The first person I spot when I exit the back door of Vipers is Ryan. Unlike the past week, he isn’t leaning against his patrol car. He has his knee braced on his truck. The very same truck he owned when he was a teen. The truck we. . .

I fan my cheeks, suddenly overheated.

“Night off?” I ask, pushing off my feet to head Ryan’s way.

His foot falls from his truck, his braced stance indicating he is ready to chase me if I run. “Yep,” he replies, eyeing me hesitantly.

The hardness in his eyes weakens when I glide my hand along the overworked curve of his front fender. “She’s always had entrancing curves,” I murmur in a breathy moan.

I’ve always loved Ryan’s truck. I’m glad to see he has taken good care of her the past decade.

“Yeah, she has,” Ryan replies, his voice drenched with candor.

When I raise my eyes to his, he drops his heavy-hooded gaze from my skirt-covered backside to his feet. My smile grows when I notice he is wearing running shoes.

“Come prepared tonight?”

I inwardly cringe. My voice is way too husky. I sound like I’m seconds from climaxing. Damn Jet and his nosey-nancying. Now I’m not just looking at the attractive attributes visible outside Ryan’s clothing, I’m thinking about the desirable ones his clothes are hiding from my perverted gaze.

The chance of dampening my excitement flies out the window when Ryan smirks a boyish grin. His smile does wicked things to my insides—things I shouldn’t be feeling.

“You snooze, you lose,” Ryan murmurs, his words as breathless as my lungs.

I tap my tennis shoes together to show I understand his challenge. The scuffs on my stilettos can’t be undone, and my walls are slowly crumbling. Ryan was the first man to break through my walls years ago, so it is logical he is the same one breaking through them again ten years later.

“Why do you show up every night, Ryan?” My voice isn’t angry or snarky. I’m not looking for a fight. I’m honestly curious to hear his reply. “Your disapproval of my choices was expressed without hesitation last week, so why subject yourself to it over and over again?”

Ryan’s shoulder touches his ear. “Who am I to judge your choices?”

I’m tempted to shout, “My boyfriend and lover,” before I realize he is neither of those things. I don’t even know if he is my friend. We’ve spoken more tonight than we have the past week.

Before I can voice a more suitable reply, Ryan’s cell buzzes. While keeping one eye on me, he digs it out of his pocket. My thighs press together when a blistering smile stretches across his face. Damn, I’ve missed this man’s grin.

Just as quickly as excitement blazed my veins, anger follows it. That smile wasn’t elicited by a message from Brax. That’s his smile when he’s wooing someone out of her panties. I know this, as it is the one he always gave when sliding my panties down my thighs.

Oh my god—is he hooking up in front of me?!

My first thought is to slap his phone out of his hand before inflicting my anger on his cheek. But since Ryan suffered a violent childhood, I harness my anger before resorting to the tactic I always use when times get rough.

I run.

With my endeavor to evade him at fever-pitch, I charge for the bush instead of the roadside, reaching it in three heart-thrashing seconds. Because Ryan is distracted returning the text message of the person responsible for him grinning like a lovesick idiot, he fails to notice I’m fleeing until I’m a good three to four hundred feet into the scrub.

I realize he’s spotted me when he grumbles, “For fuck’s sake, Savannah.”

Peering over my shoulder, I watch him put away his phone before he pushes off his feet to chase me down. It’s utterly ludicrous for me to think I can outrun him, but I sprint like the finish line is in my sights. The prickly hedges scratch my thighs, but I ignore them, more determined than ever.

Just as I reach an opening near the freeway, Ryan’s long strides catch up with me. I’ve barely forced out my first set of demands when he opens the passenger door of his truck to throw me inside.

Yes, I said throw, as that is precisely what he does.

Luckily for me and my short temper, his truck doesn’t have the means to keep me contained like his patrol car does. Even our exchange being witnessed by over a half dozen spectators doesn’t weaken my determination in the slightest. I charge for the scrub like I’m outrunning an axe-murderer, my strides as spirited as my resolve.

Ryan is nipping at my heels two seconds later. He curls his arm around my waist, hoisting me so far off the ground my shoes run on air.

“You can’t outrun me, Savannah. I chase criminals for a living. It’s my job,” he murmurs into my ear as he walks us back to his truck, his steps not as hurried this time around.

My frantic wails come to a shrieking halt. I can’t fight him—I’m too busy calming the inane pulse his gritty voice caused to my sex. If the force doesn’t work out for Ryan, he should consider book narration. He’d have the readers’ panties damp just from reading the copyright notice.

While pinning me to his truck with his body, he throws open the door I slammed shut during my evasion. I’m not going to lie, not all my breathlessness is from running away. Some—if not all of it—is from having every inch of his rock-hard body pressed against mine. Ryan has always had a nice build, but he’s added a few extra pounds of muscle the past ten years, making his body not just nice, but mouthwateringly impressive.

My spine snaps straight as disturbing notion after disturbing notion filters through my head. He was just sexting another woman, yet I’m grinding against his crotch like his cock is a metal detector and I have a treasure chest lodged up my ass.

What the hell is wrong with me?

“Let me go, Ryan!” I demand with anger dangling on my vocal cords.

“No,” he replies without pause for thought.

He shoves me into the passenger seat of his truck before sprinting for the driver side door. With the encouraging cheer of my colleagues, I swing open the door he just slammed shut and commence sliding out.

I don’t even get a foot on the ground before Ryan’s impressive body fills the doorframe.

Snarling, I clamber for the driver’s side door.

Ryan’s torso warms my back two seconds later.

And thus begins a vicious game of cat and mouse.

Our audience grows in size with every back and forth exchange. If there wasn’t a weird, sick, demented part of me relishing Ryan’s resolve, I’d be peeved at the attention. But with playfulness warming both my heart and my core, my anger is kept at bay.

Ryan’s face displays his annoyance, but that isn’t the only insight his panty-wetting features reveal. He is also thankful for the challenge. Ryan isn’t an overly competitive man, but he is still a man nonetheless. He loves the chase just as much as any red-blooded man. To some men, this type of foray is as good as foreplay.

To some women as well.

I swear my panties have never been so drenched. Just last week I was arguing with Ryan that my morals hadn’t up and left town. Now, I’m not so sure. Am I so desperate for attention, I’m willing to pretend I didn’t see what I saw? Wasn’t turning a blind eye what got me in this position to begin with?

I’m not doing that again. If I can’t be myself around a man I’ve known since I was four, who can I be honest with?

No one.

“Who was she?” I ask, stopping Ryan’s trek from the passenger door to the driver’s door midstride.

He peers at me sitting in the middle of his bench seat with confusion slashed across his handsome features. “Who?”

I say a private prayer to keep jealousy out of my voice before replying, “The woman you were smiling about earlier. Who is she?” For once, my prayers are answered.

Ryan remains still, either shocked into silence or striving to weasel his way out of an awkward situation.

I realize it is neither when he locks his eyes with mine and says, “You, Savannah.”

Confusion engulfs me. Ryan is a bad liar in general, but when he is looking directly into my eyes, he has no chance in hell of hiding his deceit, so why would he bother? Unless he’s telling the truth.

“I didn’t send you a message.” Confusion echoes in my tone.

Ryan smiles, then nods. “I know. But the message wasn’t from you. It was about you.”

Spotting my growing bewilderment, he adds on, “Izzy wanted to know if I needed backup tonight. I told her I had everything covered.” He licks his dry lips, drawing a moan from a female spectator watching our exchange from the sidelines. “I have everything covered, don’t I?”

Before I can utter a syllable, a female voice purrs, “Oh, yes, you do, Officer Carter.” She enunciates his name with the same seductiveness I used when coercing him to join the force over a decade ago.

With a snarl, I swing my eyes to the voice. I’m not surprised to discover the seductive purr belongs to Melena. Utterly oblivious to the half dozen eyes glowering at her, she twists the rope scarcely concealing her monstrous rack from the public between her thumb and index finger while her hungry eyes burn into Ryan’s profile.

I’m five seconds from telling her to row up shit creek without a paddle when the air in my lungs brutally evicts. Since I was distracted issuing a vicious glare to Melena, Ryan has snuck up on me. While whispering in my ear that he has everything covered, he yanks me out of his truck.

Ignoring the excited hollering of my coworkers encouraging me to fight—and the disappointed sigh of Melena—he stomps around the wooden bed of his truck, holds open the door with his foot, then slides into the driver’s seat, taking me right along with him.

Since he’s not used to driving with a person sitting in his lap, his steering wheel digs into my back and his crotch jabs my ass. It’s been over a decade since I’ve seen Ryan’s cock, much less felt it, but I’m fairly certain I’m not the only one stimulated by our closeness. I can’t miss the bulge in his jeans.

When I attempt to scoot off Ryan’s lap, he yanks me back into my original position. Considering the thickness I’m striving to ignore grows from our battle, I come to the conclusion not only is he at half-mast, but his manhood is even more enticing than I remembered.

“I can sit in my own seat,” I snarl.

I’m not peeved at him. I’m not even peeved at myself. I’m pissed at his jeans. How dare they come between us.

Grunting in lieu of a response, Ryan tugs the seatbelt around us before locking it into place. His hot breaths fan my nape when he stabs the key into his ignition to fire up his engine.

My work colleagues’ exuberant catcalls ring in my ears for the next quarter of a mile, along with the thud of my raring pulse.

I bite on the inside of my cheek when Ryan hits his third pothole for the night. My bite isn’t pleasant; it is painful enough tangy copper stings my taste buds. The past three minutes have been pure torture. Having Ryan so close but being unable to touch him is the cruelest form of punishment. I can smell him on my skin, taste him on the tip of my tongue, and feel him sitting heavy beneath my ass. If that isn’t already distracting my senses to a point of no return, every subtle bounce of his truck reminds me how perfectly aligned our bodies are.

If I weren’t wearing panties, and he wasn’t wearing jeans, we’d be . . .

No, Savannah. Don’t go there.

“Pot-ooh-mmm.” My warning turns into a throaty moan when the front tire of Ryan’s truck hits the pothole with the precision of a marksman.

“You’re mean,” I mutter in a breathless pant.

I’m not game to look at his face, but I know he is smiling. I can feel it in my bones.

“What? I didn’t do anything,” Ryan denies for the fourth time, a smirk heard in his words.

My eyes roll skywards. He can deny it until he is blue in the face. I know he is aiming for every bump in the road. How? Because not only does each collision add to the heat between my legs, it makes the thickness in his jeans swell.

“Did you say something, Savannah?” Ryan growls my name, sending his voice through my veins like liquid ecstasy, stimulating not just my hot buttons, but every goddamn button I own.

“No,” I answer, my one word incapable of hiding my aroused state.

Mortified at the lust-craved idiot I’m portraying, I attempt to scoot off his lap for the fifth time the past four minutes. I barely move an inch when Ryan throws his hips forward. I groan, heightened beyond belief when the mouthwatering outline protruding from his crotch rubs the sensitive skin between my ass and sex.

I moan, practically purring. I’ve never been more aroused in my life. My clit is throbbing, and my panties are soaked. I am equally excited and frustrated. I’m not frustrated by Ryan’s attention; I’m annoyed my clit doesn’t have anything to grind against. I’m sitting side-straddled, meaning, other than pressing my thighs together, I can’t ease the throb between my legs. See—torture. Pure, unbridled torture.

Groaning in frustration, I burrow my inflamed cheeks into Ryan’s neck. Now matters are ten times worse. His scent is even more inviting from this vantage point. He smells intoxicating and familiar—a scent I crave more than anything.

“Please stop.” The furious pulse raging through his body amplifies the thrumming of my core. “I can’t do this. I can’t be close to you and not. . .”

I stop talking, mindful I’m crawling into a hole I may never get out of. I’m dying to taste him again, but I know from experience one taste will never suffice. If I have one, I’ll want another, closely followed by another. Is that something Ryan can offer me? Or am I simply praying for a miracle?

Furthermore, is this what I want? I barely survived leaving him the first time. I won’t survive a second dose.

“Do what, Savannah?” The raw huskiness of his voice excites me more. “What do you want?”

“Nothing.” My disappointed breaths make condensation bead on his neck. “I don’t want anything.”

My knees curve inward when Ryan’s truck rolls over the safety grooves in the roadside. The pleasing vibration lights up every inch of me, while also eradicating my hesitation. I’m panting, aroused and brimming with anticipation of what is about to transpire.

“Ryan. . .”

“Yes, Savannah,” he replies in an instant, his voice as rough as mine but a hundred times hotter. It is like ice cream on a hot summer day: heavenly. “What do you need?”

“I need. . . I want. . .”

My tongue darts out to clear a bead of sweat from his neck before my brain can command it not to. Any hang-ups I’m having evaporate when his taste fills my senses. Even his sweat tastes better than I remembered.

After swiveling his hips to reveal I’m not the only one being led by lust, Ryan commands, “Tell me want you want, Savannah.”

I contemplate a ladylike way to express my needs. It is a futile two seconds. “I want you to fuck me, Ryan.” I’m not the least bit embarrassed. I’m too drunk with need to register shame. “I need you to fuck me. Please.”

My second plea barely leaves my mouth before Ryan drags his truck to the side of the road and frees his cock from its tight restrains. White spots dance in front of my eyes when his engorged crown grazes my aching clit. I’m in so much of a lust haze, I didn’t even register a change in position. My shuddering knees are now straddling Ryan’s hips, and my heaving breasts are squashed against his firm pecs.

After slipping my panties to the side, he guides his eye-bugging member up and down my glistening slit, coating himself with my arousal. I grind against him like a nymph, loving that I’m on the brink of ecstasy while still clothed. Ten years have passed since I’ve felt this crazy ebb and flow sensation—ten lonely motherfucking years—but you wouldn’t know it. I am as giddy as the teenage girl I was once.

Recognizing that I’m five seconds from detonating, Ryan nestles the crest of his cock between the folds of my pussy. When he drives home, I call out, loving the burn of taking a man his size without preparation. It’s been a long time since I’ve been stretched this wide.

“Fuck, Savannah,” Ryan groans, appreciating my pussy clenching around him. “Perfect. Nothing less than perfect.”

He doesn’t wait for me to acclimate to his girth before withdrawing to the tip of his cock. When he rams back in, his second lunge is more brutal than his first. I don’t mind his aggression. Actually, it’s hot. For the near year we were together, Ryan never fucked me. We had sex, and we made love, but he couldn’t hurt me in or out of the bedroom, so fucking was a no-go zone.

Don’t mistake my admission; nothing he is doing now is hurting me. It feels way too good to be anything close to pain.

After securing a grip on my hip, Ryan’s other hand weaves through my sweat-drenched hair. His dominant hold aids in guiding me up and down his cock at a speed that drives me wild. I meet his thrusts even more aggressively, taking what I need without any hesitation. I’ve been dying for this day for years, so I’m going to relish every perfect second.

“Harder,” I breathe out in a moan, my one word barely audible over our combined groans. “Faster—fuck me, Ryan. Fuck me.”

His hot breath fans my lips when he meets my request with the determination of a madman. His pumps turn frantic, bringing the finish line to within an inch of my spent face. I brace my hands against the roof of his truck when his crown flicks the sweet spot inside me. The change in position adds even more stimulation to my overflowing plate.

Ryan’s mouthwatering pelvic bone smashes into my clit with every grind, and the stubble on his chin grazes my breasts through my thin cotton shirt.

“Sweet Jesus,” I pant, my tone spiraling as crazily as my mind.

Ryan rocks his hips forward so effectively, my head grazes the roof with every thrust. I moan on repeat, loving the craziness of our exchange. We aren’t making love. We aren’t even having sex. We are fucking like two people who can’t get enough of each other—because that is precisely who we are.

When a familiar tingle in my core becomes too great to ignore, I snap my eyes shut. Ryan tightens his grip in my hair, wordlessly demanding my focus back to him. As a bead of sweat glides down his cheek, he stares into my eyes. He doesn’t say a word, but he doesn’t need to speak for me to hear his thoughts. He’s not just claiming my pussy; he’s claiming every inch of me.

“Ohh. . .” I purr in an eccentric moan when the sensation gripping every inch of me turns blinding.

While holding Ryan’s heavy-hooded gaze, I moan through the climax shredding my core as effortlessly as his promising eyes crumble the wall I built ten years ago.

He grinds into me another four times before my name leaves his mouth in a throaty groan. The heat of his seed coating my pussy catapults my climax to a never-before-reached level.

There is nothing that could take away from this moment.

Not a single thing.

Not even the flashing of police lights behind us.