite draws me out of my memories of last night and back to the present moment.

With a huge smile on my face, I stretch myself out on the bed and listen to Lucas singing. He’s a musical genius, that man. There’s simply no other way to accurately describe him.

I slide off the bed and pad into the darkened living room.

Lucas is sitting on the couch in the moonlight, naked and playing his guitar, his muscles and tattoos on glorious display. Wow, he looks so damned beautiful right now, I want to drop to my knees and blurt every last thing on my mind to him. I want to tell him he’s perfect—my idea of perfect. I want to tell him everything I’ve done. Who I am. I want to confess I’ve destroyed lives in the past and that I’m sorry about it. I want to tell him I haven’t had a problem in years, but that I’m so damned lonely these days, it’s hard to get too excited about measuring “progress” in terms of “the absence of problems.”

I want to tell Lucas it sometimes feels like my life is empty. Like I’m headed toward a pointless, joyless oblivion, followed by death. I want to tell him when I’m with him I feel alive in a way I’ve never felt before. Adored. Loveable. I want to tell him when I’m with him I feel hopeful. Like maybe there is a point to all this craziness, after all.

I want to tell Lucas I’m falling head over heels in love with him. For real, and not as part of an “extended role-play.”

And, most of all, I want to beg Lucas to take me with him to Los Angeles because I’m pretty sure I’m going to fall apart after he leaves me, despite my best efforts to keep it together.

But of course I don’t say any of it. Because I know full well none of it is part of our deal. And because I know this particular man needs to be free a lot more than he needs a doting girlfriend, especially an emotionally damaged one.

I settle myself next to Lucas on the couch and listen to him playing his latest song, my heart panging almost painfully. He’s singing about a girl who’s become a “supernatural addiction” for him. A girl who somehow knows exactly what to do to “bring him to his knees” and “conquer” him.

As I listen, my stomach drops further and further into my toes. Damn. If only he hadn’t hired his “supernatural addiction” to crush him at the end of this week, it’d be a truly lovely song.