He walked toward me, making me walk backward to avoid his touch. He wasn’t slow or particularly predatory. Just…nonchalant. When my back hit the dresser behind me, I finally exhaled some of my rage. He just stood there and didn’t say anything. Needless to say, that annoyed me.

“Say something,” I growled. His eyes tapered into slits.

“You knew.” He meant the engagement.

“I did,” I admitted, without missing a heartbeat. “Blake said you’d go on a bender if you found out. My job is to keep you sober. You are a job, Alex,” I reminded myself more than to him.

He pondered my words, rolling a lock of icy-blue hair between his fingers. Any trace of his sadness was gone from his face now, replaced with quiet, burning desire. One that runs deep and doesn’t end in your lower stomach, but buzzes all the way down your toes, kissing every nerve in the process.

“That is cold,” he said, his fingers sliding down my shoulder again—warm and rough and so callused—slipping the strap of my swing dress back down. “Especially for someone so warm. You really hate me, don’t you?”

“I don’t hate you.” I swallowed. A truth for a truth. Would he give me one, too? “Do you care about me at all?”

“Yes,” he admitted evenly without blinking, no trace of emotion on his voice. “I care about you.”

“Then let me go. Let me work here and stop this…this…” What were we? What the hell were we? It felt like more than a fling but less than dating. “This thing between us. You’re in love with someone else.”

“No,” he said, in the exact level tone, his body crowding mine further and further until the handles of the dresser dug into my lower back. Our limbs were entwined, but other than that, I had no excuse to the way my body reacted. Like it wanted to dance and fling itself off a cliff.

“Why?” I breathed.

“You need this. We need this. Today wasn’t about Fallon. The engagement came as a surprise, sure, but it wasn’t what made me lose my shit. My mates taking every ounce of power and freedom from me did.” Pause. Beat. Swallow. “I accidentally broke Tania.”

My stomach flipped, a shiver running down my spine. He killed Tania. His turtle’s back. Tania inspired him, protected him, was there for him. My mouth fell open.

“How…”

“I went mental on Blake for leaking those dick photos. For hiding so much from me. I didn’t even realize what I’d done. I just grabbed the first thing in reach and swung it his way. It hit the door. Remember this next sentence, Stardust, for it’s important, and a rare fucking truth: I’m not upset about Fallon. Granted, I’m not happy about it either, but today wasn’t about her. It was about my fucked-up life and my fucked-up mates and the fucked-up way I mixed business and pleasure like a rookie. I no longer know who’s there for the money and who’s there because they care. And it gets worse—if I could know, I’d still choose not to. Because it’d hurt like a bitch. The stupid, overrated truth.”

Something moved between us. Some kind of silent understanding. Alex was a liar because he hated his truth. But he was there, in front of me, his face so naked and raw, and at that moment, I didn’t care that he’d break me just the way he had Tania.

We needed each other. Now. On this tour. Like air, and oxygen, and the pulse beneath our flesh. For once, I understood what he’d meant about being above gravity. There was a world outside, I knew it. But there was a smaller asteroid on which we lived, and that was the only place I wanted to be in that moment.

Silence.

Silence.

Silence.

Music.

It came from somewhere downstairs. A street party, I think. As soon as it started, our lips crashed together, and we wrestled each other out of our clothes. The soft thuds of fabric hitting the hard carpeted floors filled my ears even with the festive music on, and Alex hoisted me up to curl my legs around his waist, his signature move, and walked me around the room. He always opted for the Jacuzzi, the balcony, or while I was bent over the kitchen alcove. He liked it awkward and savage. The un-photoshopped version, as he’d called it.

Alex dumped me onto the cold sheets of the bed, and I arched my back, the sheer surprise of him wanting to do it in bed startling me. He dragged his teeth along my skin, and I wrapped his hair around my fingers, giving him better access to everything. When he kissed his path down my stomach, I started feeling the butterflies swirling around my belly, my sex tightening around nothing in anticipation. He was always so smug, like he had the world at his feet—and he really did. That was, perhaps, the entire irony of it all—but never when we were in bed together. When it was just us, his lips hovering over mine, his thick cock grinding into my body, he looked humble, and grateful, and pained.

His mouth found my sensitive bud, and he started playing with it as I let go, forgetting about my family and my heartbreak and the discarded plate of French fries that made the room smell funny. It was just me and him. Me, him, and the pleasure.

“I need to fuck you,” he murmured, his voice vibrating and tickling my inside. “I need to be inside you the way you’re inside me. So deep I want to peel my skin off just to get rid of you. I need to get rid of you,” he repeated, and my heart dropped, my breath catching in my throat, as my clit began to throb, my lower lip shaking with an impending orgasm that had threatened to ripple through me like a storm. He loved to suck on my clit so hard my vision dotted with thick, white clouds.

“No.” My voice quivered, my pelvis rocking into his mouth as he began to thrust his tongue into me over and over. He was relentless. Dirty and shameless. Like the way he spread his fingers under the back of my thighs and pushed me back and forth to make his tongue go deeper and deeper into me. Or the way he pressed his cock to my thigh until his zipper tore at my leggings from grinding me so roughly.

“I told you, I’m never going to sleep with you,” I said under my breath.

But it was a lie, and we both knew that. There was no difference between sleeping with him and letting him eat me out every night. Finger me at public dinners and play with my nipples while he was talking on the phone with Jenna, yelling at her about some appearance he’d never agreed to do.

He chuckled into my warm flesh. “But I’ll break you.”

You already did. Today. I said nothing to that. My thighs began to shake uncontrollably and my mouth dropped into an O as I clutched tighter into his hair. I was sure it was painful for him, but he didn’t complain. He never complained. For all the jackass things he did outside of the bedroom, once the clothes were off, he made me feel comfortable. Comfortable to scream, to moan, and to demand. Comfortable to hungrily suck on his shaft and wipe the drool with the back of my hand at how incredibly aroused he’d made me by simply looking at me the way he had. Like touching each other would take all our troubles away.