By Sunday, the pain had receded, but Elise had had to postpone the booty call to spend the day with the girls.

“Now don’t get too excited,” she said as she showed the security guard in Jay’s office building her temporary badge. “This isn’t like a residential job. It’s not going to hit you over the head with its fabulousness.”

“I beg to differ,” Gia said. “I can already feel myself getting faint at the fabulousness that’s in my future.”

Gia had flown in late Saturday. She did that sometimes. She would parachute in for a quick best-friends-fest, and the four of them would gorge on each other’s company. Gia had stayed at Elise’s place last night, and today they had all gone from breakfast to the spa, and now they were headed up to the empty offices of Cohen & Smith so she could show them her work.

They all crowded onto the elevator, chattering a mile a minute.

These intense doses of her best friends, where they dropped everything and just reveled in each other’s company, were among Elise’s favorite ways to spend time. Usually.

She had been more than a little distracted today.

But she wasn’t going to be one of those women who bailed on her friends for a man. And she really did want to show off her first big solo design job.

“Hold the elevator!”

Elise reflexively did do, sticking her hand out to stop the door closing.

“Thanks.”

Oh, crap. It was that woman Stacey. Jay’s ex-girlfriend. Or not. Depending on who you believed.

“Hey!” Stacey seemed a little too happy to see her. “Elise Maxwell, right?”

“Yes, hi. I’m just taking my friends up to Cohen & Smith to show them my work. Jay said I could.”

She wasn’t sure why she added that last bit. Jay had given her a key to the office long ago and told her to come and go as she pleased, but it wasn’t like Stacey needed an explanation.

“I’m sure he did.” Stacey was looking way too amused for a causal elevator encounter.

Elise was starting to get annoyed. So this woman was Jay’s ex. So she was stunningly beautiful and accomplished. But just because she had a history with Jay didn’t mean she had to lord it over Elise.

Her irritation must have shown on her face, because Stacey said, “I’m sorry I was so weird and bitchy that day we met.”

Uh, what? That was the last thing Elise had expected.

“It was just because I get kind of possessive of Jay. And not because we dated, but because we’re old friends. I mean, we did date, but he was right, it was only for, like, five minutes. I mean, the way he kisses.” She made a face like she’d smelled something bad. “Like, chill out, dude. It’s like he only has one degree of intensity, and that’s, like, a hundred, you know?”

Elise’s face heated. “Um, no, I don’t know, actually.”

Stacey grinned. “Well, you’ll see.” Elise started to protest, but the elevator stopped at Stacey’s floor. She paused halfway out. “You’re exactly his type.”

“What…type is that?” Elise couldn’t help asking.

“Smart. Capable. Independent.”

Well, crap. Elise was shocked that she came off that way to someone like Stacey. Shocked and pleased. Maybe she was moving along faster than she’d realized on her whole self-transformation project.

She was trying to think how to respond when Stacey stepped fully off the elevator. As the doors started to close, she winked and said, “I’ll be seeing you around, Elise Maxwell.”

Her friends—she’d kind of forgotten about them for a second there—were silent until the elevator closed fully and started moving again. Then they lost their minds, exclaiming, talking over each other, and crap. She was going to have to do some explaining.

The offices were dark. She’d kind of hoped someone might be burning the Sunday night oil, thereby saving her from the interrogation she was about to be subjected to, but no such luck.

“Can I at least show you the lobby first?” she asked weakly as she held the door for everyone.

“No, you cannot,” Jane said. “I can’t concentrate on your brilliance until I know who that woman is and why she thinks you would know how your client kisses.”

Wendy sank into one of the chairs in the lobby. “I concur.”

Gia did the same. “I don’t know who that woman was, but I do know that Elise likes this Jay guy. A lot.”

Elise sighed. Gia was already on to her, which she’d known. And now that the other two sensed that something was afoot, they were never going to let it go.

So she sat, too, and told them everything. About the sexual tension, the postponed booty call. But also about how awesome his confidence in her work made her feel. About his take that her rift with her parents said something about her character. She didn’t spare any detail. The more she talked, the more embarrassed she became that she’d kept any of it from them in the first place. It was just that this…thing with Jay wasn’t like any of the relationships she had in the past. It felt different. Private.

“Look at you!” Wendy exclaimed when she was done. “New apartment, new company, new boyfriend.”

“Oh, no.” Elise hurried to correct her. “He’s not my boyfriend. We’re just going to sleep together.”

Hopefully several times.

“I see,” Jane said. “You guys lie around playing board games and cuddling, but he’s not your boyfriend.”

“Yeah, I would almost buy that, except for the cuddling,” said Wendy. “You don’t cuddle with your fuck buddies.”

Crap. Wendy would know. She was the queen of long-term casual relationships.

“You especially don’t cuddle with your fuck buddy when you’re not actually fucking,” said Gia.

Panic started to seize Elise. “Oh my God, you guys. I can’t have a boyfriend.”

“Why not?” Jane asked.

“I’m in the middle of establishing my business, and…well, this sounds dumb, but I also feel like I’m establishing myself, you know? As an independent person. For the first time in my life.”

“So?” Wendy asked.

“Well, I’ve spent my whole life dependent on my father. Now I’m going to switch to a boyfriend?” If that was even on offer, and there was no evidence that it was. So she wasn’t sure why they were even having this conversation.

“Oh my God, Elise, you are so dumb sometimes,” Gia said.

“Not according to Stacey.” Wendy cackled in that way she had.

“Look,” said Gia. “You don’t want a boyfriend? I’m cool with that. I, of all people, am cool with that.” It was true. Gia was unapologetic about her commitment allergy. “But don’t cast Jay in the same mold as your father. From what you’ve said Jay…ugh, I can’t believe I’m going to say this.” She made a gagging gesture. “Jay lifts you up. Helps you.”

Was that…true?

“It’s okay to let someone help you,” Jane added.

Elise didn’t know what to say. They were all silent. Just for a moment, but it must have been too much for Wendy, because she stood, clapped her hands, and said, “Well, this has been a great talk. Let’s see some décor and shit.”

The “great talk” was still rattling around inside Elise’s head when she said good-bye to Gia at the airport. Gia had tried to order Elise to call Jay, insisting that she would take a cab, but Elise wouldn’t hear of it. She always drove Gia to the airport at the end of her visits. Maybe she had some thinking to do about the little bombs they’d dropped on her earlier, but she absolutely refused to be the kind of person who ditched her friends for a guy. Even if she was becoming someone else, she refused to be that girl.

As she sat in her car outside the terminal, she told herself that it was too late to text him. He wouldn’t be expecting it anyway. She’d texted him yesterday when she found out Gia was coming to town and outright told him she wouldn’t be able to see him until Monday. And they’d both known what she’d meant by “see.”

But, damn, she wanted him. So desperately.

She also missed him, which was a little alarming—it had only been forty-eight hours since he’d left her place. He’d slipped out of her bed Friday night close to midnight, kissing her on the forehead and whispering to her not to get up as she half dozed.

Oh God. Was she falling for him?

And could that be…okay?

The girls had made a pretty convincing argument that it could.

But anyway, she was getting ahead of herself. She had no idea what his thoughts on the matter were. They’d agreed to have sex tomorrow, and she was more than fine with that, even if nothing else happened.

She glanced at her phone. Ten fifteen.

Really, though, what could it hurt to text? If he was asleep, he wouldn’t answer. Right?

She was a fool. She opened her message app.

She laughed at herself. The line was so awkward and cheesy, yet somehow perfect.

The reply came instantly, and it sent a shiver up her spine.

That would give her something to do. Forward motion. And it would get them together sooner—she didn’t need ten minutes to get ready to go.

She glanced at her herself in the rearview mirror. She was really going to do this.

She wasn’t sure why she sent that last text. It wasn’t normal to forego a condom when you were just having casual sex. Which was what they were having? Right?

Yes. She forgot that other people had to worry about that. She sighed.

He didn’t reply, which seemed weird. Had he somehow been put off by the notion that she was unlikely to be able to conceive? Since she’d known for years she likely wouldn’t be able to have kids—biologically, at least—it was something she’d come to accept. She’d become rather matter-of-fact about it, even. But okay, infertility probably wasn’t a topic to introduce into a Hey we’re going to have some hot sex logistics text thread. She should probably do some damage control.

They were going to get married, was the thing—if he had anything to say about it, anyway.

Jay was standing in front of his bathroom mirror. He had hightailed it in there to brush his teeth when the first booty call text arrived. Now, he was staring at himself like he was looking at a fantastic mythological animal, at some exotic creature he didn’t recognize and couldn’t name.

The revelation had arrived in his head fully formed, an automatic response to her breezy assertion that they weren’t going to get married. It came with a rush of possessiveness. In keeping with the animal metaphor, he felt like some kind of primitive ape beating its chest, pointing at his mate and claiming her. Mine.

As revelations went, it was a big one. But not as big as the one that hit him right on its heels, an aftershock a thousand times more powerful than the original: he wanted to marry her regardless of her fertility status.

Holy shit.

Elise Maxwell, the woman he wanted more than anyone else, had just told him she couldn’t get pregnant. This should have been the best news he’d ever received. And it was. But…she could have just texted him about her desire to have fourteen kids, and he still would have wanted to marry her.

What. The. Fuck.

He almost laughed, it was so absurd. They would have had some shit to work out if that had been the case, but he would have been online in an instant, cruising through listings for relationship counseling. Which he was pretty sure meant...

He was in love with Elise Maxwell.

Of course he was. It was so obvious now that he did laugh. Stared at his reflection, at this man who looked familiar but had suddenly become a stranger, and cracked right up.

He had always experienced love, or affection, or whatever it was he’d had with his past girlfriends, as a more gradual thing. There would be an initial attraction, then a getting-to-know-you process. Feelings developed gradually. Like immersing yourself in a cold pool one body part at a time, taking time to adjust to the new sensation before progressing any farther.

This was…not that. This was jumping into the deep end and not even realizing you’d jumped until you were already there, sputtering for breath and swimming for your life.

So much for his decades-long insistence on women who’d aged out of childbearing years. He’d met Elise, and all that discipline had just tumbled down like a poorly constructed Jenga tower.

Although it turned out the collapse didn’t matter. The universe had given him exactly what he wanted, in the form of exactly who he wanted. He must have been a saint in a past life.

She was his dream woman. She was everything he wanted—and nothing he didn’t want.

He was going to marry Elise Maxwell.

Though that was too creepy and intense a declaration to make so soon. So he would amend that thought: from here on out, he was making it his mission to be the kind of man that Elise would want to marry. Someday. Eventually. There was no hurry—another side effect of the no-kids thing was that there was no ticking clock hanging over them.

Oh, they were going to have so much fun. A lifetime of fun.

It was a weird feeling, imagining with such calm certainty, a future in which he was married to a woman he had yet to have sex with.

His phone buzzed, drawing him out of his fantasies.

Shit. He hadn’t replied to her last text, so consumed had he been by his own swooning.

He grinned and added a final thought.

By the time the doorman was calling up to Jay’s to tell him she was on the way up, Elise had lost some of her nerve. Her time with Jay had been one extended, scorching bout of foreplay. But then it had been derailed by her period. Would it be like an actual train derailment, where the momentum was all gone and they had to somehow get themselves going again? A bit of self-doubt started to worm its way into her mind.

Okay, more than a bit. A lot of self-doubt. At her worst, on the worst days of the worst months, she felt broken. The feeling always passed. But she’d let him see her like that, at a low—if not at her absolute worst—which somehow felt more intimate than the prospect of having sex with him.

The elevator made its way up to the eighteenth floor, each chipper ding an ice pick that chipped open the pit in her stomach a little bit more.

There was also the part where she hadn’t done this for a long time. And, to be honest, she hadn’t ever slept with someone she…liked so much.

Which was a dumb revelation, because she’d had long-term boyfriends before.

There was just something about Jay that made the stakes feel ridiculously high all of a sudden. Jay blew every other man she’d ever met out of the water.

She paused outside his door. Well, paused wasn’t the right word, really. It was more like balked. She had her hand up, poised to knock and everything. But what was she going to say to him? What if she—

She hadn’t knocked, but the door suddenly swung open almost violently. He surged forward for a second, before he registered that she was standing right there. Then he reared back so as not to crash into her. But he’d overcorrected, and he had to grab the door frame so as not to fall over backwards.

It should have been funny. She probably would have laughed. She was pretty sure that’s why she had opened her mouth—to laugh. But then he grabbed her and pulled her to him, making her reconsider.

Maybe she’d actually opened her mouth so she could stand up on her tiptoes and press it over his. So she could slide her tongue inside without any prelude so that they were finally—finally—kissing.

He groaned and took control. One hand came to the back of her head, the other snaked around her waist, and he feasted on her. His lips were hot and demanding, and as his tongue battled hers, her mind lurched back to the dirty Scrabble game. To his threat to lick her clit, specifically. It suddenly felt like he already had: moisture pooled between her legs, and she rolled her hips in search of desperately needed pressure. Her first attempt was thwarted by their height differential, and she managed only to grind up against the front of one of his thighs. It was pressure, but not focused enough, not hard enough. It was almost worse in a way, because all it did was ratchet her need up even higher. “Unnh.” The frustrated moan slipped out as she tried again to mash herself against him.

“Look at you,” he muttered as he pulled her into the apartment, which put some distance between them, distance that she did not want. “So frustrated. So beautiful.” He kicked the door shut.

She bared her teeth at him because frustrated hit it on the nose—though it occurred to her that this move probably wasn’t reinforcing the whole beautiful thing.

“Aww.” He took her hand. “How can I make it better?”

She would have thought he was being annoyingly smug, that he was playing her, except she’d felt the evidence of his arousal just now. She might not have aimed properly to get what she wanted, but the hard, insistent length of him had dug into the soft flesh of her belly. His pupils were blown out, too, black circles surrounded by the thinnest slice of that Bahaman Sea Blue, and she could see the pulse racing at the base of his throat.

He wanted her as much as she wanted him. The difference was that he had a better rein on his lust. He wasn’t having a tantrum like she was. He was still exercising his famous restraint. Discipline.

It was almost unbearably hot. She suspected he could do more for her with the crook of a finger than other men could with their full arsenals.

“I don’t know,” she said. She hadn’t been trying to make her voice breathless, but what came out was sort of Marilyn Monroe-esque. She had no doubt he would do whatever she asked to “make it better,” but suddenly the idea of narrowing down this vast, unswimmable sea of lust she was floundering in to a single, specific, actionable request seemed an impossible task.

He must have known somehow, because he tugged her toward him again. He leaned over and put his lips on the side of her neck, moving them against her skin as he spoke. “Do what I say, and I’ll make it better, okay?”

“Yes.” The thought and the vocalization came simultaneously, and something flared in his eyes. He liked that. Well, she did too.

He started walking, but he kept her plastered to his chest, so she was walking backward as he moved forward. She stumbled a bit, and he righted her and kept going, silent and staring. All that famous focus, turned toward her. Would he lose control eventually, or would he keep his iron-fisted restraint? She wasn’t sure which option she preferred.

He made a right-angle turn halfway down the hall, flipping on a light that illuminated a bedroom. He kept going, never slowing his pace, until she hit a bed with the back of her legs. He pushed her gently so she ended up sitting on the bed.

“Take off your clothes,” he said. Then he stepped back and, in one fluid motion, pulled his T-shirt over his head.

She stared, let herself just look her fill. Leer, really. Shirtless, he was both the same and not the same as other men. He had all the same parts, of course—a very fine-looking, lightly muscled chest with a smattering of dark hair chief among them. But he also looked different. She struggled to articulate why, but there was something about him that was strangely, sharply familiar. Like he was hers.

“Take your clothes off,” he said again, interrupting her silent ogle-fest. He sounded almost peevish. Even though she still had the strong feeling that he somehow belonged to her, which should have suggested that she was the boss here, she jumped to do his bidding. She slid out of her skirt, but then she checked herself halfway through unbuttoning her blouse. His eyes rose from where he’d been watching the progress of her fingers working the buttons to her face. His eyebrows kept going until they stopped, perched high, expectantly, and maybe a little impatiently. When she still didn’t move, he said, “I thought we established you were going to do what I say.”

“I’m going to.” Her voice came out low and raspy. Goosebumps rose on his chest as she spoke. See? She did kind of own him. She bit back a grin. “But this isn’t going to be some Fifty Shades thing. I’m not going to be your silent, submissive doll.”

He didn’t break eye contact. A muscle twitched in his jaw. “Good. I like when you get lippy. I hired you because of that little speech about how my lobby looked like a dental office.”

She licked her lips, trying to see if she could make that muscle twitch again. “I believe I said a dental office in Yellowknife.”

Success.

“You bait me on purpose, don’t you?”

He didn’t wait for an answer. He just pushed her down so she was lying on her back as he climbed onto the bed, caging her in by hovering over her on his hands and knees. He wasn’t touching her, though, and suddenly she was back to where she’d been in the doorway, drowning in a sea of too much—yet not enough—sensation. He leaned down with his head only and kissed her. It was slower than before, but deeper. Dirty and relentless, like his tongue couldn’t get deep enough. Yet he was also, maddeningly, taking his time. When she clasped her arms around his neck and tried to pull him down on top of her, he wrenched himself from her grasp, making her cry out and arch up after him.

He grabbed her forearms, peeled her off him, and pressed her arms down on the bed above her head. Then he slid his palms up her arms until he reached her hands, which he guided up to the headboard. They were clumsy, and she banged a knuckle sharply against the ironwork and winced. He brought the hand to his mouth and, still with the unrelenting eye contact, kissed it tenderly. She shuddered, and he did it again, dragging his lax, open mouth against the bends of her fingers. Then, slowly, he extended her arm again and said, “Grab on to the bars, okay?”

She glanced up at the offending headboard, which was a series of unremarkable wrought iron spindles. He nodded at her hands. She found herself wanting him to…not ask. To order. So she caressed the spindles but didn’t grab on. “This headboard is ugly.”

He didn’t falter. “You can get me a new one. Later. Grab on to the bars.”

She still didn’t do it—though she did smirk to show she was playing with him—and she rolled her hips almost involuntarily. She expected him to take things up a notch, to get more forceful or loud with his command—that’s what she’d been aiming for—but he did the reverse. Leaning over, he put his mouth right next to her ear, but he said nothing. He slid one hand into her opened blouse and shoved the soft cup of her bra up on one side, just grazing her nipple with the base of his palm. The friction made her gasp. He lifted his hand then, leaving the one breast cold and exposed. He was no longer touching her anywhere, which suddenly seemed wildly unfair. But he hadn’t moved his head, so he was still right there with his lips. She could feel his hot breath on the shell of her ear. He repeated his earlier command, but it was quieter this time. “Grab on to the bars.”

She grabbed the bars.

“Good girl.” The hand came down on her breast again, and she cried out in relief. “Grab on and don’t let go. Don’t let go until I tell you to.”

He hadn’t asked this time, but she nodded anyway, writhing and twisting fruitlessly after him as he slid down her body.

When he was gone, she was so…exposed. She was stretched out, her body taut with desire.

She’d taken her skirt off already, but she still had her underwear on. She hadn’t been planning on seeing him this evening, so it was just a ratty old cotton pair. She spared half a thought wishing she’d worn something nicer, but he jerked her underwear down in the same rough way he’d pushed her bra up. Like he hadn’t even registered them.

Then his thumbs pressed on the front creases of her thighs as he exhaled a shaky breath. He was still in control, but was it slipping? He had her so turned inside out, she didn’t know if she wanted to bolster that control or hasten its demise.

He rotated his hands and pushed her thighs open. “God.” Another one of those breaths that teetered on the edge. “I’ve been thinking of nothing else since we played Scrabble.”

When he paused so close to her body that she could feel the heat radiating from his face, she knew what he intended to do. She responded by pushing her pelvis up off the bed to close the distance between them.

At first, he just laid his lips against her, and they both moaned. But he pulled back. She barely had time to register her disapproval before he enacted the Dirty Scrabble scenario, dragging his tongue over her clit.

“Oh my God!” she bit out. With anyone else, she would probably have been embarrassed by how wet she was, but the radical honesty thing they had going apparently extended to nonverbal interactions, too. He kept up the lazing licking as she writhed under him. Soon, she was bucking wildly as pleasure pooled deep in her core. As if he knew she was close, his hands clamped down on her hips, stilling her pelvis by pinning it to the bed.

She tried to push back against him, but he growled his displeasure. “Be still,” he ordered, searching her face. “Don’t move.” She nodded, but he added an “Okay?”

She’d been thinking, earlier, about how she wanted him to tell, not ask, but she appreciated that he was the kind of man who sought affirmative verbal consent. It signaled a level of care that she wasn’t sure she had ever experienced with anyone in bed before. And somehow that made the experience even sexier.

“Yes,” she whispered, and he lowered his head again. He kept his hands on her hips—not that she had intended to contravene his instructions. It was hard, though, to keep still. It was like having restless legs at night but without the relief of being allowed to move them. The noises he made as he ate at her—growls of pleasure interspersed with incoherent swearing—were so wonderfully obscene, she couldn’t stand it. As much as she was a convert to this delectable form of torture, she needed more.

“Jay!”

She hadn’t meant to yell, but apparently she couldn’t control things like volume and tone anymore. She could barely control her body—but that part seemed okay, because he was doing a spectacular job of it for her, putting it where he wanted it and doing such deliciously filthy things to it.

But of course her cry had come out sounding alarmed. So he stopped. Let go of her hips as his head popped up from between her legs, his beautiful face knit in concern.

She heaved a ragged breath and rushed to reassure him that she wasn’t calling things off. “I need you inside me now.”

He smiled a wicked, wicked smile. “You do, eh?”

She nodded frantically, her whole body vibrating.

His hands traced up the sides of her body from her hips and undid her bra, which clasped in the front, and kneaded the flesh of her breasts. She was on her back and stretched out, so there wasn’t much there. She wasn’t very generously endowed, and this position wasn’t showing what she did have to her best advantage—another thing she distantly registered she would have been embarrassed by in other circumstances. But she didn’t care, just thrust her chest up at him the best she could, taking care not to lift her hips or let go of the headboard. She was still, for some unfathomable reason, following his orders.

Well, actually the reason was fathomable: doing what he said felt so amazingly good.

He took one tight, aching nipple into his mouth, and she practically screamed. It felt so incredible, even as it highlighted how not enough it was.

“I need you inside me.” She tried again, infusing her voice with as much neediness as she could muster and not caring what she sounded like.

“I suggest…” He spoke around her nipple, his teeth gently grazing the too-sensitive flesh. “You ask me nicely.”

“Please, Jay. Please.”

Oh Jesus Christ. The way she laid there, her body splayed and stretched as she continued to hold on to the headboard. The way she begged him so nicely…. Fuck.

Jay had had a lot of sex in his life. A lot of different kinds of sex. He liked it all—you might call him an enthusiastic agnostic in matters of the bedroom.

But maybe that’s because he’d never had exactly this kind of sex, with this woman.

He had found religion.

And it involved bossing Elise Maxwell around. For example: “Spread your legs wider.”

She spread her legs wider so fast it unbalanced him.

But it wasn’t a simple case of some mild dominance, as it also involved getting her to mouth off. So when he said “So pretty. I could just lay here and look at you forever,” he had an ulterior motive.

The compliment embedded in the statement was the absolute truth, but really, he couldn’t lay here looking at her forever. He was shaking with the effort of not touching her. He was trying to bait her.

And it worked. She lifted her head, even as she maintained her grasp on the headboard. “That’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard.”

He quirked an eyebrow. “Yeah?”

She just glared at him.

He chuckled and ran a hand lightly over the pink folds that had been exposed by his previous command that she spread her legs. But the joke was on him, because his control was hanging by a thread. But…

Birth control. He had to hold onto his senses long enough to take care of her, to ensure her comfort. “What are we doing for birth control?” he rasped as he dragged the tip of his cock over her slit. “Condom?”

“I can’t get pregnant,” she bit out between gasps. “I’m clean. So if you are too, we’re good.”

He was. And, oh God, the idea of being inside her bare. Skin to skin.

“Are you okay?”

He opened his eyes. He hadn’t realized he’d closed them. Or that his brow had furrowed something fierce and his jaw locked. His reaction to the fantasy-come-true scenario she’d suggested probably looked, outwardly, like pain. Relaxing his face, he felt a goofy grin blossom of its own accord. He was trying to project confidence and authority here, not goofiness, but apparently he had no control over his facial muscles. “I am fantastic.”

It was her turn to smile, a giant, guileless, joy-filled one that sliced right though him, raising a lump in his throat.

They remained pinned in place for a moment, staring at each other and grinning stupidly.

This was the beginning.

The start of a new life.

There had been nothing wrong with his old life, but this one was better.

Her smile disappeared. “Do I need to let go of this headboard to get you to move?’

That knocked him out of his mooning. He did not want her to do that. He wasn’t sure why—he had no master plan here—except that they both seemed to be getting off on these mild power games.

He grabbed his dick and guided it to her entrance, keeping a close eye on her face the whole time. “You sure?” he whispered.

He’d meant about the no-condom thing, but the way she said “Yes,” so quietly but so assuredly, made him think she was answering a bigger question.

He slid in, pushing past the initial resistance he encountered, and fuck. She might always be cold, but inside she was a furnace. And… “So tight,” he gasped.

“Well, you’re kind of huge,” she shot back.

She must have seen the beginnings of hesitation on his face. Before he could ask if he was hurting her, she said, “Huge in the best way.”

He inched himself in the rest of the way, stopping when he was fully seated, needing a moment to adjust to being inside her. To being in this new life.

Elise moaned—or maybe it was him. Either way, he suddenly had to move. Obeying the primal urge, he pulled out halfway and sank back in, trying to keep his strokes even.

“I need—” Her eyes widened when he filled her fully the second time. “Oh!” She shook her head back and forth like she was frustrated. He loved the sight of her honey hair fanned out over his pillow.

He leaned in to get a whiff of the addictive lemon scent that always lingered in her hair. “What do you need, sweetheart?”

“I was going to say that I need pressure on my clit to come, but now I’m not sure.”

He grinned as he found the sensitive nub with his thumb. “Well, let’s just cover all the bases, shall we?”

“Oh my God!” She started grinding her hips up to meet his, circling them a little at the top of every stroke.

Using the hand that wasn’t working her clit, he reached down for one of her legs. “Now wrap your legs around me, sweetheart.”

She hooked her ankles together around his lower back, and he let loose, pumping his hips into her sweet heat. It wasn’t going to take long, so he concentrated on making sure she was keeping up with him. “You feel so fucking good, Elise. I want you to come all over my dick. Can you do that?” He rubbed his thumb in circles over and around her clit as he spoke.

She nodded frantically, but said, “I want to touch you.”

He shook his head. He wanted her to keep holding on to the headboard. He wasn’t sure if he could talk, though. Almost-unendurable pressure was gathering at the base of his spine. “Keep…holding on,” he managed to gasp as he fucked her against the bed.

She did not obey him, his Elise. Despite their games, they both knew who was in charge here.

On a giant inhale, her hands flew off the bedpost and landed on his sweat-slicked back. Her whole body almost seemed to levitate as she clung to him.

And oh, the addition of those hands. Her touch, suddenly there where it hadn’t been before. It was the single most erotic moment of his life, somehow. He was going to come, hard. But her eyes had slipped closed.

“Look at me,” he said. “Look at me when I come inside you.”

Her eyes, almost all pupil, flew open. He started to shudder, and she screamed.