The seatbelt dug into my shoulder, as I pulled away from Ash’s questing mouth and searched for the latch that would allow me to climb over him to ease the unwavering ache in my core. I pressed the button and when nothing happened, I pressed harder … and then harder again. Why wouldn’t the goddamn thing just work already? “Motherfucking piece of American engineering! Let go of me!”

I was well on my way to ripping the metal clasp out of that piece of black plastic when Ash started laughing.

“Shut up, this isn’t funny. I haven’t had sex in almost two years!” I cried, my desperation making me admit things I wasn’t proud of. Normally, I would have been embarrassed, but I had needs that needed seeing to, and I didn’t care if Ash knew he was the first man I’d wanted to fuck since getting sober.

Reaching over, he pressed down on the buckle—the one next to the one I’d been trying to wrestle into submission. “As much as I love it that you’re willing to tear apart this fine piece of American engineering in an effort to have my cock inside of you, maybe you should go a bit easy on the destruction. That’s my job.” When the buckle clicked and the nylon went slack, Ash placed an open-mouthed kiss against my neck and hauled me into his lap. “Now, what was that you were saying about your needy, aching cunt?” His teeth sank into my flesh.

I moaned at feel of his mouth clamped tight around my skin, and the small shockwaves that traveled straight to my pussy at his small show of dominance. If something that simple caused a four-point-oh on my sexual Richter Scale, I couldn’t imagine how hard my world would rock and roll once Ash finally sank his monster cock into me.

“I need you,” I groaned against his lips as I took his mouth in another fiery kiss.

How have I gone so long without this? I asked myself as he nipped at my bottom lip. No wonder I’d been such a snarky bitch lately.

Wanting more of him, I hiked up my skirt and straddled his thick, muscular thighs. I hadn’t remembered how wide and solid he felt beneath me. What I did suddenly recall was Ash looming over me, my wrists clasped above my head, while his cock hit my g-spot and I thrashed beneath him, chasing my orgasm.

“Oh my god,” I breathed out, rolling my hips over his straining erection. I had loved Ford to distraction, but I’d never needed him as badly as I needed Ash at this very moment. “Please, fuck me,” I begged, reaching between us to try and undo his belt.

Ash locked my fingers against his belt. “No, Rae. Not here.”

“But you promised,” I whined and dropped my head to his shoulder.

Ash laughed. “No, I don’t believe I did.”

I sat up and swatted as his shoulder. “You did too!” I cried like a petulant child. “You said, and I quote, ‘Now what was that about an aching cunt?’”

“Oh baby,” he chuckled, capturing my mouth in a quick kiss. When he pulled back, his eyes danced with mirth. “Listen to the words you just used. I never said a thing about giving you my cock.”

“But—” I wailed as I tried to cup his massive erection in my tiny hand “—I want it.”

“Sorry my angry little Veruca Salt.”

I pulled back in surprise. “What did you just call me?”

“Veruca Salt.”

My mouth split into a wide, happy grin. “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory—the original one with Gene Wilder, not that freaky remake with Johnny Depp—is my absolute favorite movie of all time.”

“And you’re the sweetest fucking candy I’ve ever tasted,” he answered as he licked his way up my throat and over my pounding pulse, “but I’m not going to fuck you. We have plenty of time for that later.”

I collapsed against his chest, defeated. “God damn you Ash. You fucking tease. Why’d you have to get me all worked up only to leave me hanging? Didn’t you hear me when I said I hadn’t had sex in two years?”

“Oh, I heard you babycakes,” he growled, pushing me away from his sculpted pecs so he could look me in the eye. After a brief, teasing moment, his mouth hitched up to the side and a confident smirk stretched his lips. “I said we weren’t going to fuck. I never said anything about not taking care of you.”

And just like that his hand snaked up my bare leg to find my panties soaked with desire. “So fucking wet,” he murmured, petting my pussy. After a few more strokes where I silently begged for more with thrusting hips, he ripped the material from me, easily shredding the silk, and pushed one long finger inside of me.

“Holy fuck,” I moaned as I rode out the wave of ecstasy that followed. “More,” I begged, already on the verge of orgasm, as I rolled against his palm.

He snickered and slipped his finger from my core.

“No!” I cried. “Put it back.”

Instead of giving me what I begged for, he went back to petting me. Teasing me. As if we had all the time in the world; as if I wasn’t a writhing mass of need who might combust any second if he didn’t make me come.

“I’m not used to being told what to do,” he pronounced, his words a perfect melody to the movement of his hand. “I know you remember that night, Rae. I can see it in your eyes every time you look at me.”

As the beginnings of a few salty tears stung my eyes, I bit my lip to keep myself from crying. “Only snippets,” I admitted on a pained whisper. “Not this,” I added with a sob as I tried to ride his trouser-clad erection. If he didn’t make me come, and soon, I was seriously considering jumping off his lap and doing it myself. I didn’t know how much more of his teasing I could take.

With his other hand, he gripped my hip and held me steady so I couldn’t rock myself to completion. “I didn’t give you permission to come,” he growled and nipped at my shoulder, the bite a punctuation mark to his statement. “Such a bad little girl. I think you might want to be punished.”

Incoherent with longing, I shook my head frantically and then my tears began to fall. “You’re punishing me now.”

“Oh sweetheart,” he said, his voice like honey. “This isn’t punishment, this is anticipation.”

“I’m dying, Ash!” I cried. “Why are you torturing me?”

“How bad do you want me?”

“Bad,” I croaked. “So fucking bad.”

I tried to ride him again but his grip on my hip was firm. “Tell me what you remember about that night or I won’t let you come.”

“You motherfucking fiend!” I cried, slamming my palms against his broad chest. “Why are you doing this to me?”

Ash’s arms came around me like a vice, and he held me tight to his chest. “I promise you Rae, if you do things my way, you will come like you’ve never come before.”

“I don’t need to come like I’ve never come before,” I argued. “I just need to fucking come.” I wiggled against him, creating enough space to twist my wrist and snake my hand down to against my belly. I’d almost reached my weeping cunt when he grabbed ahold of my wrist and raised both my hands between us.

“Oh no you don’t,” he growled. “I thought I made myself clear: you come when I say you come. And for that little stunt, I’m going to make you wait longer.”

“Fuck you,” I whispered, all the fight going out of me. “I hate you.”

“You don’t hate me,” he responded, shaking his head. “You adore me.”

“I wish I’d never met you.”

He maneuvered my hands around my back, and holding both wrists in one of his hands, he said, “That’s not true. You wish you’d met me sooner.” His words were spoken with the confidence of a man who had a woman at his mercy.

He traced a finger up my belly and over my sternum until his hand rested flat against my thudding chest. “If you think your heart is racing now, imagine what it’ll feel like when my cock is buried deep inside of you. When I’m in so far and buried so deep, there’s nowhere else for me to go. When you’re so full of me you think you’re going to break apart. Imagine what it’ll be like when you’re down on all fours in front of me and I’m slamming into you, my balls smacking against your pussy and my handprint glowing on your pink, heated flesh. Imagine how fast your heart will beat when I lay you out like a feast and dine on your exquisite cunt, when I nibble on that beautiful little clit of yours until you you’re not sure if you’re in heaven or in hell. Imagine how hard it’ll beat when I take you farther than you’ve ever gone before.”

As Ash spoke, the sound of his voice calmed the angry fire burning inside of me and stoked a wholly different one back to life. With just his words, my desire raged to the fore, the skin of my thighs prickling with awareness, with memories. I’d felt his head between my thighs once before, his beard abrading that sensitive skin. I knew what it was like to have him feast on me, like he was a dying man and I was his last meal. Between his words and my memories, my lust built, my stomach clenched, and my pussy quivered.

I don’t know what Ash saw on my face in that moment, but whatever it was, it pleased him. “Yeah, just like that,” he crooned. “Let go,” he commanded as he rolled his hips beneath me, the friction of his wool trousers against my exposed center rough and tantalizing. “Remember what it was like when I fucked you before, when you fucked me back,” he encouraged, slipping a long, thick finger inside of me, brushing up against my g-spot, pumping fast.

I screamed for my life as my orgasm hit. “Holy shit, I’m coming.” The words came out as a roar as the massive wave—a tsunami of feeling—washed over me and then crashed to shore, leaving me shattered like a million pieces of sand scattered at Ash’s feet.

When I opened my eyes, he was licking my juices from his finger. “So fucking sweet.”

I collapsed against him in a fit of exhausted giggles.

* * *

Having spent most of my life on stage, I didn’t regularly feel exposed under the watchful gaze of an appreciative audience. If anything, I reveled in being the center of attention. And yet, as Ash and I sat across from each other on the private jet to Portland I ducked my head and stared down at the book in my lap, letting the fall of my hair shield me from his gaze.

What had happened in the car—what I’d let him do to me—kept coming back to me. Obviously, I wasn’t a prude about sex, but I struggled with how I’d literally begged him to let me come. How I’d let him reduce me to nothing but a needful bunch of nerve endings. He’d commanded me, and pushed me past my limits. He’d made me feel out of control; like I had back when I would have done anything for my next drink. In his lap, I would have done anything for my orgasm.

And I couldn’t ignore the way he’d needed to control the situation, to control me. There was something about him and his needs I didn’t understand, and until I did, I would be wise to tread carefully. I’d never been with a dominant man—the idea had never appealed to me—and now, having glimpsed what that might be like, I wasn’t sure I liked that side of him. Or me.

Physically speaking, for as relatively tame as it had been, it had also been one of the most erotic experiences of my life. But, given how carefully my sobriety needed to be managed, I couldn’t give up the reins of control the way he’d want next time. I’d spent far too long being out of control that the idea left me unsettled. And yet, my body still thrummed with the memory of the way he’d played me like a finely-tuned instrument.

“I can see the wheels turning in your head,” Ash remarked.

I closed my book and set it aside. Folding my hands primly in my lap, my legs crossed at the ankles, I decided to attack the problem head on. Hiding from things, or staying quiet and hoping something would change on its own, was never a smart idea. We needed to discuss the situation like mature, level-headed adults.

“You pushed me back there.”

“I did.”

“I’m don’t know if I liked it,” I continued, keeping my eyes trained on his face, looking for a glimmer of emotion.

Ash rested his elbows on his knees and made a steeple with his fingers. Propping his chin on the point, he studied me, his shrewd eyes raking over my face, then down my body, and back up again. “Your body said otherwise.”

I met his challenging stare with one of my own, my eyebrow cocked. “I’m not denying that I came. What I’m telling you is that I didn’t enjoy the overall experience. I didn’t appreciate you dismissing my wants.”

“Is that what you think happened?” he asked, and I could see he was truly perplexed.

“I wouldn’t have said so otherwise.”

He sat back and rubbed his hand over his beard. “I …” He paused, and then, thinking better of whatever it was he’d intended to say, cleared his throat. “My apologies then.”

“I don’t want you to apologize,” I huffed, exasperated. “I want us to talk about it.”

He shrugged, the gesture meant to be nonchalant, but Ash wasn’t the only one who could read people, who knew how to interpret body language. He wasn’t as comfortable as he wanted me to believe. “It’s not a big deal. If you didn’t like it, it won’t happen again.”

“You’re lying,” I challenged, and this time I did get a reaction. A small one, but the slight widening of his eyes and the tightening of his jaw said I’d struck a nerve. “Look, I’m just going to put this out there, and then we can drop it if you’d like. We’re going to be spending a lot of time together—probably more than I’ve spent with anyone, save Charlotte—and we’ve proven we’re not great at keeping our hands to ourselves. So … I’m just saying that I think it’s important that we figure out how this is going to work.”

“You didn’t enjoy yourself, but you want a repeat performance?” Ash’s brow furrowed.

I tried switching tactics. “Before, in Boise, were you bossy like earlier?”

“You really don’t remember that night, do you?”

“Not all of it,” I admitted. “I see flashes of it, snippets really, but nothing concrete.”

The line of his shoulders tightened, and he rubbed the pad of his fingers over his lips. “I didn’t intend to go back to your hotel. If I’m being honest, when I approached you with that shot of bourbon, the most I was hoping for was a quick blowjob in the bathroom or something.”

He paused, as if waiting for me to argue over the indelicacy of the scene he painted. He’d be waiting a long time, if that was the case. I loved giving blow jobs. It was one of the things I missed most about my self-enforced celibacy. There was just something so fucking primal about being down on your knees with a big, thick, pulsing cock in your mouth. Primal, and powerful.

“Right,” he continued when I didn’t balk. “If I’d known you were so drunk you wouldn’t remember me in the morning, I wouldn’t have gone home with you. I’ve done a metric ton of bad shit in my life, but taking advantage of a woman who is incapable of making wise decisions isn’t part of the deal.”

I regretted that my honesty made him feel as if he’d taken advantage of me. Since that wasn’t at all how I remembered my time with him, I said, “You’re not responsible for my shitty life choices. If it sets your mind at ease, I definitely remember some things. Walking into the hotel lobby, kissing in the elevator, stumbling to my room with another bottle of Jack clenched in my fist. The drunken removal of clothing. It’s just what comes after that is fuzzy.” I smiled weakly. “I wanted you in my room. I made that decision.”

I fell silent, the only sound the whirring of the jet’s engine.

Eventually, Ash clasped his fingers over his abs. “Alright, if you say so.”

“I do,” I nodded. “So, about what happened next …”

“Are you sure you want to know?” he asked, his eyes flicking between mine with concern.

I nodded. “I need to.”

Picking up his glass of soda water and lime, Ash took a long drink, set it down, and studied me for a few seconds before speaking. “You kept begging me to make you feel something. Anything but the numbness, is what you said. At one point, you slapped me across the face and yelled at me to just fuck you already. I thought about leaving because it was clear you had issues, but … I didn’t.” He rubbed his index finger over his lips again. “I couldn’t.”

“Were you …” I paused, looking for the right words. “Did you try to control me then, too?”

“I’m not always like that,” he said, his admission startling in its rawness, its vulnerability. “I prefer it that way, but I don’t need it. But you? You needed it that night.”

I sucked in a breath of surprise as he continued.

“Your emotions were all over the place. One minute you’d be kissing me like I was the last man on earth, and the next you’d be pacing the room, telling me you hadn’t done anything wrong. I asked what you were talking about, but you’d just go back to kissing me, telling me you didn’t want to talk about it. I could tell you were hurting so I asked what you wanted me to do. You told me to make you feel. So I took control.”

I closed my eyes and tried to conjure up a memory of that night. Maybe it was hearing his version of events, but this time, his words brought more to the surface than I’d been able to recall before. “You tied my hands to the headboard,” I breathed out, as a memory of him using two of my scarves to bind me to the posts fluttered to the surface. I could almost feel the fabric snaking softly over my wrists. “And …” I tilted my head, chasing a hazy picture. “Did you make me come up with a safe word?”

I opened my eyes to find Ash watching me. “Always.”

“Pumpkin?” I questioned.

He shrugged. “You were pretty set on it. I figured if it was something you felt so strongly about, that was a good thing.”

“I can’t remember why I picked that,” I admitted, wondering at my strange choice. “What happened next?”

He smiled wolfishly. “Then I ate your pussy until you came all over my face. I kissed your soaked cunt like I was a dying man, and you were the last woman on earth.”

The cunt in question pulsed, and I knew if I touched myself—if Ash touched me—I’d be wet for him.

“And then?” I asked breathlessly.

Ash leaned forward and his eyes bored into mine. He licked his lips, as if he could still taste me there. “And then I fucked you.”

My eyelids dropped as I willed the memory to the surface. When it didn’t come, I wanted to sob. When I opened my eyes, Ash had scooted to the edge of his seat, our knees practically touching. His eyes flicked between mine and then held for a few beats. “And when you came, screaming my name—a name you didn’t remember the next morning—you told me it’d never been that good, that you’d never come that hard before. You admitted you liked being tied up and told what to do.”

“I did?” I asked, skeptically. That didn’t sound like me at all. If anything, when I’d been sleeping my way across Route 66, I’d been the aggressor, the one calling the shots. I could believe I’d begged Ash to make me feel something I’d been going through life numb. But I had trouble imagining I’d given myself over so completely to a virtual stranger. I’d never even done that with Ford.

He nodded. “So, you can imagine why I’m confused about you saying that’s not what you like.”

Ugh. No wonder Ash was confused. I’d done one thing, and now I was saying another. “What a mess.” I shoved my hands in my hair and tugged at the roots. This was more complicated than I’d thought, and I’d already found it pretty fucking complicated.

I dropped my hands to my knees. “One of the things that I took from rehab was not keeping my thoughts bottled up where they can fester and rot. When I was drunk, I spoke my mind freely. But sober? Well, I haven’t always been great at speaking my mind. When I got out, I promised myself I wasn’t going to be that way anymore.”

At the mention of my stint in rehab, Ash’s eyes dimmed and his face morphed from curious to somber.

“Does that bother you?”

“What? You speaking your mind? Not at all.”

“Then what it is? You don’t want to hear about my time in rehab,” I asked with a defiant lift of my chin.

While Ash wasn’t the great love of my life, the reality was he was in my life—even if I was paying him to be there. Sooner or later he was going to learn all about my past. He might as well hear it from me instead of reading about it on the Internet.

“It’s not that. I’m just surprised. I thought you might keep dancing around it. It’s not like I don’t know already.”

“Yeah, but it’s one thing to read the woman you want to fuck is a drunk, and a whole other thing to hear her discuss it so easily, isn’t it?”

“It’s not that,” Ash said, but he wouldn’t meet my gaze.

“The funny thing is,” I continued despite the ball of nervousness forming in my stomach. I hadn’t been lying. Sober, I hated talking about this shit. “I would have thought you of all people wouldn’t care. You already know what my crazy looks like.”

Ash rubbed his hand across his beard again. I’d realized he did that when he was nervous or trying to suss out a situation he wasn’t entirely comfortable with.

“I don’t give a shit about you going to rehab. We all have our demons,” he finally answered.

“I wouldn’t hold it against you if that’s it and you’re trying to spare my feelings. Not everyone can accept the idea of a woman hitting rock bottom. But if you say it’s not that, I’ll believe you. So, what’s got you bothered?” I notched my head to indicate his hands fisted at his sides.

Ash’s jaw ticked, but before he could open his mouth to answer, the stewardess approached. “Excuse me Ms. Griffin, Mr. Devereaux. The plane will be landing shortly, so I’ll ask you to fasten your seatbelt now for the remainder of the flight. Once we land, the pilot wants you to know we’ll have a long taxi since we’re not heading to the usual wing.”

My eyes flicked to Ash, questioning.

“Just a precaution,” he said, answering my silent plea.

I nodded and turned back to Amy. “Thank you. For everything.” I handed her my empty water so she could take it with her into the galley at the front of the plane. As she passed, she smiled down at Ash, her eyes lingering on his mouth. The look of naked desire on her face was so clear even a blind man wouldn’t have missed it.

I wasn’t a jealous woman. After all, I had no real claim on Ash, but I didn’t relish the idea of discussing not remembering our night together while locked in a flying tin can with someone who could recall exactly how Ash liked to fuck and be fucked. I liked Amy, but I hated her too for knowing for certain what I could only claw at.