The door swings open. No knock, no quiet voice asking if it’s a good time. A shadow falls over the room. The man standing in the doorframe dominates the space like nothing I’ve ever seen or felt before. I would know he was in the room even if I was blindfolded. The air itself seems to charge with electricity, making the hairs on my arm stand on edge. The small voice in my head that normally diagnoses and evaluates people falls silent for the first time since I started graduate school. I listen for it, search for some way to understand this dark figure striding into the room and helping himself to the chair in front of my desk, but there’s nothing, just an empty void, like soundless night rushing into my ears.

His eyes haven’t left me since he entered, and I’m not sure if I’ve breathed. He has dark hair, dark eyes, and a few days worth of beard growth that only makes his perfect jawline even more defined. My throat is dry as I take him in bit by bit, marveling at how every last detail is perfect. He wears a black suit with a black undershirt and black slacks. He has his buttons undone enough to show the tattoos that cover his chest and just barely touch the base of his neck. I notice tattoos on his right hand and fingers as well.

“Aren’t you supposed to ask me questions?” he asks. His voice is deep and smooth. It makes me jump, realizing I’ve just been ogling him since he walked in.

“Y-yes. Let’s get started?” I ask, rather than say. Make statements, not questions. I take a deep breath, trying to recover some semblance of professionalism. Real great first impression.

He leans back in the chair like he owns the place, kicking his leg over his knee as he narrows his eyes at me. “It looked like you got started the moment you saw me.”

I blush. When have I ever blushed in this office? This is my space, where I’m in control. Yet here I am, blushing like a schoolgirl while this man devours me with those bedroom eyes. “It says here you have a history of violence, Mr. Citrione.” I say, looking down at his file, anywhere but into those eyes that are like burning coals, lighting a fire in my chest that snakes between my legs and makes me flush.

Wait… where have I heard that name before? I suddenly remember Damian Citrione, Callie’s husband. Holy shit. If this guy is even remotely related to Damian, he is bad news. Really bad news.

“You want to talk about history? I thought you were supposed to ask me how I feel.”

I purse my lips, getting a little irritated by his attitude. “I’m here for you. If you want to talk about how you feel, let’s talk about how you feel.”

“How about I tell you how I could make you feel?”

“Mr. Citrione—”

“Leo,” he interrupts.

“Leo...I need you to take this seriously if we’re going to make progress.” My voice sounds more firm than I feel. I make the mistake of meeting his eyes again and it’s doing all the wrong things to me.

He licks his lips with a slow seductiveness. I can’t seem to look away, like every motion is designed to draw me in, to lure me closer to him until he gets what he wants. He folds his hands in his lap and I notice how strong they are, how powerful. Jesus, why am I getting so turned on imagining those hands on my skin?

He stares at me unapologetically, eyes roaming my body, lingering on my breasts and mouth.

I feel my nostrils flare and my nose twitch. It’s a bad habit I have when I get angry, and I of all people should know not to telegraph my feelings. “What are you doing?” I snap.

“Taking you seriously.” The hint of a grin at the corner of his mouth puts me over the edge. He’s fucking with me.

I finally regain some sense of control, using my anger to force a calm face. I stare silently at him, using one of the oldest psychology tricks in the book. Sometimes silence is the best prompt, the best way to dig an answer from your patient.

Normally the silent treatment works within seconds. The patient first grows uncomfortable with the situation and then seeks to fill the silence, often choosing to speak about themselves, opening up the lines of communication.

Leo Citrione is different.

He is perfectly at ease in the silence, happy to sit and examine me with those eyes of his that are somehow both cold and full of heat at the same time. Well, if he wants to be Mr. Hardass, I can let him. He’s easy enough on the eyes that I’m perfectly content to just sit here and take him in. Although, I do wish I could stop my mind from wandering and flashing vivid images of his beautiful face between my legs, or from wondering how far down his body those tattoos go.

Despite knowing better, I give in and ask him another question. “Do you enjoy your work, Mr. Citrione?”

He smirks, as if he’s willing to play along with this charade, for now. Why do I feel like he’s the one in control? Like I’m the one lying on the couch while he dissects my mind piece by piece.

“I’m good at what I do.”

“That doesn’t answer my question. Do you enjoy it?”

He purses his lips in thought. “I enjoy being the best.”

“And what is it that you do, exactly?”

There’s laughter in his eyes as he answers. “I guess I’m a jack-of-all-trades, but you could call me a debt collector.”

“A debt collector?” I ask dryly.

He smirks. “Yeah.”

“How exactly does one excel at debt collecting?”

He leans back, planting his feet wide, looking perfectly at home. A tattooed finger taps on his knee as he raises an eyebrow. “By knowing how to read people.”

I shift uncomfortably. “Let’s talk about that. Do you ever feel you spend so much energy focused on reading others that you ignore your own feelings?”

“You could say that. For example, when I’m fucking a woman, I focus mostly on what they are feeling and on how I can get them to cum hardest.”

I swallow, feeling like my mouth is full of sawdust. I’ve never spoken to someone as intense as him. I trained extensively in interpreting body language and sub-verbal cues, but the only thing I’m getting from him is pure confidence and desire, as if he wants to fuck me and he knows with bone-chilling certainty that he will. Every word feels like a flirtation, every gesture and sentence a seduction.

Be a fucking professional, Julia. Take control.

“If you used these powers of perception on yourself, what would you find?”

His air of confidence falters for a few seconds while he answers. His eyes trail down and his brows furrow slightly, as if he has never considered it. “I’d say I’m a man who lives in the darkness.” He pauses, eyes still distant. “And it gets darker every day.”

His words chill me. “Where does this darkness come from?”

The momentary vulnerability passes as quickly as it came, and his cocky smirk is back. “Why don’t you turn off the lights and I’ll tell you about it?”

“Mr. Citrione, if this is going to work, you’re going to have to stop making a mockery of our session.”

“No. If this is going to work, you’re going to have to let me relieve some of that sexual tension you’re carrying. I can practically hear your heart racing from here. Why don’t you be honest with yourself for a second? You want to fuck me. You want it so bad it hurts.”

Hot rage billows up inside me. I’m pissed at being turned into a stammering fool just because he’s gorgeous. I’m pissed that he knows exactly what he’s doing to me. And most of all, I’m pissed that my dream job has turned into a nightmare because my boss is a prick and every extra penny I make is going to my mom’s cancer treatment. I stand abruptly, moving to the couch, sitting down, kicking off my heels, and putting my feet up. He wants to play games? That’s perfectly fine with me. I don’t need to waste my time and energy trying to make progress with him. I grab a magazine from the end table by the couch and start to angrily flip through the pages. I don’t know if it looks like I’m reading or not, but I don’t really care.

He half-turns in his chair, resting his elbow on the backrest and smirks at me.

I slap the magazine down to my thighs and glare at him. “Stop staring at me.”

“If you knew how fucking gorgeous you were, you wouldn’t ever ask me to stop looking at you.”

I blush again. Dammit. Who talks like that? What kind of person just…I lift the magazine again, bending my neck down a little until I can’t see his perfect face still pointed directly toward me.

I hear him stand and move toward me. He sits beside me on the couch, so close that his legs are against mine. I never thought such an innocent contact with another person could feel so sensual. My body practically explodes. Every nerve ending screaming for more, begging me for friction, for his skin against my skin and the heat of his body. I take a deep breath and begin to stand, but his arm flies out, grabbing me by the wrist and keeping me from leaving.

“No,” he says.

“Excuse me? Let me go.”

His face is bathed in arrogance as he looks up at me from the couch, perfectly at ease. “Under one condition.”

I want to tell him to go fuck himself, but the truth is I’m curious. What condition?

“Look me in the eye and tell me you don’t want to fuck me. Right now. Right here on this couch. Tell me you don’t want to wrap your hands around my cock and feel me inside you.”

It feels like I just ran a mile at a full sprint. My mouth is dry, my heart is pounding so hard I feel it in my temples, and I can barely breathe. I look at his hand on my wrist and then back to his smoldering eyes. My eyebrows draw together in confusion as I try to piece together what he just said, making sure I heard him right.

I’m not this kind of girl. I’m no prude, by any means, but I don’t just sleep with men I barely know. Even kissing a patient could mean losing my license to practice and wasting years of schooling. Hell, even if he wasn’t a patient, I don’t sleep with convicts either. I’ve never even dated a guy with a criminal record for Christ’s sake. So why the hell can’t I say it? Why are the words dying in my throat? No, I don’t want that. Why can’t I say it?