He spins around and sets me on my feet, dainty as a feather. I’m breathless – literally. It’s like he’s stolen the air from my lungs and spirited it away. He’s pulled me into his body like we’re lovers embracing, and his fingers are running an endless, electric dance across my skin, and I don’t even know his name.

“You’re too good for this place, Puss,” he whispers, “so tell me what you’re doing here.”

He stares into my eyes, searching my soul, and I look back into his and –

I blink.

He smirks. “You like them?” He asks, brushing a piece of imaginary fluff from his stubbled chin. I hate how goddamn cocky he is about it, but I can’t help staring. I’ve never seen anything like it before.

“It’s a family trait,” he continues, and I realize I’m lost in my own head. I can’t remember the last time I took a breath, and I can feel the heat of the man crackling in the air between us, and charring my skin.

I still don’t know his name. All I know is that his eyes shine different colors, one a glittering hazel orb, the other as green as mine but flecked with gold, and he smells like sex, and all I want to do is plant my mouth on his and let his hands roam across my ass, and grind my hips against his until he gives me the release I only just realized I so desperately crave.

“Tell me, Puss –”

“Casey,” I correct him in a breathless whisper. I strain to keep my eyes open, because every time I blink another filthy image grows in my fertile imagination. “I’m not Puss, I’m Casey. I’m not a toy or your goddamn tabby cat; I’m a grown woman and I’ve got places to –”

He leans forward and silences me by planting his lips on mine. An electric shock grazes my lip, and I’m struck dumb.

His stubble grazes my chin, while his hand snakes around the back of my head and buries itself in my hair. A memory of Vince doing exactly the same just an hour before crosses my mind, but this feels different. He’s soft, yet insistent; urgent yet gentle.

The mysterious man’s tongue grazes my lips, tickling them, teasing them, and testing them until they part to the pressure. I let out a gentle moan, and without fully realizing it, I press my body against his. Even through his thick sweatshirt I can feel his strength. I picture him throwing me up against the nearest concrete wall and I know he’d bear my weight without complaint: perhaps without noticing.

I want it, I want him so desperately, but –

I pull back. My breath is ragged, and I let out a frustrated moan. “Please,” I pant, “I don’t have time for this; and if I get caught –”

Now his stubble grazes my cheek, and he nips my right earlobe, taking it into his mouth and whispering into my ear. His hands never stop circulating around my body, leaving contrails of fire streaming out everywhere he touches.

I’m burning up, on fire for him.

“No one’s catching me,” he says, with such complete confidence I can’t help but believe it’s true. “I can be quick,” he says, and I swear he’s got a goddamn smirk in his voice, “if I have to…”

He starts walking, and I’m dragged along with him. My feet don’t even touch the floor. He doesn’t stop talking, whispering, or caressing my body as he moves. I barely hear his footsteps over the pounding of my heart.

“Or I can be slow,” he whispers into my ear, pulling my hips onto his and my legs around his body. I squeeze them, holding on for dear life, and loop my arms around his shoulders. I don’t want to break the spell, the moment, the only good thing that’s happened to me since Luke died.

“As slow as you want me to be, Casey.”

Casey this time, I note. My thoughts are muted, quiet. Usually they rush like a swollen river, testing the banks of my sanity, but now all that counts is my burning desire.

His voice is hoarse, or maybe that’s just the heat of his breath on my skin playing tricks on me. “I could have you on your knees looking up at me, and it would be the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

Please…

“Or I could hoist you up on my shoulders and bury my head between your legs.”

I feel my cheeks burning up, and know I’ve gone crimson with shame. It’s been a long time since – since, you know…

– since I got laid.

I haven’t shaved, or waxed down there in I don’t know how long. I didn’t need to. No one’s seen me naked in longer than I can remember.

“Tell me, Puss: is that strip between your legs the same color as the hair on your head? I hope it is. I want to feel it tickling my nose as my tongue strokes your lips. I want to caress it with my fingers…”

My back presses against the wall, and I bite down on my lip, knowing what’s about to happen. I’m ready for him, but what I was expecting to happen doesn’t – the wall gives way instead, and I realize it’s a door.

Right now, up is down, and my head’s spinning with lust.

He’s pushing past the door and we’re in a darkened room. My eyes adjust to the faint glow of streetlight filtering through a half-boarded window, and I hear his fingers grappling for the light switch.

I grab his arm. “Don’t,” I gasp, struggling against my panting breath. I know this is happening; that trying to claim I’ll resist this man is pure fantasy. I cannot refuse him. He has cast a spell over me. Still, I can’t let him see everything.

Not down there.

He chuckles, and the sound vibrates in his chest. “Have it your way, Puss. Let’s leave it for next time.”

What does he mean by “Next time?”

We turn – or his body does, and I follow, as mine is draped around his. He presses me against the cold concrete wall, sprouting goose bumps which sweep across my skin in wild waves.

A door swings open on the outside of the warehouse, and noise spills out: two men laughing; the sound of an empty beer can being tossed aside; the striking of flints as cigarettes are lit.

I pull back, and my body freezes, but gray sweatshirt ignores it; his hands keep roaming my body, stroking my inner thigh and rising up inside my skirt. I squeeze my legs together, closing the gap between our bodies, in an attempt to stop him.

“What are you doing?” I whisper in panic. “You can’t –”

“I can,” he pants, “and I will.”

His fingers slide insistently between our bodies and stroke my pussy. I flinch, and a spark flies from my core all the way up my body, crackling and burning up my spine and exploding in my head. I squeeze my legs together again, but this time I’m panting with desire making my reaction feeble, weaker, faint … deceitful.

I give up; I give in; to him.

I plant my lips on his again, and I bite down – hard. So hard I worry for a second that I might draw blood or make him pull back. I don’t, and he doesn’t. A deep chuckle throbs inside his throat, and he pushes me back into the wall.

Harder, I think, even if I can’t bring myself to actually speak the words. Please, go harder.

My body jolts with the force, but I don’t get a second to recover. His fingers slide up my back and with practiced ease my bra is lying on the floor. His rough hands slide across my breasts, and my nipples harden in an instant. He dips his mouth to them and rolls one across his tongue, and my body stiffens with the pleasure.

Then he stops.

“Tell me you want this, Puss,” he growls. “Tell me you need me inside you.”

I freeze. I know what he’s doing. He’s taking me for himself, imposing his will on me – claiming me. I don’t care. Right now, I want all of it: him, and this – whatever this is – and a few short minutes where I’m not thinking about how my life fell apart in a matter of days.

I look down at him, and at his unique, glowing eyes glittering in the semi-darkness. I nod urgently, desperately, my head bobbing up and down like a Jack-in-the-Box.

“Out loud,” he commands. “I want to hear you say it.”

“I want you,” I gasp. “Whatever the hell your name is. I want all of you.”

A strange look flickers across his face. “Baby steps, Puss,” he whispers, and that’s the last thing I remember because he pushes my skirt aside and rips my underwear away.

My protest dies in my throat as he presses his mouth on mine and I’m lost in an ecstasy of pleasure. His fingers stampede over my body like a horde of migrating animals, never stopping long enough to allow me to settle.

I pant, and all I can hear over my breath is the sound of men in the background, and the fear of getting caught heightens the pleasure. My tormentor, now – what – my lover, presses his palm between my legs and finds them opening up to him, and my pussy is wetter than it’s ever been. He presses a finger inside and I jump from the pleasure. It’s not enough, so I bite down on his neck, and he gets the message.

His fingers withdraw, leaving me momentarily empty, but the sound of his buckle opening fills the room, then his jeans dropping around his ankles, then the crinkle of a condom appearing from God knows where.

He bites down on my lip to repay the favor and presses into me, and he’s big – so goddamn big I can barely take all of him. My eyes water, and I bite down harder, and he presses into me and it’s a circle of pleasure. He grabs my hips so hard I imagine his handprints will mark me for days. He grips them and pushes himself to the hilt, and almost pulls out –

I let out a suppressed groan of longing.

Then he starts to fuck me.

And I mean fuck me: not softly; not missionary on your birthday sex; but a real honest to God fucking. I don’t know what the hell’s going on, or how I fell into this, but this is the kind of sex that girls dream about, but don’t often get. It’s rough, it’s quick, it’s hurried; it’s perfect for a girl whose life fell off the tracks and started careening through a damn wasteland. It’s been so long since I’ve felt a man’s touch –

“Don’t stop,” I pant, and he growls as if to indicate that was the last idea on his mind. No, he’s an animal off his leash, and I’m his. I might be marking him by biting down on his shoulder, but he’s claiming me for himself.

It’s like he’s pushing a wagon up a hill. With every thrust, every stroke, he sends the orgy of pleasure inside me an inch higher, before the heights of my budding orgasm fade.

Every time he strokes inside me my clit throbs, driving me wild, and every time the plateau of pleasure is a second longer, a second brighter. I rake his body with my nails, tattooing my claim on his back just as I did on his shoulders.

“I’m close,” I pant, “so close, please, please –”

My words tail off into meaningless nonsense, and sparks begin to radiate from my core like flames off a blacksmith’s smelting iron. The beast I’m still thinking of as gray sweatshirt doesn’t tire, not like ordinary men. He keeps going, taking one hand from his hip and shoving his fingers in my mouth. He’s silencing me, making me his, proving who’s in control.

Through the rising tide of orgasm, I know he doesn’t need to. He doesn’t have to mark my body to claim me. He’s done it already. I know that no man will ever make me feel this way again. No man will ever have the strength, the experience – the will. So I’m his, at least in part – forever – whatever…

I’m so, so, close to the best orgasm of my life …

“Casey, you stupid bitch!!”, Suddenly, everything comes crashing down.

“Where the fuck are you?” A voice bellows down the corridor. “You’re supposed to be goddamn working. If I have to come find you, you best believe things ain’t gonna go well.”

I freeze and push my unnamed lover away from me – and out of me. He lowers me to the ground gently, turning his head with questioning eyes. My eyes water even as my body keeps smarting and sparking with the orgasm that was so close to the brink of washing over it, and I can’t believe how stupid I’ve been.

I’m panicking and gray sweatshirt is already dropping to the floor. He picks up his clothes and tosses them to the wall, then retrieves mine. I’m still wearing my skirt, because all he did was hoist that up my thighs so he could fuck me like some high school kid in the janitor’s closet.

He motions towards me; in a daze, I obey him. He threads my arms through the bra strap and fastens it shut with nimble fingers. He leads me to the window and straightens my clothes before tidying my hair.

He tugs at one of the loose boards that cover the window. His shoulders bunch and his back knots, and it comes loose. I blink, and his naked leg is already half way out.

Down the corridor I hear another bellow. “Casey – you bitch!”

Gray sweatshirt motions his fingers towards me; once again, I obey. He grabs me by the back of my neck and pulls me in for a deep, possessive kiss. I’m spinning, half-terrified of what’s coming down the hallway, and half desperate for this moment to never end.

He breaks it off, already pulling away and out into the shadows of the night. “It’s Declan, by the way,” he murmurs. Then he’s gone.

Declan.

A second later, the door to the storage room is kicked open, and it clatters against the concrete wall.

Of course, it’s Lenny, and boy is he pissed.