I’m smiling.

I know it before I even open my eyes.

It’s puzzling, because I know I’m not even in my own bed—am I even in a bed?—though right now, none of the “important” details seem to matter. I feel like I’m waking up from novocaine. Something should hurt, but I don’t give a damn. I may not give a damn again. Everything’s soft and quiet and smells so freaking good…

I roll over. Whimper a little. Okay, ugh. The earlier question? About what should hurt? The answer is everything. Have I been hit by a truck?

I amend that assessment the second my eyes are open.

If it was a truck, it knocked me to a damn beautiful spot. At first sight, I wonder if I’m back in the penthouse at the Brocade. The view is just as sweeping, with the beginnings of dawn sifting through the maze of city lights below. But geographically, everything is wrong. The ocean’s a little closer. The neighborhood’s a little nicer. There are a couple of broad greenbelts nearby. I’m sure one of them is the LA Country Club’s golf course.

The bedroom I’m in is no less breathtaking. Though the color palette is all California mission tones, brown and sand and gold, there’s nothing traditional about the furniture. Everything is elegant but practically space-age, looking crafted especially for its place in the room. I’ve never been in a bed this huge, which seems like a king and a half, with several pillows as long as I am tall. There’s a control panel in the nightstand with more buttons than a starship from one of Wade and Fershan’s games. Though each of the buttons is accompanied by an icon, I’m hesitant to push anything with novocaine brain still in effect.

“Where the hell…”

I let the query fade. It’s not the proper question. Another horse belongs in front of this cart.

What the hell has happened to me?

A stab of alarm gives way to crazy flashes of memory.

Reece, waving from the elevator. Adoration in his eyes. My sweatshirt around his waist…

Blasted into nothing by Angelique La Salle. Her siren’s smirk. Those cufflinks in her hand…

Blasted apart again, the only choice my heart would allow. Running. Refusing to confront my own stupidity. My blind trust in an idiot’s fairy tale…

Really blasted then, by the creeps in the train station. Their hands on my body. Their knife in my clothes. Their threats in my ear…

Then the biggest explosion of all.

Him.

Flinging them through the air. Pinning them to the wall. Black leather. Grim fury. Effortless power. Supercharged. Supersonic.

A super hero. Saving me.

“Holy shit.”

I sit straight up. Tousle the covers with a bunch of swipes and kicks. Maybe I just need to confirm they’re real. That I’m still real. That being real won’t smash away the memories.

Memories? Or a dream?

“Holy shit.” I whisper it this time. I run a hand over the sheets and the plain white T-shirt into which I’ve somehow been changed. It fits me like an oversize gunnysack, but it’s as soft as these million-count sheets, smells as clean as cedar, and beats the hell out of the eau de gangbanger in which my work clothes are likely drenched by now.

But for all that, I’m still left with no clues about who it really belongs to. What the hell is going on?

I’m saved from confusing contemplations about that by a harsh vibration from the nightstand. My phone, inside my purse, is easy enough to grab. I smile in gratitude at the caller’s picture and eagerly swipe at the screen.

“Neeta.”

“Emma!” The punch of her voice makes me lean away for a second. “Baap re! You are okay!”

“I…I think so.”

“Where are you?” Her demand is pitched with panic. Before I can come up with a decent answer, instinct steering me away from the obvious, she rushes on. “We saw you. On the news. It was everywhere!”

“On the news?” I shake my head, trying to free it from the fuzz. “What? Why? How?”

“The security camera feed from the Soto metro station.” She takes a huge breath. Her tone softens. “You were attacked, Emma. Do you remember?”

“Yeah,” I say too quickly. I rub my forehead with the opposite speed. There’s so much to process. Too much, even before the most daunting thought of them all thunders back into my gray matter. “Yeah. I remember it all.”

Tangible stillness. Then her reverent murmur. “Even the last part?”

“Even the last part.”

“So…Bolt is real?”

“Yeah.”

And I think I’m in his apartment right now.

Fortunately, Neeta’s occupied with her own high gasp. “By all the gods. Emma.”

I wince. Her fervor slams me, too huge to take in. I’m motion sick, and the only thing turning is the earth on its axis. Maybe if I beg hard enough, God will do me a solid and halt it for a few minutes. “Can… Can I call you back in a little while?” The Almighty will likely want my full attention on the stop-the-globe request.

“Of course. Wait.” There’s shuffling from her end. Her breaths are hollow, as if she’s cupped a hand over her phone. “Are you still with him now?”

“No.” Not a lie in the least. I still have no idea what this place is or how I got here. Hell, I don’t know if I’m a guest or a hostage—though when I hear a door open somewhere nearby, I sense that answer is near. With heartbeats attacking my throat, I mutter, “Call you back soon,” and disconnect the line.

I scramble out of the bed, following the noise despite my uneasiness. Gingerly, I walk toward the sounds.

“Whoa.”

I definitely didn’t expect…this.

First, there’s a built-to-fit architectural island constructed out of custom-hewn rocks and curved insets of dark wood. It houses crescent-shaped bookshelves that arch over a curved, see-through fireplace. On either side of the fireplace, narrow steps lead to a sunken reading area with plush couches. A second bookshelf brackets the other side of the area, but instead of a fireplace there’s a spirits cabinet.

In short, my idea of heaven on earth.

Sealing the deal? My own angel comes with the package.

He stands in the doorway off to my left, leading to what looks like a bathroom as oversized as the bed. Steam billows around the lean muscles of his towel-wrapped hips, as if he’s really just emerged from heaven and the clouds don’t want to let go. Can they be blamed? He’s glorious, from the bold cut of his abdominal V to the rippled plateaus of his proud shoulders.

And every damp, defined striation in between…

No. No.

I don’t want this. I don’t want him. I can’t want him.

Because he’s not my angel.

Because somehow, in some strange twist of fate, I’ve ended up here with him—wherever here is—and now must deal with looking at him like this. Knowing the shirt he pulled off to get like this had cufflinks with it. Those cufflinks…

We were caught up in a…discussion…

“You’re awake,” Reece states.

I push one foot back. Another. “Yeah.” Finally, I’m able to step away from him. “In a lot more ways than one.”

“Velvet—”

“Do. Not.” The point is worth halting for. I stand my ground, my gaze on fire from the inside out, one finger stabbing at him. “You don’t get to ‘velvet’ me anymore. Or ‘bunny’ or ‘foo foo’ or whatever the hell else you’ve cooked into that Kool-Aid.” I let the finger fall. “I’m not drinking it anymore, Mr. Richards.”

“I’m not asking you to drink.” He should be given points for not budging from the doorway. “I should have never even asked you to take a sip.”

I pivot from him. I know I should let him have that as the last word, accepting accountability for layering more meaning on our fling than he ever should have, but my legs are locked in place. My heart is intractable, clinging to its need for logic. So stupid. There’s no logic here. Not with a player like him, who enjoys the big boys’ version of chess. Shifting real-life people as his pieces. Playing with their hearts.

No. Not my heart. You don’t get that part, damn it. “Is that why you had him bring me here?” I peer around again. I don’t want to—resisting the interior-design lusties all over again—but I can’t help it. “And where is here?”

A humorless chuff. “You think I live at the Brocade twenty-four seven?”

I don’t answer. Of course that’s what I think, especially now. In the space at the hotel, it’s simple to slot him into one role. Arrogant, breath-robbing boss man. Here, he’s more reachable. More real. He does stuff like read, sleep…take showers.

“And who, exactly, did I have bring you here?”

“You know who.” I stab him with a glare as vicious as my tone. “That…person. Or whatever he is. Bolt. You know him somehow, don’t you? So you contacted him after I passed out. Or maybe you had him knock me out somehow…” Which is a disturbing thought, so I don’t finish it.

“Why would you think I know him?”

I ignore the subtle scalpel in his tone too. I don’t want to be nicked by whatever has sharpened it. Apprehension? Tension? Do I care?

I shouldn’t. I can’t.

“Don’t you know all the special people, Mr. Richards?” I finish it off with pure snark before descending the stairs to the sunken reading heaven. I shouldn’t be doing this, purposely closing the gap to such incredible temptation, but I refuse to keep talking to him anywhere near the bed. “People like Angelique La Salle?”

Perfect words for reinforcing my resolve. The man may be only wearing a towel now, but less than twenty-four hours ago he was in the backseat of that woman’s car—letting her take off his cufflinks. And the logical things that came after that.

Reece doesn’t follow me down the stairs. He remains on the higher level, arms folded, feet braced, once more in misplaced pharaoh mode. If the towel were tucked differently and he had one of those fancy gold pharaoh turbans, then yeah. But that would mean covering his hair…

“You think Angelique La Salle is ‘special’ to me?”

I fold my arms too and push out a confused huff. The question isn’t rhetorical, but it sure as hell isn’t compassionate. He wants—demands—an answer.

“You going to tell me she’s not?”

He hauls in a long breath. While letting it out, he steps down to my level, though little else changes. He’s still in his Ruler of the Nile stance. His gaze is the color of armor in the rain.

“She used to be…a good friend,” he finally murmurs. “She was in town. I met her so I could return some things to her.”

“Like a pair of cufflinks?”

His next inhalation is sharper. “Yes. Among other things.”

I glower carefully. “Good friends.” I tell myself not to finish it…but what other choice is there? Bleed out slowly or just rip the damn bandage off? “How good?”

“We were…involved. About a year and a half ago.”

I back up by a step. Swallow hard. It’s the blood I asked for, just not the pain I expected. “Involved.” And as long as I’m hemorrhaging… “Like lovers?”

His posture tightens. The sight of it is both exquisite and excruciating. The man isn’t built like a tank, but the creator spared no detail on his lean, beautiful body. His muscles are carefully carved, utterly decadent.

“No,” he states at last. “Not like lovers.”

“So you didn’t fuck her?”

“Oh, I fucked her a lot. But she was not my lover.” He drills his gaze into me, intense as lightning. “She let you believe something differently, didn’t she? When she came to the hotel. When she tried to bring back those goddamned cufflinks.”

“But how did…” I shake my head, answering my own question. “The security cams. The same way you knew I’d left the hotel, right?”

“Yeah.” He draws out the word, making room for a strange subtext in his tone. I’d usually call it tension, but not the same kind I’ve seen in him before. This stress is different. It doesn’t make him scary anymore. It makes him vulnerable. “Something like that.”

“Something like that.” Damn it, I want to ignore that tenderness—to pretend that side of him isn’t speaking out at the wrong, wrong, wrong damn time—but I can’t. “How?”

His composure tightens. “What did Angelique say to you?” he counters. “You two talked. She was at the desk for a while.”

I turn from him again, for a couple of different reasons. One, it’s hard to remember my own name with him in that towel, let alone what his bombshell of an ex dropped on me in the conversation last night. I go ahead and voice number two out loud. “Why should I answer your question when you won’t acknowledge mine?”

“Because your answer is going to help me keep you safe.”

“Safe?” I practically laugh out the word. If I don’t laugh, I’ll cry—and hell if I’ll let him see that. “That’s a funny term to me right now, buddy.”

“I am aware of that, Emma.”

“Are you?” Now it’s time to get delirious. And pissed. And outraged. And scared. I think “scared” might be the newest word in my permanent vocabulary. “Are you really aware, Mr. Richards, of my ‘safety’ when it comes to your crafty ex?”

His hands coil. His jaw squares. He jerks his head, raining drops from his hair over the taut slabs of his chest and the chiseled dessert tray of his abs—but dessert isn’t an option as he slowly steps closer, brandishing hard eyes and flaring nostrils.

“Crafty?” He growls the word but punctuates with a harsh chuff. “Crafty. Well, there’s a piece of funny.”

“Excuse the hell out of me?”

He breathes in through his nostrils and exhales with vicious force. “I think you don’t know shit about ‘crafty,’ Emmalina—and that scares me most of all.” He leans over, skewing the towel sideways, exposing the strain of his extended hip—not that I get more than a glance as his ire blatantly grows. “‘Crafty’ is a word for your shoe-eating dog, your scrapbooking neighbor, or the grandma who makes Christmas wreaths out of used soda cans. It’s not the word for my lunatic bitch of an ex-girlfriend.” He closes the gap between us and opens one of those fists to grab my shoulder. “Do I make myself fucking clear?”

My breath wads at the back of my throat, congeals, and turns into a boulder before crashing into my gut. Forget considering his vulnerable side. What he reveals now isn’t even a run-of-the-mill soft side. This is him, genuinely spooked by the idea of Angelique even talking to me last night.

Angelique. His “lunatic bitch of an ex.”

A claim that should mean something—more than what it means now. But every time it seems like the man rips a mask off for me, another is swept into its place and glued firmly on. I know he’s telling me the truth—just not all of it.

Not the biggest part of it.

“Reece? What the hell?” I let him hear every note of my desperate confusion. Let him feel the force of my searching stare. But if I make a dent in his ire, it’s impossible to tell. His features remain the texture of solid, inscrutable granite.

“I said,” he finally growls, “do I make myself clear?”

I huff out a sigh. “Yes.” I wrench my arm away—or try to. “Now let me go.” When he’s as responsive as a ninja gripping a katana, I resort to yelling. “Reece.”

When he jerks his stare up, his eyes are glazed.

“Let me go or tell me what the hell is going on. Do I make that fucking clear?”

My hand slips from her shoulder.

Let me go…

A breath slowly flows from her body.

Or tell me what the hell is going on…

With equal sadness, she takes a step back. Then another.

Only in that moment, in the dip of her head and the stiffness of her shoulders, am I bulldozed by an awful recognition.

Warning her away from Angelique, I’ve done nothing to protect her—and everything to alienate her.

She’s just as fucking serious as I’ve been. Letting her go…means letting her go.

No. No, damn it. Not an option.

Which means I have to consider unveiling what’s behind door number two.

“Emmalina.”

She stops, one foot angled on the corner of a stair. She waits, hands at her sides with fingernails jabbing into her palms. I watch her wrists shake from the effort—knowing I’m the cause of her pain. Hating myself for it.

Goddamnit.

Hating myself for every dumbass, douchebag move I’ve ever pulled, from sticking my dick in the crazy of Angelique to landing myself right here, right now—wondering how the hell I’m going to break this to the most amazing woman I’ve ever met.

There’s no instruction manual for this.

Isn’t there supposed to be an instruction manual somewhere? Congratulations! You’re a super hero! Quick and easy FAQs, including how to talk to your doctor, your dry cleaner, and your girlfriend.

And during my dumbass sulk, she’s moved on, turned away, and cleared the stairs.

“Emmalina.”

This time, she doesn’t stop. She leans over the bed to scoop up her phone, derailing every damn thought in my mind again with a peek of her ass, perfectly cupped by her pale-pink panties…

Christ. There needs to be a chapter in the manual about dealing with panties too.

“Please. Shit. Emma. Damn it!”

She stops and straightens but doesn’t turn back. “Reece… I…” The nightstand light throws golden light across the side of her face and the cloud of her hair, transforming her into a vision of innocence and illicitness in one breath-stealing second. “Look, I want to…” She sets down her phone and pushes out a soft tsk, as if admonishing herself for this tension between us. “I just want to say thank you, all right? Whatever this is, or was, between us…it was really awesome, but—”

“Goddamnit.” I stomp up the stairs. “No way. We’re not a ‘was.’ We’re not—”

“Reece.” She grabs one of my hands with both of hers and lifts a wistful smile. “We’re not even a ‘we,’ and that’s okay. It’s not good or bad or wrong or right. It just is. You have a lot going on. I mean, you’re…you…and—”

“Fuck.” I yank my hand back and drag it through my hair. Punch out a wry laugh. “No, Emma. I’m not me. I mean, I’m not him. That guy you think I am. That prick—”

“You’re not a prick.”

“Not anymore.”

“Not ever.” She pushes forward, lifting her hands to bracket my jaw. Her immense gaze pulls me in, the aqua light mesmerizing every neuron in my body. “It took you a little while to free the good man hiding underneath that other one, but he’s there. I see him, I believe in him, and he’s beautiful. Now you just have to believe too.”

My snarl is guttural and deep—and angry. I jerk my head in vicious defiance, setting my face into a don’t-cross-me expression. “You have no damn idea what you’re talking about.”

The woman actually hurls back her own growl. The defiance is so breathtaking, I’m reduced to a stunned stare as she pushes on. “Oh yeah? Who came down from the spire, rolled up his sleeves, and helped us turn the rooms for the tour group during that crunch?”

“And snagged a nice fringe benefit from the deal?” I jab a knowing smirk.

“Okay, then. Who’s the guy who keeps insisting on paying Zalkon every day just to haul my backside to and from work?”

“You mean when you’ll keep your backside at work?”

“I think my backside gets an excuse note after last night.”

“I think it deserves a number of notes on any night.”

She whacks my shoulders. “You’re ignoring the point.”

“Which was what again?” Not that I’ve forgotten. More like I hope she’s forgotten—since I’m beginning to. Fast. Discussing any part of this woman’s anatomy, much less the hot temptation of her backside, derails my senses, consumes my will, blazes every drop of my blood. For the first time in my life, I really know the meaning of obsession—in the best and worst ways.

“That I’m not going to let you get away with the ‘just a dick’ excuse?” Despite her sassy tone, her hands haven’t moved off my shoulders. I watch them now, as she starts exploring my collarbones with her fingertips. It feels so fucking good. I clench back a savoring moan.

Just a dick. Oh, Velvet. If you knew exactly how much I could validate that…

To turn her explorations into my seduction. To chisel her point down to craving my point. To make her forget everything except the one thing I can do better than anyone else.

Which will do what?

Delay the inevitable, that’s what.

Tell her—or let her go.

“You’re still not convinced, are you?”

Her prod makes me chuckle. “That I’m a dick?”

“Ugggghhh.” She bats at me again. Though I attempt another laugh, she refuses to join in. “Fine. As long as we’re talking about my lame move from last night, who was the ‘dick’ who tracked me down to the train station and then came and got me—after I passed out in another guy’s arms?”

I almost laugh again. It’s the way I roll when fate opens a door so hard, the wood knocks me between the eyes. But I’m not spinning so hard that I don’t see the gaping break she’s handed over.

It’s time to jump through.

No matter how black the abyss on the other side.

“Yeah…uh…about that ‘other guy’…”

Weird.

It was the word Neeta, Wade, and Fershan whispered that first night I’d met Reece. The word I’d been irked about, much less couldn’t understand. The word that’s lingered at the back of my mind this whole week, mostly because it still hasn’t made any damn sense when it comes to him…

Until now.

Now, he’s weird. Not even that. His vibe is something I just don’t get. Enigmatic? Cryptic?

Scary?

The descriptor fits better than the others, but I don’t want it to. But something about how he takes both my hands and guides me to sit on the bed sears my spine with nothing but scared. The apprehension worsens when he releases me to take a measured step back. He breathes in, as if preparing to peel back his lips and reveal gleaming fangs.

I sit up straighter. “Okaaayyy,” I finally utter. “Reece? What is it?” I manage to grab one of his hands again, tightening my hold around his stiff fingers. “That other guy? What are you…” A frown sets in. “You mean Bolt?” Another slice of fear, though he reaches for the nightstand drawer as if he’s just searching for a tissue. “What happened with him? Shit. What did he do?” I shove furious air through my nostrils. “Did he hurt you? Because, I swear to God, if he tried to—”

I freeze as he turns, trailing something from the drawer between two of his long fingers.

Not a tissue. A mask.

A sleek, black, Maserati mask.

“What…the…”

He lets the molded leather fall to my lap. I look at it like he’s dropped a killer spider.

“I…don’t understand. Where did you—” My breaths come faster and faster. “Did he give this to you? Like a souvenir?”

He laughs. Not hard, but enough to make me want to smack him again. No. Punch him. He needs to be telling me I’m right—that the leather in my lap is just a gift from his buddy or a memento found on the train platform.

Because if I’m not right, that means…

Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.

“He didn’t give me the mask, Emmalina.”

…that every knowing note in his tone is right…

“Then why was it in your nightstand?”

…that every ounce of dread in mine is too…

“Because it’s mine.”

…that the unreal is suddenly very real.

I lurch to my feet and force them to move in a frantic figure eight, countering my exploding mind and churning stomach. My fist twists against the molded leather game-changer he’s just laid on me. My other hand opens and closes in time to my wild-woman pace. “But not because it’s yours yours, right?”

When he issues nothing but silence, I freeze in place, gaping at him with new urgency. Mentally, I drop the towel from his body and redress him in black leather. My imagination secures the mask across the chiseled planes of his face.

All too easily, the result blooms in my mind. All too clearly, I can see him in that god-in-leather finery. Filling it with his regal posture. Turning it into visual poetry with his stride, his grace.

Dominating the very air he’s in.

Controlling it. Using it.

Like his weapon.

The guy’s weird, Emma.

He’s not the person you think, Emma.

“Shit.” I sink back to the bed. “Shit.”

“Emma—”

“It is yours.” I lift my head, staring, as if seeing him for the first time. “Because you’re…him.”

He averts his gaze. Twists his lips into a ruthless grimace. “I’m just me, Emma. And I’m just trying, for the first time, to do something with my life besides being paparazzi food. What everyone else chooses to call it, or how they want to glorify it…” He shrugs, turning the errant drops on his shoulders into planes of muscled luster. “That’s not up to me.”

After letting that statement steep in a long silence, I murmur, “Which is why you’ve kept it a secret.”

“Among other reasons, yes.”

“But you finally did tell me.”

I lift the mask, still dangling from my palm, back toward him. I’m not sure what I’m trying to tell him with the act, but he gazes at the leather with the same intensity I do, knowing the gesture stands for something. Not my total understanding—that may not ever come—but perhaps my gratitude. Exposing himself like this… It’s taken trust that turns his body into a block of tension and his energy into a strained matrix.

He accepts the mask from me and drops the leather piece back on the nightstand. He sits down next to me, curling one of his hands with mine. “Because it was tell you or lose you.”

I turn, taking in his face more intently. Most specifically, the truth now speaking to me from his eyes. “But you’re still not sure I won’t run away flailing.”

I don’t expect his sardonic snort. “I’m just a guy playing the odds, beauty.”

I turn my hand in, twining my fingers with his. Comprehension slams hard. The recognition that, despite the informational warhead he dropped a minute ago, this moment blows me away more. The rogue savior of our city, the idol who’s fascinated the land of the jaded, is sitting next to me wrapped in nothing but a towel and a lot of uncertainty. A super hero who keeps his mask in the nightstand has clearly placed his heart in my hands.

Is this really my life?

Am I really lifting his hand and gently turning it over to trace a finger along the pulse beneath his wrist? Am I really watching a tremor take him, rolling through him like a bank of summer thunder, turning his blood vessels into a web of lightning? Are his fingers actually glowing blue and gold against mine, their light corresponding to the heavy breaths pumping his sculpted chest?

“Tell me.” My whisper is weighted by demand as much as curiosity. I join a second finger to my first, flowing my touch up his arm…watching the amazing light of his bloodstream beneath his skin.

Beneath my touch, Reece’s limbs jerk and shudder. He grips me, digging into my hips, all but pleading with me to keep exploring him like that. “Tell you what?” he grates. “You can have anything, Velvet. Everything.”

I lean in and lift a hand to the thick artery pumping down the side of his neck. I watch it light up like a hose holding radioactive acid. I stroke a little harder. The glint intensifies. “Is this why you always ordered me to close my eyes?”

He swallows deeply. “Yeah.”

I lift my head, confronting the gorgeous glow from his pupils too. “It’s beautiful.”

“You’re beautiful.” He pulls my fingers to his lips. His kiss carries a tiny shock, inciting a gasp. He does it again, sending a similar zap to the tender tissues between my legs.

I angle my body more toward his. He releases my fingers and settles his incredible lips over mine. I thread my touch through his hair as we kiss for long tender moments. Static flows in the wake of my fingers, transferring white-hot energy back into my hand and up my arm.

“Wow.” I let out a delighted laugh.

“No shit.” His commiserating grin is mesmerizing.

“Dork.” I say it as a tease but turn sober enough to add, “As if all this is new for you?”

He kisses me again. New energy arcs between us, making us both gasp and quiver. “Every moment.”

“Bullshit.”

“No shit.” He dares me to doubt him with a harder, deeper kiss. Well over a minute later, when he lets me up for air once more, I openly gawk.

“So…you weren’t kidding the other night? About it being a while?” I watch the slow, steady shake of his head. “Because of…what happened to make you this way?” Refusing to accept his thick silence as an answer, I tug at his hair. As silken as the strands are, I stay focused. “You said I could ask anything, Reece. That you’d give it to me.”

His brow furrows. I can all but hear him cursing himself, but that won’t get him a bye on my purpose. I need to know.

“This shit…it’s part of me now,” he finally utters. “It’s in my blood, my sweat, my nervous system…”

“And you didn’t know what that would do to someone if you were intimate with them.”

I release a long breath as the understanding sinks in. He answers by jerking another nod.

“To be honest, my head wasn’t even there anyway. My life was ass-backward and upside down, and all I cared about was righting it again.”

“Then why did you end up here?”

“In LA?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Richards Resorts International is headquartered in New York. You’re as far away from that as the contiguous states will allow.”

“And?”

“Well, if you’re trying to get your shit together, why did your dad banish you out here?” I tilt my head. “You have to know that’s what everyone is saying, right? That the family sent you out here for some heavy shit that went down in Europe. Parties? Women? Drugs?”

He chuffs. “Yeah. That’s all still pretty funny.”

I right myself. “So it didn’t happen like that?”

His stare turns droll. “Hell if I know, Velvet.”

“You were too strung-out to remember?”

“I was too not there to remember.”

I blink hard. Then again. “But there were pictures of you…”

“Cut, pasted, and altered, and then strategically released to the media,” he supplies.

“What?” I gape. “For how long?”

“Nearly six months.”

“Why?”

“So nobody would figure out where I really was.” He cuts me short from the logical follow-up to that with a look I can only describe as shellshock. He juts his jaw, inhaling deep once more. “It was six months of fucking hell, and that’s the only ‘everything’ you get about it.”

My heart squeezes. My throat constricts. Air is my new enemy, hurting with every intake, as I slide my hand to the back of his neck. I wrap my other arm around his waist, rejoicing as he pulls me even tighter.

Just like that, it’s back—that sizzling, encompassing force field of his, binding our energies like lightning in storm clouds but with a thousand times more magic. I give into it with a jagged sigh, tucking my lips against his neck. I press kisses from his ear to his jaw and back again. His breaths rumble into my hair, sparking more fierce need between us. My pulse sprints to match his. My hand races up and down his spine. I marvel at his corded strength bunching beneath my touch like power cables wrapped in satin. Tanned, taut, muscle-laced satin. I yearn to dissolve into him, to tangle myself with him. The admission pushes another shaky breath through me, echoed by a similar sound in his chest.

Between those rough breaths, I finally compose words. “Wow.” Okay, one word. Saying it all, yet saying nothing. How do I tell him he’s fried the neurons of my mind? Blown apart every imagining of my soul? Given my heart one of the greatest gifts it could ever receive? How do I tell him all that, without making it about Bolt?

Because he’ll never believe me. I even wonder if I’ll believe myself.

Because without the hell he endured to become this man in my arms, he likely wouldn’t be the man in my arms.

And I’ve fallen helplessly, hopelessly in love with the man in my arms.

The man who envelopes me tighter in his hold, wreathing my torso in greater sparks of awareness and awakening, before whispering, “Wow is a damn good start.”

“A start.” I trail my mouth down to his shoulder. I breathe him in, all fresh sandalwood soap with a hint of his natural smoke and cedar, while sliding my tongue over every fascinating muscle of his shoulder. “But…just a start, right?”

“Only if you’ll have me for more.” He issues it in a soft snarl, which quickly becomes a fierce choke. The sound bites the air as I do the same to the bottom of his neck. “Fuck, Emma. Say you’ll have me.”

He digs a hand deeper into my waist, bunching fingers into my shirt. His shirt. I revel in the awareness. I’m in his bed, wearing his shirt. And now, I’m twisting to straddle his lap before planting my knees in his sheets. I’m surrounded by him—his scent, his fabrics, his bed, his energy—razing me from scalp to soles, inciting one consuming need in return.

To surround him with me.

“I’ll have you, Reece Richards.” I brace my thumb and forefinger against his jaw, securing him with possessive intent. “I’ll have you. I want you.”

I love you.

For a second, I’m terrified I’ve let it escape aloud. The way his whole frame stills—stopping as if I’ve shot him in the chest—has me dropping my hand. His features take on a new hardness. His gaze beams with a force nobody would question twice. A message confirmed by every thrumming, throbbing, cell of my body.

He craves me too.

He shows me exactly that, lunging in until our lips collide. He’s untamed shrapnel in my mouth, everywhere at once, setting me afire with every sweep of his tongue. In response, I give a shaky, needy moan. I’m already collateral damage, gutted from his assault, gorging on his passion…

Ripping off his towel.

Looking down at him—all of him—with savoring hunger.

Rejoicing in every magnificent muscle I see. And caress. And spark into electrified glory as his blood heats and pulses and funnels to the most fascinating bolt in his body…

I wrap both hands around his cock and stroke him from glowing balls to the bold beacon of his head, wanting him worse than I ever have before.