Owen takes me for a quick, quiet lunch at an out-of-the-way restaurant on the beach, then we go to my hotel to pick up my duffel bag and check out. After that, we head toward the hotel he’s staying at in South Beach.

His room is a penthouse, and it has a wraparound terrace that overlooks the glittering nighttime ocean. It has a deck that surrounds a private infinity pool, two master bedrooms that also have views of the Atlantic, and a marble bathroom with a rainfall shower and a deep standalone tub.

Everything is white, pure, and sedate, and I’m almost afraid of tracking dirt everywhere.

As I dump my bag near a floor-to-ceiling window to admire the view of the dimly lit pool, Owen comes up behind me. I can feel the heat of him, and I shiver.

“Do you think the water’s warm?” I ask.

“Why don’t you find out?”

“I didn’t bring a swimsuit.” Of course, he could have one delivered in a second flat.

But then I turn to look up at him, and I see the fever in his eyes. He doesn’t want me in a bathing suit. He wants me to strip for him and take a swim.

Now that I know my life is under control again, I’m in the mood. And I’ll do anything he needs.

“Are you coming with me?” I whisper.

“I’m going to watch you, Juliet. And then I’m going to fuck you.”

Oh. Hearing him say this so directly turns me on with a flash of desire. He’s been waiting hours for this. Every time I would look at him over lunch or in the limo, I would see him counting down the minutes until he could get me alone.

And I savored every one of them, enjoying the erotic anticipation.

Never breaking eye contact with him, I slowly step out of my pumps. My blood twists through me, my veins feeling as if they’re fusing as I unbutton the top of the suit I wore to the courthouse, then shrug it off. The jacket hits the floor, and I unzip my skirt, also letting it drop to my bare feet.

As I stand before him in only my fancy lace bra and panties that he bought me, I don’t feel paid for at all. After what we went through at my house this afternoon, I feel as if we belong together, here in the moonlight, with him hungering for me with such possession and passion that I never want to belong to anyone but him.

And judging by the way he’s fisting his hands by his sides, he’d like to take me now.

Backing away from him, I lift my hands behind me to undo my hair from its constricting bun. My locks spill down, and I shake them out.

Lust heats his eyes. I can tell that I’m getting him aroused, and I’m right there with him. My belly swarms with fluttering excitement. My clit is beating hard, making me damp.

I turn around to open the sliding door that leads to the pool deck. The night air is lovely and warm, the sound of the water restless as it pours over the side into seemingly nowhere.

I walk toward the faintly glowing pool, offering Owen a view of my bottom as I reach down to slip my fingers under the panty’s elastic that cups my cheeks. With a look behind me, I see that Owen is standing in the doorway, filling it up with his mighty body. He’s transfixed by every move I make.

A blazing sense of desire overcomes me, because seeing how much I arouse him never gets old—it only pumps me up, making my blood pound harder everywhere, especially between my thighs.

I dip my toe into the pool, creating tiny, agitated waves that imitate the heat I’m feeling inside of me.

When I look back at Owen again, he’s got his hands in his pockets, still watching.

Waiting…wanting.

Have I teased him long enough? I’m not sure I was even trying to do that in the first place, but as I breathlessly ease the straps of my bra off my shoulders, I do it lazily, loving the way his gaze follows everything I’m doing.

With the same unhurried pace, I unclasp my bra in the back then slip my hands to the cups in front, squeezing up my breasts and watching how his jaw clenches.

He’s a silent animal checking out his prey. He’s losing his patience, and I’m feeling brave enough to push him until he pounces.

I cover my breasts with my arm, pulling off the bra at the same time, then releasing it so that it falls to the deck.

“Goddammit, Juliet,” Owen grits.

“What?” I ask innocently. “Is there something in particular you wanted to see?”

His smile is brittle, but it’s a real smile, and a pop of eagerness splashes through me.

“Maybe,” I say as I lower my arm from my chest, “this is what you want?”

He devours my bared breasts with his gaze. Courage scratches through me, and I hook my thumbs into the sides of my panties, then start to lower them. Owen takes a step out of the doorway but doesn’t come any closer.

“Lower,” he says, and he means it. He wants me to start stripping faster.

I pull down the scrap of lace, but only until I show him a hint of the landing strip of hair on my pussy.

“Lower,” he growls.

My belly has started to quake. Even after being with him so many times, I’m unprepared for his intensity…and mine.

I’m getting dizzy, my heartbeat taking me over as I slowly lower my panties all the way, then step out of them.

As Owen lavishes me with his dark gaze, I quiver some more. The tips of my breasts are so stimulated they ache, and my clit is so aroused that I feel as if I’m full of steam, building up to a fast orgasm.

“There’s one more thing for you to show me,” he says, stepping toward the pool, then taking his hands out of his pockets.

Name it, I think, and it’s yours.

He jerks his chin at me, his eyes on my pussy. A gush of heat drenches me.

“Come on,” he murmurs. “I want to see how turned on you are.”

Does he mean…?

I bite my lip, knowing exactly what he wants, and I give it to him by smoothing my hand down my stomach then over my belly where the tiny muscles flicker. Then I slip my fingers between the slick folds of my sex, spreading my lips for him with a wet sound.

As he takes in the sight of my exposed clit, it throbs harder. I hold back a groan.

Owen slowly begins to loosen his tie, then abandons it, leaving it askew. Normally he’d never leave it so sloppy, but now he’s half-savage, his wildness dying to come out of him all the way.

“Touch yourself,” he says tightly.

Something coils within me, primed to burst. I do as he tells me, because I’ve been waiting for it, hoping he’d defile me like this tonight.

As I slide my middle finger over my clit, I gasp. I stroke myself as Owen grips his tie and yanks at it until it’s free, then tosses it to the deck. He begins to work at his jacket.

“You’re wet for me,” he says. “Fuck, I can hear it even from here while you touch yourself.”

“That’s how you make me.” I don’t know where I get the guts to say that, but my temperature is high, pounding inside of me with fits and starts as I keep teasing my clit. “All I have to do is think of you to get like this.”

“Good,” Owen growls. “But now I want you to get all wet for me.”

At first I don’t understand, but I see how his eyes are glowing with need, and I want to learn how to turn him on until he can’t live without me. Want to so badly.

He roughly undoes his cuffs. “I want you to cool off in that water before I get you hot all over again, my dirty little girl.”

Part of me ignites at the name, but another part feels as if we’ve gone back to night one, when I was his highly paid escort and nothing more.

It’s as if this afternoon at my house didn’t happen.

But my body is too far gone for him, and I play his game, stepping into the pool and then coasting into the water until the liquid warmth swallows me.

He’s got his button down all the way off now, and the sight of his powerful torso sends a fiery bolt through me. As heat consumes me, I dip all the way into the water to cool off, just as he wants me to, submerging myself until I’m holding my breath and silence surrounds me. Only the raging thud of my heartbeat interrupts the void as my hair flows around me.

Thump. Thump…

Pushing off the concrete, I break the surface with a gasp, hearing the fall of water at the pool’s edge then wiping the moisture from my face.

After I blink my eyes, I find Owen looming at the edge like a naked, rugged beast. Every muscle is cut and glistening with emerging sweat, and I shudder as I realize that I’ve made him this way—sweaty and hard, his cock long, thick, and erect.

He never looks away from me as he steps down into the pool. Excitement and fear boil inside of me.

When he crooks a finger, summoning me, I walk through the water to him, a slow, expectant hum buzzing through my veins. At the same time, he backs up until he comes to a little cove at the side of the pool. He brings himself onto the seat there and sits on the ledge, halfway submerged.

“God, Juliet,” he growls while watching me approach.

But this is no ordinary sexual growl from Owen. The way he says it makes a flush of intimacy flow through me. And as he keeps looking at me…

On a burst of passion, I swim the rest of the way to him. When I arrive, he slowly pulls me up until we’re face-to-face.

I’m breathless, my heart stuck in the middle of a beat. As he gradually lifts me closer…closer…I think my pulse is going to stop altogether.

He keeps looking into my eyes, a shockwave to my fragile system. It’s as if his emotions really are in his gaze, revealed now.

As if he’s shown me too much, he tugs me toward him until my legs are braced on either side of him, my hands gripping his strapping shoulders as I lean back. I’m panting, aching, because the stiff length of his cock is on top of my thigh and against my hipbone. Then he nudges the opening of my pussy, and I push against him.

He sucks in a breath, his grasp tightening on me.

Inspired, I rock against him again, feeling his penis tip against my slit, and he growls louder, then suddenly brings me up higher until my full breasts are crushed to his chest, my sex against his belly.

“Fuck, you’re a born tease,” he grits.

Then he presses me flush against him, urging me up then down so my breasts are rubbing against his chest. The wet, carnal sensation of my tips against his skin makes me coo for him. I let him guide me, getting me hotter with every rub as I feel his shaft sliding over the inside of my thigh, so close yet so far…

Steam is building inside me again, and when he reaches between my legs to stroke my clit, I finch with an electric jolt. I’m there, I’m ready, I’m—

As a crashing orgasm shakes me, I cry out. It keeps quivering through me, gripping me, not even close to dying out.

“That’s it,” he says roughly. “Show me that dirty little girl. Keep it going.”

And as he continues to work my sweet spot, and I fiercely spurt inside again, wet and wild, hot and hotter.

With a brutal grunt, he grips my hips and lifts me, bringing me down and impaling me with his cock.

“Fuck!” That’s my voice, and it sounds a world away as Owen thrusts into me once…again. His fingers dig into my hips as he churns me over his stiff, long cock, and I keep hearing myself cry out, dirty little words blasting from me every time he pummels me.

Fuck—

Shit—

Keep—fucking—going—

Then I come again with a powerful blast that seems to last forever, like heat that seeps over my sight inch by throbbing inch until, with one last shuddering quake, everything goes dark again.

But Owen is still going, and I fist his hair, urging him on, gyrating with every driving stroke of his cock into me. The water is in turmoil around us, splashing with waves that hit the sides of the pool.

“Come on,” I say between my teeth as I ride him. “Get me as dirty as you can…”

He blasts into me once, then presses his mouth to my neck, lightly and erotically biting it as he comes once more, sending a shattering thrill through me.

As he relaxes, everything sizzles to an after burn. Our heaving breaths slice through the air, and I cling to him, not knowing if he’ll start getting bothered by the water we’ve just contaminated with our juices.

Things are a mess again, and I don’t only mean the pool.

I don’t know where we stand.

As that reality sinks in, I’m the one who goes tense this time, bothered, still bewildered.

Then Owen draws me in for a kiss, and my world starts spinning, making me not care about anything else as I once again lose myself in him.