As dusk sinks over the valley, I sit, legs tucked against my chest, on the back-porch swing. For a moment, I wonder how Daddy is getting by without me at the hotel. The thought is swiftly overwhelmed when I think of Kase. I can’t say there’s anywhere else I’d rather be right now. Not even home.

After dinner, Kase had ordered me out here to relax while he finished cleaning up. Somehow, I already miss him. His touch. His attention. The way I feel like the most important person in his world. As long as we’re here this way, together, existing in this little bubble that our arrangement created, he’s becoming the most important person in mine too.

Ten minutes later, Kase joins me. He leans on the peeling whitewashed railing, legs crossed casually at the ankle. “Thanks again for dinner. It was delicious.”

I give him a small smile. “I’m glad you liked it.”

He stares down at me. His gaze seems to penetrate my skin, touching every part of me, from my messy hair to my bare toes.

That quickly, I get the sense that I’m being hunted. That Kase is making plans for us—for me—somewhere in the depths of his mind. It knots me up inside.

“What are you thinking about?”

He turns and looks out at the mountains, which are now saturated in deep reds and oranges. “The answer to that question is always you, June.” He glances back at me, a new rigidity to his posture. “The longer we wait, the harder it’s going to be for me to do this right.”

The air presses out of my chest with his confession. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t devoted every other minute of today wondering if we’d go further tonight. If he’d finally take me the way I’ve been damn near begging him to.

“I told you I was ready.”

He curls his fingers over the edge of the railing. “You think you are because you have no idea what’s in my head right now.”

I wait patiently for him to tell me.

He strums his fingers on the rail, looking down. “You know what I did last night?”

I shake my head.

“I imagined all the filthy things I wanted to do to you. It was a nonstop erotic slideshow that I couldn’t shut off no matter how hard I tried. All goddamn night I had to convince myself not to go into your room and make every one of those fantasies come true.”

“What do you want to do to me?” My whisper lingers in the air between us. An invitation that draws him closer, one slow, confident step in front of the other, until he’s settled on his haunches in front of me.

He cups my ankles and tugs until my feet hit the floor. Never breaking eye contact, he spreads my legs wider, sliding his palms along the sensitive insides of my thighs. “Tease you. Make you want me as badly as I want you.”

I close my eyes at the recollection of his fingers plunging inside me yesterday, awakening sensations I’d never known before. He must have no idea how badly I want him already.

His gliding touch up each of my arms draws my attention away from the memory and back to the living, breathing Kase. “Slowly…” He digs his thumbs into the crease of my elbows and drags slowly down. “Methodically…until every cell of your beautiful body cries out for more.”

I suck in a breath, acutely aware of how the rough trail of his nails down my skin feeds the fire raging in my core.

“I want to turn you on until it hurts. Then I want to press into that hurt and find out how far you can go, how much you can take until you break.”

My heart races. My blood sings, hot and needy through my veins. “You… You want to break me?” I swallow, but my throat is dry.

“I do.” He lowers to kiss my wrists and licks up the faint red line he drew up my forearm. “I want to dominate you. Control you. Push you. Fuck you.”

A shiver works its way through my whole body. I’m suddenly too warm. My nipples are tight, needy beads under my shirt. The arousal between my legs is tied to every dirty word that spills from his perfect lips. I squirm, jutting my hips another inch toward him.

“Do what you want, Kase. I told you already. I trust you.”

He stares at me a moment. His body totally still. His gaze seems to search for a reason not to believe my words match my intent.

Kase is different. Intense beyond words. And from what I already know about him, he’s a doorway to the kind of pleasure I’ve only dreamt about.

He threads our fingers together.

“Nothing about this arrangement between us—the property or your time here—means you’re obligated to do things with me that you’re not comfortable with. You can tell me to stop. I’ll do everything in my power to make sure you’re more than satisfied. But if it’s ever more than you can handle, all you have to do is say so.”

I’m ready to say yes to anything. All of it. I’ll sign in blood if I have to. Sure, I’m afraid of what I don’t know yet about Kase and his dark promises, but that fear lives inside an intimate kind of trust that grows between us day by day. I’ve never felt such a contradiction like this with another human being in my life, but it feels so damn right.

“Where do we start?” The question is breathy, laced with invitation.

He doesn’t budge. “Say you understand. I need to know your limits, and I can’t know unless you’re willing to tell me.”

I lean forward. Our noses touch… Our lips nearly do. “Kase.” I draw my palm across his rough cheek and my thumb along his lower lip. “No one’s ever made me feel the way you do. Before you ever touched me, I wanted you to. Nothing’s changed except I know you better, and I want you so much more. So put your hands on me. Dominate me.” I hover my lips above his and flick my tongue against his mouth. “Fuck me.”

With a growl, he consumes the space between us, sealing our mouths in a savage kiss. His arms come around me, and in a flash, I’m wrapped around him. He moves us out of the night air, into the house, and up the narrow stairs. Our lips never stop seeking. I touch him everywhere I can reach. I tug at his soft white T-shirt as we pass into his bedroom and fall onto the bed. He tears my hand from the hem and pushes it and the other into the mattress above my head, pinning me.

Kneeing my legs apart, he settles between them. I can feel my heartbeat through my whole body. In my swollen lips when our kisses get deeper and more desperate. At my wrists where he holds me tightly. All my senses are on high alert. His jeans are rough against my thighs. Every grind of his hips teases what’s to come. The weight and strength of his body matches the dominating hold he has on me. It’s comforting and arousing all at once.

But my skin prickles for more… More contact, more skin on skin.

He trails his touch over my belly and under my shirt. Dipping under my bra, he traps my nipple between his fingertips and pinches until I whimper.

I wriggle in his grasp, which only tightens when I resist. “Let me touch you,” I beg.

His eyelids lower a fraction. “No. I like it this way.” His gaze roves over me hungrily. “I think I’m harder than I’ve ever been in my life, seeing you pinned like this, just waiting to find out how I’m going to fuck you. It’s taking all my willpower not to tie you to the goddamn bed right now. I could tease you for hours.”

I exhale a shaky breath as I try to process all of that. I’ve been so on edge for days. I’m not sure how I can survive hours more of this craving.

“Please…”

“Please, what, baby?” He grinds against me, eliciting a whole-body shudder.

“Kase,” I mewl, turning my head to the side.

“Look at me when you beg. Or I’ll put you on your knees and show you what real begging feels like.”

I whip my gaze to his. My cheeks heat and my next few breaths come quickly with his threat. The dark look in his eyes tells me not to challenge it. The idea of getting on my knees for him isn’t wholly uncomfortable. Being there doesn’t get him any closer to being inside me, though. So I give him what I think he wants.

“I thought about you all day. The same way you thought about me last night. Kase, I fantasized about this night a thousand times.” I swallow, because a part of me hates being this vulnerable. But he has to know it…

He reaches for my shorts, tugs on the top button, and drags the zipper down slowly. “What did you fantasize about?”

“Us at the falls that night. Sneaking back to the hotel, going to my room.”

He slides his hand down and teases his fingertips over my panties, derailing my thoughts. “How did I touch you?”

I bite my lip and try not to moan. “Like this. Just like this.”

“Then what?”

“You undressed me.”

Slowly he releases my wrists and, pushing my shirt up, places a hot kiss against my belly that makes me quiver. Hooking his fingers under the band of my shorts, he pulls them down with my panties.

“And how did that make you feel, being so naked and exposed in your fantasy?” He stands by the bed and pulls his shirt off.

I try to formulate words, but everything gets muddled when he shucks his pants and stands before me. A tower of muscle and mouthwatering desire. As if my focus isn’t already riveted on his thick cock jutting out from his muscled body, he strokes it leisurely, and I’m fixated. My pulse thrums a heavy, steady beat that I can feel between my thighs.

He opens a drawer in the bedside table and pulls out a condom.

“I asked you a question, June. How did it feel?”

He brings it to his teeth and tears the wrapper before slowly rolling it onto his considerable length.

“Scary,” I say, my voice shaky and breathy. “Intimate. Like this.”

He comes toward me, and I think I might combust when he tears my shirt and bra off, bringing our bodies together, hot and flush. When he kisses me, I feel his teeth and his waning restraint.

“Then what?” His voice is like gravel, vibrating through me.

“You… You…” I shake my head. Not being able to form the words suddenly makes me feel like the shy sixteen-year-old girl whose desire Kase lit on fire all those years ago.

He notches the head of his cock against my opening, and my breath catches.

“I fantasized about you too,” he whispers. “About this.” Then he pushes in, meeting that tender spot his fingers found back in his truck. He lingers there, pinning me with his stare. Those two blue oceans ease me into the piercing pain that comes with the surge of his body joining completely with mine.

A small cry escapes my lips, and I cling to him. He’s the force behind the discomfort, but somehow he’s my salvation too.

“You were always the one,” he says softly.

I blink through the haze of my pain and the rush of the moment.

“This is always where I wanted to be. I knew I could never have you, but I never forgot about you, June. Never stopped wishing that night had ended the way you envisioned.”

I wrap my legs around his waist and hold him to me. “You have me now.”