The inside of her mouth is as soft as the rest of her. The light from the window hits her face and shows me her pink lips. They pucker and wrap my cock.

The worst of my fury sated, I let her go slow. Every part of her shakes. I want her quaking and wasted from what I’ve done to her. I want her every thought taken over by her need to make me come.

Her mouth is as supple as she is between her legs.

I don’t expect to get hard again. I expect to let her starve longer without touching her. But my expectations are flawed.

She sucks—her tongue drawing me to the back of her throat and teasing me to the tip. I curse and pull her down farther onto me. Her mouth is greedy. She wants to please me. Every draw of her mouth is a plea for me to give her more.

I want her sense of self so distorted she can’t remember who she is. But I can’t bring myself to stop her. I grip her head and urge her faster. Control—she wants me to have it, though by instinct she’ll fight me for it.

She resists, tries to stiffen her neck to her pace. I refuse, moving her head and mouth to my rhythm. Or at least, I think I do.

When I’m fully hard again, distended and stabbing into her mouth with each bob of her head, I nearly forget who’s in charge. But only for a moment.

I pull her mouth away and, leaving her on her knees, force her shoulders to the floor.

I lean over her back, brushing my cock against the seam of her ass. “Do you want me to stop?”

She moans a “No” that echoes through the room.

“No?” I press her cheek to the floor.

She cries in frustration. “Moooore.” It’s a plea born of a depthless need—for me. She arches into me, a wanton shimmy of her ass against my cock.

I press her flat to the floor, trapping her, stilling her. “You will get what I want to give you and no more. Understand?”

She doesn’t speak, only nods, but her breathing is desperate enough. Her fear that I won’t let her come turns her on as much as her need for it.

I rise off her and jerk her hips into the air. I scramble for a condom and put it on. My fingers seek between her legs and find her swollen and dripping.

I position myself and drive into her. A yes rips from her throat on my entry, and I can’t help a sadistic smile. I pound into her, giving her what I need and what she wants.

It’s contrary to everything I wanted before, but I want her orgasm as fiercely as I want my own. To give her the mindlessness she craves—because of me and the things I’ve been forced to tell her.

But making us both wait for it makes it better—as much for me as for her. Though I’ll never tell her that.

* * *

I wake naked in my bed. Alone.

Not remembering how I got there.

I turn my face to the morning sunlight. The heat of its rays doesn’t erase my chill. I lie there and breathe, for minutes, enamored with the feeling of my lungs expanding.

I am not the same.

It’s strange. I feel strange. I am strange. A foreign fullness. A deeper well. A stronger force. Yet, freer, lighter. Too light. My skin feels like a paper dress I could peel off and step out of. If I wanted, I could take it off and float away.

I jump from my bed and shake the thought away. Losing myself like a balloon ascending into the atmosphere is not on my to-do list today.

The beach is. I have the day off.

A trickle, an inkling of memory, a flash of last night, before he turned off the lights. The real misery, the real tortures. The truly evil things . . .

I stumble to the bathroom, wishing I could make the thoughts float away on denial. But Logan is here—somewhere—and he’ll make it better, make it easier. Just like he did last night. His form of torture is my best medicine for coping.

I put on my bikini, not the sunbathing kind with teeny ties and triangles, but the playing on the beach kind with wide elastic and firm support. Maybe I’ll run in the sand today.

When I get out of my room, my eye catches on the spare bedroom door, which has been closed every morning since Logan moved in.

It’s open, his bed empty, unmade with tousled sheets. The scent of him hits me like a wall, and I’m bathed in him. I step into his room, and it’s like walking into him. I want to wrap myself in his arms.

Spots cover my vision; I get lightheaded and have to sit on his bed. I force myself to breathe, but that makes it worse, taking the smell of him into my lungs. Like I’m inhaling him. I should get out, even if I have to crawl into the hallway.

But I can’t.

I don’t want to.

Instead, I roll to my side and bury my face in his sheets. I breathe him in deeper until my body gets used to him and relaxes onto the bed.

Wow.

I flop onto my back and stare at the ceiling.

My skin doesn’t feel like paper anymore. It feels like him. Like his hands holding me together and keeping me earthbound. As if the scent of him filling my lungs is the gravity keeping me from flying away.

I’m frightened for myself. Why am I so desperate that the smell of him makes me faint?

How do I look him in the face today? Mindblowing sex with my blackmailer. Except he’s more than that now.

It floods me—the recordings, the files, the truth. The despicable unforgivable truth of everything my father was—it excavates a crater in my chest so deep it feels like I’ve been stabbed.

The urge to sob bubbles in my throat, but I reject it. I force myself to sit up. I resist the need to curl up in Logan’s bed and cuddle into his sheets.

I pick one of his T-shirts off the floor, the one he wore yesterday, and pull it on over my bathing suit. Covered and wrapped in his scent, I won’t have to worry about floating away.

I trot into the kitchen and expect to see him out on the terrace. He’s not there. I have no idea what he does all day.

I sit for half an hour drinking coffee on the deck and get my answer.

Shirtless, shoeless, he runs past me on the beach. It’s hard to see his face, but I recognize his back, the muscles rippling with his pumping arms.

The need to go after him sends a terrifying jolt through my limbs.

But terror and I are becoming friends. I’m as afraid of him now as I was when I met him, but for a different reason. Before I was afraid of what I didn’t know. Now it’s because of what I do know. What will he do to me today? Whatever it is, I’m dying to find out.

I go down to the beach to wait for him.

* * *

I don’t recognize her at first. But I recognize my T-shirt.

A broad-brimmed hat shades her face, and she sits with her toes buried in the sand. She looks up and has difficulty meeting my eyes. She stares at my chest.

I wish I could return the favor, but her chest is covered in the navy blue of my shirt. “What are you doing here?” This is my running time. She shouldn’t be here. I don’t want her here.

I’m not recovered from last night. I can still feel her over every inch of me. Around me. Swallowing me. Killing me. I can’t go through that again.

And yet I have to. I need to. More than I need to breathe.

The need is hotter than the sun on my back, stronger than the tide at my feet. I will move earth and mountains to make her mine again.

She lifts her chin, her hat falls off, and I’m . . . confused.

I don’t know what’s different, but she’s not the same as last night.

Her eyes glow—it seems impossible—but they’re bluer than the water. Bluer than the sky. I want to dive in, to freeze and boil inside her. I get closer. It’s not a choice. It’s a compulsion.

She licks her lips.

I’m overcome with the need to taste them. The taste of her lingers on my tongue. Once will not be enough. I will eat her until I consume her.

She puts up her hand to stop me. “Logan.”

I look down. I’m on my hands and knees in the sand, stalking toward her. I don’t remember kneeling. “I’m going to kiss you.”

She crawls backward. “Why?”

I follow her. My heart beats faster. “Are you afraid of me?” I want you afraid.

She stutters an incoherent response that means yes, and she likes it.

“Why are you wearing my shirt?”

She scrambles faster, but her hand slips. “Because I—”

“Take it off.”

“But—”

“Take. It. Off.” The bite to my voice is sharp, and she jerks in fear. I want to see her. I don’t want her covered from me. Ever. I need to know she’s there.

“I don’t want to.”

I grab her ankle. “I said, take it off!”

“Fuck you,” she yells and kicks me in the chest.

I’m launched backward, and the air is forced from my lungs. When I look at her again, she’s pelting across the sand as fast as she can back to her condo.

I chase her.

* * *

It doesn’t matter how much I want him to devour me. When he looks at me like that, like he wants to consume me, my reaction isn’t what it was. Before he drew me in. Now I want to escape, even though I sought him out. My self-preservation instinct that was absent when I came down to the beach has reasserted itself. I don’t know how long it will last.

“Stop!” he shouts after me.

I don’t turn. I don’t slow. I run as fast as my feet can in the hot, shifting sand. I start up the steps to my terrace and see him chasing me. The feral look on his face spurs me.

Fear slithers into my veins. I barely managed to hang onto myself last night. I won’t be so lucky this time.

I bolt up the stairs and speed across the deck. I get the door almost closed, my hand on the lock, but he shoulders it open.

I duck into the kitchen.

“I will catch you.” He stalks me around the counter.

“No, you won’t.”

He stills and whispers, “No?” A sliver of reason enters his eyes. “As in . . . ?”

A different kind of fear, one of disappointment, moves my tongue. I’m horrified to learn I want to run from him, but I don’t want him to quit chasing me. “Don’t stop.” I have to whisper it to say it.

There is only animal in his eyes.

His skin shines with sweat, and as he creeps closer, I smell him. I fight the urge to go to him.

“You know you want me,” he taunts. “There’s no need to run.” He lunges for me, but I dash from the room and race around the couch.

He comes after me in slow, measured steps. “Poor little girl, are you scared?” He leaps to grab me, but I dodge him.

“What are you afraid of?” He tilts his head like a wolf. “Are you worried I’ll break you?” He bares his teeth in a snarl.

I pivot down the hall, my bare feet slapping on the tile. He curses behind me and something lands with a crash. I scramble into my room.

I slam the door closed and lock it.

He pounds on the other side. “Open the door, Penny!”

My pulse racing, I slide on my back to the floor, my breathing loud and fast.

“You know you want to let me in.” His voice comes level with my ear on the other side of the door.

I jolt and crawl to my bed. “Go away.” I wait for his response, but nothing comes. My back against the bed, I close my eyes and let my breathing slow. He can’t come through the door.

A boom sounds and the door shakes, like something heavy crashed against it. I freeze—he wouldn’t . . . would he?

Another crash and a splintering of wood at the hinges. It occurs to me how little I know about this man, about the lengths he’ll go to get what he wants. Except—I do know. I’m living proof. He’ll warp his life completely, even marry a stranger to get what he wants. A locked door is no obstacle.

I’ve lost.

The door breaks—hinges ripping from the wall, lock tearing through the wood.

He steps through, bare chest and arm muscles heaving, and his voice growls thick, “You didn’t say ‘no.’”

He stands over me, glistening with sweat, face blazing with hunger.

I could run from him, but I’m paralyzed, mesmerized watching him and the strength with which he wants me. My eyes wander lower to find him already hard and straining behind his shorts.

He stalks closer and licks his lips. “You’re going to taste good.”

I have an idea. A wonderful, terrible, awful idea. I may be fixated on the need to be caught by him, but it doesn’t mean it can’t be on my terms.

“Stop.” I hold up my hand.

He pauses and tilts his head in question.

I crawl backward, shimmy out of my bikini bottoms, and let my legs fall open.

He stares where I want him to, where I know I’m swollen and wet, so turned on by him chasing me that no other foreplay is necessary. The aggression drains from his face. His shoulders relax, and his expression turns helpless, as I knew it would.

Unable to tear his eyes from my nakedness, he falls to his knees and crouches before me. His hands glide up my inner thighs. His morning stubble scratches the tender skin, and he buries his face between my legs.

I collapse on my back, thanking God I let him catch me.

His tongue lands where I want it most, licking and spinning fast.

My nails scrape at the floor, grabbing for something, anything to hold onto. I hear my voice groan “More.” He brings my body to life, stroking my nerves, burning pleasure through my blood.

I’m a slave to his mouth, rendered useless except to lie here and take what he gives me. Spirals of ecstasy climb my spine, reaching higher, arching my back. I come, my body sucking everything from his mouth, clenching, desperate to have all of him driving inside me.

My eyes crack open to see his head rise. His lips, glossy from me, curve in a sadistic grin. “It’s my turn.”

I glance at his lap where he’s hard. Though my body vibrates with the need to have him inside me, I’ll gladly take him in my mouth again.

He growls the most animal sound I’ve yet heard from him. “Not this time.” He grabs my hips and flips me over, pulling me to my knees. He pushes my head down until my cheek meets the floor and tugs my ass in the air.

The T-shirt slides down my chest, baring my back. It’s a humiliating pose—him staring at my backside, refusing to look at my face, me unable to see him. It’s the same one he put me in last night—the one where I came just from his cock frictioning over that perfect spot inside me. My breath quickens. It doesn’t matter that I’m still coming down from orgasming on his mouth—I want it again.

He scrambles and swears behind me, and I realize that he doesn’t have a condom with him.

I clench my eyes shut in disbelief that I want to help him. Through my teeth, I say, “In the nightstand.”

I hear the drawer open and close, and the condom wrapper crinkle. I rest and wait, impatience twisting my core in empty spasms, frantic for him.

Then he thrusts into me, and I keen in my throat. It’s like last night. Him taking all of me in the most brutally ecstatic way. Me too insatiable to deny him anything.