Christian thrusts into me with total abandon like it’s his last night on earth—hard, fast, strong, and deep.

I was looking at books in his den. It’s an impressive collection, and it distracted me from the silence that fell over the room It distracted me until it didn’t. Turning, I dropped my hand.

The words I’d planned to say flew right out of my mind when I saw the look in his eyes.

There was pain there, like he was fighting off something sharp and cruel in his head, but obscuring it was a pure, masculine need. His muscles tensed underneath his jacket. His jaw worked. Then came the smoldering smile that sent electric jolts of lust in a wave from my nipples to the hallowed space between my legs.

I didn’t need words to know what to do next.

I crossed the room, pulled him toward me, and kissed him hard enough to shake the pain loose from where it was stabbing through his heart.

He responded instantly, wrapping his powerful arms around my waist and pulling me in tight, so close to his body that my feet almost left the ground.

It wasn’t far from the den to the bed and once he’d carried me there, we attacked each other’s clothes until they were all piled in a rumpled heap on the floor.

He pushed me down onto my back on the bed and I arched up to meet him, locking my arms around his neck, kissing him even deeper, and then I shoved my weight upward and sideways, turning us over by sheer force of will.

I straddled him, bucking against his hardness, already slick, the wetness coating his skin.

“Jesus,” he said on an exhale, the heat of the word catching in the hollow of my shoulder.

I took that as a sign to press into him more forcefully, striking a rhythm, drawing my wetness over his shaft again and again until I felt his muscles clenching underneath me, his hips rising to meet mine with more intensity. Then, in one smooth movement, I lined myself up over his cock and drove my hips down toward his, taking him all in.

When our bodies slammed together, he heaved a guttural sound from behind clenched teeth that was half relief, half desperation. It unlocked something in me, pushing me over the edge to wildness, and I worked against him with a fury I had never before experienced in my life.

It took him by surprise. I could tell by the sharp breath he drew in, but it only took him seconds to parallel my pace and intensity, taking in everything I had to give him, hands pressed tightly on my hips to pull me down onto him even harder than I could manage by myself.

Next thing I know, he’s lifting me away from him, turning me, so that I’m on hands and knees, my palms pressed into the million-thread-count comforter beneath me. Christian positions himself behind me, lines the head of his cock up with my opening, and stops. I’m panting breathlessly.

It’s a cruel tease.

I buck my hips backward against him, trying to get him to sink inside me, but he resists. His hands are clenched on my hips, gripping tightly and steadily, like he wants to be in control.

I can give him that.

I press my breasts down against the comforter and arch my back, head down, ass up, hands clenching the comforter. “Fuck me.” I know he wants to hear it as much as I want to say it.

“Beg.”

His voice is hard, uncompromising, and the tone sends a new gush of wetness between my legs.

“Please!” I urge. “Please.”

He remains still for three more heartbeats and I clutch the comforter in my fists, willing myself to stay down, to stay still. He is loving this. Something about that man’s mistake at the fundraiser made him feel out of control—that much is clear—and though I can’t read his mind, I’d bet my life savings that this is exactly the remedy he needs.

Is that all this is? says the little voice in my head, but it’s struck down by the rest of my body, which is dying to have him inside me again.

This is who he is, the one behind all the barriers put up in public, behind all the social constrictions, behind closed doors.

With me and me alone.

It’s a great deal, if he would—

At that moment he crashes into me with such a powerful thrust that it takes my breath away, crushes my chest into the bed, makes my pussy clench around Christian’s steely hardness. I’m moments away from climax, and I squeeze my eyes shut, gasp in a breath. My body responds to him, going higher, higher, higher until I’m careening over, crying out into the mattress. Moments later I hear Christian’s answering roar as he pins me back against him and comes hard, his hips spasming even as he stays buried deep inside me.

We’re frozen in that position for a heartbeat, then two, and then he pulls out and falls forward onto the bed, maneuvering up to the pillows while he turns me over onto my side with one hand, his arm wrapped around my waist.

He doesn’t say anything.

It’s not long before his breathing steadies and slows.

I lay there next to him, his breathing steady. The room darkens as the sun sets behind the buildings. My mind is too hyped up to sleep, too caught up in the electrifying encounter we had.

When I can’t stand it any longer, I gently disengage his arm from my waist and slip out of bed. I don’t want to put on my outfit from the office—a sleeveless dress and a short-sleeved blazer—but I don’t have any other clothes with me, so my first stop is Christian’s walk-in closet. In one of the lower drawers, I find a pair of lounge pants and a plain t-shirt that smell like him. I throw it on, luxuriating in the softness of the cloth.

I don’t want to look at my phone in the dark room and risk waking him up, so I pad down the hall to his den, with its bookshelves and leather furniture. There’s a certain armchair I’m dying to sink into.

There’s a small table lamp in the corner that gives the room a pleasing glow. I shut the door closed behind me. The armchair, tucked in the corner and surrounded by shelves full of first editions and other of Christian’s favorites, is both plushly soft and supportive. I curl up in it, tucking my legs underneath me in a comfortable and relaxing position, and sigh. Pure satisfaction.

I’m about to unlock the screen of my phone when something on a nearby shelf catches my eye. It’s a journal like the other ones I saw at the Cottage—exactly the same, but it’s all by itself.

I bite my lip. I shouldn’t snoop. Absolutely not.

If I do, I can admit it to him later on.

It’s probably an archive of teenage angst in written form.

I pull the journal down from the shelf and start to flip through it.

There are pages and pages of neat handwriting, so neat that it makes me want to put it back. This kind of writing doesn’t seem like it would be something the party animal Christian that I know would write, and suddenly I’m struck by my actions, and what a terrible invasion of privacy this is.

I turn the journal over in my hands to close it, but my nail catches on the back cover, revealing the very last page.

There, scratched in a panicked scrawl, the writing appearing so different from that which has been written throughout the rest of the book, are words that make my heart thud with anxious fear.

WHAT HAVE I DONE

I HAVE TO BE HIM

FOREVER

FOREVER

FOREVER

My stomach lurches and churns as my mind spins into overdrive. This is some kind of joke, right? Or some kind of teenage outburst? The hairs prickling up on the back of my neck tell me I’m wrong. This is something I was never supposed to see. Something nobody was ever supposed to see.

I’m flashing back, reflecting and piecing together one memory after the other, of all the things I’ve seen Christian do since we met on that rainy day on the sidewalk. Then I remember the way he froze up when I asked about memorials during our very first meeting. The way it pissed him off when I said he was like a different person at the Bowery Mission. The way his face went white as a ghost when that man, Matthews, called him by his brother’s name.

His brother’s name.

Elijah.

Then the final piece clicks into place, and I clap my own hand over my mouth to keep from screaming.

Christian’s tattoo.

My eyes lingered on it that afternoon at the Cottage, tracing the lines, trying to make sense of each of the sections.

Carolyn’s voice haunts my thoughts. They got matching tattoos the same week that he died.

In one of those sections of the tattoos, between the silhouettes of various predatory animals, is an intricate design. If you look at it for long enough, it resolves into a letter.

But the letter on Christian’s chest isn’t a C.

It’s an E.