In the mirror, my hands were bound above my head. Ash stretched me up, my arms twisted over me. My ribs stuck out with the effort, and my stomach lifted and sank with my pants.

I’d never seen anything so erotic. Ash stood behind me, his larger frame dark and powerful, shadowed behind mine. He’d turned the light on directly over my head. Nowhere to hide, he could see everything. He could see every pant, the detail of my peaked nipples, the glistening, slick heat building between my thighs. I stood now with my legs closed, clenched, enjoying the throb in my pussy. But I had a feeling my legs wouldn’t be together for long. Sooner rather than later, Ash would command me to part them. And I’d love it.

Ash trailed a finger along the curve of my waist. “I love seeing you watch yourself. You’re very visual.” I followed the path of his fingers, feeling them tingle along my skin, mesmerized by the thick, calloused feel of them. He had such expressive hands, hands that played piano and guitar and my body was no different. He treated it like an exquisite instrument that he’d been born to play. And he was a master artist.

“Watch in the mirror,” he instructed me. I looked up, but still watched his hands, snaking their way along my outstretched, naked skin, heating me up, making me quiver. “Do you see how beautiful you are?”

His voice in my ear, his breath along my neck, I shivered under his attentions. He did make me feel beautiful in a way I’d never experienced before. I’d always felt somewhat average, grateful I mostly seemed to pass under the radar. I didn’t have anything about me that garnered too much attention, either negative or positive, and that seemed about right for my temperament. In high school, I’d seen kids get so mean with some unfortunate girls. And the opposite didn’t really appeal, either, the girls strutting around, relentlessly pursued by aggressive jocks. They seemed to thrive off of it, but I would have hated the pressure, the spotlight.

But here, it was just me and Ash. Here, he could be as aggressive as he wanted. He could pursue me with as much passion as he dared and I’d thrill to it all. Here, it wasn’t a show. It was just him and me and I didn’t have to feel afraid. I knew whatever he had in store for me would be new, but I just as certainly knew he’d take care of me. And I’d love it.

“Watch how you respond to me.” Ash stood behind me, his broad, warm chest against my back. Slowly, he brought his large hands under the mounds of my breasts and cupped them, full and warm. Not rough, just owning me. A sigh broke from my lips as I watched him grasp me, thrusting my tits up and out, massaging them.

“I love touching you, Ana,” he said as he continued to play with me, showing me how erotic he found me. “You’re perfect. And do you see how you respond?” He held my breasts in his hands. As I watched in the mirror, he slowly swiped his thick, calloused thumbs across the sensitive tips of my nipples.

“Oh!” I cried out, pulling my wrists against my restraints. I felt so exposed, so vulnerable tied like that and the sensations he brought out in me were so intense. I couldn’t get away.

“Watch!” he commanded and I realized I’d closed my eyes in the onslaught of desire. I opened them again and watched as he circled my nipples, drawing his fingers lightly along the edges of my dark pink buds. Then he drew his thick fingers together over my sensitive tips. “It’s like you’re made for me Ana. Watch,” he ordered me again, low and gruff, and then he pinched his fingers together, hard.

My mouth opened wide as I gasped and felt an electric shock of lust burst through my throbbing, swollen clit. It was hard to keep my eyes open, but it turned me on even more to fight through it, follow his command, watch him play with me as he liked. And watch my response. He was right. We were a perfect fit. I got so turned on from his every touch.

He stepped back. “Now let’s take a look. Are you wet for me, Ana? Spread your legs.”

Whimpering slightly, I slowly moved my legs apart a little. It made no sense, I knew I’d shown Ash everything, but I still felt a twinge of embarrassment. It still seemed naughty to me to enjoy this so much. That I should be so turned on by being tied up and owned, possessed by this rough, demanding man. Parting my legs and allowing him access would only expose me further, show him how much I loved it.

“Wider!” he thundered and I started at the intensity of his voice. He meant it. I moved my feet apart farther. The wider I got, the more I had to stand on my tiptoes because my wrists were bound. I spread them as far as I could, standing for him in front of the mirror under the light, parted legs, up on the balls of my feet.

“Good,” he praised me and there it was again, the flush of response to pleasing him. My pussy gushed with warm, wet joy when he pet me, when I pleased him. There was no fighting the response. It was how I was wired. I just hadn’t realized it until I met Ash. Ash tapped into it. It was Ash who dialed into me so intimately, teaching me aspects of myself I’d never known.

He brought one hand to my breast again, cupping it, holding me there firmly against his chest. Then he brought the other to my inner thigh, caressing it lightly.

“What am I going to find, Ana?” he teased me. I turned my head to the side, closing my eyes, biting my lip. He was going to find me soaking wet, that’s what he was going to find. I still hadn’t 100 percent accepted that this was who I was, that this was exactly the kind of sexual play I most craved. It wasn’t what good girls were supposed to want.

“Oh no, Ana. That’s not going to work,” he whispered low in my ear, keeping his fingers grazing my thigh, not up further, up where I quivered with need for him. “You know the rules. You have to watch.”

I swallowed. This was hard. He required so much. I had to give him everything.

“You need me to touch you, don’t you, Anika?” Oh, did I. My clit throbbed in response to his words and I whimpered with need. He knew exactly how to touch me, just how to tease me, then right when he needed to get rough. With his expert fingers, I could be coming full and fast and hard in seconds. “Tell me what you need?” he asked, his fingers still light, still not where I wanted them.

“Please, touch me, Ash. Please.”

“You need me to touch your clit?” He kept his voice controlled, his hand on my thigh light, but his hand on my breast grasped me hard and it made me moan.

“Yes!”

“You know what I require, Ana. You need to ask for it.”

“Please, touch my clit! Please, Ash! I need it.”

“Watch!” he commanded. I opened my eyes. He parted my folds and brought his thumb down right on the center of my slick, pink nub.

“Ah!” I screamed, watching him touch me right there, right where I was so slick with need.

“Look how wet you are.” He parted my sex and I could see it, how swollen and slippery I was for him. How much my body cried out for his. He plunged a finger up inside of me and it was hard to keep my eyes open, but I did it. I knew he’d want me to. And it was riveting to see him pleasure me in the mirror, one hand on my breast, the other sliding in and out of my pussy. My juices coated his fingers and they shone in the light, attesting to my desire. He slid along me, taking me higher, higher.

But then he withdrew, leaving me standing, panting, quivering, about to come but deprived.

“Ash!” I bit out, shuddering.

“See what you do to me?” He stood next to me and took his long, hard, thick cock in his hand. I groaned, licking my lips. He was so fucking huge.

“You’re so thick,” I murmured. I loved how wide he was, not just long but broad, too.

He stroked his length. “Do you like how I stretch you?”

“Yes,” I groaned, almost feeling him do it. It shattered me when he was inside me, drove every thought from my body. He filled me so completely.

“You feel so tight around my cock, Ana. I could fuck you all day.” I groaned in frustration as he drew his hand rhythmically up and down his cock. At first, he’d used the juices from my pussy to lubricate his shaft, but now at his crown I could see drops of precome glistening. He swirled his fingers across the tip, then worked it down his full length, growing even bigger as he did it.

“Please!” I begged, shaking with need. I didn’t care anymore, didn’t care if I shouldn’t want this, shouldn’t be so turned on by this dominant play. I needed his cock. I needed him driving so deep inside of me, no condom, just him fucking me until I could feel every last drop of his come buried inside of me.

“You want this?” he asked, his voice thick with desire, his eyes darker than I’d ever seen them.

“Yes!” I cried out, pulling against my wrist restraints.

“You need to watch it all,” he warned me, pointing at the mirror. “If you want me to fuck you good, you need to watch me do it.”

“Ah!” I cried out, quivering, my desire literally dripping down my inner thigh. “Yes.”

Finally, he brought his hands to my hips. I stood on tiptoe, spreading my legs as far apart as I could, giving him as much access as I could manage. When I felt his thick tip at my wet entrance, I nearly came from the contact. I was right at the edge, panting.

In one, long, completely satisfying thrust, he parted me and shoved his cock all the way inside. I screamed, loud and long, my orgasm building up and cresting over me as he held onto my hips and began driving into me again and again.

“Watch!” he commanded in my ear. I looked sideways into the mirror and saw his large, firm hands guiding my hips, my breasts giggling and bouncing with each hard thrust. My wrists bound tight, my body was stretched out and held exactly where he could fuck me hardest. He stood with his feet firmly planted on the ground, his thick, thighs corded with muscle, his ass flexing as he ground his cock into me over and over again.

The sight of him fucking me nearly made me come again, the way he owned me, controlled me. He brought a hand down to my clit and started rubbing me in rhythm with his strokes. He was supporting almost all of my weight now, assisted by the tie at the ceiling. I had nearly no strength left, all melted, molten desire quivering through me.

“See how you take me in? All of me.” I looked at his slick cock entering into me again and again, to the hilt, burying himself into me until his balls slapped against my pussy. He stretched me to the point of hurting, but I only wanted more.

“Are you going to come again, Ana, when I come in you?” He worked me like a giant beast, sweaty, pounding, controlling all of me.

“Yes!” I called out, every inch of my body responding to him, craving him, needing his seed deep inside of me. The feel of him tensing, tensing, then exploding inside of me released my own orgasm, bursting out from within, shimmering up and out through every limb. Gasping, screaming, I took in his come, my pussy clenching around him, milking out every drop.

“Ana,” he cried out my name, giving me his last shot of come, holding my body against his as I’d now lost any ability to stand. I collapsed against him, letting him support me, pull me close against him as if he couldn’t bear even the slightest amount of separation. We’d melted into each other.

I wasn’t completely aware of how he unbound me, or how he scooped me into his arms. I think I might have blacked out for a few moments from the intensity of the orgasm. When my eyelids fluttered open, I was pressed against his chest, held in his strong arms. He set me down on the large bathroom counter and took a soft, warm washcloth to my limbs.

“So beautiful, Ana.” He kept an arm supporting me as he cleaned me, gently washing off our mingled juices. Then he took my wrists in his hands and held them, warm and secure, working them, massaging. “How do you feel? Does anything hurt?”

I shook my head no, unable to speak yet. I felt like I was floating on a warm cloud of fucking awesome, that’s how I felt. And nothing hurt, nothing at all.

“I still want you to take a couple of Advil. I’ve been rough with you. I can’t stop myself.”

I took the Advil he handed me and swallowed them down with water. Then I looked up at him and found some words. “I don’t want you to stop yourself.” I grinned up at him shyly.

He smiled back, then scooped me back into his arms. “You’re going to kill me.” He nuzzled into my hair, carrying me back into the bedroom, and then out into the main room of the cabin.

“We’ve got to get out of the bedroom or I’m going to try to fuck you again. And then I think we really both might hurt ourselves.”

I burst out laughing and he started in as well. We really were crazy for each other. Who knew the hazards of dangerous attraction? I certainly hadn’t experienced it before.

He found a soft blanket and wrapped it around me. “Here. I think it’s a necessary precaution.” I laughed again, enjoying the thought of my body like a weapon. I rather liked the idea of him finding me so devastatingly sexy. I could threaten him, “You’d better watch out, or I’ll get naked.”

I stood, wrapped in the blanket, and he surveyed me. “Shit, you still look fucking tempting.”

Behind him, I saw the answer to our problems. “You, go put on some pants.” I used my stern librarian voice on him. “Then meet me over at the piano.” He grinned and did as he was told.

If someone asked me how long we spent playing piano together that afternoon, I honestly wouldn’t have been able to answer. It could have been an hour. It could have been three. The snow swirled around us outside. The music swirled around us inside. Together, we created our own private world, conversing in the best language I knew.

We played each other bits of pop tunes we’d grown up with, singing along or belting it out as appropriate. Ash Black, shirtless and tousled with a day’s worth of stubble, singing Justin Bieber or Brittany Spears just about killed me. I had yet another moment of gratitude that no paparazzi were present to capture the performance. It would have gone viral in sixty seconds, and I would have been in it as well, half-naked. I had a feeling my just-fucked beehive of hair wasn’t as sexy as his black, reckless tumble, but with Ash alone, I didn’t care. He made me feel like the most gorgeous woman on the planet, so desirable I was hazardous to his health. Who needed stylists and makeup artists? Ash made me feel like a glorious incarnation of the goddess Aphrodite, brought back to life in the form of a piano-teaching librarian. Implausible, yes, but here it was happening right before my eyes.

“Play me something from way back. Like, one of the first songs you ever wrote.”

“Yeah?” He looked at me, a mischievous glint in his eyes.

“I want to hear it.”

“Even if it sucks?”

“Absolutely.”

He played me a basic tune, catchy and simple. I mostly listened, joining in when I could feel where.

And then he started singing. “You’re so hot, so hot, so hot. You’re so hot you melt my face off.”

“Um, what was that now?” I turned to him, unable to stop a smile from playing at my lips.

“Some early lyrics.” He grinned at me. “I told you I had some really sucky early stuff.”

“Melt my face off?”

“Yup.”

“That’s disturbing.”

“And never made it onto an album,” he confirmed. But then he took the tune he’d been playing and morphed it into the chorus of one of his more famous rock anthems. I could hear how he’d developed it, grown it, and changed it into the hit it became. We both belted out the famous lyrics that did not in any way reference melting faces.

“Much better,” I told him as he hit the closing notes.

“Now you.” He looked up at me, taking his hands off the keys. “Play me something you love.”

“It might be classical,” I warned him. I still found it strange how many people said they loved music, but never listened to classical. To me, pop, rock, jazz, hiphop, classical, they were all pieces of the same glorious puzzle. But I’d had enough conversations with enough people to realize I was a bit of an anomaly.

“Give it to me.” Ash settled back on the piano bench, his arms folded against his chest.

My fingers tickled their way along the keys as my mind roamed among songs, solos I’d memorized for auditions, pieces I’d absorbed over the years because my parents had played them so many times. Then it came to me, the Rachmaninoff concerto.

From the opening chords, it commanded great swells of emotion, rumbling along the keys, evoking dark, fraught trouble but moving, slowly, effortlessly through the piece into lighter, swirling moments of sweetness. I’d always been in awe of this concerto, how subtly it changed between emotions, how fully it ranged across the keyboard from bright, prancing, showy notes ripening into full, deep tones. It blended, creating an entirely otherworldly mood, another space in time. I could hear the piano together with the sweeping strings, woodwinds and brass of a full orchestra, swelling and accentuating and bringing it all to life. As my fingers came off the final, triumphant notes, I opened my eyes and wondered, what did Ash think of all that?

He watched me, mesmerized, as if he hadn’t taken a breath the whole time I’d been playing.

“What was that?” he asked, as if he’d just seen a UFO.

“Rachmaninoff.”

“Rach what now?”

I laughed. “He’s a Russian composer.”

“Holy shit!”

“I know, right?” He’d felt it, too, the power of it all.

“Here I was thought I was making music all this time!” He brought a hand to his hair. “Holy shit, Ana. You’re amazing!”

“Thanks.” Shyly, I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “Not amazing enough to make a career out of it. But…”

“Why do you put yourself down like that?” He brought a hand around my waist. And I realized that the blanket had slipped completely down around my waist while I’d played. I’d performed it all topless.

“Whoops.” I brought the blanket up around my shoulders again, folding it demurely over my torso.

“I have to admit, that added to my enjoyment,” Ash teased me. “But, seriously, do you know how talented you are?”

I shrugged. It was complicated. And hard to explain it to a musician so famous he had the world eating out of the palm of his hand. “The thing is, going into music isn’t exactly an easy way to make a living.”

“You could do it,” he insisted.

“Ash.” I shook my head. “It’s not that simple. My parents groomed me be a classical pianist, but my heart wasn’t really in it. And you have to love it like nothing else if you’re going to do that for a living.”

“OK, so you don’t want to be a classical pianist. What do you want to be?”

“I’m a children’s librarian.” I deliberately didn’t answer his question about future potential, choosing to ground myself in reality.

“I know what you are. But what do you want to be?”

I let out a frustrated breath. “It’s easy for you to ask me that, Ash. You’re a famous rock star. You’re living the dream.”

“No, I’m not, Ana. Half the time I’m so sick of the shit around me I want to scream.”

“Why don’t you?”

Now he sighed in frustration. “There’s a whole machinery around me, Ana. Tons of people making a living off of me, my band, the promotions, the touring, the merchandizing. I can’t just walk away from it all.”

“Why not? If it’s making you miserable?”

We looked at each other, tense. Until, suddenly, we weren’t anymore. He smiled at me and brought a finger to my chin and I melted into his touch, his sweet kiss on my lips.

“You make a lot of sense, Anika.” We sat together, touching foreheads. “But you still haven’t told me what you want to be when you grow up.”

With a laugh, I reminded him that I was already 24.

“And you think it’s all over, then? 24 and done?”

“All right.” I held my hands up in surrender. “You want to know what I really want to do? But don’t get me wrong, I really do like being a librarian.”

“I know,” he assured me. “I saw you in action. You’re very stern.” I glared at him. “And helpful with the kids,” he added.

“What I’d really love to do is compose. I love writing songs. There, I said it.” I realized I was shaking. Why had that been so hard to admit? I guessed there was the fact that my parents had told me time and again there was no way to earn a living doing songwriting. Why pursue a dream that made no sense?

“Cool!” Ash clapped his hands together. “You’re so good at it.”

“What do you mean?”

“You figured out the perfect way to end that song I’ve been working on for months. I couldn’t get it. Then you jumped in, finished it off and made the whole thing so much better.”

“Really?” That was cool.

“Yeah.” He turned to the keyboard again and began playing that song, the one we’d done together so many times. When I’d first heard him playing it in that stadium in Santa Clara, it had stayed with me, haunting me, calling to me. And he was right, I had heard the ending. It had flowed straight out of my heart and together now we played it beautifully.

“This song’s about you.” He turned to me almost shyly as he played.

“It is?”

“I don’t know how, yet. I’m still figuring out the lyrics.”

“Nothing about melting faces,” I cautioned him.

“Got it.” He nodded.

Outside the window, the view caught my attention. “It’s stopped!” I exclaimed, clutching the blanked around me as I stood up and walked over to the glass. “It’s not snowing anymore.”

In the late afternoon light, the snowscape looked both gorgeous and eerie. Crystal white, icicles hung from the rooftop. I couldn’t make out any distinct shapes in the yard, only mounds, drifts and swells of white. No paths, roads, or other houses, only huge pine trees weighted down by pounds of white snow still stood tall, bearing their heavy load.

“The storm’s over.” Ash came and stood next to me, sounding somewhat regretful.

“It’s so quiet all of a sudden.” No wind raging, no limbs snapping off of trees or heavy whumps of snow falling off roofs. Just us inside, and the silent frozen expanse outside. Soon, snow plows would have it cleared. Soon, we’d have to leave. My heart sunk. There it was, reality. I’d never wanted it to come back.

“You know what that means? Now that the snow’s stopped?” Ash took my hand and squeezed it in his own. The tone of his voice sounded way more upbeat than I felt. “Hot tub!” he exclaimed, pulling me along with him.

Out past the master bedroom, to the side was a sliding door which I had to admit I hadn’t even noticed. We hadn’t exactly been whiling away long, boring hours in the bedroom for me to study all the features. When I’d been in the bedroom, I’d either been tied up and having the best sex of my life, or passed out cold after having had the best sex of my life. It didn’t exactly hone my powers of observation.

Ash flicked on exterior lighting and I could barely make out the shape of a large, white mound surrounded by other, smaller mounds of things. What was it exactly?

“I’m going to need a shovel,” he declared, and dropped my hand to start heading somewhere.

“Get one for me, too!” I called after him. I put on some sweatpants and a sweater I found in a drawer, both too big for me but they’d work. What I didn’t have were snow boots. He’d managed to bring my bags when he’d kidnapped me, but inside I didn’t exactly have snow gear. The best I had was sneakers, the cute kind with neon pink laces.

Ash came back up looking like he’d gotten attacked by a giant coat. He wore massive snow boots up to his knees and wild tufts of fur framed the hood around his face.

“Are you in there?” I asked.

“You laugh,” he told me. “But just you wait. I’m going to shovel you out a hot tub.”

“That’s my man.” I patted him on the back and sent him out into the snow. Just opening up the sliding glass door took some doing, and it became my job just sweeping up the snow that billowed into the bedroom. Ash got to work, shoveling load after load of snow until, slowly, a large circle emerged, then wooden benches, then, the hot tub, itself. He pried off the top, flicked on a few buttons and lights came on inside the tub.

“Victory is mine!” He exclaimed, holding the shovel up above his head like a gladiator.

“You did it!”

He came in and swept me into a huge, snowy embrace and kiss. “What’s my reward, wench?”

I laughed. “Naked hot tubbing?”

“Arg!” He began stripping off his clothes. I followed suit.

“Wait, were you being a pirate just then?”

“With the ‘arg’?” he asked and I nodded. “Not entirely sure.” He helped me out of the sweater and took my hand. “This tub gets hot fast, but we’ll have to give it a few minutes. The caretaker only had it set to 75.

“It’s already warmed up?” I asked, astonished.

“I’m prepared for every scenario.” Ash winked at me, giving me another “arg,” for good measure. He disappeared into the kitchen and came back with a bottle of red wine and two glasses. I grabbed a couple of towels and jammed my feet into a pair of slippers I found in the closet.

Outside, steam rose thick and fast out of the tub. Ash pressed a button that set it to a low bubble and it looked like a witch’s cauldron, hissing and spewing into the night air.

“Are you sure this is OK?”

“Are you afraid I’m trying to cook you? This is like a Hansel and Gretel thing?” He stretched out his hand and said with a grin, “I can’t promise I won’t eat you.”

“At least you’re being honest.” I took his hand and we both took a few tentative steps out into the cold. Make that freezing. And I wasn’t wearing anything. But in a few more steps, we reached the tub and we hustled in as quickly as we could.

The shock of the heat mingled with the chill of the cold air had my senses whirling faster than the hot tub, itself. But slowly, I adjusted, letting the peaceful hum of the water lull my senses. Up above, a crystal clear night sky expanded limitless and promising, countless start twinkling down on us.

“It’s so gorgeous here.” I exhaled, sinking down into the water. I guessed some city people would consider where I’d grown up rural, but honestly it was pretty suburban. We had plenty of traffic lights and stores that stayed open all night and you were hard-pressed to find any part of town where you felt all alone. Out here in the mountains, it felt different. The silence, the darkness at night, the mountains rising in the distance. Days could pass without any interruptions. We’d just experienced it. I didn’t want it to end.

As if he were reading my mind, Ash cleared his throat and said, “This doesn’t have to end, you know.”

I looked up at him, not sure what he meant. Of course our time up in this cabin had to end. Roads would be cleared. Planes would take off. The future would descend upon us whether we liked it or not.

“This between us,” he went on, seeming uncharacteristically hesitant. “I know we signed that contract. That this was a fake thing between us, for a month.”

I swallowed, wondering if he was saying what I thought he was saying.

“We don’t have to, you know…” He swallowed, too, and I realized he was nervous. Ash Black was nervous, talking to me. My heart swelled.

I reached over to him. “We’ve already kind of done things we said we wouldn’t in that contract.”

“Yeah.” He wrapped an arm around me, drawing me close. “The no-sex clause didn’t exactly happen.”

“We ripped that right up,” I agreed.

“So, about what we have going here.” I could feel his heart beating fast. “Do you, ah, want it to end in a week?”

“No,” I answered, quickly and honestly.

I felt him exhale. But he still held himself tense. “I thought you might, that night in Vegas.”

“You mean the night you kidnapped me?”

“Yeah, that one.” He sounded sheepish.

“I’m glad you did,” I reassured him. “But, you’re right. I was thinking about breaking things off. Fake or real or whatever this is.” Now I was stammering a bit, too. “Because, the thing is, Ash, I can’t really do that whole scene in L.A.”

“No, I can’t either,” he agreed with me urgently.

“Really?” I looked up at him. “Because that’s pretty much your scene.”

“No,” he protested, but I kept looking up at him, waiting for more. “OK, yes, it was. It used to be.”

“Until you met me?” I couldn’t help it, my question was laced with doubt. It wasn’t that I didn’t think much of myself. I had a pretty good sense of what I was bringing to the table, both great and not-so-great. But Ash had lived a hard-partying life all his 26 years. A flash romance with me wasn’t going to change all that.

“It sounds like rubbish, I know,” Ash admitted, shaking his head. “But I’ve been tired of this crazy life I’m in for ages. A couple years now, if I’m honest. I’m done with it.”

I wanted to believe it, take it at face value and just let it make me feel good. But the pragmatic part of me had to interfere. “That’s pretty easy to say when you’re snowed in here with no one but me to keep you company. What about when we’re back?”

“I don’t want to go back,” Ash answered, holding me close.

“Neither do I,” I confessed. “But at some point we have to go back.”

“Not to the way I was living. I’m not going to do it. I want to figure out something new.”

“You do?” I looked into his eyes, so dark and sexy.

His lips parted, full and red. “I do. I know it sounds like bullshit. But you have to remember, it’s like show and tell in school.”

“Like show and tell?” Sometimes it got hard to follow exactly what he was saying, he was so freaking hot. His shoulders so broad and muscled, rising above the bubbling heat. His jaw so strong, that stubble dark and rough. I wanted to feel it on me. Between my legs.

“Show and tell,” at least he continued the conversation. “You’d bring something in from home and talk about it?”

“Yes.” I remembered show and tell.

“I’m better at showing how I feel than telling.”

“Yeah?” My question came out breathy. I really wanted him to show me.

“Yeah.” His voice sounded deep and husky and he brought a hand to my neck, slowly trailing a thumb down my skin to the hollow at the base of my throat. “Can I show you how I feel?” he asked.

“Hell, yes,” I managed before I sank into his kiss, kissing him more deeply, more passionately, more breathlessly than any lead characters in any of the historical romances I’d read in the basement of my town library. We kissed and kissed, twining our limbs, drifting our hands along each other’s skin, kissing each other like we’d never stop.

Gently, he eased me out of the water, kissing every inch of me that emerged. I’d grown hot, from the water and his loving, and now the chill of the winter air felt welcome. He kissed along my belly, brought his hands to my ass and there was that scratch of stubble, right where I’d wanted it. Damn, did it feel good, adding just the right amount of rough along with his long, slow, hot licks straight up my slit. The man was a freaking genius with his tongue.

I clenched his hair in my fingers and he really began to feast on me, digging his fingers into my ass cheeks and fucking me with his tongue. Up he’d swirl over my clit, grazing it with his teeth, just enough to make me gasp, then he’d suck me in full with his gorgeous lips and start tongue-fucking me again until I couldn’t take it anymore.

“Ash!” I cried out, bucking my hips into his face. “Ash, I’m going to come!”

He growled into my pussy, licking and lapping and then bit down right onto my tender clit.

“Ah!” I screamed as the orgasm hit me, hot wave after wave washing through my body as he sucked and licked and drank me in.

“You taste so fucking good,” he groaned as he finally lifted his head, licking his lips.

“Oh God, Ash.” I wrapped my hands around his neck and slid down his body, his hands traveling up my back. I positioned myself right at his groin, right where I could feel his huge, swollen shaft. I brought my hand down to his cock and wrapped my palm around it, savoring the feel, velvet and steel.

“You’re so big, Ash,” I moaned, feeling him grow under my stroking. His muscles gleamed in the water, the lights and steam showing them off. I wanted to lick him everywhere. I sank my mouth down to his chest and kissed and licked.

“Fuck me, Ash,” I groaned, pressing my sex down against his cock. “I need you inside me.”

“I can’t go easy, Ana,” he warned me, lifting me to the top step in the tub. “I can’t do it.”

“Don’t go easy, Ash,” I begged him as he began positioning my legs, throwing one up over his shoulder, then the other. “Fuck me hard,” I pleaded.

“Yes,” he cried out as he positioned his tip and then sank into me deep. With my legs thrown over his shoulders like that, he got so deep inside of me. My mouth flew open and I gripped the base of the step to brace myself.

“Keep your legs like that and hold on,” he growled as he wrapped his hands around my ass and started to fuck me good. Driving into me so deep, he kept hitting me exactly in the spot that made my eyes roll back in my head.

“Fuck! Ash!” I screamed, almost not able to take it yet wanting more, wanting him to split me in two, wanting him to fuck me harder than he ever had. He drove into me again and again, relentless, seeming to get even bigger as he took me.

“I can’t wait to come in you, Ana.” His voice, so rough and deep, the way he held me and took me. I’d never felt so cared for, so possessed. “Are you going to take my come, baby?”

“Please,” I begged him, knowing how good it would feel. That hot shot of thick come from his cock, feeling it deep inside of me. I was so close and once I felt him shoot it into me, I knew I’d come, too.

“You want it?” he asked, breathless and rough, pounding into me like a jackhammer.

“Yes,” I moaned, holding onto the step as best I could for purchase, my legs up over his shoulders.

“You need my come?”

“Yes, yes, Ash!” I screamed, crazy for him. “I need your come. Please, give me your come!”

With a great roar, he exploded into me like a fucking firehose, coming deep inside me, shooting it out of his huge, thick cock. Screaming, clawing at his shoulders, I threw my head back and came, bucking against him, my quivering pussy clenching in orgasm around his shaft. Groaning, grasping, we shuddered and rode the waves together, coming and coming into each other under the sky full of stars.

He held me close and we drifted there together in the warm, bubbling water. I breathed him in, his scent, his rough stubble, his heart beating. I looked up at the sky and I knew. I didn’t know exactly when it had happened. But I knew that it had. Somewhere along the way in the last few weeks, I’d fallen completely, hopelessly, impossibly in love with rock god Ash Black. Heaven help me.