A whirlwind week later, I found myself tied spread eagle to a four-poster bed.

It wasn’t even the most erotic thing he’d done to me this week.

There was a tie for that. It was either the time he’d grabbed me and pulled me into the employee bathroom for a quickie, or the day he’d had me strip off my panties – again – then pushed a vibrating egg into my pussy before processing to set it to buzzing at various intervals through the day via a remote control he’d kept in his pocket.

By contrast, being in a hotel with relative privacy almost seemed tame.

Except he came toward me now carrying what he’d told me was a velvet whip.

“Ready to cry wolf?” he said for what seemed to be the tenth time this week.

“No.”

He nodded and flicked his wrist.

It sent the silken lashes of the whip flicking over me.

One curled around my right nipple, and I gasped.

The sensation was caught right between pain and pleasure, and I shuddered. If I could have withdrawn into the mattress at that point, I would have as my mind struggled to take in the mix of delight and torment.

But he didn’t give me even a few seconds to process what he was doing before he did it again, then again.

He lashed me across the breasts, the belly, the upper thighs.

Then his gaze locked on the core of me. “Lukas, no–”

The very tip smacked against my clitoris.

It was a good thing he hadn’t told me not to come, because I wouldn’t have been able to stop it.

A shriek peeled out of me and I thrashed on the bed, jerking at the restraints and begging.

I had no idea what I was begging for.

Lukas had a better idea, and I felt another velvet lick between my thighs, the ends of the whip coming in contact with the folds of my pussy. Exposed, bare, swollen, the sensitive parts of me felt like they’d been set on fire as he stropped me lightly.

I was whimpering, desperate when he finally threw the whip aside and came to mount me. His hands went to my hips, and he knelt between my thighs. “You’re sensitive now. I bet you can’t tell if it feels good or not.”

I shuddered. “I think it feels good. But it’s too much, Lukas.”

“Then what do you say?” He bent over me, his blue eyes catching mine, holding them in challenge.

A question popped into my mind.

Why are you so determined to scare me away?

If I could have reached up then, I would have caught him in my arms and held him.

“I’m not saying anything,” I told him, determined.

Something flared in his eyes, but whether it was shock or satisfaction, I had no idea.

He drove into me, hard and deep, knocking the building scream right out of me with the force of the impact.

As I struggled to catch my breath, he fucked me hard and deep, his blue gaze relentless, his passion merciless.

And yet…

Yet there was still a wall.

I jerked against the restraints. “Let me go,” I demanded.

“No.”

“Yes!”

It became a challenge of wills, his head bending to mine. “If you want me to let you go…cry wolf.”

I bit him instead, turning my head and sinking my teeth into his neck.

His body stiffened, and his cock swelled to near massive proportions. A growl rumbled out of him, and he battered me with his thrusts. The orgasm welled up, a leviathan that had slept inside me now rising to take me under. I cried out as it broke over me.

And still, he drove into me.

Teeth clenched, eyes locked on something I couldn’t fathom, Lukas took me.

I came a second time, then a third before he finally found release.

I was breathless and shaking, my limbs sore and aching.

And still, I knew he was holding back.

* * *

He carried me into the shower nearly a half hour later.

The tenderness of his hands on me was what undid me. I’d swear it to my dying day. I knew he wanted nothing more than sex, but some part of me was starting to believe he lied – to himself and me.

When he stroked that rag over me, handling me like I was made of spun glass, I couldn’t help but wonder if he lied.

That was what weakened the stone wall I’d built inside me.

Nothing else would have done it.

A hundred times, I bit the words back, but after he carried me back out to the bed and started to dry my hair, I couldn’t do it anymore.

“I saw you in the shed,” I blurted out.

He tensed, and the towel slid from my head.

Lifting my gaze to his, I swallowed.

His eyes had gone cold.

For the past hour, they’d been lambent, almost warm. I thought I’d glimpsed emotion in that slate blue gaze.

But maybe I’d been wrong.

Now, swallowing, I struggled to find my footing.

“I…um…”

He fell back a step, his hand tightening on the towel.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I was looking for you, the day we left the mountain. I heard noise coming from the shed. And I…I saw you. You were hurting yourself.”

Lukas turned away from me.

The sight of his back, broad, beautiful and scarred, was like a fist in my gut. I rose from the bed, clutching the towel he’d wrapped around me.

“We’re over, Stella,” he said quietly.

But there was a controlled rage in his voice.

The words hit me like a full body slap – the sting came with confusion. “What?” I whispered.

He slanted a look at me, and I caught the coldness in his gaze then. “You heard me. We’re over.”

He walked away then, and I stared at his back as he proceeded to dress, quick, economical motions that made short work of the everyday task.

“Lukas, wait,” I said, gripping the towel in my fist. “I…look, I wasn’t asking for answers or anything–”

“Shut up, Stella,” he said icily.

It was so brutally delivered, I felt like I had no choice but to do just that.

I shut up.

Numb shock gripped me for almost an hour after he left.

I sat there, wrapped in the same towel I had grabbed when he stormed out, watching the door in the hopes that he’d come back.

But it didn’t happen, and I knew it wouldn’t.

That didn’t keep me from freezing my ass off, unable to move. Finally, my hair tangled and dried in twisted ropes down my back, I dragged myself upright and looked around. He’d left his stuff here. His watch, his jacket. Hell, even his wallet…

His wallet.

Seizing on that opportunity, I lunged for it, the towel dislodged by my sudden movement. It fell to the floor, but I didn’t bother to pick it up. I grabbed the wallet and opened it.

His driver’s license was in the neat front compartment, and I stared at the address, feeling like I’d been given a second chance.

I could go after him, find him. Apologize. Hell, I’d camp out on his front step for the duration if I had to. Even if he still wanted to end things, I at least needed to tell him I was sorry.

I never should have said anything.

He had made it clear he didn’t want things going into emotional or personal territory, and I’d known what I’d seen in the shed was something deeply personal.

I dressed hurriedly and went into the bathroom, intending to make only a cursory attempt at straightening my hair but changed my mind. I knew the importance of making an impression, and the last thing I wanted Lukas to think was that I was so desperate that I’d come running after him.

Even if it was close to the truth.

I took my time straightening my hair, even dampening it and using my round brush and the hotel blow dryer to smooth out the tangles. It took longer than I liked, almost fifteen minutes, but I used that time to smooth out the tangles inside me as well.

It wasn’t good that I felt so deeply enmeshed in this – in him.

Maybe it was a good thing this had happened, I told myself. It was fortuitous, perhaps, a way of keeping me from getting in over my head.

That had been coming for quite some time, if I was honest.

It had started the moment I let him talk me into taking off my panties in the office.

If he asked me to go braless under a silk top, I just might consider it.

And that was insane.

He was like poison, like candy, like a drug, all wrapped up into one, and I was addicted already.

Maybe it was good that he’d ended things.

But I didn’t want them ending like this.

* * *

The area where he lived was clearly set aside for the well-to-do.

Even if I hadn’t come from money, I’d know what I was looking at – the insanely, ridiculously rich. Just like my parents.

But from everything I’d read about Lukas, he’d earned his money the old-fashioned way.

He’d worked for it, making big business gambles that any sane investor would have ran away from – possibly screaming. He’d taken those risks and come out on the other side, smelling like a rose.

Maybe it was because it all bored him.

I could see it in his eyes during the group meetings he held with the company.

Maybe the risk was the rush, the reason he did it.

“Maybe you’re stalling,” I muttered.

Maybe I was. No. There was no maybe about it. I’d been sitting at the foot of the drive for nearly ten minutes, and that was after breaking nearly every traffic law known to man – or at least to me – to get here.

Heaving out a sigh, I threw the car into drive and started forward.

The drive wound through the grounds, treating the visitor to a view of the house that was nothing short of mind-boggling. It was done in a way that made me think the designer of both house and land had wanted to disturb the lush natural beauty as little as possible. It wasn’t about showing off. I couldn’t describe it, but the five-minute drive to get to the house made me appreciate the beauty of the land all that much more.

And the house – wow.

Tumbled timbers, panes of glass, natural stone. My heart ached a little seeing it.

It ached even more when I saw the car parked in front – a familiar car.

Lukas’s.

He was here.

Drawing in a rough breath, I parked close to him, although it was just as close to the door as it was to him. That was what I told myself.

As I climbed out, I grew aware of how sweaty my palms were, how quickly my heart beat. I couldn’t do much about my heart. I had never learned to meditate. It was something I might need to pick up if I expected to keep working around Lukas.

But I swiped my palms down the sides of the narrow-fitting skirt I wore. That took care of the damp palms, and I felt a little more prepared to face him.

“You’ll probably get a butler with a stiff upper lip,” I said, thinking of Eustace – George Eustace, to be precise – back home. He had been the family butler since I was five, and he’d taken over from his father. Also George Eustace. Our Eustace was the fifth in the line. The Eustaces had been with our family since the third Eustace.

While my family wasn’t the kind to do so, there were those who’d refer to Lukas as new money, so he wasn’t likely to have a Eustace V, and somehow, I couldn’t see the man who’d served my family for so long being with a man like Lukas.

There would be somebody though. Maybe not a butler, I didn’t know.

But Lukas would have people who tended to this house.

As I started up the walk, I found myself hoping it was a daytime staff. I didn’t want to have to deal with a stern butler – or an even more stern housekeeper.

Grimacing, I looked down at myself, checked to make sure there weren’t wrinkles in my dress. Some sins, after all, were unforgivable. According to my mother, at least.

Deciding it was better to hope for the best, I started for the door. My hopes were dashed when a gorgeous woman answered, dressed in severe black, her sharp eyes homing in on me. “Yes?”

“I…um…” My mind blanked out on me. I didn’t know what to say, and the words that blurted out of me would have horrified my mother – and Eustace. “I’m looking for Lukas. Who are you?”

She cocked her head at me. “I’m Gracie. His wife.”