This was not me. I didn’t know who this guy was, but he wasn’t me.

I always played it a certain way with women. I was always in control. When you’re the one who can take it or leave it, you’re always the one in power.

Tonight, I wanted Evie. Very fucking bad.

If she didn’t want my chivalry, she wasn’t going to get it. She was going to get me instead.

We were silent on the drive to my place. Evie’s jaw was tight, her cheeks flushed. She was wearing a sexy but classy black dress and Andrew’s jacket, her hair down over her shoulders. I couldn’t take her or leave her right now. Not tonight, and not Evie.

We didn’t have a word for each other as she followed me into my penthouse. Scout was sleeping in her dog bed, but she got up and wagged her tail when we walked in. I shushed her and told her to go back to sleep, and she lay back down, tucking her nose under her tail and obeying. Then I turned to Evie, pressed her against the kitchen counter, and kissed her again.

We tangled—there was no other word for it. It was an argument almost as much as it was a kiss. She pushed my jacket off my shoulders and I dropped it to the floor. I yanked her jacket off of her. She kicked off her heels and jerked up the hem of my t-shirt. We shed clothes piece by piece, wrestling with each other as I walked her toward the bathroom.

“Where are we going?” she panted against my lip.

“Shower,” I said.

We didn’t even stumble. In a second we were in the bathroom as her dress dropped to the floor and she hooked her thumbs into the waist of my boxer briefs. Still kissing her, I banged open the shower door, leaned in, and turned on the water.

“Why are we showering?” she asked.

“Because you stink, redhead,” I said. She smelled like Cintano’s, like sugary alcohol and hair product and other men. I wanted all of that off of her. I wanted just her.

“God, you’re a jerk,” she said, and then she yelped in surprise, because I pushed her back into the shower, under the warm spray. She was still in her bra and panties—lacy and black, because she’d been planning to get laid, which made me lose control again—and I still had my boxer briefs. We got soaked, both of us, the cloth sticking to our skin.

She sputtered, pushing her wet hair back from her face, but before she could protest I pulled one cup of her lacy bra down, exposing her nipple. Water beaded on her skin, and I bent down and sucked it off.

I heard her intake of breath, and I pulled the other cup down and sucked the other nipple, which was as wet and juicy as the first one.

“Do that some more,” she said, reaching behind her back and unhooking the bra. Her voice was throaty and turned on, but I still had work to do. I wanted her to lose it the way I was losing it.

I tossed the bra to the shower floor and moved my mouth up her collarbone, the warm skin of her neck, as I cupped her tits in my hands. Fuck, they were just like I’d imagined. A perfect fit, spilling past the edges of my palms, their weight settling in my grip. I ran my thumbs over her nipples, pinching them gently.

She made a satisfying aah sound, and her hands skimmed over the wet skin of my back, sliding down to the waist of my boxer briefs again. She reached down and squeezed my ass where the soaked fabric clung to it, then she peeled the briefs off me. I let go of her tits and helped, stepping out of them where they joined her bra on the shower floor.

Her eyes got hazy as she took me in. That was good. I spent a lot of time at the boxing gym, and right now every second was paying off. I’d double my workouts if it made her keep looking at me like that.

I stepped forward and tilted her face to mine, kissing her, tangling with her some more under the hot water. Her hand traveled down and wrapped around my cock, squeezing it, exploring it between us. Her other arm wrapped around my neck so I held her upright.

She leaned in and licked my earlobe as she rubbed me. “Is this King Cock?” she said in a sexy voice in my ear.

I put my hand over hers and stroked, using her hand, sliding us both up to the tip and down again. “Don’t say you’re not impressed,” I said.

“I’m supposed to be impressed?—Oh,” she said as I pushed her back against the wall. I kept using her hand to stroke me, and then I used it to press my cock between her legs, where her soaked black lace panties still clung to her skin. Together, we rubbed the head of my cock against her, back and forth, just a scrap of fabric preventing me from shoving into her.

She was breathing hard, stroking me obediently, rubbing her pussy against me as I dragged my cock over the soaked fabric. I found her clit and pressed it with my thumb through the panties, and her hips moved against me, pressing me into her harder. She was getting lost now, her self-consciousness nowhere to be seen as she ground against me, her legs parted, her hand on my cock. She was nothing but a fire of need for me, which was good, because I was already there.

“God, Nick,” she said as the water ran down her perfect tits and into her belly button. She pumped against me. “I’m going to—”

“Yeah,” I said. “You are.” I dropped my hand from hers and stood back. While she stared at me in surprise, I leaned over and shut the water off. I took her hand and pulled her out of the shower.

She followed. She was in the zone, so turned on she would have done anything I told her to. She’d finally let go of everything. I wanted her to see that. I wanted her to see herself.

So I moved her up against the bathroom counter, facing the mirror. Through the steam from the shower she looked soft, almost unbearably sexy—her hair wet and tousled, strands sticking to her cheek and her neck, her lips parted, her eyes heavy-lidded, her nipples hard. I put her hands flat against the counter and moved behind her, stroking her back, down her spine, her hips. Then I pulled the wet remains of the black lace panties slowly down her legs, letting my fingers drag with them, along her thigh, the back of her knee. I crouched and pulled them all the way down, stroking my palm over her calf, letting the fabric drop to the floor. I took a second to admire the view from this vantage point—specifically, Evie’s hot, rounded ass—and then I stood again.

I grabbed a condom from my vanity drawer and put a hand on her hip, locking gazes with her in the mirror.

“Watch,” I said.