Blake has something planned for me, and God help me, I’m dying to know what it is.

I’ll do more than look at her.

My imagination is limited. Everything I try to envision him “doing to me” seems too tame, too mundane. Nothing this man does would ever be mundane. It would be abrupt bursts of intensity, turned passion, turned . . .

I shake the thoughts from my head.

Dad said I shouldn’t speak to him. Blake is the exact kind of Southern old money I’ve sworn off. Fantasizing about him is a waste of time.

But I have to know why he threatened my father.

I walk back to the file cabinets, away from the foyer, where no one can see me, and start digging through the old papers again. There have to be some answers here.

“You didn’t think I left, did you?”

I jump at his voice—the dark tone, as dark as his eyes, sends shivers down my spine. He’s here. Behind me. I try to turn around. “Blake?”

“Sh.” He holds my shoulders and whispers in my ear. “Do you want your father to hear?”

My heart speeds and my hands start to sweat. I really thought he’d left, but I feel his breath on my neck, his body hot at my back. It’s not proper, not here in my father’s office, but I want him to press me into the cabinets and make me come alive.

“He said I shouldn’t speak to you,” I murmur.

He traces a hand up my arm. “But you’re not going to listen to him, are you?”

I should, but his mere hand lights up my insides, too exhilarating to resist. “Are you going to tell me why my father’s so angry at you? Why you were shouting at him?”

“Maybe.” He nuzzles my ear, and I feel his lips brush my skin.

I turn to face him, finding him closer than he should be, but as close as I’d like. His eyes, mottled with an infinity of secrets, stare down at me with all the mystery and desire I’m needing and dying to have in my world. He’s a potentially dangerous man—full of threats and anger.

But hell, I could melt from the way he looks at me, sink right down into my shoes on the floor from how hot his eyes are. His lips are right there, turned up at the corners, not with lightness but with malicious intent.

“What are you going to do to me?” I can’t believe the words are coming out of my mouth until they already have. What do I want him to do to me? is the real question. Or more like: What don’t I want him to do to me?

His gaze drops from my eyes to my mouth and back—like he can’t decide which he wants more, to look at me or kiss me. “Have dinner with me. At my estate.”

“From threats to a date? You do keep a girl guessing.”

He slips a hand to my waist and brushes it over my hip. “If you like games, I’m happy to play. Just know that you’ll lose.” I can feel the heat of his palm through my skirt.

“I like games. I’m very good at them.” And I want to play them with you.

“Don’t say that until you know the rules.”

“Are you going to teach them to me?” I bite my lip.

He touches his thumb to my lip.

“Give me a reason.”

My lips brush across his fingertips as I speak. “Why should I ignore my father’s warning and come with you?”

“A reason?” He stalks closer, pressing me into the wall.

I grab the lapels of his jacket, needing him to kiss me, begging to get a fill of him beyond just the promises of his eyes. “A good one.”

He doesn’t disappoint.

He grasps my face and tilts my head up to him. His lips meet mine in a rush of passion—all the things he’s holding back in his body and his words set loose from his mouth into mine.

As hot and hard as I’d hoped it would be.

There’s no testing, no teasing, just full-on him, intense and unrestrained. Consuming me and filling me with all the rage roaring through his body. I feel it now—the compressed anger, the animal behind his mad gaze. Any hope I had of escaping this man—every attempt I made to get away from him last night—is gone.

I open my mouth and his tongue invades like a force of nature, unleashing a strength of feeling I had only guessed could come from a kiss. It sweeps through my body, heating me to my core, making me ache to be naked and laid out for him to do this to all of me—for how he would awaken all the things in me I’ve been so desperate to feel.

My hands grasp at his neck, his face, his hair, and I pull him against me, needing to go along on this ride he’s promised me.

But too soon, he breaks the kiss and jerks away from me.

I moan in protest and vainly reach for him, my whole body throbbing with want.

He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and stares at me like I’ve turned into a bomb—one that’s ticking away and set to go off.

I lean against the wall and brush my hair back from my face. “That’s a good enough reason,” I say, my breathing as jagged as his.

His stare turns brutal—a flash of anger so hot it scorches. I stiffen in alarm. But he closes his eyes and grits his teeth, and when he reopens them, the brutality is gone.

“I’ll pick you up when you get off work,” he grumbles, almost like he doesn’t want to, except I catch a glimpse at the crotch off his pants, where he is visibly hard. Oh, he wants to.

“Five thirty.”

“Fine,” he says, then stalks away. Without a goodbye, without a backward glance. His footsteps echo down the hall, then the front door slams behind him.

I’m in so much trouble.

And that’s how I like it.