“Ow. Let go.” I try to pull my wrist free of the steel vise of his fingers as he drags me into his apartment, but no use. “Jarett. You’re hurting me.”

“Fuck, sorry.” His grip relaxes, and I pull my hand away, rubbing at my wrist. He glances at it, his brows knitting, and starts to pace. He’s vibrating with tension.

“What’s the matter?” I stand in his living room, in my heavy jacket, wondering what got him so worked up. “I just wanted to talk—”

“You shouldn’t come here.”

“Rest assured it won’t happen again,” I say, stung.

“It’s dangerous,” he says. “There were gang members across the street, and they could have seen you. They get all jittery after robbing a store.”

I take a step back, his words a physical blow. “Your gang?”

“Yeah, my gang.” He runs a hand through his dark hair and stops across from me, though he’s not looking at me. As if he’s forgotten I’m here.

That stings, too. Hurt twists up my stomach, makes my eyes feel too hot, and that is so not fair. Because all this just sucks, and it’s getting worse by the second.

“Are you serious right now?” I swallow hard. “You went and robbed a store?”

He glances sideways at me. “It’s a fucking gang, Gigi. What did you think we do, sit around knitting socks and watching Desperate Housewives?”

“It’s not funny!”

“Of course it’s not goddamn funny.” He shakes his head, as if he can’t believe I’m not getting it yet. “You can’t be seen with me, Gigi.”

And my name spoken in his low, sexy voice is the last straw.

“Really? You went and robbed a store, and now you’re worried about me? How about not robbing that store? How about never joining a frigging gang in the first place?” I go and stand right in front of him, jab a finger into his hard chest. “How about being a good person?”

He looks down at my hand, as if having trouble understand what it is. “Gigi—”

“You know, I used to think you were so cool when I met you,” I hiss, pressing my finger against a rock-hard pec. “Quiet and a bit stoic, but good. Solid. But now? Now I don’t know what to think anymore.”

He grabs my hand, holds it tight. “I’m trying to save your goddamn life!”

“Oh wait, I get it. You just saved me, that it?” And just like that, anger flares once more. “That what you’re saying?”

He blinks, those pretty green eyes narrowing. “I told you, if they see you with me, if they think we’re friends…”

“We’re not friends.”

He flinches, a slight, almost imperceptible movement, and for a second my anger wavers. “Of course not,” he says, and then his face settles into hard lines. “And yeah, I saved your ass, Gigi. Or I’m trying to. What of it?”

“Guess I owe you payment for this, too?”

His eyes widen for a split second, then heat seeps into them. “Is this what got your panties in a twist, sweetheart? You’re dying to pay me back and don’t wanna say it?”

“What? No!” I’m suddenly aware of how close together we’re standing, how his rough thumb is moving in small circles against the sensitive inside of my wrist, sending shivers down my spine. “I don’t…”

Don’t even know what to say.

Because he’s right again. This, and every time—that I want him so much I can’t think straight.

This isn’t what I came here to do, but every time he’s around, rational thought flees my head and I’m just a hot mess of desire and need—for him. I swear I feel flames lick my skin.

Never been this way with any other guy. Figures I’d fall in lust with the one guy I shouldn’t want. In lust, and so much more.

With the pretty boy with shadows in his eyes.

The bad wolf of the neighborhood.

I gasp when he lifts my arm and puts his mouth on the inside of my wrist, a kiss, a brand, and his eyes are on me, a flicker of heat in their cores like the beating of wings.

Then again when he slips his other hand behind my back, pulling me against him.

“Feel this?” he rasps. “Do you want it?”

My lips part, but no words come. God, yes, I feel him, and want him, every inch of his hard, strong body pressed to mine, and his thickening cock, burning through our layers of clothes. That delicious masculine scent is everywhere, starting a fire in my belly. My pussy clenches, my clit throbs, and my breasts ache.

This is crazy.

“You think I’m the villain,” he says, and bends his head to mine, his breath a hot whisper over my lips, peppery spice and a faint hint of aftershave. “And you’re right. But you’re still here.”

I am, and I lick my lips as I stare at his mouth. I want him to touch me, to kiss me, to fuck me, and God, what’s this spell he has on me?

“Say something.” The shadows in his eyes deepen, lashes lowering until they hide his gaze, and his lips part, letting out an uneven breath.

I can’t. Can’t think, not when he’s pressed to me, his big, hard body, his hard cock, his muscular arm tight around my back, keeping me close. Keeping me here, with him, right where I want to be, where I find myself in my dreams and fantasies.

So instead of talking, I kiss him. Rising on tiptoes, throwing my arms around his neck, I slant my mouth over his.

For a long second, he’s still, his mouth as soft as I remembered, his taste exploding on my tongue. I lick at his lips, and he shudders.

Something like a growl escapes him, and suddenly I’m pushed against the wall and his tongue is in my mouth, his lips hard and insistent on mine. There’s nothing soft about his mouth anymore, about him. He’s all hard and unyielding, hot and burning.

His knee is between my legs, and I moan into the kiss as it presses right where I need him. His tongue fucks my mouth, and I hump his leg, my hands gripping his big shoulders so tightly I can’t feel my fingers.

Every sweep of his tongue, every shift of his body, every touch feels like the first and last I’ll ever feel. It scorches me, marks me, destroys me.

Drives me higher, the pleasure drowning me before we’ve even started.

Then he’s tearing my jacket off my shoulders and pulls his mouth from mine to bite into my flesh. His lips move higher, to my neck, and I buck against him, needing him closer, needing him naked.

“Jarett…” I breathe, releasing his shoulders to tug at his clothes. Too many clothes between us, too many barriers, untruths and problems and impossibilities.

Lifting his head, he fixes me with his heated gaze. God, a boy shouldn’t be allowed to have such pretty eyes, such a pretty mouth.

Such a bad soul.

All my doubts have led me back here, and he’s again crushing them with the reminder of the gang he belongs to, the arrogance in his voice and the harshness of his words. This boy sure isn’t all roses and rainbows—but it’s more than that. He has an edge that cuts deep.

He’s made of sharp bits, all ready to hurt, beautiful like a shiny blade and just as lethal.

And worst of all, he doesn’t seem to sense the wrongness of it. Doesn’t seem to want to change his ways, to be saved.

He pulls back just enough to shed his jacket and in one swift movement drags his sweater and T-shirt off. “This what you want?”

God, yes, I think, the rest of my thoughts derailed and fading as I let my hands roam over his muscled, inked chest, over firm, warm flesh, over the beat of his racing heart.

He’s affected by this. Aroused. Shaking with it. He’s so hard the tent in his pants pushes into my stomach, even though we’re not pressed together anymore.

More. I want more, and I let my hands drop to his belt.

But he slams me back to the wall before I can do more than that, driving the air from my lungs. Grabbing the hem of my sweater, he lifts it over my head, until I have no choice but to lift my arms and let him drag it off me.

Undress for me, that’s what he’d demanded last time, and I’d walked out. Looks like this time he’s getting his way, and I’m doing nothing to stop him.

I don’t want him to stop.

Somewhere at the back of my mind, I’m aware of a small voice screaming at me to end this madness and walk out, to think before I do something even more stupid than last time. But I can barely hear it over the sound of my own heartbeat, too loud in my ears, as he moves his hands over my body, around the back, seeking the zipper.

He locates it, his body again covering mine. He pulls the zipper down, and the dress drops to the floor, pooling around my feet.

Dressed only in my bra and panties and my knee-high black boots, I look up at him, my breath caught in my throat, feeling more exposed than ever before in my life. Even though I’m still not naked. Even though other guys have seen me in less.

The way his eyes darken as he takes me in, the way his hand drops on a possessive grip on my hip… it’s as if he can see my every secret, my every thought.

See how powerless I am to resist him.

“Red underwear,” he mutters. “Of course.” He braces his other hand on the wall by my head, cornering me. Trapping me with his bulk.

I love it.

His tongue darts out to wet his lips, and I gulp. His hand on my hip trails lower, dipping inside my panties.

I shiver.

“So wet,” he says softly, stroking my clit, and I gasp and arch against him, helplessly clutching at his arms. “All this for me.”

So arrogant, I want to tell him. So sure it’s for you.

It’s the truth, though. It’s all because of him. He’s driving me wild, his thumb circling my clit, his gaze boring into mine… just that, and I’m about to come apart.

Giving in to him again. Giving myself up to his sexy voice and clever hands, his hot kisses and my need for him.

He leans in closer, until I see the different greens in his eyes, and flecks of gold swimming in the iris. “Say it,” he murmurs.

“What?”

“I want to hear you say it. Say you want me.”

Is he blind? Is he stupid? Can’t he see he has me at his mercy? And yet a stubborn part of me refuses to obey.

“Gigi.” His thumb stills between my legs, and he bends his head to bite at the side of my neck, jolting me with pinpricks of pain.

Still I say nothing.

He grunts, pulls his hand out of my panties, and yanks down the straps of my bra, down my arms, letting my breasts spill out.

He cups one, massages my nipple with his thumb, the same thumb that was between my legs seconds ago, and the scent of my arousal hits me. I moan, the pain/pleasure of his grip on my breast, on my sensitive nipple, shooting pleasure straight to my pussy.

Bending over, he takes the other nipple in his mouth, sucking hard, and I cry out, a blaze making its way into my core. My hips roll restlessly. I need something.

I need him inside me.

His hot mouth lets go of my aching nipple, and he kisses my mouth, a quick, savage kiss that leaves me breathless.

“I want you,” he whispers against my lips, “I want you to want this. To want me.”

Not a question, or a demand. There’s a break in his voice, a hairline crack, an uncertainty I didn’t expect, and it makes me weak. Makes me wish I could tell him how I really feel.

But I don’t, and the moment stretches until it snaps.

He draws back. “Fine,” he says, still softly, voice still broken. “Let’s fuck.”

* * *

One moment I’m standing there in my underwear and boots, his thumb pressing on my clit, holding me prisoner—and the next I’m pushed down on my knees, in a position that’s starting to feel familiar when I’m with Jarett.

It feels wrong—after this foreplay, his request, this rare crack in his defenses, unless I imagined it?—that we seem to be right back where we started.

Where he’s using me for his pleasure, and no matter how sexy that is, deep down I’d been hoping… for something else. Something more.

I reach up and unbuckle his belt, unbutton his pants, aroused and too hot, and yet wanting to cry. The backs of my eyes sting, and I have to swallow hard as I kneel there, my breasts bared, my panties soaked.

What am I doing? Why am I doing this to myself?

My vision is blurring, but my hands don’t want to stop. They tug on his pants, pulling them down, finding him bare underneath, as expected. I put my hand on his hard-on. My pussy clenches when I wrap my fingers around it, when he grunts low in his throat.

My mouth shouldn’t water at the sight, at the thick veins, the size of him. My body shouldn’t want him.

Not when dark memories keep welling up, threatening to drown me.

When he tears the foil packet open and hands me the condom, I put it on his cock, roll it down his length, just as I tell myself I should get up.

Get up and go. Fight the haze in my head, this maddening desire.

But his hands close around my forearms, and he pulls me back on my feet. I gasp when his hard cock presses into my stomach, hot and big.

His mouth curls into a crooked smirk, then he lifts one of my legs, boot and all, around his thigh, against his muscular ass, spreading me wide. Until I’m standing on tiptoes and straining, off-balance and at his mercy.

And then he shoves his cock into me.

It’s a slow push, and even so it’s too big, too much. My body rebels at the intrusion, my legs trying to close, keep him out, but he just lifts my leg higher and pushes deeper, making me cry out.

Oh God. I can’t take it, I can’t… and as the fear swirls in my mind like a black hole, he sinks deeper, filling me up more and more, until I think I’ll split in two.

I’m holding on to him for dear life, trying to breathe through the sensations, to tell myself it’s okay, wondering how to tell him to stop when I can’t speak—and then he shifts, rocks his hips in a thrust, angling his cock just so, and the world splinters into pleasure.

I splinter.

Or I come back together, I don’t know, it just feels so unbelievably good I squirm and pant and roll my hips, trying to feel that twisting bolt of sweet fire again. Dangerously good. He’s so deep inside me, deep enough to make my whole body jerk, make me lose control.

He’s still now, his large frame tense and muscles straining.

He’s holding back, I realize. His gaze is hot on me, on my face, watching me, and his powerful chest is rising and falling as if he’s been running.

“You okay?” he asks softly, and with his next breath, his cock slides a bit deeper, then out, and we both gasp.

“Please,” I whisper. “Rett, please.”

“Yeah,” he whispers back, “that’s it,” and I should want to punch in his handsome face, but my body is on a verge of something huge, pleasure unlike any it’s ever felt, and it holds the reins.

“Fuck me.” I swallow hard. “Hard.”

His eyes go heavy-lidded. “You got it.”

He steadies himself with his hand on the wall, biceps bulging, while he keeps the other on my leg that’s wrapped around him, and thrusts.

“Oh God…” I can’t recognize my voice. It’s broken, choked. It doesn’t sound like my voice at all. “Oh shit.”

He thrusts again, a grunt leaving his lips, his hips snapping, thrusting harder, faster.

Every little movement, every breath and every word makes his thick cock swell bigger inside me. It rubs on every nerve ending I possess, ratcheting up the need, higher and higher until I think I’ll go crazy.

“Rett…”

“You never called.” He hisses as he pumps into me, smashing my thoughts. “I gave you my fucking number, and you didn’t fucking call.”

What is he talking about? “You’re in a gang.” I sob for breath, my pussy clenching around his hard-on. “A frigging gang that robs stores.”

“That’s not for me, dammit. I had to…”

“Had to what?”

“Fuck this.” He slams me against the wall and fucks me so hard he bottoms out, his balls pressed to my ass, and it’s a fine line between pain and pleasure as I teeter on the brink to the most powerful orgasm of my life. “Damn, girl…”

He’s fucking me, and I’m riding his cock, my arms around his neck, my back pressed to the wall, and it’s my undoing.

His roughness, his insistence, his skill… his unexpected gentleness when needed.

Always unexpected.

“Jarett!” I press my mouth to his muscular shoulder, bite softly into the thick muscle as my core spasms, and I come, waves of pleasure rolling through me, my heart drumming in my chest.

He groans, his rhythm faltering, his thrusts growing frantic and shallow, and he grinds me against the wall, burying his face in my neck and I think he whispers my name.

It sounds like my name.

Over and over again, like a prayer.

But after a while, when his breathing calms down, he straightens and pulls out of me and says…

He says, “Go.”

And for some reason, the finality in his voice breaks my heart.