There must be something about me that Travis can’t bring himself to have sex with. But if that’s the case, why does he seem to like my body every time he looks at me or touches me? Is it my personality that turns him off?

I don’t know how long I stand there, thrown into a state of confusion, but then I see something in my peripheral vision: my image in the bedroom mirror. As I turn to it, I see a sophisticated yet scared girl looking back at me, her bare curves on display, her breasts full and erect, the diamonds around her neck the only thing in the room that’s glittering. Then I see the look in her eyes. My eyes. There’s a banked anger, a fire that’s been started by Travis and then ignored.

He can’t just leave me this way.

Without thinking of the consequences, I march over to the chair where he tossed his jacket, yank it on, and pull lapels closed. I stomp toward the hallway.

“Travis!”

Maybe I should be calling him “Mr. Star” like the rest of his employees do, but I couldn’t care less.

I’m halfway down the gallery when he saunters out of the living room door, his shirt still unbuttoned, two drinks in his hands. He leans against the doorframe, raising a dark eyebrow at me. He’s a totally different man from the one who walked out of my bedroom. All emotion is gone, replaced by a cockiness that still gets me hot. I hate that it makes me that way.

A flicker of lust consumes his gaze, and I think that he likes seeing me wearing his jacket as well as the diamonds. Then he’s back to coolly eyeing me.

“Did you think I went somewhere?”

In my frustration, I want to rage about everything: his mysterious gazes, his hot-and-cold attitude. But I only stand there thinking that he left me alone because he was showing me too much, tipping the hand he’s always playing so close to the chest.

Or maybe I’m being the cocky one and I’m totally wrong.

“I thought you left me.”

He walks toward me, holding up a glass. “You were tense, so I thought a cocktail might do the trick.”

I was tense?

Nevertheless, I take the drink from him, and he reaches down, lightly pulling me by the jacket back to the bedroom.

Maybe I should drink every drop of this cocktail right now. Maybe that’s the only way I’ll stay sane with this man who’s messing with my mind with such arrogant expertise.

Or maybe I’m totally misreading him. Maybe I’m just a victim of wishing that I could be that one girl who matters to him.

At any rate, I follow my own advice and gulp some brandy, then cough at the burn in my throat and chest. He relieves me of my glass, setting both of ours down on a table. Then he strips his jacket off me with one tug and throws it on the chair again.

As my body picks up where it left off, crackling with heat and need, he leads me to the bathroom. Light whispers through the window, but it’s still enough for me to see his face as he stops me near a gold-trimmed marble washstand with a basin and pitcher. He fingers the diamonds around my neck, and as I search for some meaning in his gaze, there’s nothing there.

He skims a finger away from the necklace and down, through the center of my breasts. “You wear these diamonds so well.”

“Thank you.”

At my ingenuous answer, he laughs with that edge to him. He turns to the pitcher and pours water into the basin. I don’t ask how the water got there; I assume a maid was in my apartment during the charity benefit, preparing it for Travis’s needs. As always, I just wish I knew what he has in mind.

The way he dips a washcloth into the basin tells me that, whatever he’s about to do to me, this is something he does with all his women, and I’m only the latest in the necklace he’s created of us, one gem at a time.

He holds the cloth out to me. “Wipe some of that makeup off your face.”

It’s another demand, but a quiet one. I’m actually relieved to be getting rid of this mask I’ve been wearing all night, and when I’m done, I check the dark mirror. It’s still me. I’m still here.

Travis is wetting two more cloths. “You can put that used one on the counter now.”

As I do what he wants, he wrings out one of the washcloths, sets the other on the basin, then faces me. He glides the rough-smooth fabric under my breast, and I grip his loose sleeves, exposing more of his chest where his shirt is unbuttoned. His skin looks dark in the mottled moonlight, and I focus on that as he slowly drags the cloth over me. Then, with more leisurely strokes, he arouses my other breast. My pussy is a swirl of cream, my clit pounding out a needy rhythm.

He slips the cloth around to my back, then lifts me until I’m half on the cool marble counter.

“God, your tits,” he says. “I can’t take my eyes off of them. I’ve been thinking about what I want to do to them all night.” His voice tightens. “Wrap one of your legs around me so you don’t lose your balance.”

My heartbeat pings around me, hitting every pleasure spot and leaving sparks. I bring up a leg and wrap it around his hard thigh. He feels so damned good.

“There you go, Beautiful.” He swipes the cloth over my nipple, and the texture stimulates me, makes me arch against his touch.

His gaze lowers, enflamed, and as he bends down to bring me toward him, I hold on tight.

When he sucks my nipple into his mouth, I push my lifted leg against him, biting my lip. He laves his tongue around my distended tip, and a sensual jolt forces me to rise to on my toes. He pushes my hips against his groin, my wet folds sliding against the nudge of his head in his trousers. I wiggle against the hardness, mewling.

His mouth worships my other breast as I keep rocking against him, gripping his hair. Thoughts of reality slide out of me, because now I’m in a place that’s part mist, part fire. I’m washed through by cool and hot, and the combination makes my head reel.

As he keeps sucking at me, he draws his hand from my back downward. He slips the cool cloth between my cheeks, washing and rubbing me there, too.

I let out a shocked, delighted sound.

“I can’t wait to touch every part of you,” he says, his words like kisses against my skin. “Just be patient, Beautiful. We’ve got time enough.”

I’m trying to be patient, but when he gnaws on my nipple, I arch against him harder. He keeps rubbing me with the cloth in that wicked place between my cheeks, and the texture drives me wild enough so that I start gyrating against his cock with every pass.

“Fuck yes,” he says, then drags his mouth away from my tit. “My virgin wants to dry fuck before the real thing. Doesn’t she?”

He brings himself up hard against me, and I whimper, responding to his every churn as he rubs his cock against my bare sex. Each time, he kneads my breast, stoking me with a heat that’s threatening to blow at any moment.

With a curse, he drops the washcloth. His breath comes hard as he replaces the fabric with his fingers, stroking my folds.

“Now you’re going to cream for me again,” he says between clenched teeth. “And then you’re going to come, Beautiful. You’re going to come hard when my cock’s deep inside of you.”

His dirty talk makes me even hotter, and I can feel myself getting juicy in record time as his thumb presses my clit, back and forth, flirting with it.

“Just like this,” he says. “There’s my hot, tight girl…”

I can hear just how wet I’m getting again as his fingers work me. The sexy sound clearly turns him on, too, because he leans over to gnaw at my neck. Electricity rides my nerves, a network of flashing lights that spark and pulse.

“So hot,” he says against my skin. “So damned—”

He slides a finger up and into me, and I pull hard at his hair, bringing his mouth to mine. As he opens my lips with his tongue, he pushes his finger deeper, then sweeps his tongue against mine as he slips his finger out. He begins to pump me, echoing each thrust and pull with his lazy kisses.

A primal sound slips from my lungs as I melt with every carnal move. He suspends the kiss, his lips still on mine.

“So she likes being finger banged, too,” he whispers against my mouth. “Isn’t that right, Beautiful?”

He keeps calling me “Beautiful,” not “Nova,” but I don’t think much on it, because the next unintelligible sound I make answers his question. Yes, I damned do like it. Forever yes. Now yes.

“Does that mean you’re ready for more?” he asks.

YES!

He slowly kisses me again, then pushes two fingers into me. At the pressure in my passage, heat expands in my belly, rumbling, rising, and I reach between us to grab his wrist. I’m urging him to go on, moving my hand with his as he pumps me, definitely juicing me up for…

My god, it’s going to happen. This time he’s not going to stop.

At the mere thought of going all the way, passion rushes me, and with a striking bolt that comes at me out of the haze, everything shatters, and I cry out louder than before. But even if I’ve already come for him, he doesn’t stop banging me. He only looks into my eyes, still priming me for more.

He grits his teeth, and I see that strange something in his gaze. A tenderness, an openness that…

He closes his eyes, and when he opens them, the darkness has taken over again.

He pulls out of me and carries me out of the bathroom. The way he handles me isn’t rough, but it’s not intimate either, and when he puts me on the bed and strips off his clothes, I grip the covers.

Something has changed between us yet again, and I try to catch my breath, shivering in anticipation and fear.

His rock-hard silhouette makes my already pulsing sex twist and beat even harder. In the dim light from the window, I see his perfection: the muscled chest and abs, the cut lines of his hips and thighs, the animal way he crawls onto the bed and hovers over me. I press my fingers to his chest, even though I don’t want him to stay away.

“You’ve got me so fucking hard.” He grasps my hand and brings it against him. “Can you feel that?”

“Yes.”

He’s so stiff, pulsing in my hand. I’ve done this to him and he doesn’t seem happy that I have so much control. But he’s going to be inside me soon, and a restless, hot scream of desire rises in me, pressing against my core. My clit pumps, my pussy soaked.

“Are you ready to feel all of me?”

“I’m ready,” I say with urgency. “Please, Travis.”

He likes the please—I can tell by the gleam in his eyes as he presses the heel of his hand against my bare mound. I lift off the bed at the erotic shock, then writhe back down as he drags his fingers over my belly and lower. He comes to my pussy, separates my lips, and I hold my agitated breath.

Then, with one smooth thrust, he’s inside me, and I gasp at the tight pain. He pauses, sliding nearly all the way out, but I grip his forearms. After a charged moment, he fills me again, then moves his cock out and in slowly, expertly.

“Relax,” he says in a ragged whisper. “Let me fuck you until you scream for me again.”

I get used to the discomfort, keeping my hold on his arms. As his cock strokes in and out of me more…more…again, my eyes seem to roll back into my head, and I begin to truly relax. He braces himself on one arm and keeps smoothly driving into me. He grips my hip with one of his hands, guiding me with every thrust.

Heaven. Hell. I’m both places at once…

Then he reaches down to stroke my clit, pressing, and I pulsate all over…faster…louder…

“Such a beautiful cunt,” he says, working me with more intensity. “So fucking beautiful.”

My heartbeat takes me over completely: wet, wild, punching me on the inside over and over and over until I rock off the mattress higher than ever before and explode into a million roaring pieces.

Quick, ruthless, and oh my god, everything…

It’s as if Travis has been in control up until now, and he clenches his jaw, coming into me with a violent spurt, then again, again, cursing each time as I keep clutching his arms.

When he’s done he collapses to the bed, his face buried in my neck.

“Goddamn it,” he murmurs. “Goddammit…”

Warmth flows through every part of me, and I wrap my arms around him, thinking that this is what they call an afterglow. My skin is giving off the last of its engulfing heat, all my systems at a low throb that slow down and down by the second. And even though Travis seemed to be remote at times, I feel so close to him now.

But as I touch his arm, he tenses, and even if he isn’t looking at me, I feel the darkness return.