The bed of Max’s truck was corrugated plastic, ridged like a tin roof, and still warm from the heat of the day. He laid me down and pulled my panties off me, yanking my legs past the end of the truck bed, bending my knees and drawing my body off the bed liner. He placed a line of kisses up my inner thigh and touched my clit with his fingertips. It made me arch my back, and I pressed my hands down to raise my hips up to him even closer.

“How do you want it?”

“You tell me.” I ran my hands up his arms, up those perfect muscles and back down again.

He shook his head. “I asked first. You want it sweet, or you want it dirty?”

We’d done sweet. We’d do sweet again. But right then, naked in the moonlight, there was only one thing I wanted. Max, unfiltered. Max, unstoppable. Max, the alpha. So I brought my lips to his ear, nipped the lobe, and whispered, “Dirty.”

He answered with a primal growl. “You better be damned sure.”

“Don’t be gentle.”

“Tell me you’re sure.”

One more nip. “I am.”

He dug his hands into the muscles of my ass, gave the right cheek a slap. “Then get on your knees.”

Hello. “Don’t treat me like your best friend. Not tonight.”

“Fuck no. But listen to what I told you. If it gets to be too much, you just stop me. I’ll listen. Probably.”

His eyes shimmered in the moonlight, and the droplets of salt water ran down over his abs—I had flashes of actual washboards in actual rivers.

When I didn’t answer and didn’t roll onto my side, he got wilder in the eyes. When I didn’t do as he’d asked after one second, two, three, he glared at me. Melted me from the inside out. “Get on your knees, beautiful. Show me that ass.” He twisted the edge of my panties around his finger, making the lace pull tight. He put the other hand to my hip and positioned me where he wanted me to be, getting me on all fours like a cat. I looked back over my shoulder at him as he put his foot on the fender and got into the bed, too. He stood above me like that, towering over me, and stroked his cock a few times. “You sure this is how you want it?”

“Yes,” I said, but the word was long and desperate, like a purr. Yessssss. He came down into a crouch and parted my ass cheeks, his thumb just brushing along my opening, enough to give me goose bumps all over. He rolled my panties halfway down my thighs and put his tongue inside me. I could feel his breath hot, warm, and sultry against the opening of my ass.

He watched me like that, and I watched him, too. His tongue felt so good that I started to crumple down into a ball, but he yanked me back up and shook his head; his stubble grazed the inside of my thighs. God, oh God, oh God. He entered me slowly with two fingers, taking his mouth away from my pussy. He found my G-spot immediately, and I felt it echo back through my clit, waves of pleasure pulsing on each side of me. Inside and outside and back again.

Still with his fingers inside me, he moved his tongue up my opening, and then…kept on going. I hissed as he licked me there, the place nobody ever had—the place I’d never even let myself imagine being tasted. It made me feel vulnerable and dirty and utterly…amazing.

“Max,” I gasped.

And he just went for me more greedily than ever.

“I want every goddamned inch of you to be mine,” he said. “Not just this body either.” He dug his fingers into my left ass cheek, and I heard him hiss, drawing a breath through his teeth.

“What else?” I said. I was actually panting for him, my own breathing jagged and exaggerated.

“Every moan, every writhe, every feeling you have, Rosie Madden. I want to put my name all over this body. I’m never, ever letting you go.” With one more lick of the valley between my ass cheeks, one more full-body shudder, he got up on his knees, pressed into me, and took me until I’d slid right up against his toolbox behind the cab. I grabbed the nearest thing at hand to hold on to—the handle of his toolbox.

Max’s thrusts slowed slightly, and he hooked his forearm around my hips to keep me as close as I could get. “I’m never gonna be able to touch that box again without thinking of this moment, you know that?”

I turned to watch him. So determined, so aggressive. So beautiful. “I don’t want you to think of anything but me, doesn’t matter when or where,” I managed to tell him between pants and moans and whines.

“Fuuuuuck.”

He was so deep it made my eyes roll back in my head, and I gripped the hand that was over my rose tattoo as hard as I could. Finger bones to knuckles and nothing sweet about it. Every drive got me closer, and he must’ve been able to feel that too because within just a few more pounds, he’d put his fingers to my clit again.

“Come for me,” he told, “Right now. Give me everything you’ve got.”

The command made me powerless against him. I was coming, and I was coming hard. My whole body was shaking, and I was going back down into a ball again. I couldn’t help it—it felt so good, so, so good. “Coming,” I panted.

“Good girl,” he said. “Such a good fucking girl.”

That. Oh my God, that. “Say it again.”

He laughed, or I think he did. I don’t know—I was falling headlong into the darkness in my mind, where everything was warm and soft and shimmering.

With the next thrust, he said, “Good…” Another. “Fucking…” And the third. “Girl…” Which was so hard and so powerful that my body gave in to him completely.