Cage is leaning against the doorframe of his bathroom with a towel riding on his hips. The moonlight from the floor-to-ceiling window shows me every carved inch of him: his long, strong legs, his hard abs and broad chest, his chiseled arms and wide shoulders. His tanned skin is beaded with water, his hair wet, and the clean, damp air tells me that he just got out of the shower.

My mouth starts watering as I imagine how his skin will smell, how it’ll feel slipping against mine.

Tonight’s going to happen.

Oh my god…

It’s actually happening.

He moves away from the wall then toward me so slowly, methodically, that it’s as if he’s already thought long and hard about what he’s going to do to me and how he’s going to do it. “Just look at you, Karini. Fuck, look at you.”

He makes me feel as if I’m the only woman who’s ever caught his eye. I never really realized that I could be attractive before this, but now I quiver with the knowledge that he wants me badly, and it’s not only because he bought me.

I pulse with heat, with desperation as he comes even closer.

“How about a kiss hello,” he says.

I nod, almost in a sensual trance, then I draw in a tight breath as he stops in front of me. A thousand seconds seem to pass as I look up at him, my knees weak.

This is happening…

Before I can steady myself Cage surges toward me.

With breathtaking strength, he hauls me up to him, lifting me high and bringing my back to the wall as my knees balance on his shoulders. I hold my breath and clutch his hair while he grips my hips, his mouth near my bare pussy.

A kiss hello… Oh god.

My heart flounders, not knowing what to expect next, only knowing that my thighs are parted and his harsh breathing is stirring the hem of my negligee. I can feel the heat of his mouth so close to me, and I wince in anticipation. I’m so swollen down there, beating and yearning.

As he nudges under my nightie with his nose, he lets out a rapacious growl then presses his mouth to my sex, laving me with his tongue as I press back against the wall, gasping. But his hands are strong, his arms like iron bands that hold me up as he wickedly tastes me through and through.

Oh god…

I’m unstable, feeling as if I’m about to fall when he deftly gets a hold of me and lazily lets me slide downward, my pussy dragging over his chin, then his chest and belly. My clit is singing with the friction.

As I hit the ground and try to keep upright on my feet, he hungrily smiles down at me, and I see the darkness in his gaze that excites me so much.

“That was just hello,” he says in a deep, gravelly voice.

He starts walking me back toward the bed, dominating my every step. Our gazes stay linked, and it’s as if he’s the one pulling every string, guiding me, commanding me.

“Tell me,” he says. “What’s going to get you off?”

He’s got a good head start, but I don’t even know what to say.

He eases me onto the bed, arranging my arms above my head, looming over me as I lay in this vulnerable position.

“Do you even know what you want?” he asks.

Timidly, I shake my head. Then I whisper, “Show me.”

Show me what I want, what I need…

As he bends one of his knees onto the bed, his towel opens enough to show me his powerful, streamlined thigh. The outline of his cock against the fabric makes my pussy cream, because tonight’s going to be the night.

And I don’t know whether to run or tear that towel off.

He rests a hand on my neck, and my pulse kicks against his fingers. After if he feels how keyed up I am, he skims down over my collarbone, between my breasts, over the center of my stomach, then my tightening belly. Just as I think he’s about to stroke me between my legs, he moves to my thigh. He slides off the bed, sinking to his knees on the floor.

The desire in his eyes is imprinted on my mind, even though he’s out of sight, and the deep blue color glows inside of me, burning until I shift my hips in agitation. He cuffs his fingers around my ankles.

I stare at the ceiling, my heart scuttling.

“Easy,” he says in that low, persuasive voice. “Just lie back and let me make you feel good, baby.”

“Okay.”

I relax a little, and he rubs his thumbs at the sensitive spot just above my ankles.

“When I fuck you,” he murmurs, “you’re going to forget all about being nervous. You’re going to moan and gush until my cock is dripping with your cream.”

I never imagined a man would talk to me like this and that it would get me going so hard that I want to sob for him to continue.

“What’re you going to do to me?” I ask, my voice wavering.

His thumbs are still petting the inside of my ankles, and I rock my hips on the bed.

“I think we should start right here,” he says. “Does this feel alright?”

I only moan.

“And if I were to do this…” He runs his palms up the inside of my calves, then walks his fingers slowly between my knees, parting them a little farther. “What would you think?”

“I think…” God, I’m starting to pant, and it’s the only sound in the room besides my overwhelming pulse. “I can’t think, Cage.”

“Good. Because this isn’t about thinking.”

His fingers dance their way up between my thighs, and the blood thumps between my legs. My labia feel plumped, drenched, and he hasn’t even gotten there yet.

He pauses in his journey, caressing the inside of my thighs with gentle strokes, up, down. Each time his fingers inch under my negligee, my hips shift, responding to his every movement.

I feel as if I’ve had a glass of wine and the alcohol has infiltrated my body, giving me a sexy buzz. But I haven’t had anything. Only him.

“Good?” he asks me.

“Yes.”

As he gets to his feet again, he runs his hands over the tops of my thighs. He continues upward, his thumbs skimming my pussy, giving me a little shock. He lifts my negligee as his light fingertips come to my belly, making tiny muscles jump there. He roams up my stomach, and when he cups my breasts, I squirm.

His large body blocks out everything else in my sight, his heat encompassing me.

“Damn,” he says, fondling me. “Your tits…”

I rest my hands over the backs of his as he squeezes my breasts, his thumbs dragging over my nipples to tease them to hardness. My feet are braced on the mattress now, giving me the leverage to move with his caresses. I’m one long line of slow flowing lava.

The moonlight shows me what’s in his eyes—demons that are chasing him, even in this bedroom. I wish I knew what they were, but I can’t think right now. All I can do is make impatient, delighted sounds that seem to drive him on until something snaps in him and he suddenly flips me over on the bed.

I heave in a startled yet turned-on breath as the mattress dips with his weight and he works the negligee up and then over my body and arms. With one practiced move, he wraps the nightie around my wrists over my head, and my clit gives a violet jerk. A spurt of wetness coats my pussy.

I can feel the bare tip of his cock brush my bottom. The towel has obviously fallen away from him, just as surely as so many other things have fallen away.

His composure.

His cool.

“Tell me to stop if you want me to,” he says darkly.

Stop what? The heat that’s building inside of me? The fever I’m running?

“More,” I whisper harshly.

He pauses, almost as if my answer has surprised him, but then he tightens the nightie around my wrists, pulling them up slightly as he dips his cock between the backs of my thighs.

Scared of what comes next, I keep my legs closed, but as I feel another velvet nudge from his head, I open slightly.

“Shit,” he mutters, but he pulls back. I don’t know why. This is all going so fast, just like everything else with Cage does. I want this to happen, but then again I don’t. I’m juiced and I’m frightened, needful, desperate.

I hear him breathing as he straddles my body with his knees on the mattress, feel him keeping a tight grip on the nightie around my wrists. But he doesn’t do anything else.

An eon seems to pass by. Car horns float up from the city street beneath us and compete with my sharp breaths. The air conditioning kicks on, humming and imitating the flow of my blood as we both wait.

And wait.

I can’t stand this. “Cage…?”

I might as well be pleading—I think I am—and he hears it, too, because he gently loosens his grip on the nightie, letting my hands fall all the way back to the bed. Then, with a tenderness that mystifies me, he slips his hand back between my legs, urging them open.

Give it to me, I think, excitement warring with my anxiety. Keep going…

He strokes into my pussy from the back, skimming over my entrance on his way to my clit, his touch slick with my cream. I press the side of my face into the mattress, biting my lip.

“Good,” he whispers as he continues to rub me. “So ready for me…”

Everything inside me is beginning to unravel and untie. At the same time, it’s as if ribbons are tightening within me, my clit knotting up along with my belly, creating a pressure so unbearable that I don’t think I can stand it. And when Cage lets go of the nightie around my wrists altogether to slip that hand under my stomach, I begin to urge him to go faster as he strokes my pussy.

“Yes…yes…yes—”

He cuts me off by bending and crushing his lips to mine. The unexpected kiss suspends all the tightness in me, almost like the ribbons are being taken up by the wind, hovering before they swirl down to the ground again, curling back into their knots.

Now he’s kissing me ferociously, ravaging me, devouring me, and I return every erotic beat, reaching up to grasp his hair, my negligee dangling from my wrist and covering us like a veil.

He breaks the kiss, stops stroking me, and waits. My approaching orgasm pauses. Damn him, he’s teasing me, priming me, and when he suddenly flips me to my back again, I’m high with the need to come already.

“Cage!”

At the sound of my frustration, he bends my legs then urges them apart as he stands up from the bed, so tall, so everything. Now I can see the fire in his eyes, hellish and driven by whatever it is that I can’t explain. I can see his hard cock bobbing with his excitement, and the thrill of knowing that he’s going to be inside me soon terrifies me in a brutally hot way.

As he slides his fingers into the folds of my pussy again, I wiggle my hips.

“Now?” I ask.

“Not yet.”

“When?”

“Soon…”

He pushes a finger up and into me, and an animalistic yowl fills the air. It’s mine.

He adds another finger, slower this time. I make more little sounds as he swirls inside of me, opening me up.

I grip the duvet. When. When. When…?

It’s only as I open my eyes and look at him again that I see past the demons in him, straight to something I’ve seen before.

Does he feel something for me?

Does he?

My thoughts blinker off as he curls his fingers inside me and presses on my g-spot. Sparks go off inside me, almost lighting a flame.

But not quite yet.

“Are you ready for my cock?” he asks.

I don’t answer, because now he’s using his other thumb to circle around my clit. It’s even more maddening than having him touch the sweet spot itself, and I let him know that by crying out my rising pleasure.

With a ragged sound, he withdraws his fingers from me and pulls my legs to his hips. I feel his tip at my entrance, but he’s controlled enough to wait.

Barely.

“Tell me how much you want this,” he whispers.

“A lot.”

“This much?”

He dips his head into my opening, just enough so that I suck in a breath at the discomfort of taking him in. As he releases me, I hear the wet sound of him slipping out.

Desire beats inside me like tiny fists as he lowers me so that I’m flat on the bed again. Then he braces himself on the mattress and slants his body so that the length of his cock slides against me, but not into me.

“Please,” I say.

He slips his hand up my body to caress my breast, and I see the battle in his gaze—light versus darkness, the present versus some kind of past that’s marked him so badly.

Then he slips his fingers down from my breast and plants his hand on the bed so that he’s caging me. The next time he prods me with his cock, it goes in farther, enough so that I inhale stiffly.

Oh, I wish he would just—

As he slides deeper inside me, I lock my legs around him and grip his arms, gasping. My walls tighten around his big cock, and when he slips out of me, there’s a stinging burn along with the discomfort.

But there’s also a craving that I have to feed, and I do it by digging my fingernails into his skin.

It’s a yes, please, more, and he enters me again, hard and thick, and with every stroke afterward, the burning subsides, and I begin to move with him.

“God, baby,” he says, working me, driving me crazy as everything whirls inside of me, gathering speed and force.

He fucks me and fucks me, my brain blinking in and out, the sound of my mewling the only thing I hear. As the friction of his cock against my walls creates heat, more sparks, a fire, everything that was suspended in me starts rolling, heading toward something big…something great…

When that something finally bursts through me with savage speed, I scream.

It’s as if my orgasm lights him up, too, because he gets all the way on the bed, bringing me onto his lap to face him. He grips my hips and impales me with his cock, and I gasp loudly again. He uses his hands to show me how to churn on him, letting his cock ease in and out of me as I hold on, groaning with every thrust as he starts to lose control.

His eyes…dark…light…I don’t even know which one anymore…

Another orgasm is building and building, and he leans me back and fucks me with his tip hitting my ultimate spot, nudging it, pushing me, urging me—

It happens again—release, wreckage, rapture as I’m torn open with a shattering wet splash. He comes, too, blasting into me, and we both fall to the bed, rolling over it with the force of our passion. I feel us both falling, and as we tumble off the mattress, I land on top of him, panting, grasping for breath as he holds me on his lap, digging his fingers into my hair.

He holds me close, my face buried against the damp skin of his neck so I can’t see his expression. But from the way he can’t seem to let go of me, I think we just crossed yet another line.

And I can’t wait for even more.