I didn’t answer questions like this. I didn’t fucking explain myself.

If she’d never have fucking snooped, she’d never have found the damn pictures in the first place.

“Have you been stalking me?” Erika asked, flapping the pictures at me again.

Christ, what a goddamn cock-up.

“Noah, what the fuck. Have you been stalking me?” she repeated, flipping through the pictures again. “Some of these were taken in high school—when I didn’t even realize…”

“Calm down,” I replied, and tried applying the same rule to myself. Anger simmered beneath my surface, the lid on the pot already clattering. Frustration had taken me—the fact that I couldn’t have her though I wanted her, the fact that she was under my roof and untouchable.

“I won’t calm down,” she snapped. “You’re going to tell me exactly what you’re doing with these, or I’m going to—”

“What?” I asked and smirked at her—a defense mechanism against the growing rage. “What are you going to do, Erika? Leave? And go where? Back to Chicago? Run back to Syracuse and ask your parents to put you up? At thirty-four?”

“Fuck you!” She threw the pictures at me. “Fuck you. What is this? You owe me an explanation, Noah. You violated my privacy.”

“Is that what they’re calling it nowadays?” I asked, keeping that smile in place. I clung to it like a fucking life raft, because that was what it was. My last hope for keeping her at bay.

“Don’t joke with me, Noah, don’t you dare. This is creepy as hell. You can’t Facebook-stalk like normal people? You’ve got to take pictures? Explain yourself.” She stamped her foot. “Explain it, right now.”

“Fuck!” I yelled, the lid flying off with such force, Erika actually took a tiny, staggering step backward. Her ass bumped into my desk and she braced herself against it with both palms. “Fuck, you don’t understand shit.”

“Then explain it to me.”

“You’ve never understood it, Erika. It’s like you refuse to believe it,” I growled. “Like you just won’t see it because you’re too afraid.”

“See what?”

“I’m fucking in—fuck!” Not that. Don’t say that. It can’t be true. Try again.

Erika stared at me, emerald eyes spearing me, her cheeks flaming red. “What? You’re what?”

“I’ve wanted you since I met you.” I moved toward her, and she shifted, as if she could escape backward over my desk and run. “Ever since you moved in down the fucking street. Ever since that first day. I wanted you when I found you in the pool that once. I wanted you when I found you burning my picture. I wanted you every single fucking day. At school. When you were under the same roof as me. When you weren’t.” I closed in on her, and her chest heaved with every word that left my lips. “I wanted you in every fucking way possible, and I could never fucking have you, so I settled for second best.”

Her lips tried forming words, but no sound came out.

I halted in front of her, leaned in, placing my palms over hers on the desk. “I took pictures of you. I pasted them in my closet like some lovesick puppy dog. I worried about you. I followed you home on days you missed the bus to make sure you were safe. I stayed over at Marc’s house, your house, just to make sure that you were there, that you were fine. I was fucking obsessed, until one day, I moved away, and I put you behind me.”

“Behind you?”

“Yes,” I grunted. “Until the wedding. Until you came back into my life in that silver fucking dress, on that hotel bed, and then I knew I could have you. That you wanted me too, and it all came back. I wanted nothing but to make sure you were fine, happy, healthy. So, when your brother told me you’d moved to New York…”

“You stalked me?”

“No, goddammit,” I said, pressing my forehead to hers. “Do you see any recent pictures? Huh? It’s just the old ones that I took of you, and the ones from the wedding.”

“I don’t understand,” Erika whispered, her lips quivering as her gaze darted down to mine. The tip of her pink tongue poked out as she wet her bottom lip, hesitantly.

“If I can’t have you, if I can’t make you mine, at least I can look out for you,” I said, and it sounded pathetic to me. It was the first time I’d said it out loud, or even admitted it to myself. The obsession I had for her had run too deep for too long.

“Noah,” Erika whispered. “I don’t need protection. I’m OK.”

“Are you?” I asked. “Are you, Erika? You look like you’re ready to break. The last time we were together, you fell apart in my arms.”

“I don’t need you to pick up the pieces,” she lied, but inched closer to me, pressing her breasts against my chest. “I just need—I need—”

“What?” I asked. “What do you need?”

“I need… I need to stop wanting you. To stop thinking about you. To stop—to stop fantasizing—”

I claimed her mouth before she got the word out properly, kissed her so thoroughly she slipped against the desk. I caught her around the waist, lifted her and forced her back. “I’ll give you something to fantasize about,” I growled, between wet, warm kisses. “I’ll give you something to fucking dream about.”

My fingers worked underneath the straps of her camisole. I ripped them down, then took the bottom hem of the shirt and ripped it up and over her head, releasing her breasts, admiring their bounce. I sucked one of her nipples into my mouth.

Erika slapped her palm down in the center of my back and scratched a line down my spine. “Oh my god. Oh, Noah.”

“That’s right.” I pressed her breasts together, then suckled on both her nipples at once, working her flesh, nibbling and tasting. She was so goddamn tasty. “This is what you came for, Erika. This is why you’re here. To be with me.”

“Noah, I—”

I cut her off by reaching for her jeans, unbuttoning them, then ripping them all the way down to her ankles. She wore plain cotton briefs underneath—my kryptonite. Nothing turned me on more than a pair of white cotton panties.

I played with the waistband, dipped my fingers inside, past the tiny patch of hair on her pussy and to the lips. I slipped one finger over her already-pulsing clit and drew a moan from her lips.

“I can’t—take—it,” she managed. “Noah, it’s too good.”

My resolve had already snapped, but this only made it more difficult for me. Couldn’t control the desire bubbling through me. My cock ached against my pj pants, and I tore them down and freed it, then ripped the panties from her, down her legs, threw them aside.

“Wrap your legs around me,” I grunted, and gripped her by the back of her neck. “Lean back, baby, that’s it. Just like that. Hands on the desk.”

Erika followed every command, placing her hands further back on my desk, wrapping her legs around my hips, even going so far as to press her tits outward, challenging me with her stare. Fuck, I loved that about her. The challenge, never backing down when faced with me. Others would cower, but not my Erika.

“Play with your clit, Erika,” I said, and angled my dick at her entrance, positioned myself in front of her dripping hole. She was so swollen, so ready for a fucking pounding from me. “Now.”

She reached down, balancing on one hand now, and circled her clit, gasping and rocking with every stroke of her fingertip.

“That’s right. Fuck, I’m going to own you. I’m going to show you exactly how you’ve made me feel since the day we met.”

She whimpered and quickened her pace.

I entered her slowly, pressing in an inch, then halting, then another, stopped again, until she keened and fucking begged for it. “Noah, please.”

“Beg for it.”

“Please! I want it. I need you, please give it to me. I’ll do anything for that dick.”

That was all I needed to hear. One swift stroke, and I was inside her, buried to the hilt and throbbing.

She howled and threw her head back, working her clit, her thigh muscles twitching and shaking around me. “I’m so close, Noah. I’m so close.”

“Come for me.” I pumped into her, each thrust a desperate attempt to claim more and more of this woman. The woman I’d never allowed myself to have, to want, or at least to admit that I wanted her. Each moment was a paradise, living in my fantasies. “I want to feel your pussy clench, baby.”

She worked that clit, maintaining her rhythm, and her eyes glazed over, eyelashes fluttered. Her legs trembled out of control, and her ass tried to lift from the desk. I held her in place. “Slow or fast?” I asked.

“Slow. So slow. So slow.”

I slowed my pace, taking my time with each thrust, pressing in so she’d feel every ridge, every fucking vein. Her silky warmth embraced me, and she gasped, shuddered, and peaked. Again and again, her walls closed around me, massaging me, and I couldn’t hold back a fucking second longer.

It was too much to ask, holding back when she was like this.

“Noah,” she moaned. “Oh fuck, Noah, you’re so good. You’re so good. You’re so good.” She repeated it over and over again with every pulse of her orgasm.

“Coming,” I grunted and shot over the edge with such force my eyes rolled back in my head. Pleasure streaked through me, and I pulled her into a kiss, my lips messy, my tongue seeking. We collided, kissing and coming, as one.

The extreme pleasure filtered away, replaced by satisfaction, and she collapsed backward onto the table, lying flat across my paperwork and desk pad. She spread her arms, breathing hard, still speared on my slowly softening cock.

“So good,” she whispered, and covered her eyes. “And so bad. Noah—we just—”

“No,” I said, “Erika, we’re not doing this now. For one fucking night, I want to enjoy this. Enjoy you.” I pulled out of her slowly, then closed her legs, and hooked one arm under the backs of her knees. “Come here.” I lifted her off the desk and carried her out of my study and down the hall, past the living room and its Christmas tree, half-decorated, the smells of that fantastic dinner still lingering in the air.

This could be your life. This could be it—you and her, living together, eating together each night, fucking, loving. No. I couldn’t do that and never would. It wasn’t me, and it was too damn risky, but, for now, I’d enjoy what we had and leave it at that.

“Tired?” I asked and kissed her forehead, as she drifted in and out of sleep in my arms.

“Mm-hmm,” she replied, as I entered the master bedroom. I walked her over to my bed, the sheets still in disarray from when I’d leaped out earlier at the sound of her talking about me down the hall.

I laid her down then crawled in beside her and covered us both with a sheet. I curled her against my chest, acting as the big spoon, and kissed her shoulder, up and down, to the crook of her neck and back.

Finally, I drifted off, the sleep coming with a dream of what I’d never allow myself to have.

More than this.