He kissed like he wanted to burn pleasure into her lips, pressing her against his hotel room door and hiking her thigh up over his hip, fingers tight on her skin and blunt nails pushing, just gently, the edge of desperation making her chest pull tight.

He couldn’t seem to draw her in close enough—devouring her mouth and pulling on her body, and it was like he wanted to fuse them together, to get inside her and find the very heart of her pleasure. She couldn’t breathe with it, drowning in sensation, overwhelmed by the pure animalism in him and it was sexy, god, so very sexy. She had to take a break from it, lest she start riding his thigh and bring an end to this all too soon.

She pulled back, gasping, taking sight of his slick lips and blown pupils and the heat spread across his tanned cheeks. She had to close her eyes for a half a moment because it was too much, all of it was too much.

“Let’s go in,” she muttered into the space between them, but she wasn’t sure if he heard—he was too busy lighting a path up her thigh with his bare palm, slipping beneath the hem of her dress to grab a handful at the edge of her ass, fingers pressing the underside so close to the lace of her panties. Her throat hitched with a short breath.

He stared into her eyes, saying nothing, and it was as if the moment hovered in suspended anticipation as he searched her face for something, she didn’t know what—permission, maybe. Need.

She swallowed down her nerves and trailed a hand up his chest, then popped the top button of his shirt and murmured throatily, “Take me inside, Preston.”

Making a noise that sounded like a growl low beneath his breath, he pushed back into her space and flattened her to the door, seizing her mouth in a whirlwind of desire that left her head spinning. The kiss was fierce, brutal even, designed to bruise her lips and stir the blood up to the surface, and she hoped he would kiss her like this for the rest of the night, god, that he’d lick into her mouth like he was right now, with filthy abandon and the taste of scorching need on his tongue.

With the distraction of the kiss, she didn’t notice him fiddling with the lock, and suddenly she was tilting backwards through an opening door, and she would’ve fallen, made a complete fool of himself, except he held her so close to his body that there was no chance of it. She couldn’t move unless he wanted her to.

They stumbled through together, joined at the mouth, and both of them working to get his shirt off. It fell to the floor with a delicate flutter of material, and all of his skin, all of his muscle, the sheer expanse of him—she didn’t know where to look or where to touch, how to even breathe when he released her mouth and her body and allowed her a step back to see him.

She wanted it all, every bit of him. As he stood before her shirtless and heaving labored breaths, as he looked at her with fire in his eyes and a predatory gleam in his expression, as he rolled his shoulders and pulled his bottom lip between his teeth—he was the single most breathtakingly sexy sight she had ever witnessed, and her pussy gave a deep, overwhelming throb at the experience of it all. She caught a moan in her throat.

“I want to see you,” he said, then stepped towards her, pulling her in sharply by the waist. He brought his mouth to her ear and licked the fluttering skin beneath the lobe while she tried to stay focused, not melt into a puddle at his feet. “I want to strip you bare and lay you out, taste every inch of you…”

The words promised filth and pleasure, and his hands skimming the curve of her ass, his lips on her neck, the breath against her skin—it all worked to heat up her groin and thrum her heart. But the reality of it doused her in cold water, and for the first time since she’d agreed to this, she felt panic clawing its way up her spine.

She buried her face in his bare shoulder, shuddered in a breath. “M’not much to look at,” she mumbled.

“Shut up,” he said, not harshly, but with finality. Brooking no argument. Then he dragged hands down her sides and hips and thighs, back up and around to her buttocks, an urgency to his touch like he couldn’t get enough, like he was desperate to get to the skin beneath. “You’ve got no idea how much I want—”

He cut himself off, pulled her head up by her hair and crashed their mouths together, and half a second later, the distinct sound of a zip opening filtered through the haze in her mind. He was opening her dress, pulling the zipper down her back, and devouring her mouth so thoroughly that she didn’t have the mental capacity to worry about it.

When she stood in little more than her bra and her underwear and jewelry, her dress a puddle around her feet, he eased the kiss as if to stop it, to pull back…to look at her.

And panic seized her again, clenched around her heart like icy fingers. She couldn’t let him stare at her body, but neither did she want this to stop.

She kissed him harder, brought her hands to his belt, tasted the groan on his tongue and the renewed fire in him as he guided her backwards, meeting the bed and pushing her onto it.

She pulled him with her, gasping as he tucked his face into her neck and kissed her throat and straddled her body and then, suddenly, pulled away.

The swift grasp of total fear strangled her throat in the moment she realized he was up, intent on removing his shoes and hers, standing at the foot of the bed with the entire bareness of her body open for him.

There was only moonlight to guide his vision, but it was enough. If she could see him, then he could see every bit of her—and he looked, kept looking, gazing at her as he kicked his shoes away and efficiently pulled off her heels, palming the swelling in his pants as if beyond aroused by what he saw, and she wished he would speak, say something, say anything. Because she was drowning in this silence, and even him crawling onto the bed, laying a kiss to the dimple of skin above her knee, did little to ease the fact that she was floundering here, and she couldn’t make those icy fingers release her heart.

“I can’t,” she said, vaguely at first, a bare murmur of a word as her stomach clenched with the onset of debilitating panic.

He didn’t hear her, or he didn’t pay attention--instead he continued to kiss a path up her thigh, reverent with it, tongue snaking out to lap at her skin and his eyes shut, expression radiating something like bliss.

He was inches away from the pulsing center of her desire, and all she could think about was how hard her frozen heart was thumping against her rib cage, how her labored breathing sounded deafening in the silent room. How her palms were clammy, her hands shaking, the walls and ceiling suddenly feeling so very close. She was drowning in something too far removed from lust and she couldn’t do this. She just couldn’t.

“No, I can’t,” she said, louder this time, and pushed at the top of his head just as he nosed the silken edge of her panties.

He halted immediately, going entirely still, his muscled, tanned back rising and falling with each shuddery breath. Both of his hands were fisted in the sheets, and she heard it, loud and clear—the thick, heavy swallow of a man overcome with arousal. Aroused by her.

God.

He lifted his head, and she took the opportunity to close her thighs and scoot upright, bring her knees to her chest and hug her arms around them. She didn’t look at his face, his eyes—she couldn’t look at anything but the rounded tops of her knees, pebbled with gooseflesh. She was acutely aware of her lack of clothing, but something was stopping her from getting up and retrieving her dress. Like she was paralyzed by the idea of him seeing her now.

“Ashley—”

“I’m sorry,” she said, squeezing her eyes shut. She dropped her forehead onto her knees and hugged herself tighter. A lump in her throat threatened to steal her voice. “I’m sorry, I just…”

He said nothing, and she could’ve died of humiliation. Obviously she’d disappointed him. Obviously he was figuring out the best way to get out of here.

Just leave, she thought bitterly. Pick up your things and leave.

But he couldn’t, because this was his room. She would need to leave. Oh god. She had to get up, clad in only her lingerie, everything about her on full display for his view. And it was unlikely he would look upon her in any favorable light this time, not now that she’d offered him everything on a plate and then snatched it away.

Forcing down the urge to cry, she drew in a stuttered breath and gathered some courage, enough that she might be able to look at him, meet his eye, dress with some modicum of dignity.

Except she didn’t get a chance to do any of that, because in the next instant, something soft fell gently over her shoulders, something that smelled like…Preston.

His shirt.

“Hey.” His voice was barely more than a murmur, full of warmth, his movements slow and reassuring as he tucked the shirt around her. “Look at me.”

The mattress shifted, the space beside her dipping with his weight. He was sitting next to her, she realized. Close enough to see the flush on her skin. To feel the waves of embarrassment rolling off her.

She looked at him, because she had to. Because she couldn’t sit there all night hiding from it. From him. She’d gotten herself into this situation, thinking she was ready to be intimate with a man again, to let herself go and give over to her base desires. And now she had to face what had become of the moment, after realizing she wasn’t ready, not yet. Not even close.

So she lifted her head and met his gaze, and what she saw staring back at her left her breathless. He wasn’t disappointed. He wasn’t angry. He wasn’t even mildly frustrated that his good time had been cut short.

If that look in his eyes was anything to go by, then she could see nothing more than concern.

“Don’t be sorry,” he said simply. And then, like a muted beam of sunlight piercing through the storm cloud in her head, he smiled a smile so soft and genuine that the lump of emotion in her throat threatened to spill tears. God, she was a wreck.

Sniffling, she rested her cheekbone on her knees and returned his smile. “I’m a mess,” she muttered, self-deprecation heavy in her voice. “None of this is because of you.”

He nodded, like he already knew that, and shifted his weight to better face her. In this grand room, against a backdrop of moonlight, he looked like a Greek god—all flexing torso and wide shoulders, an intensity in his eyes that twisted her heart.

He was looking at her as if she was his entire focus in the world.

“Anything you want to talk about?” he asked.

She coughed a laugh. “Definitely not.” Her story wasn’t something to tell a one-night stand, and that was what this was supposed to be. Her and Preston, hooking up for one night of mindless fun. Except she’d failed, unable to switch off and just be. Her stupid past and her stupid insecurities and her stupid, horrible, douche-bag of an ex-husband—all of it working together to make her the worst candidate for relaxed between-the-sheets fun in history.

But a part of her was dying to tell him, to explain it all, to say Don’t judge me, please, because this isn’t who I am. I can have fun. In fact, I like to have fun. I’m just a little broken right now.

He seemed to sense her inner turmoil, because he gave her a little nudge with his elbow and coaxed, “Come on. I’m a good listener.”

She couldn’t help but snort. “You don’t even know me. Why would you care?”

“You’d be surprised what I know about you.”

“Okay,” she said, raising an eyebrow, “mildly creepy…”

He flashed a grin. It was a beautiful grin, full of straight white teeth and an abundance of charm. “I mean—I might’ve asked around,” he said, and was that a blush slowly brightening his cheek? “Done some digging.”

“Asked about me?” She pulled his shirt tighter around herself as she fought the urge to squirm. Why would a man like Preston—devastatingly gorgeous, sexy as hell, and unfathomably rich—want to know anything about her? She was just Ash, an average girl, an ER nurse who liked ice cream a bit too much, and whose idea of a great weekend was some reasonably clean pajamas and a binge watch of her DVR-ed shows. There was nothing of interest about her for someone like Preston Alcott.

And yet there was a gleam of fascination in his eyes right now, looking at her.

She swallowed. “Why?”

His smile, this time, was bashful. “I think I covered that back at the wedding,” he drawled, and when she didn’t respond, he sobered, sighed a little, his face softening with some kind of vulnerability. “Because I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you. You’re…an itch.”

Her stomach swooped, but it didn’t stop her from dryly uttering, “Thanks.”

“I don’t mean it like that.” He ran a hand through his hair, flexing his bicep and the glistening planes of his bare chest. She caught herself staring at his nipple, the perfect, dusky roundness of it, and then jerked her gaze away with embarrassment. Jesus.

“You got under my skin,” he explained, an open confession that left her wishing she hadn’t messed up this night so thoroughly.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t…you know…do this.”

He lifted a shoulder—half shrug, half endearing coyness. He shouldn’t be this adorable, not a man so filthy rich and powerful. And yet he was—those bashful smiles, his youthful face beneath the sexy brush of stubble, the twinkle in his eye, his relentless charm. There was something about him that said he’d be happy to geek out in front of the TV on a Saturday afternoon, but with an edge to him that promised delicious sin after dark. A heady combination.

“You’ve been treated bad?” he asked her. “Before this?”

“Kind of,” she said before she could stop herself. But she found she didn’t want to stop. There was a dreamlike quality to this moment between them, with them half naked but not intimate, moonlight spilling in to bathe the luxury of this room in a soft glow. And it made her want to confide in him, at least about this.

So she took a deep breath and said it—the one thing that’d been holding her back all these months, that stopped her from enjoying this night with a man she was quickly coming to realize was worth the effort in ways she hadn’t fathomed till now. “He said I’d gotten too heavy,” she muttered into the stillness between them, unable to look him in the eye as she said it, lest she witness some kind of agreement there. “That he didn’t find…my shape…attractive. He’s with a younger, thinner version of me now,” she added, huffing a bitter laugh. “She’s a social worker at my hospital. He met her at a staff party he attended as my plus-one.” And wasn’t that a kick in the teeth.

She could still remember that night as clearly and as sharply as a new blade against her skin—the night he’d told her it was over, and why. It hadn’t been some dramatic showdown. She hadn’t walked in on him with another woman, or had any opportunity to scream her pain at him. He’d come home one cold winter evening and sat her down, calm and easy, and he’d told her he’d met someone else. That he’d been seeing this other woman for weeks, been sleeping with her, and now he had to face facts—he’d fallen for her, and he no longer saw a future with Ashley. He wanted a divorce.

Because he wasn’t attracted to Ashley anymore, and hadn’t been for a long time. And this new woman—this Bethany—was the kind of woman he liked. Young, slim, full of life—not weighed down by life and work, not too busy, or too tired, or too stressed.

Not overweight.

He’d left her sitting silently on the couch, seized by shock and humiliation, and spoke to her only through lawyers after that.

“He’s a dick,” Preston said, and she looked up at him. His eyes were glimmering with understanding and compassion, but not pity.

She smiled. “A whole bag of dicks.”

“He’s also blind,” he added, and reached a hand towards her, as if wanting to lay fingertips against the warm skin of her chest. His gaze caressed the shape of her all of a sudden, left her feeling exposed in a breathless moment of charged intimacy. “If he looks at you and doesn’t see what I…” He trailed off with a thick swallow, hand pulling back.

With little more than a look and a few stilted words, he made her feel as if she could stand naked in the brightest light, confident and tall, and have the world look at her.

But that feeling lasted only a moment.

“I’ve forgotten how to be comfortable with myself,” she admitted, sighing. “With this kind of situation.”

“That’s okay. There’s no rush.”

His words—they meant more than they said. She could see it there, hovering in the space between them, lingering in hope. The idea that they could work on this—together.

And his intentions might have been good, but she knew the reality. Men like Preston Alcott had better things to do than spend their time trying to convince the Ashley Woodsens of the world that they were beautiful.

He’d get bored, and she couldn’t put herself through all of that for nothing.

“And I’m not ready for anything else,” she said, her best line of defense. She didn’t know if it was strictly true, but what she did know was that she wasn’t willing to find out.

His face fell, almost imperceptibly. As if he actually gave a shit. And maybe tonight, in this moment, he did. Just like he gave a shit about whichever girl was in his bed last weekend, or whoever it would be next week. A successful playboy knew how to make each woman feel like the most valued person in the world. She wasn’t blind to his reputation.

Although she appreciated his efforts all the same. He might be a playboy, but he was also a gentleman, and she felt a surge of affection for him, disconnected from the all-consuming lust that coursed through her veins every time he touched her, looked at her with that fire in his eyes.

“Oh,” he muttered.

“I’m sorry,” she said with a grimace, pulling the front of the shirt together so she could begin buttoning it. “I just… I give good front, you know? I act like I’m annoyed about being single, that I’m over my ex—’cause it’s been over a year now, and I should be over him, but I…” She stopped, breathed, ran a hand through her hair. “I am over him,” she said firmly. “I’m just not over how it ended. The things he said.”

“I understand. You don’t need to explain yourself to me.”

“I promised you a good time tonight.”

“You don’t owe anyone anything,” he said, a hint of steel in his voice. And then he softened, lifted a hand—touched her this time, just a feathery ghost of his fingers across her temple, brushing hair off her face. “And you’ve given me a good time. I like talking to you.”

“Even when I’m being super depressing?”

“Even then.” He smiled, and she smiled back at him, the two of them creating a warm, intimate moment that had nothing to do with naked bodies and vicious exes. She looked into Preston’s eyes and saw something that almost made her want to lean forward and kiss him again, restart what she’d ruined. But that grip of fear kept her still.

“Do you want me to drive you back to your hotel?” he asked, and she startled out of the moment, embarrassed to have been thinking such mushy thoughts while he’d obviously been wondering when she would leave.

“Oh…okay. Let me just—” She moved to get up, mindful of her naked lower half, but he stayed her with a hand on her forearm.

When she looked at him, she found a man tentative with hope.

“Unless you want to stay?” He licked his lower lip, fingers like a brand on her skin. “You don’t have to go.”

She could tell in his voice that he didn’t mean anything untoward, and there was just something about weddings—they had a way of making you feel horribly alone. The temptation to share a room with him tonight was strong.

“Sleep here,” he said, as if sensing her weakening resolve. “I’ll take the couch.”

She stared at him, watching him get up from the bed and grab a pillow, take it to the couch pushed against the far wall. It was a big couch, looked extremely comfortable, and yet—

“You can share the bed. I mean…I trust you won’t try anything.”

The look he shot her was dark with sin, and she realized in that moment quite how much he was still fighting with his desires, even now, after she’d shown herself as so much of a mess. It knocked the breath out of her.

“I’m not sure I can handle the torture,” he told her bluntly, and then disappeared into the bathroom.

She didn’t sleep well that night, less than a dozen feet away from him and knowing he was awake too, the pair of them staring up at the ceiling. He’d been perfectly respectful towards her, coming out of the bathroom and offering her a toothbrush, his face smooth and free of the internal struggle he’d shown a glimpse of when she’d offered him half the bed.

She didn’t know if it was the idea of having sex tonight that put him at war with his own libido, or if it was the idea of sex with her in particular, but either option put the images of him and sex together in her brain, and she spent the next couple of hours squirming, squeezing her thighs together, trying to pretend her pussy wasn’t aching with arousal.

She could have him, if she wanted to. She could walk over to him right now and kiss him, touch him, free his cock and lower herself onto it, ride him until they both screamed with it. He would have her. He wanted her. But every time she considered it, her ex’s voice filtered into her mind, dousing her in misery.

She was playing a losing game with her base instincts, and it was wearing her out, yet she couldn’t sleep. So when she finally heard Preston’s breathing grow slow and even, she tiptoed out of bed, changed into her dress, and disappeared into the night.

She figured, come morning, he wouldn’t give much of a damn anyway.