I pull in front of her house the next morning, expecting I’ll need to drag her out. No. The truck barely stops and she’s trotting down her front steps and sliding into the passenger seat.

She’s wearing a white skirt and some frilly top. I’m trying to ignore how shapely her legs are and how tempting her cleavage is. I can almost see down her shirt.

“Let’s go. Before anyone sees.” Her voice is deliberately cool, unaffected by me. Only because she avoids looking at me.

Today marks the end of her prissy little life. Today I make her mine, an instrument for me to control. In an hour, she signs her life over to me.

It feeds a morsel of satisfaction to my craving for revenge, but one bite is not enough. It only starves me for more.

I can’t keep the triumph from plastering my face with something close to glee. My need to take her in my hands and control her is surprisingly sickening. Sickeningly good.

I rest my arm on the back of her seat and peer at her until she turns those fear-stricken eyes on me. “Everyone’s going to see when I move in with you.”

Her lips part on rapid breaths. “You’re moving in with me?” Again, I horrify her. She makes it so easy, and it tempts me to do it again and again.

“How else are we making your brother believe this and give you the money?” She’s fidgeting with her purse, and her lack of response annoys me. I will make her answer. “Do you want me to tell him too?”

“No. Blake doesn’t need to worry about this on top of everything else.”

She’d rather deal with me alone than her brother. Exactly as I predicted, she wants to protect him from this. It’s strange to see something I’ve contrived work out so perfectly according to plan, and I’m pleased. There’d be far less opportunity for revenge on her and the brother if he forked over the cash. It’s more satisfying torture for her to spend two weeks trapped with the likes of me.

I put the truck in drive and pull away from the curb.

“How old is this truck?” She scrutinizes the ripped upholstery and the radio with the tape deck. Whether she’s taunting me or distracting herself, either way, it’s brave—but stupid to provoke me.

Unless she wants my wrath. Perhaps she does want me to upset and ravage her too-perfect world.

I accept her invitation. “It’s young enough to get me across the country, and to drive you to the courthouse.”

“You came from Nashville?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re wearing that for a wedding?”

I glance at my T-shirt and cargo shorts. “It isn’t a wedding.”

She points at my shoes. “You can’t stand in front of a judge wearing flip-flops.”

“Why not?”

“Do you want this to look real? No judge will take us seriously with you dressed like that.”

“Which is exactly what you want, isn’t it?” I’m not offended. I’m wearing this because I don’t have anything better. It’s ragged because I can’t afford anything else. Because I’ve made choices, because I have priorities. I spent most of what I had left on the gas to get here. The money I’ll get from marrying her matters as much as the misery I’m causing her.

“I don’t want to be turned away and have to do this again. It was hard enough getting someone to cover my shift today.”

“I’m not changing my clothes.” She can’t be thinking of this as a real wedding.

My thoughts are steam-rolled by an image: her under me, me fucking her—her taking it and me loosing everything I have into her.

Her screaming for more.

I shove the image away as fast as it came. But it doesn’t change what I’d give to run my hands up her skirt and bury my face between her breasts.

* * *

It’s there. The memory of his mouth. The heat of him against me. My mindless reaction. How badly I wanted to beg him not to stop.

Yesterday I fought him as much as I fought my need to let him. I had this fantasy of him pinning me to the wall, peeling my clothes back, forcing me to open for him.

Then he fucks me as hard as his brutal stares promise.

My gaze catches on his crotch. I wonder how big his dick is.

I wrench my eyes away, focusing out the window at the palm trees passing by. I can’t hide the heat rising on my face, and from the corner of my eye I see him glancing at me.

He saw me staring at his lap.

The truck warms like a sauna, broiling with a swirling electricity between us.

I want to say the tension is about what’s coming, this permanent, intimate-but-not-intimate thing of marriage. But it’s not that. There’s a physical awareness—I can feel the heat of his muscles radiating and brushing over my skin. I hear myself breathing. Or maybe it’s him. I can’t tell but there’s a whooshing sound in my ears, a throbbing that could be my lungs. It could be my pulse, but whatever it is, it’s making me hot.

I reach for the temperature dials on his dash. It’s so dusty I could write my name in it. “Don’t you have A/C in this thing?”

“Nope.”

“It’s stifling in here.” Anything is better than admitting I’m turned on enough to smolder to ashes on his front seat.

He doesn’t respond, just rolls down his window. Literally rolls, like a hand crank, not an electric button.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen one of those,” I say.

He snorts. “You need me to do yours?”

He stretches across my lap, reaching for my door, and my throat constricts. I want him to lay across me. To press his back to my chest. To touch me with his heat and burn me.

“No!” I screech. I stub my finger on the door in my hurry to roll down the window myself.

The breeze is tinged with the salty sea air, and it cools my blushing face.

I hold my breath for a moment, willing myself to get through this. It’s two weeks. Less if I can convince my brother to get him the money sooner. My gut twists, braiding itself into a knot of anxiety. Blake is the last person I want to see today. I don’t know how I’m going to convince him, marriage or not.

“We’re going to need rings,” I blurt.

“What?” he snaps in the bitter tone that’s his normal voice.

“If my brother is going to believe me when I see him later today, I’m going to need a ring.”

A low growl sounds in his chest. “I’m not paying for it.”

“I didn’t say you had to. But we have to go shopping before I see him.”

He doesn’t respond, just pulls into the parking lot of the courthouse. It occurs to me: His beat up truck, his casual clothes—he has no money. Of course he has no money. That’s why he’s after mine. “Where do you live?”

“On the beach.”

“Are you renting?”

“Camping.”

“Wait, on the beach?” I can’t hide my revulsion. I love the beach, the sand between my toes, the water lapping at my ankles, the warm sun on my face. But sleeping there, in a tent . . . “Which beach?”

“Yours.”

“You mean—”

“Next to your building.”

I see them sometimes from my terrace, an occasional tent camper on the sand. It’s illegal. They’re not supposed to be there. “How long have you been . . .”

His gaze shifts to me from the corner of his eye, and I gasp. The predator is there, that I’m hunting you, are you sure you want to know you’re being hunted? look he had on the first day I saw him at the hospital. He wasn’t only following me at lunch. That was just the first time he let me see him. He’s been watching me at night too.

“How long?” I whisper.

“You don’t want to know.”

“Three nights? Four?”

He cuts his head back and forth.

My heart thrums faster. “A week?”

“And a half.”

He’s been sitting outside my condo. Watching me. “Can you see my terrace?” I know it’s visible from the beach. I don’t sunbathe nude or anything, but it’s my private space. The idea of him spying on me when I didn’t know . . .

“I can see everything you let me see.” His voice rumbles like a train barreling down the track, drowning all other sound.

The fear and excitement—the spike in adrenaline I felt every time he stared at me at the hospital—is back. It washes through my blood like a high and steals away my anxiety—about my father, my brother, my life. All gone. In its place is the flood of sensation, everything in me igniting and spinning.

He’s been watching me, at night, through my windows, for weeks. I know I should be freaked, but instead I want it. I want him to stare at me. I want to be stared at.

I wonder what I would’ve done if I’d known he was watching. Would I have closed my drapes tighter? Or would I have parted them . . . given him a show?

The truck stops, and I open my eyes—I didn’t realize they were shut.

He has parked outside the courthouse. I glance at the entrance arch and see someone familiar walking inside.

“Shit.” I duck beneath the dashboard.

“What?”

“Get down!” I pull his arm down until his head is level with the steering wheel.

“What the hell?”

“Shh!”

“Who is it?” He glares at me.

“Blake.”

“Why’s he here?”

“He’s a lawyer. He must be in court today.” But suddenly that isn’t important. Because Logan’s eyes are inches from mine, transfixing me. “They’re green.”

He jerks back like I’ve slapped him.

“Wait.” I reach for his face and clasp his cheek.

For days I wondered what color they were. They’re so light, they’re almost white. The irises would blend with the outer white of his eyes except there’s a black ring—or maybe it’s dark green—a line around his irises. That’s what makes them look dark yet light at the same time.

His breath brushes my cheek, his lips part, his tongue flicks out, and I realize I’m hypnotized—by the mouth of the lion.

* * *

Her hand is on my face.

I have the urge to nip at her, to bite her and frighten her away.

But the stronger urge—the one that means I can’t keep my eyes off her mouth, can’t get enough of her begging eyes, full of the cloudless, sweet life I never got to lead—that urge wins.

I clutch the back of her head and seize her mouth with mine.

Sweet. So fucking sweet.

Fresh as spring, pure as downy cotton, and ripe for taking. I suck her lips between mine with a frenzy I didn’t know I possessed. She whimpers, and it’s like on the floor of her condo: her mouth opens before I ask.

I delve into her mouth, capturing as much of her as I dare. Not as much as I want, but as much as I can’t resist.

Fire.

How can something so sweet be so hot?

I stretch over her, pushing her into the seat with my chest. My hand up her skirt gripping her thigh, her fingers pulling my hair until it stings.

She gasps hard and I bury my face in her neck, sucking her skin, inhaling her scent. She’s soft as silk and fragile, pliable, bendable to my will.

However I want her, whatever I say, she’ll do it.

That, as much as a car door slamming, shocks me.

“Shit!” I pull away from her and leap from the truck. I rest my hands on my knees to catch my breath. What was that? I groan to myself.

I’ll never get anything I want from this woman if I can’t keep my hands off her.

But maybe . . .

I want money. I have to marry her to get it, but that’s as much an inconvenience to me as it is to her. What am I really taking from her? If my goal is revenge, if I want to ruin her life, maybe I really need to ruin her.

Maybe I need to take everything she has to give me. Including herself.