I come home to my apartment one day, Hopper right behind me as he always is. We never spend a night apart now. I walk into the bedroom to kick off my heels and am greeted with an arc of beautiful glass bottles laid across the width of the dresser. Some are sculpted into the shapes of angels or nude female torsos, some with funky flower molds on top of the stopper and some just sleekly black.

“I have a perfume store in my bedroom,” I squeal, running over to unstopper and sniff each on in turn.

“You didn’t treat yourself to anything with my Amex. This is just the start of the gifts I want to give you.” Hopper comes up behind me and slides his hands around my hips.

Our eyes meet in the mirror and we both ignite with lust.

Afterward, we lie sprawled across the bed, completely enervated and spent. The back of my head lies on Hopper’s taut bicep as we chat about ourselves. I guess we’re both eager to share and catch up to knowing each other personally as well as we’ve come to know each other physically.

You might think I was remarkably unbothered about my fate after being so terrified about being returned to it. There’s a funny thing about fear – the sooner you can face it, the faster it’s going to lose its power to terrorize you.

“It’s what they do, the people that control us,” Hopper informed me. “Keep us afraid of everything so we do as we’re told. It begins in kindergarten.”

“I doubt you ever did as you were told, even as a toddler.”

“True, but my father used to thrash me for it.”

“That’s horrible,” I say, wrapping my arms around my huge man trying to give solace to the small boy inside.

“It was back then, but it made me a fighter and got me to where I am now.”

“Are you giving me there’s a good side to every bad girl fable?” I joke.

“There’s nothing but good sides to you, Grace.”

When his voice husks my name like that, I’m inevitably spread wide open again within moments. Hopper is granite hard and pushing inside my wetness, desperate to be deeply buried inside. He has a voracious appetite, although he blames it all on me. Says he was never like this every single day before I strolled into his coffee room. Either way, we still cannot get enough of each other.

One beautiful September morning, all golden as late summer is, we walk to the office from my/his apartment and stop into Clarence for his special coffee drink, dark as tar but the aroma is amazing. As are the cakes they sell. He orders a doppio and my latte then, when I look at him a second too long or too intently, he bundles me behind the counter, up the stairs into the cramped washroom and shoves the lower half of my wraparound dress, my daily uniform, apart. We hear them calling his name, to pick up his coffees and double dark brownies over and over while he pounds into me bent over the sink.

Since he discovered the way my pussy runs juices at being shackled in his closet, Hopper calls me into his office frequently.

“You’re a torturer,” I moan, breathily as he pulls my wrap dress open and trails his feather duster across my skin until I tremble with rising lust. The pressure of desire fills my breasts and Hopper pinches the hard points.

“Tell me you don’t love it,” he rasps, his lips right against my ear, tangled in my hair, inhaling my scent. “You can’t lie Baby, your body betrays you. From the moment I set eyes on you your body was screaming with yearning.”

He’s not wrong. That first day in the break room, I wanted him with every nerve ending but it seemed too crazy to admit. Hopper found me in there one day and replayed our first meeting, leaning up against the door his gaze traveling all over my body as I made coffee, painfully aware that he was behind me, desperate to keep myself in check.

He moved toward me the same way and covered my mouth with his just as commandingly. My fingers wrapped around the back of his solid neck and then our bodies took over. Not holding back this time even though there were still a few late stragglers left in the office. Who drinks coffee past four right?

We don’t care. We live dangerously every day. Hopper lifts me onto the countertop like I’m weightless and shoves my thighs apart. He tears my panties to one side and slides his fingers through my soaking wet folds with a deep groan, arrowing directly for my tight entrance.

We thrash around on each other, knocking cups flying from the counter, a jug of milk. We don’t care about the world around us at all. It’s as though it’s on another plane of existence. Or everyone is a machine and we’re the only humans left on the planet. There are looks of course, from my co-workers. No one would dare say anything to me but I know they think I’m a slutty little tramp making out with the boss every day.

“She’ll be gone soon,” I overheard a little trio of employees by the water cooler. “She’s only a summer intern.”

Will I?

Is Hopper really playing out his summer fantasies with me? Even though he isn’t married like those other mega rich guys that cheat on their wives all summer with their secretary, he could still return to his old ways as soon as Labor Day rolls around.

One Friday afternoon, there are barely repressed smirks as I’m called into the boss’s office. I stand and brush down my wrap dress as the excitement rises into my chest. Hopper acquired some little pincher thingies that he clamps gently around my nipples so they’re constantly being pinched as he lightly teases my skin with the tickler or the end of his tie. The combination of pain and delight sends me over the edge. He chuckles hard as his fingers slip into my panties and find me dripping wet for him. My nipples are already prodding hungrily at the silky jersey as I push open his door.

I startle, finding Janice seated across from Hopper and, oh shit, the same two beat cops that came to arrest me six weeks ago. My heart pounds against my ribs in an agonized beat. Am I being accused again?

“Tell Ms Hart what you came to tell me,” Hopper says, with a satisfied smile and a wink at me.

“Yes,” the partner, not the one that was desperate to haul me off, says, “we have arrested one -” he looks at his notes - “Yanka Zukov at the, er, Bellagio mall in Las Vegas. She was buying over ten thousand dollars worth of designer clothing when fraud detection picked her up.”

“With...” Hopper prompts him.

“With your American Express card, Sir.”

“Yanka stole the card from me?” I wail. “But how? It was always kept locked in my room.”

“Ms Zukov has forty seven counts of grand larceny. I doubt she was much deterred by the lock on a door in a halfway house,” the cop says.

“Wow.” I’m shocked but a warmth infuses me as I see how proud Hopper looks as his eyes meet mine. He never once wavered in his trust of me, despite the evidence all pointing toward me being guilty. He believed my story and me. That brought us together.

Even Janice looks sheepish now as she was the opposite of Hopper, willing to believe the alleged evidence despite my protests of innocence. She shows the cops out of the office and Hopper grins at me with a wolfish hunger that sets my heart skittering again but in an entirely different way.

“The officers didn’t handcuff you but you are still a bad girl and I’m going to have to take charge of it,” he says, reaching into a drawer for his restraints.

He gets up out of his chair and approaches me which starts me trembling all over with anticipation. He roughly pulls my arms behind my back and leans into my body to reach around and lock me in. The solid press of his taut chest against my erect nipples sends sparks of heat through every pore. Hopper’s breath is already ragged and his bulging pants tell me his lust is pushing at his skin, yearning to be released.

Instead of leading me to the closet to pin my arms helplessly above my head, he shoves me up on his desk and pushes my thighs wider than ever before. My arms are held behind, supporting myself on my palms as Hopper tears my panties to one side and plunges into me. He’s destroyed more underwear than a human hurricane this summer but he’s very good about replacing it with ever more over-priced but beautiful replacement sets.

Afterward he leaves me sitting cuffed and helpless on his desk.

“You can be my objet d’art,” he grins and pretends to read over some contract while I sit there spread open and exposed for his perusal.

“I’m curious about why you were so cold with me, even though you claimed to believe that it wasn’t me that ran up your card with world trips,” I say, stroking the leathery side of his neck with the backs of my fingers.

“You know why,” he grits.

“I really don’t.”

“Because the thought of you leaving me and going that far away was fucking intolerable. I’d never had that kind of feeling about a woman leaving me and it threw me off for a while.”

Never. He said he never felt like that before. Pride and, I guess, joy flow through my veins knowing Hopper feels that way about me.

“And now that summer’s over?”

“It’s not done yet. We’ve got the last wedding of the season tomorrow and this one is the biggest of all.”

“We’re going?”

After the last one, I’m definitely shaking with nerves, not looking forward to the attempts at humiliation even though I don’t care how anyone judges me now. They can think what they want and probably always will, but it doesn’t affect me.

Sophie glares at me from across the room but I ignore her. None of these people means anything to me. Hopper and I are only here for the business networking. And for the most part, people seem to have forgotten I was a waif he plucked from the pound just a couple of months ago and accepted seeing us together around town. Or maybe they choose to forget because they want Hopper’s monetary contributions.

Only at one point after the bride has thrown her bouquet to her maid of honor and the couple have disappeared, do I hear a voice behind us say, “Hopper Grady fancies himself some kind of Dr Dolittle, creating a perfect woman out of a common little thief.”

I feel Hopper bristle, then crack up laughing.

He turns around, keeping his hand firmly on me for support, to Cassandra, Sophie’s stepmother.

“Dr Dolittle talked to animals,” he tells her. “If your expensive private education hadn’t been wasted on a dimwit like you, you’d know it was Professor Higgins.”

“I’ve seen My Fair Lady,” the woman squawks, “And I know he won’t marry such a low class tramp and she goes back to her own kind.”

Hopper throws her a look but pulls me away, out of the house and down the beach. The same one as we first stood on when he nustled into my neck from behind. I recognize the house on the shore, looking much smaller now that I’m accustomed to the palatial homes.

“I guess that’s going to keep coming up,” I murmur, kicking my toes at the sand. Hopper squeezes my hand and I see he’s grinning secretly to himself.

“You’re a keeper. No doubt about that,” he says.

“You mean you want to continue like this, after the summer I mean?” My heart is pounding faster than a marathon runner at mile twenty six. I’m also coming in to the home strait.

“You working for me, coming to my office every day?” he asks, like he’s considering his options. My nerves pick up until I’m quivering all down my legs.

“Twice a day,” I correct him.

“Yeah I want to keep that.”

“And I continue living in your guest apartment?”

“I guess you’re going to make me pay your twenty thousand a month too?”

“No, I’m not that kind of girl,” I squeak.

“You’re going to need it to pay your lingerie expenses,” he rasps, then pulls me into him so my back lines his chest as his arms circle tightly around me, crushing me to him. The setting sun is nowhere near as gorgeous as Hopper’s gaze but I love it when his solid body lines my spine.

“I could continue like this as we are forever, couldn’t you?” he asks, his breath hot on my neck.

“Yes,” I squeak. He cannot even imagine how I want this to be my life. I can hardly believe this is happening.

“I’m a man so I’m as easy to please as a retriever and happy as we are, but I know that women want more, to feel secure in love. Do you feel secure, Babe?”

I don't know whats happening to me but tears are running down my cheeks. I can’t speak so I just nod agreement. Having Hopper, plus his trust and desire for me, has made me into the most confident and secure person I never thought I’d be. I can be completely happy just like this.

“Here on this beach is where I first knew you were my girl,” he says.

“You knew back then?” I say in amazement.

“I’m a man, we tend to know when we know. It seems right that this is where I close the deal,” Hopper says, dropping to his knees and twirling me around to face him.

What is he doing?

Tears flow fast and uncontrollable over my cheeks, for no reason I can fathom besides the massive expansion in my chest. He looks so unlike my cocky Hopper Grady, kneeling on both knees in the sand wearing a five thousand dollar suit. My hands fly to my mouth to hold my heart in.

My head whips side to side in ultimate disbelief as he slides a bright blue little box from his pocket. He tips open the lid and offers me the hugest diamond I’ve ever seen.

“If you haven't had enough weddings to last a lifetime, will you marry me my beautiful perfect Grace?”

My head seems to have taken on a life of its own. I halt the side to side shaking before he gets the idea I’m refusing him and nod hard. Very hard and fast. The ring glides onto my finger as Hopper pulls me down on my knees to face him. His hand slides up my back until his fingers dagger through my hair and catch it taut as he cups the back of my head. Holding me rigidly cupped in his huge palm, his mouth covers mine for a kiss that lasts until the light disappears and he claims me forever.

Hopper’s tongue probes every corner of my mouth like he still doesn't know me intimately enough and demands to. Then it entwines with mine and tugs me into him. We only come back to earth when a rogue wave crashes the sand and rushes around our thighs, shocking us back to reality with the water’s fall chill.

Hopper powers up to stand and raise me up in his hands. His eyes are glowing with the triumph of winning. Mine probably are too and this first triumph feels so sweet and puts the seal on my new life.

“I meant what I said about seeing enough weddings,” Hopper says, leading me by the hand back up the beach.

“We don’t have to get married,” I say. “I’ve got the ring and I meant too, when I said I can be happy like this forever.”

“Oh no, I definitely intend to make an honest woman of you. I just want it to be you and me though.”

“Like run away to Vegas?”

“I was thinking more like Tahiti. There are some private islands there that are pure paradise. I can rent one and have you running around naked for a week purely for my pleasure.”

“So you really did mean it when you said nothing would change.”

“Very funny, Mrs Hopper.”