Owen is playing a game with me.

He must be, because I’ve been lying here in bed in my lace-trimmed, cream silk nightgown for two hours now. Each flash of the digital clock, each dragging second tells me that he’s getting some sort of revenge on me for making him wait last night.

And the wait is killing me.

Even so, I can’t fight my exhaustion—the past nights of tossing and turning have done a number on me—and I finally give in to sleep. But just before I lose consciousness, I stretch my hand out on the mattress next to me, wishing Owen were here, feeling a pit of emptiness inside of me.

And then suddenly, I snap awake, feeling him climbing into bed beside me. “Red,” he says softly.

It’s dark and my eyes haven’t adjusted. “What’s going on?” I ask.

He doesn’t answer at first.

When he kisses me in the soft spot behind my ear, my breathing begins to quicken. He plants another kiss on my neck, and I can feel a vein there pounding against his mouth. He gently bites me like a famished thing, a wolf that’s found a bit of prey, and I moan again.

“Quiet,” he whispers. “Not a word, Red.”

There’s a faint scratch of stubble as he nuzzles me, and I almost feel like I’m still dreaming, because the Owen I know wouldn’t stand to have anything but a cleanly shaven face.

As he keeps nestling against the back of me while gnawing on my tender skin, my clit pulsates. My pussy feels plumped, swollen with the blood pounding down to it, and I press my thighs together to assuage the sharp need.

He runs his hand to my breast, squeezing it, making me cry out a little.

“You can’t stay quiet, can you?” he whispers roughly in my ear.

His voice echoes through me as if he’s inside of me, a fierce vibration, a brutal ache.

I start to say something—I don’t even know what—but he crushes his mouth to mine, stealing my breath away. His kiss is long and lazy, his hand busy caressing my breast through the silk of my gown. I writhe against him, still half-asleep, still dreamy. The surreal feel of him only heightens my arousal, sending a pulse of cream down between my legs.

He ends the kiss, and I grip his thick arm.

“I didn’t think you wanted this tonight,” I say.

“I’ve been wanting it ever since the last time I had you.” He’s whispering, making it feel as if we’re doing something forbidden and we’re trying to get away with it.

He buries his face into the crook between my neck and shoulder, nibbling at me until I strain beneath him.

“So delicious,” he murmurs. Then he digs his fingers into my hair, sliding his mouth to my temple. “And your gorgeous hair…”

He commandingly tugs me all the way under him until his streamlined, powerful body presses down on mine. “It’s driving me crazy. And I know you’ll smell just as good in the one place that always does. I know that because I’ve already tasted you.”

He rocks against me, his cock nudging against my silk-covered pussy. I spread my legs and cry out a little at the spike of lust that claps through me.

“Not a word,” he whispers again. “No more talking, Red. Not while I fuck you tonight.”

Did he have his fill of talk at dinner? Is having a conversation too messy for him right now, or does he want to just hear the sexy, chopped sound of our breathing?

I begin to think he’s on to something as he drives his cock against my sex again, and I hold back any kind of sound except for the slight gasp I can’t contain. I can’t help it—blood is zooming through me, making every breath labored, making my mind fog up until my fevered body rules me in every way.

As he dry humps me, there’s nothing but my panting and the wet sound of my juices. He’s turning me on expertly, ruthlessly, and I gyrate with him, hooking one leg around him so he can grind his tip against me harder.

He gets more aroused, too, maybe by the slick sounds, maybe because of my agitated breathing. A low, primal growl emanates from him with every push against me.

I scrape my fingernails down the side of his body. He grunts, then laughs quietly, giving me an extra hard prod with his cock. My hips suspend off the bed, then I groan as I fall back to the mattress. From there, our pace picks up.

My nightgown is riding up, over my hips, the tip of him messily slipping through the folds of my sex until he reaches between us to take hold of his shaft. He urges his head against my beating clit, and at the electric contact, I mewl.

The high, charged sound cuts the air as he grinds, pushing me to my limits, making my eyes roll back in my head, my mouth opening in a silent cry that’s cut short as I—

With a wet explosion, I bang for him, fast, furious, spangling to pieces.

Laughing roughly, he gets to his haunches, pulling me up with him. With a savage tug, he rips my gown off, and the tearing sound dominates our heavy breathing. He throws the silk away then brings me against him, body to body, skin to skin, ravishing me with a ferocious kiss. I scratch at his chest, and he catches my wrist in his long fingers, pushing my arm behind my back as I sway, enthralled, so caught up with him that I think I’m falling.

Falling hard.

He growls again as he disentangles himself, moving off the bed and bringing me with him. Is he taking us to the shower so we don’t make a mess?

Before I can get my bearings, he’s kissing me again, and I kiss him back with a bruising lust that feels as if it’s just now escaping from me all the way, crying out in silent passion, begging for more.

I’m throbbing for him all over my body, sweaty, my pussy sopping wet. I wrap both legs around his waist with such verve that he takes a step back, crashing into the vanity table near my bed.

The sound of quaking glass trembles in the air, and he makes another animal sound, whipping me around and clearing off the table with his arm.

Glass hits the thick carpet, furniture bangs against the wall. He puts me on the table, and the skidding resistance of my sweaty skin on the glass top jars my heart in my chest. My clit is hot, ready for another orgasm. My belly is flipping around, adding to my stimulation as Owen cups my face in his long fingers.

I can barely see him in the near darkness. Only the light from behind the sheer silver curtains suffuses the room. But from what I can see—and from what I can hear by the coarse rhythm of his breathing—I know that he can’t get enough of me. I don’t know how a normal girl who just blew into his life can have this kind of hold over someone like him, but somehow I do.

As I look through the dimness and into his gaze, time seems to stand still. I think I’m already half in love with him. I think I was the minute I saw him at the door on that first day.

His eyes go just as dark as the rest of the room and just as obscured, but from the feel of his hands braced on my waist, he won’t let go of me even though I’m the last thing he needs, his addictive poison.

I take a shuddering breath at the realization that there has to be something emotional between us just as he bends down and latches his mouth to my breast.

He sucks me, and with each draw, a violent strain of electricity sears me. I open my legs, planting my feet at his hips while he drags his mouth lower, worshipping the skin of my stomach. I slide down farther with every kiss, angled on the table now.

It sounds like I’m screaming in reverse, sucking in a sharp breath with the arousal that overtakes me. He whirls his tongue around me there, and I begin to whimper.

The sound starts off slowly, softly, but as he moves down to my pussy, I get louder.

So loud that my gasps build on one another, filling the room like blocks of air that are about to tumble.

He gnaws at my sex as if he’s starving, a beast that has cornered an innocent in the woods. He feasts on me with his mouth, kissing me in such a feral way that I grab the side of the mirror. It shakes with every move of my hips as I keep up with his famished attentions. He licks at me, growls against my wet pussy and sends snarling vibrations up and through me.

As he teases my clit with his tongue, nosing against it to add pressure, I hear my juices bathe his face. The carnal thought of him getting so messy sends a splinter of lust through me so fast and hard that I cry out again. But I don’t come.

Like a brute, he seems to sense this, and he repositions me so that I’m upright again. He takes me by the hips, and with a barbarous thrust, he plunges into me with his stiff, unrelenting cock.

It seems as if all of me escapes from my body with this cry of sublime pleasure, and as he pounds into me again and again, I can feel myself coming. I was already nearly there again for him, balancing on a thin yet crooked line that seems to rip through me now, flashing back and forth like lightening, hitting me with strikes of blinding rapture.

I come like a bolt that rocks the sky, clinging to him, urging him on as he hammers into me. I grip his hair and press my forehead to his chin. His teeth are bared in savage passion as he drives and drives, hitting me deeper and harder with every stroke. And when he climaxes, he does it with a blazing series of spurts that fills me with wet and wonderful heat.

Then, as I still grasp at him, he picks me up as if I’m a wisp of air, a thread of oxygen that he’s trying to suck into his lungs with every gasp he makes.

We fall back into bed together, and he holds me for a while, our breaths matching as we come down off of our mutual high. Then, almost subtly, he looks back at the chaos we left over at the vanity table.

Another mess that bothers him in some profound way that I can’t get a hold of.

I touch his cheek and bring his attention back to me, and he embraces me, cuddling me like that for what seems like forever. Or at least it could be until I fall asleep in his strong arms.

When I awaken later, he’s not there and the mess is cleaned up, but I only close my eyes again, knowing I’ve got him for the next month…and maybe longer if I don’t let him push me away again.