“So,” Janie said. “When's the last time a man crossed your threshold? You've had a moat full of crocodiles around your pink castle for how long?”

“Pink castle?” I scrunched my nose as I looked in Janie's direction. She leaned in the doorway of the spare bedroom, holding her drink. Her freckles were in full bloom, her ruddy hair frizzy. She had the kind of figure you'd call voluptuous and I almost hated her for it. What I did hate her for was not seeing how damn sexy that figure was. Compared to me, slight and bony and barely able to boast a B-cup, she was Aphrodite. How could she find the nerve to complain about the jiggle in her belly when she had thighs for days?

“This drink is strong,” she said in her own defense, reaching her lips out to snag the straw and take another hearty sip. My own drink was sitting on the table beside the bed. Rev's bed. The bed Rev would sleep in. In the room next to mine. In my house.

What in the hell was I thinking when I agreed to this?

“You're not answering mee—eee,” Janie sang, crossing the room to help me with the sheets.

“I don't know,” I said, smirking. “I don't keep a conquest diary, like some people.”

“It's called a little black book,” Janie said, leaning over to tuck in a corner sheet. I stood back and let her. She was a nurse. She could do those hospital corners. Me? I was used to making beds for animals, and they didn't care about crisp sheets.

Then again, considering who I was making this bed for, maybe my veterinary experience was more appropriate.

“Misty!” Janie's voice snapped my head straight. She was holding a pillow out to me. I took it and stuffed it into a pillowcase, wondering what the pillows were like in prison.

“There was the guy with the pierced dick, remember?” I said, recalling my last encounter with the opposite sex.

“Oh, right,” Janie said. “It was snowing then. It hasn’t snowed since…”

“Stop,” I warned.

“But he's hot, right? You mentioned something about James Dean...?”

I grinned, taking a quick break from pillowcase-stuffing to glug at my drink.

“He shaved off that James Dean hair,” I said. “But yeah… you could say he's hot. Hot as a stolen car.”

“Mmm,” Janie hummed. “I wish I had a buff, tattooed man sleeping in my house. Ex-con or not...”

“Come over and share his bed,” I snipped. “Just don't let me hear it. These walls are thin.”

I wished I could take it back as soon as I said it. Maybe I didn't want anything to do with Rev's engine, but I didn't really like the idea of Janie having anything to do with it, either. His job was to protect me and help me, not bed my best friend. There were ten thousand reasons I didn't want Rev and Janie getting together, and exactly zero of those reasons had anything to do with my own feelings about Rev.

Nope. He didn't have anything I wanted. Anything I could get from him, I could get just as damn easy from my vibrator. Purrloin appeared in the doorway just as I had this thought, as though reminding me of our kindred spirits: we didn't need men. Didn't need 'em and didn't want 'em.

“Misty,” Janie's voice snapped me straight again. This time, she was shaking our equally-empty glasses. “Can we get a refill, or are you too busy mooning over your new prince?”

“He's not my prince,” I said, grabbing the glasses and making for the kitchen. “He's my...uh...he's my Irish Wolfhound.”

Janie looked at me blankly as I set about fixing a new round of rum and cokes.

“You know. The big dogs. They hunted wolves. Chased them off the grounds or whatever? Protected the royal family?”

“So, he's going to wag his tail and get you dinner?”

Right. In my tipsiness, I forgot that Janie didn't know the whole story. I told her the bare bones; he was an old friend of the family who needed a place to crash after prison. Janie knew my old man well enough to know that it wasn't too unusual for me to associate with criminals, and she didn't judge me for it, which was nice. And once I told her that he wasn't much older than us and that I'd once had a crush on him...

Why had I told her those things again?

Maybe these drinks were a little strong.

“All I’m saying is, if you’ve got a Jaguar in the garage, why bother driving the PT Cruiser?” Janie took the drink I offered.

“Can we talk about something else? Anything else?” I asked. His bed was made. No reason to linger. I led Janie to the living room, plopping down on the couch and flipping on the TV. Extreme Hoarders was on. Perfect. There was nothing Janie loved talking about more than sad people on reality TV shows. She flopped down beside me and quickly launched into an in-depth psychological profile of a woman who lived among newspaper piles that resembled the Tower of Babel.

I drank steadily, doing my best to keep up my side of the conversation. If Janie noticed my distraction, she was kind enough not to harp on it any more than was necessary. By the time she left, just before midnight, I was ready to collapse into bed, my head swimming and the room close to spinning. I didn’t like how much I needed to drink to get Rev out of my mind. What would it be like when I actually brought him home?

That was the last thought I had before my head hit the pillow, but it wasn’t long before dreams took hold.

I found myself outside Guvcheck. I waited patiently as the guards walked him towards the gate. He wore prison-issued gray sweatpants and a white t-shirt that did nothing to hide the body underneath. He was free. And he was going to take that freedom very liberally.

“Misty-Lee,” he growled, approaching me at the car while the guards turned around to go back inside.

“How does it feel to be...”

I couldn't finish the sentence, my words devolving into a moan as he lunged forward. He grabbed a fistful of my hair, wrenching my head back on my neck, exposing the white length of my neck to his lips, to his tongue, to his teeth. Immediately, my blood rushed, veins pumping hot fire through my whole body. His knee slipped between my thighs as his tongue danced down my flesh, his lips sucking, his teeth nipping. My nipples stiffened to tight points.

I let him do it. I let him do everything. I let him spiral his tongue across the hollow of my collarbone. I let his thigh grind up to my delta, my hips giving out and driving downward until I could feel my clit rubbing against the seam of my shorts.

“Rev,” I moaned, his hands finding my breasts, kneading them through my shirt – why hadn't I worn a bra? Because now his mouth was lower, sucking my tight nipples through the thin fabric, his hand plunging down the front of my shorts and finding my center, wet and hot and throbbing. He sucked each nipple in turn, growling like a wolf feeding on my flesh. And I let him. And I loved it. I begged for more with my rolling hips and arching back. He ripped at my panties until his thumb met my clit and rubbed it, hard.

“This what you want, Misty?” he growled, looking up at me with a beast's terrible eyes. “You want me to fuck you, don't you? You want me to spread your legs wide and lick you until you scream. You want to give me everything. You want me to turn you into a dirty little...”

His fingers pushed upward, into my dripping slit.

“Y-yesss,” I hissed, gushing at once, ready to be anything he wanted me to be, say anything he wanted me to say, just for this singular pleasure. Just to feel his muscles against my soft skin, just to feel him split me open and take everything inside. “Yes, Rev, please...”

He pushed me against the car, my back bending unnaturally as his teeth dug into my flesh again. His fingers inside me pulsed, crooked, his thumb still rubbing my clit in hard, slow circles.

“Come for me, Misty, come for me, come for me, come for me,” he muttered, again and again as he fucked me with his fingers. As he brought me closer and closer to a height I hadn't seen in a long time. His masculine scent enveloped me and his thumb rubbed my clit and his lips claimed my throat.

“Y-yess,” I moaned again. He growled, long and low, and I could feel it in my own chest. His fingers seemed to swell and grow and lengthen until they were filling every inch of me, and his thumb was a tongue lapping at my clit, suckling it until it hardened and throbbed and shot shards of impossible pleasure up my spine.

“Come. For. Me.”

And I did. I quaked and came, right there in the open air, against my father's car, at the demand of this rough-handed, foul-mouthed criminal. I let Rev buckle my knees. I flooded his palm. I bucked and seethed with hardened relief, my body breaking out in a sweat that stuck my sheets to my skin...

My sheets. My sheets. My pillow, damp. Heart heaving like an old engine that won't turn. Blood running hot. Fingers...wet.

Shit.

I was in my bed. Of course I was. I wasn't in front of Guvcheck. I wasn't letting Rev finger-fuck me in full view of the guards and any inmate looking out the window. I sure as hell wasn't telling him I'd be anything he wanted.

I was in my house. I was dreaming. I was having a fucking wet dream. I'd have to change my damn sheets. And – oh God – had I been making noises? What if he'd been in the other room? What if he'd heard me moaning his name in my sleep? This couldn't happen again. I'd stay awake for the rest of the year if I had to, because another dream like that...

Fuck. It would totally undo me.

Even ol' faithful in the drawer beside my bed couldn't make me come like that. I wasn't sure I'd ever come like that. Holy shit.

I rolled my eyes to the clock. Holy shit all over again. I was going to be late picking him up. Dammit. Dammit. Dammit. I didn't even have time to wash the sex off my skin.

To hell with it. I needed a shower. I was in no rush to get to Guvcheck. He could wait for me if I was late. I needed every precious second to get this bullshit out of my system.

Twenty minutes was enough time for me to get myself cleaned up, dressed, and on the road… but it wasn't enough time for me to get the taste of that dream out of my mind. The smell of it. The rich, raw, lusty feel of it. I had the irrational fear that he would know. That he would take one look at me and know. And he’d smirk that stupid smirk and his eyes would be those perfect awful black pools and… I’d be his…

I turned the radio as high as it would go and put the windows down to try and wash that thought straight out of my head. I took my blessed time.

I had three hours of driving back with him in the front seat. Not to mention however long he’d be living under my roof. It was time to get my head out of my pussy and into the game. Leave the wet dreams to the 14-year-old boys and keep my eyes on the prize. And remember what the prize was in the first place! Namely, staying the fuck alive. If anything could douse the fire between my legs, that could.

So why the hell didn’t it?