EVER SINCE PAIGE AND Riley arrived home from their dinner together, Paige had barely said a word to anyone. She sat ramrod straight on the edge of the couch next to Riley while images from the news show flashed across her eyes. Where did she go inside that pretty head of hers? Probably to earlier when she lay spread out on the island in the kitchen like a feast sent from heaven. If I could crawl inside her head and join her, I would.

I could see the tension coiled tight inside her in her balled-up fists, the way her lips parted so she could saw her teeth across them, her chest pushing against her black dress, the hot one according to my dick-knuckle brother, and her heavy breaths. Yeah, pretty sure I made an impression.

I grinned into the pages of my book that I hadn’t read a single word from since they’d left. Her smooth skin, delicious curves, the way she threw her head back when I ripped off her thong had consumed my head. The musky, sweet smell of her was still on my fingers, which rushed lust-filled thoughts from my brain down south into a constant, painful reminder of her.

And what she’d said before, all that about not being a good person... I didn’t know where that came from, but I wanted to know more. I wanted her to prove to me she wasn’t a good person. Naked. Doing very, very bad things.

When the sports part of the nightly news started, Paige stood and stretched up on her silver-painted toes. Her calves flexed. I tried not to stare but did a damn poor job of it.

“Well, it’s been fun, everyone, but I need to get to sleep,” she announced. Her usually sexy, relaxed voice sounded strained, even with the glass of white wine she’d downed right when they got home.

“Yeah, me too. Long day tomorrow.” Riley turned off the television and chucked the remote toward the far side of the living room at my head.

I easily dodged it. It smashed into one of his baseball trophies on the bookshelf behind my armchair.

Paige frowned at Riley and shook her head as she went to the kitchen with her empty wine glass.

“Nice one,” I said to Riley and smiled. “No wonder you didn’t make it to the big leagues.”

He stood, glaring like he always did, and swayed on his feet. Jesus, was he drunk?

“Watch it, SamRam. At least I didn’t go to jail for assault and battery.”

The smile fell from my face as I gripped the arms of the chair to keep myself from swinging at him. Paige walked back into the living room. Without a glance at either of us, she went upstairs. Had she heard the jackass’s slip?

“How about you don’t mention that again?” I warned through gritted teeth.

Riley leaned down toward me, his beer breath strong enough to gross even me out. “Afraid Paige will find out, are we? I saw you looking at her.” His gaze was dark, lethal.

I pushed my fury to the side long enough to laugh in his face. What was he trying to do, intimidate me? “I look at a lot of people. Doesn’t mean anything.” I pushed him in the chest. Hard.

He stumbled backward, the stupid drunk. He almost didn’t catch himself in time before he took a dive into the corner of the coffee table. Four empty bottles of beer tipped over when he bumped into it. I’d been so focused on Paige, I hadn’t even noticed he drank that much.

“A word of advice, though? Why don’t you lay off the beer. Nobody likes the drunk at the party.” I stood and patted his cheek to help him sober up. Also because he hated it. “Actually, nobody likes you at the party.”

“If you touch her, I’ll tell her everything about you. About how Hill cleared your name for the assault. About dealing drugs for him. Everything.”

“And the pictures with the prostitute and your dick in her hands?” I leveled him with a warning look since he should know better. “Are you going to tell her about that, too?”

The fucker always liked to spin things away from him and any responsibility he had in the whole Hill situation.  He was the one who left the fucking laptop with all his shit on it right out in the open before he’d wiped the incriminating pictures off of it. A real genius political consultant at work, ladies and gentlemen.

The police found the pictures the night I went to jail, and Hill had said he would make those disappear, too. He must really have his hands deep inside the pockets of the D.C.P.D. But instead of making them vanish, he used the pictures as blackmail against our family if we didn’t pay Rose’s debt off. He hadn’t exactly given us much of a choice.

“Do it, then. Tell her,” I continued. “I’m sure she’d be very interested to hear all of it.”

He nodded, slow and deliberate, as if he’d just cracked a riddle. “That’s why you’re around all the time, isn’t it? Is she already fucking you like the whores you’re used to?”

My fingers dug into my palms with the rage that sped through my veins. Oh, that fucking fuck didn’t just say that. He’d just downgraded his childhood friend to skank, but Paige was the furthest thing from a whore. He had to know that already, which meant he was just trying to get a reaction out of me. Testing me.

I stepped back. “There’s no fucking of any kind. She’s not my type. She doesn’t do anything for me. I’m here because I live here. End of story.”

“That better be the end of the story.”

I shook my head at the ceiling because that comeback was going in the record books under Most Pathetic. “Go to bed.”

“Drop dead,” he mumbled, then dragged himself up the stairs.

A few minutes later, I followed. Knowing him, he’d pass out the second he hit his bed. I stared at my bedroom door, listening for some kind of noise from Paige’s room across the hall. All I heard was the faint sound of water running in her bathroom. I slipped into my room and sat on the bed with my head buried in my hands.

The thought of her rolling her hips into the palm of my hand flashed behind my eyelids on repeat. She’d addicted me to her body in less than a second. I hadn’t even seen all of it yet, hadn’t explored it in all the ways it begged to be explored. My dick hardened into an intense ache that refused to be ignored. I wanted her with a fierce need. What had happened earlier had fed that craving and turned it into an obsession. Functioning—hell, walking—was out of the question until I felt her flesh slide against mine again.

A shadow darkened the space between the closed door and the carpet. Someone stood right outside.

My heart pounding, I shifted my legs off the bed, slowly so I wouldn’t squeak the mattress, and opened the door a crack. The bedside lamp cast a faint glow into the dark hallway and shimmered inside a pair of big brown eyes. Judging from her heated gaze sliding over my naked chest, I doubted she’d been in the hallway studying the paint job.

“Hi,” I said, voice husky.

“Hi,” she whispered. Her gaze dropped to the floor before it slowly skimmed all the way up again. “About what happened earlier.”

I stepped closer and angled away from the light behind me so it shone on her. Seeing her like this, her attention focused only on me, unhinged my reality for a second, as if it was one of my many dreams about her. Just to be sure, I brushed my fingers along the crease at her elbow. When she shivered, I decided I liked reality a whole lot better.

“You mean your Shh! thong? I’m holding it for ransom.”

She glanced at Riley’s door and licked her lips, which sent a jolt to my dick. If she wanted to continue where we left off pre-cock block, I was all in. Blood roared between my ears. Her skin heated underneath my fingers.

I stroked my hand up over her shoulder, enjoying the sigh that came from her lips, and brushed my fingers to the back of her neck. She stared up at me with a blazing need that made me bite back a groan.

“Sam,” she whispered. The plea in her voice fisted both my hands through the hair at the nape of her neck.

I couldn’t stop myself even if I wanted to. I pushed her into the wall beside her open door, our lips not quite touching, not giving a flying fuck that Riley could stroll out of his bedroom at any time to catch us. She wanted me. There was no way I could refuse.

My dick throbbed against her, and I fought the urge to grind myself into her. I angled her head into the light from my bedroom to see that look of pure need again and smiled at her gasp.

“Please,” she breathed across my mouth.

I teased my tongue along her lower lip while her hands roamed over my bare back, pulling me closer. My hands worked their way under her shirt and over her shockingly hot skin to cup her perfect tits.

“Please what?” I asked, thumbing her nipples into tight buds.

She gasped when I sucked her bottom lip between my teeth. “Everything.”

I crushed my mouth to hers, and she kissed me with an intensity that riled me up even more. She writhed between me and the wall while I thrust my tongue into her mouth, licking, tasting, savoring everything about her.

Every flick of her tongue, every pump of her hips against the enormous tent in my jeans made me kiss her harder, rougher, until she moaned. We both pulled away, panting and glancing at Riley’s door. Seconds later, she looked up at me with a naughty grin that nearly made me come in my jeans. Then she pushed me away from her and into her bedroom, and closed the door quietly.

God, she was gorgeous when she was about to be wicked with me. Moonlight striped the room through the half-open shades, creating a halo-like effect on her hair. Her cheeks were flushed, her lips swollen, and her nipples hard underneath her shirt.

My fingertips twitched with the need to touch every inch of her. My dick ached to be buried deep inside her. In one swift move, I had her pressed against a wall, her arms locked above her head so I could devour those sweet lips and feel her body melt against mine.

I glided one hand around to her ass, the other still holding both her wrists, and rocked her hips against my cock. She took my groans into her mouth and kissed me even harder. One yank at the elastic waistband of her shorts and panties dropped them both at her feet. The musky, sweet scent of her filled the room. The powerful urge to taste her drove me to my knees.

She inhaled a shaky breath, her whole body quivering, as I gazed up her bare hips to her navel to her heaving chest. I hiked one of her legs over my shoulder and trailed kisses up the inside of her thigh, breathing all of her in. She was spread out so perfectly with her patch of wet, dark curls and her naked, shapely hips braced against the wall. Seeing her so ready swelled my dick to an agonizing ache, and I stroked myself through my jeans.

At the first flick of my tongue, she cried out and bucked against the wall.

“Shh,” I breathed against the apex of her thighs. “The door isn’t locked, Paige. He could come in and see us like this. You’ll have to be quiet. A quiet, naughty librarian.”

Sure, we could’ve locked the door, but where was the fun in that?

As if reading my mind, she stared down at me, eyes at half-mast and fevered, likely mirroring mine, and nodded. She shuddered with the effort and brought her hands to the back of my head.

Like I needed any urging. She tasted like melted honey, and I drank my fill like a dying man in a desert. With each flick of my tongue, her hips rolled into me, fucking my face faster and faster. My own hips mimicked hers, humping the air, my swollen dick wishing it could take the place of my mouth. But she tasted too good.

She didn’t cry out, even when she started to tremble around me. I could draw this out all night, bring her to the cliff’s edge again and again, so when she finally did come, it would blow her fucking mind.

“You like this, don’t you? The possibility of being caught?” I whispered into her soaked curls.

Her grip tightened at the back of my head, her trimmed fingernails digging into my scalp. She gasped. “Stop talking.”

I grinned into her folds and looked up at her, at the moonlight glowing across her skin, at the lustful way she stared down at me. Somehow it turned me on even more. I tugged down the zipper over the bulge in my jeans. With my other hand, I cupped her and pushed two fingers inside her. Fuck, she was tight.

She dropped her head back against the wall with a closed-mouth moan, the tendons in her neck straining. When my entire hand was drenched with her, I reached into my boxers to ease the pressure on my dick. When she glanced down and saw what I was doing, her eyes brightened and her tongue wet her lips.

“Don’t stop,” she whispered.

Watching her watch me jack-off was such a fucking turn on. A loud groan rumbled through me, so I buried myself between her thighs again to muffle it. I pulled at her clit with my teeth and stroked myself with the same juices that flooded my tongue.

No way would I last long like this, locked between Paige’s thighs while her fingers stroked the sides of my face. But before I lost control, I worked my mouth expertly to push her over the edge.

It didn’t take long. She gasped “Oh” before her whole body trembled.

My tongue continued to guide her through it, even as an orgasm built at the base of my spine. It slid lower, lower, multiplying in power with each thrust of Paige’s hips into my face, each slide of my fist, until it exploded out of me. I moaned inside of her while her aftershocks continued to quake through her.

A door in the hallway opened. Riley’s door.

Let him walk in and see Paige sated, smell the sex in the air. Maybe then he would back off and treat someone else, not Paige, like an object to be dumped on the side of the road.

But when the bathroom door across the hall clicked closed, I took my cue. I slid up Paige’s body, enjoying the feel of every curve rubbing against mine. If Riley dropped dead from being a worthless human being, I would totally be up for round two just to hear how loud Paige could moan. If Paige didn’t look like she was about to fall asleep in my arms, I might’ve been up for round two anyway.

I kissed her, just a small, innocent peck, a promise for more, lots more, another time. “Good night, Paige,” I whispered against her lips.

She smiled a sleepy, sexy smile that magically put a chub back in my cock. “Good night, Sam.”