I shake my head. “Me neither, and I sure as hell don’t plan on starting now.”

“Oh…” His smile drops. “But darlin’, you already have.”

I blink at him like he’s crazy. Because he is. Completely mental, as they say in this neck of the woods.

“What the hell are you talking about?” I unzip my suitcase frantically, fishing for some clothes. I can feel my hands shaking, and I don’t know how to stop them.

He places his foot on the suitcase above me, slamming it shut with a thud and preventing me from getting dressed, and that’s when I realize he is still without pants. Just his shirt and briefs, and the mammoth erection pressing against them, pointing at me.

“You’ve already been in bed with me. Mostly naked. You’ve already had your wet-as-feck panties pressed against my cock—and yes, I noticed, thank you very much. You’ve already masturbated to the sound of me plunging into Maeve—imagining it was you, by the way, forever the romantic. Face it, Rory. Emotionally, you didn’t only cheat on Shiny Boyfriend, you basically fucked his entire immediate family, pet parrot, and rude neighbors.”

I rise to my feet, and angry blood whooshes between my ears. I’m no longer chilly. My cheeks are aflame with shame and mortification. He heard me coming from the next room. Of course, he did. The only reason he interrupted Callum and me in the first place was because his walls are paper-thin.

“Mal…” I take a step back, raising a finger in warning. “I don’t want you.”

“You don’t want me?” He takes a step forward, crowding me toward the kitchen. “Or you don’t want to want me? There’s a difference.”

“How is it different?” I play into his game, mainly so he’ll talk and not do something else to me I won’t be able to stop.

“Well, if you simply don’t want me, I have no choice but to respect that.”

He closes the distance between us, and my back bumps against the cold fridge. His bare body is flush against mine, and my heart is pounding so fast and hard, I think it’s about to leap out of my mouth, like a fish, if I open it to tell him not to touch me.

But Mal doesn’t touch me.

He almost touches me, knowing it frustrates me even more.

He gets in my face, smirking. “But if you don’t want to want me, then I’m sorry, but I’m not going to let you screw up both our lives because you feel committed to a guy you aren’t sure about to prove a point nobody cares about.”

“I got in bed with you because you were freezing. I haven’t cheated on Callum.” I shake my head, reminding him. Reminding myself.

My eyes drop to his lips, and there’s a fireball growing in my lower stomach, a sensation akin to nothing I’ve ever experienced.

You will never forgive yourself.

He leans forward, regarding me with thinly veiled amusement. I feel his hot breath on my face when he speaks. “You just did the right thing by me, right?”

“Right.” I nod with gusto. “Exactly.”

“Do you know this rumor?” He frowns thoughtfully, his hand snaking into my panties in one smooth motion.

I gasp, reaching for his arm, but he grabs my wrist and pins it to the wall with one hand, his expression unchanged by my resistance.

“About Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull in 1967? When they were allegedly caught in Keith Richards’ estate during a drug raid, while he ate a Mars bar out of her cunt?”

I feel something shoved into me and think, oh, God. Oh, Jesus. The chocolate bar is inside me. It’s so filthy and crass, I want to spit in his face, but I can’t help but shiver with pleasure, clenching around the thing.

“Do you think there’s truth to that rumor?” Mal’s lips are practically moving on mine now.

I can feel my puckered nipples rubbing against his body. My breathing is so labored, I am practically heaving. It feels like I’m tipping over an edge of something huge, like I am never going to be the same again.

“I think—” I start.

He pushes the chocolate bar in and out, in and out, thrusting it inside me deeper and faster, and I squeeze my eyes shut and hate myself, because I’m about to come.

You’re cheating on your boyfriend, I scream inwardly. He is making a point, and you are falling for it. Tell him to stop.

“Answer?” Mal asks indifferently, his lips still ghosting mine. “Yes? No? Maybe? Unsure?”

“St…st…sto…”

“Say it,” he urges, his lips crushing mine, but not kissing them—punishing, more like. “Tell me to stop, and I will.”

I can’t do it.

I can’t do it, and I break down in tears as wave after wave of pleasure begins to crash over me, head to toe, and I’m coming hard against the chocolate bar. It’s the ultimate sensation of pleasure and pain, but the guilt thrown into this makes it somehow, shamefully, even more erotic.

My knees buckle, but Mal keeps me on my feet, his hand clasping the back of my neck as he withdraws what’s left of the chocolate bar slowly. I can feel my sticky thighs gluing together, the gooey, melted milk chocolate dense over my flesh.

Mal lifts the bar between us, and it’s ruined, molten, the white waffle sticking out.

“Hungry?” he asks coolly.

I shake my head, feeling my tears fly everywhere.

I cheated on Callum, just like my mom cheated on the guy she left behind for Glen. I’m no better than her.

Mal takes a bite of the chocolate, shrugging, and suddenly, my mouth waters. I am so, so hungry. Without asking me again, he angles the bar toward my mouth.

“Tastes like you.” He licks his lips.

I take a tentative bite, then another one. I finish off the bar. I barely have time to swallow before his lips crash down on mine, and I moan into his mouth, helpless.

I wish I could rewire my thoughts back to my boyfriend. Or that Callum was an abusive, awful man who had it coming. But this is not the case.

But the truth is, I can’t.

The truth is, I don’t think I ever could, even before I met Mal in New York again. The cracks were always there, weeds slipping through them, even when Callum and I were a normal couple facing normal issues. I always compared him to Mal. I longed to feel Mal’s lips on mine, his heady scent wrapped around me like a collar, owning me without even trying. The difference was, I didn’t feel guilty, because the possibility of that ever happening seemed unlikely.

In the unlikely event.

I whimper as Mal takes my face in both his hands and deepens the kiss, growling like a beast. His tongue meets mine halfway, and my eyelids drop shut.

My phone pings, and I rip my mouth from his, snapping out of the moment. I’m cupping my face as I scurry to the breakfast nook. I flip it over to see the number on the screen.

Callum.

It’s like he has a sixth sense. How did he know?

“Hey, love,” he says, sounding cheerful when I answer. “Summer called me. She told me about Richards running off. What a wanker. She suggested I hop on a plane to keep you company. What do you reckon? Still want me to come for New Year’s?”

I look up and see Mal with his elbow propped on the side of the fridge, raising his eyebrows in a really? look. I shake my head. My thighs are cemented together with dried chocolate. What have I done?