“What the fuck is this?”

I’ve been straddling Lar’s chest for the last hour, waiting for him to wake up and face the music. It’s pretty comical how deeply he can sleep.

I’m holding his phone aloft when he finally pops his eyes open.

“Uh, a virgin pussy on my chest?”

“Shut up. This,” I say, shoving the phone screen in his face.

Lars’s eyes come into focus and then he wipes his hands over his face.

“Guess the jig is up is what the fuck this is,” he says, giving me a wicked bad-boy grin.

“Are you serious right now? I woke up to some alerts going off and I remembered I didn’t have my phone, so I figured it must be your phone. So I dug your phone out of your jeans and saw that you had an alert for activity at my apartment. Oh, and then! I found my phone in your other pocket! Amber took my phone at the library once Morty had me at gunpoint in the car. Can you please explain how you found this?”

He suddenly sits up in bed, sliding me off and onto the mattress.

“Wait, what?” he asks.

“Yeah, that’s right. I found out you’ve been tailing me. Tailing, that’s the word, right? Or maybe stalking?”

“Tink.”

I get up on my knees and point in his face. “You don’t get to call me nicknames until you tell me the whole truth. Have you been stalking me?”

He booms at me, and he’s so angry I fall backward and he’s now hovering over me. “Well if I hadn’t been watching you, where the fuck do you think you’d be right now?”

I huff. “Oh, so the ends justify the means?”

He gives me the look of a predator, and he’s literally on all fours on the bed, staring down at me like I’m about to get eaten alive.

“Listen, Miss Thing. You had no business being in that apartment complex. I took it upon myself to protect you. You want the truth? I put a tracker on your phone. Why? Because you fucking handed it over to me on a silver platter. That right there told me you were too trusting to be left alone. And I had cameras installed outside your window and in the hallway. And…I put a tracker on your car. That’s how I found you in the end.”

I hiss up at him, “Unfuckingbelievable.”

He pins my wrists to the mattress and lowers his head so his voice vibrates against my neck, just below my ear. He speaks calmly but lethally. “Hey, I could have installed a camera through our shared wall but that would have been an invasion of your privacy.”

I swallow. Fuck him for stalking me. And fuck him for making me angry and yet still feel him in my bones.

That deep voice has a vibration that reaches down into my most secret places, calling on my body to drench itself.

“Lars, you have issues,” I say.

“I got news for you, darlin’, we’re in the same fucking issues club. You like the risk as much as I do. Why else would you be living in that shit hole? And don’t give me the poor little girl sob story.”

I struggle against him, but it’s futile.

“Why do you care what I do?” I spit out.

“It’s my job,” he grunts.

“Not really, though, is it? More like your job has perks that you used against me, right? If you’re stalking me so hard, how come you didn’t know about the Craigslist ad?”

“I’ve had about enough of your sass, little one,” he says. And with that he crashes his lips against mine.

He’s devouring me with his mouth and pulling at the jersey that I still have on.

“Off, get it off,” he commands.

“No,” I say in challenge.

He yanks once and the jersey is across the room. He cups my face a little roughly in his hand. “Little sass-buckets don’t get to wear Sweetness,” he says.

He hasn’t answered my question, but it’s hard to care when I’m finding myself enjoying every little bit of roughness this man is giving me.

It feels like my small, hard, gray world has cracked open and revealed something huge, soft and vibrant inside.

In my younger days, I had shared a dry kiss or two under the bleachers at my high school. There was some clumsy groping too, but nothing that set my world on fire. And then Ma fell ill. After that, boys and dating were on the permanent backburner.

Lars is nothing like that boy under the bleachers, that boy whose name I can’t even remember now.

His hands reach down, spread my thighs wide and he thumbs my pussy.

I suck in my breath because I still can’t believe anything is allowed to feel so good.

Lars was so tender last night, but now I’ve awoken the beast.

I’m splayed open, and his thumb is stretching my walls, and my juice is coating his fingers.

He rumbles against my chest, “You’re even wetter when you’re angry at me.”

Lars takes one nipple into his mouth and teases with his tongue until the hard bud is on fire with pleasure. He switches to the other one. I reach down, wanting desperately to grab his cock, but he’s so tall I can’t reach while in this position.

His thumb in my sex is about to drive me over the edge.

“Lars, break me.”

He laughs. “Oh, I’m gonna break you in real good. I’m not done having my way just yet.”

The next thing I know, his thumb is on my clit and his face is between my thighs.

I moan in anticipation because I know what’s coming next. But I am unprepared for what it feels like.

“Oh god. Oh Lars. Holy shit!”