I opened my eyes in the dark and stared dead ahead at the sliver of light which crept through Noah’s open door and into the bedroom, dancing across the carpet. It was light from the living room.

The red digits from the alarm clock on his bedside table blared 03:00 at me. It was that late, and I was tucked against his chest, his muscly arm lying across my waist, holding me tight to his chest.

God, what have we done?

Sex. Obviously. But it was more than that. Noah had taken pictures of me without my knowledge, and he’d revealed that this wasn’t the first time. Was it crazy that it appealed to me that he’d do that? That he actually cared enough to worry?

Yes, that is fucking crazy.

Was I really going to encourage this type of behavior?

Noah slept quietly, his breaths brushing across the back of my neck, his dick soft, but nestled against my ass, right in the crease. Already, I was tempted to press myself backward into him again, take more of him.

Christ, it was like having an addiction, and judging by what he’d said earlier, he felt the exact same way. Was it really fair of me to judge him, when I’d cut his pictures out of the yearbook and pasted them into my journal as a teen? When I’d definitely, and ashamedly, Facebook-stalked the crap out of him a couple of times a year?

Apparently, we were both kooky assholes who didn’t understand the importance of boundaries.

He wanted me. He’d always wanted me, and that had to be why he’d pushed me away. To keep me from realizing it.

But why? Because he didn’t believe in love? Was that it? If so, I could relate.

I shifted in his arms, licking my lips and hankering for a glass of water. Or a tall glass of Noah. You have to stop. Because what did it all mean now? What would happen in the morning when we woke up and caught a ride together to work?

What would it be like when we no longer lived together? What would it be like when this, whatever it was, was over, and Noah was with another woman? Someone pretty and sweet and totally unaware of who he’d been in the past?

What then?

I’d be the one left to pick up the pieces of myself again, and I’d be stuck working in the same hospital as him, maybe even asking him for help with patients if I had an emergency. And that would be fucking hell.

Noah snorted in his sleep and shattered my thoughts. I chuckled slightly, and he moved behind me, his cock thickening against my ass so fast I stiffened.

“There you are,” he said, softly, his voice still thick with sleep. “I was worried you’d run away.”

“Why would I?”

“You were always scared of me, Erika,” he whispered, and kissed my shoulder, then my neck. “Always worried of what I could do to you.”

“What can you do to me?”

“You sure you want me to show you?” he asked, his fingers traveling down my arm, skipping to my hip, then over and between my legs. “You’re ready again?”

I was a little sore from earlier, but it was the kind of pain I relished. It meant Noah had been here. Noah had taken me. I arched my back and pressed my ass into his hard dick. “You tell me,” I said.

Noah groaned, scooping up the wetness between my pussy lips with one finger, then spreading it over my clit. “I love it when you’re like this,” he said.

Love it. Love it. No, no, no. “I love it when you touch me,” I said, my mouth moving before my brain could catch up. This was too close to home. Too close to what I wanted to avoid, but damn me if I didn’t want him inside me again. I wanted him now, tomorrow morning, all day long, whenever I could have him.

He pressed a finger inside me, and I gasped, dug my fingernails into the muscles of the forearm that held me to him.

“I love it when you do that,” he said. “When you scratch.” I bit his arm and he growled, tightening his grip. “And when you bite.”

Noah slipped his fingers out of me. There was a pause, and then his dick sat at my entrance. He swept it between my lips, grinding his length up and down, gathering the wetness without entering me yet. Each movement took me higher.

He was slow about it, almost loving, and I pressed back against him, flattened as much of my skin against his, absorbing his heat, his touch. “I love it,” I whispered.

“Good.” He nipped my ear, then repositioned his cock, entered me as slow as he’d rubbed against me. Noah set a pace that matched both of us and drove the heat higher. It wasn’t hard or fast, wild, reckless, but slow and passionate.

He kissed my shoulder, my neck, then pressed his nose into my ear and nuzzled it. “Turn your head, Erika. I want your lips.”

I did as he’d asked, and he took me in that slow, delectable kiss. His lips soft, his tongue seeking, pressing, then softening against mine. He held my hip with his free hand, fingers digging into my flesh as he worked himself inside me.

“You’re so wet, Erika.”

“I’m wet for you,” I said. “I’m—it’s all you, Noah. I’ve never been like this before.”

“Ditto, gorgeous.” He was breathless, sweating against me with restraint, rather than abandon. “Gonna come soon, baby.” Noah let go of my hip and focused his fingers on my clit instead. “Lift your leg so I can reach you.”

I lifted it, and his fingers found me. He pinched my clit, tugged slightly, then set up a rhythm in time with each of his thrusts. It was a slow burn of pleasure, so intense I couldn’t think, couldn’t speak, couldn’t make a sound.

My body rocked against him, taking every inch of his thickness, of his length.

“Close,” I managed. “Noah.”

“Come, baby, come. I’m going to.”

I clenched around him, the release coming with so much force it shocked me. The orgasm roared through me, lit up every nerve ending, set me on fire from the inside out.

Noah grew impossibly hard inside me and released again, and again. God, four, five times? He gave a half-laugh, half-growl as he came, then kept himself inside me, the wetness between us spreading slowly.

“We’re going to have to shower,” I said, after the satisfaction from our orgasms had settled again. “I mean, that and change the sheets. This is ridiculous.”

“Best kind of ridiculous,” he replied, and kissed my shoulder softly. He was still inside me and didn’t budge.

I clenched around him—aftershock—and he stiffened. “Man, don’t start with me again,” he said. “I’ll be ready for you in five fucking seconds, Erika. It’s like I’m eighteen again when you’re around.”

“Same.”

Noah and I lay together, our bodies cooling, sweat drying, his arms still around me. After five minutes, he shifted and pulled out, popping free, though he wasn’t even a little bit hard. “You’re right,” he said. “We’ve got to shower. I’ll get it started up.”

He climbed out of bed and made for the ensuite bathroom. The light clicked on, and he disappeared inside, the faucet turning and the patter of water following a second later.

I sat up in the half-dark and looked around Noah’s bedroom. It was sparsely decorated. An armoire, a king-sized bed with plain gray sheets, and two bedside tables. Nothing more than that. No pictures, not even a painting. It was like he was empty, and the total opposite of me.

The minute I’d moved into my room at Luna’s, I’d started putting up my paintings—abstract mostly—setting out my candles, a vase of flowers here or there. I liked my place to feel like home, not a hotel, but Noah… He was the opposite of me and always had been.

I swallowed and pressed the heels of my palms to my eyes, barely controlling the wave of despair that washed over me. I wanted him so bad I couldn’t even see straight, but I was terrified of him at the same time. Terrified of the control he already had over my emotions. It wasn’t fucking fair.

It hearkened back to those games he’d played with me in high school. The ones he now said hadn’t been games to start with, but just evidence of what he felt for me.

I dropped my hands, then climbed out of bed, just as Noah appeared in the bathroom’s doorway, a dark silhouette, broad and strong enough to be a Greek god. “Are you coming, gorgeous?”

“I already did,” I said, trying for a smile.

I took Noah’s proffered hand, and he guided me into the bathroom and to his massive shower, big enough to fit five, let alone two. He opened the glass door, and we stepped through and under the perfectly temperate spray.

“Oh man, that’s good,” I muttered and tipped my head back, wetting my hair. “Oh wow.”

“Did I hurt you?” he asked, stroking my hips with his fingertips. There were a few bruises from his fingertips there.

“No,” I replied, and shrugged. “Not that I felt. I’ve always bruised easily.”

“So be gentle,” he started, and I pressed a finger to his lips.

“Don’t start.”

We both laughed, and Noah got the soap. We got sudsy together, him running his hands over my arms, my stomach, between my legs. He washed me, slowly, and I let him, enjoying every second, then regretting it. It was the best and worst shower of my life.

No matter how much I wanted to dismiss the concerns that had taken seed in the back of my mind, I couldn’t. Noah was a red flashing light on my path toward a career-driven life, free of complication and pain, but I was drawn to that light like a brainless moth.

He turned me in the shower and washed my back, sluicing the water off, then massaging lightly. “You’re tense, Erika.”

“I know,” I said.

“Talk to me about it.”

I shook my head and pulled away from him, opened the door, and stepped out of the shower. I grabbed a towel, wrapped it around myself, then skedaddled out of the bathroom and into his bedroom. The shower cut off behind me, but I didn’t stop.

Instead, I made my way down the hall and to the guest bedroom. I dried quickly, then dressed in my silk pj’s, memories of him touching me, wanting me, returning at the sight of them. I stepped into a pair of slippers, just as the knock came on the open door.

“Erika,” he said, “you’re not seriously planning on running away from your problems, are you?”

“No,” I replied, and turned back to him. “But you’ve got to understand how difficult this is for me, Noah.”

He raised both eyebrows at me, and I licked my lips, struggled to swallow. He was half-naked again, wearing a different pair of pj pants now, barefoot, handsome, his hair moist from the shower and slicked back.

The silence grew between us, and finally, I cleared my throat. “We need to talk.”

“Yes,” he said. “We do. But first, you’re going to come with me, back to the bedroom. I’m not going to pretend this shit doesn’t bother me, Erika, but I’m not going to let it keep us from having what we want.” He stepped into the room. “And I want you. In my bed. Tonight. I want you to sleep there while I hold you. Understand?”

“Noah.”

He extended his hand. “Come.”

The temptation was too much to bear. I took his hand, and he tugged me into a hug, pressed his nose to my forehead and inhaled. “Fuck, you are so mine, Erika, and there’s nothing we can do about it now.”