Damn it.

On about twenty different levels.

How many times have I resolved not to end up in exactly this situation, with exactly this man, over the last three days?

Okay, not the exact same. In the scenarios I’ve been banishing from my imagination more adamantly than chocolate mint ice cream during PMS, I haven’t had a dusting mitt on one hand and a porta-vac in the other. A rhino-sized housekeeping cart hasn’t been wedged between us in the back elevator.

And Reece hasn’t looked half this good.

Cheese and rice, there has to be a law against the man getting even hotter when covered in dust, dander, and sweat from changing bed sheets, scrubbing showers, and replacing coffee packets. With his sleeves rolled up, dark stubble shadowing his jaw, and chunks of his thick hair tumbling over his glasses, he’s like a dirtied-up version of a Rolex ad.

Oooooh. There’s an idea.

On the other hand, I’m fairly sure I’m the first person on the planet who’s ever seen him like this, and I’m not certain I want to share the privilege with everyone else. It feels…special. Intimate. Inaugural. Several times over the last hour, I’ve caught the man peeking in mirrors and windows, as if even he doesn’t recognize himself. When was the last time he busted his ass for someone other than himself? Though technically, the effort is still about him. In one way or another, some of tonight’s windfall for the Brocade will breeze back over to him—but it’s still nice to see him actually acknowledge that fact.

“Sewing kit for your thoughts.”

I leave my musings with a giggle, accepting his offer of the room amenity. Both his arms are folded over the top of the housekeeping cart, accentuating the breadth of his shoulders and the muscles in his forearms. Dear God, how I want to lean forward and explore those striations…with my tongue…

Which would make you different from Lydia and all her tennis club gal pals…how? Which would prove your resolve that life can be about more than a man, a mansion, and the most perfect lawn on the block…how?

“Do I need to offer a pillow chocolate for your thoughts too?”

I smirk and reach for the little foil circle just as the elevator dings and the doors open at our new floor. “And that’s what I’ve been holding out for.”

But at the speed of light, he snatches my chocolate prize out of reach and the entire cart off the elevator. For a second, I stand and gawk, wondering what trick I’ve just missed—though the Muzak version of Ed Sheeran’s latest hasn’t progressed more than a handful of notes.

“How…the hell…” I struggle for words that won’t make me sound six kinds of crazy. Not that he’s listening. I race to keep up with his long strides down the hall, concentrating on matching two of my steps for every one of his.

“Hop to it, little bunny.” He moves with lithe grace even while towing the massive cart, making my throat go dry. It’s one thing to flip through gossip magazine pictures of his globe-trotting exploits but another thing to witness the natural athleticism required for adventures like cycling the Dolomites, kayaking in Costa Rica, snorkeling in Tulum—and those are only the locales I can recall. “We’re on a schedule,” he says while waving a keycard to unlock our next room.

Room being an understatement.

We’re now tackling our first suite on the rotation, and it’s one of the biggest in the hotel. The view is nearly as incredible as the one from the penthouse—not a surprise, since we’re just two floors lower. I gasp after pulling the drapes open and stop for a moment to simply stare. The city is a twinkling carpet tonight, cars forming moving threads in a tapestry of mostly amber, emerald, and cobalt. In the distance, the towers of Century City stand like diamond-studded obelisks.

“Wow.” I can’t help but murmur it, though I congratulate myself on refraining from China references this time.

“You mean that, don’t you?”

I gasp again—this time from wondering how the man got from trashing empty bottles from the bar across the room to standing right behind me. Since this main part of the suite can patch into the hotel’s house music, Ed Sheeran is still there to remind me not more than a few seconds have gone by.

“Of… Of course I do.” Maybe I can pretend my way back to normalcy. Hell, it’s worked for the last hour. We’ve been a good team, turning rooms at impressive speed. But everything changed back in the elevator, with that single look he bore into me. With that stupid sewing kit he offered. With his charming demand to see into my thoughts. “I mean…it’s beautiful.” After two more seconds of his expectant silence, I stammer, “Right?”

He pulls in a breath. I can all but hear the gears in his head working. “It’s a city,” he finally murmurs. “All cities are beautiful in their own ways, I guess. Lights. Architecture. Movement.”

“Life.” My exhortation has him do a double take. I know it as certainly as I know the lyrics of the song coming from the hidden speakers over our heads. “It’s life.” And it bears repeating, as I take a step closer to the glass. “A collection of lives. Every one of them is a different story, a different dream, a different goal…but all working together too. Meshing and mixing and reaching for something better than what they were the day before, and twining with that same energy in others.” I huff out a little laugh. “Oh, God. I just said all that out loud, didn’t I?”

“Yeah.” His reply, quiet as mine, is filled with a confident husk. I know this because he’s stepped over, sliding closer behind me…and now nearly presses up against me. I sigh deeply, fighting not to lean back into his strength and heat. Instead, I focus on his movements, steady as Tulum seas, in the shifting reflection of the tinted glass. “And I could listen all night.”

My laugh is nearly a snort now. “You want some butter for that order of corn, mister?”

He shifts a little closer. “Only if bunnies like corn.”

They do. Oh God, they do. Too much…

“And butter?” Melted to liquid, like the texture of my blood beneath the intensity of his nearness?

“Tell me more.” His tone is rougher now. Nearly a lover’s bedroom command. Every tingling tissue between my legs confirms it.

Oh, no.

I can’t start thinking this way.

We can’t start thinking this way.

But all he’s asked for are words.

Words are safe, right?

“It’s also…energy.” I must sound ridiculous by now, but he didn’t flinch from all the quixotic shit I’ve already spouted, so why not? “A vibrancy, you know? A pace. A collective craziness, I guess. It’s something…”

“Something what?” he prompts, filling in my self-interruption.

“Bigger.” I go with the first thought in my head…my soul. “It’s just…bigger.” But what does “bigger” mean to a guy who’s been around the world at least a dozen times? “To me, anyway.”

The air suddenly feels heavy, probably from the weight of my self-consciousness. I feel stripped and vulnerable. It’s not comfortable, but stepping away isn’t an option—especially as Reece moves even closer, nearly caging me against the glass with his tall, hard body.

Time for a tactics switch. Big-time.

Snark to the rescue. “Okay, buddy.” I pivot, facing him now, turning up a palm. “There are my thoughts. Now pony up the chocolate.”

The man isn’t deterred. His face is set in serious lines. His eyes are steel gray. “That’s important to you, isn’t it?” He clarifies. “Living…bigger. Having…more.”

“No.” I let him see my wince. “Not having more.” I close my hand, pressing the new fist to the center of my chest. “Being more.” At a loss for how to explain further, I face the glass again. “There just has to be…something more.”

And now there isn’t anything left to say. But why does it feel like I haven’t uttered anything at all? The air is still too thick, and the new song filling it isn’t any help. The Weeknd starts singing—I don’t recognize which song, but does it matter when it’s The Weeknd?—and my mind starts surrendering even more to the heat of the man pressing closer. I know it before even lifting my head to see him, a beautiful blur reflected by the window, towering over me with sensuous intent.

“There is.” His assurance is a warm breath in my hair, a vibrant caress along my nape. “There is more, Velvet.”

I swallow hard. Fight the shivers coursing down my spine, inching their way toward the front of my torso…into the curves of my shoulders and the tips of my breasts…

“Easy for you to say,” I whisper. “You’ve already had more.”

“Not yet.” Aside from a frisson of tension in his shoulders, nothing else changes. He pushes in tighter. Forms his chest to the back of my head, frames his thighs to either side of my hips. And holy wow, what the backs of his fingers start doing to the lengths of my arms…

“Not yet?” I stammer. “What part of ‘not yet’ are you referring to? Swimming with the sea turtles in Tulum or skiing the Alps at Christmas? Or maybe…”

What the hell was I saying again? I care about that less than the title of the song playing around us, though the lyrics are suddenly magic in my senses. Words of being freed by a simple touch and never having to rush…

“You’re my more, Emmalina.”

It’s pure heat against my neck.

Liquid fire through my body.

Awakened truth in my spirit.

A force I can no longer fight. We can no longer fight.

“Oh.” It escapes on shaking breath as my head drops, unable to stay upright as this man slings a net of arousal across my whole body. I’m helpless in his snare, muscles going limp and nerves turning to ash, though I still try to fight the pull by slamming both hands against the glass and pushing back. No use, especially as I drag my stare up, only to have my vision filled by our reflection.

Our reflection.

One word now. One image now.

Bodies pressed. Breaths mingled. Energies joined. Desires awakened.

“Oh.” I have no idea how I’m able to repeat it, or if it even makes sense. “I…I see…”

“Do you?” His growl is almost a visceral vibration instead of a spoken reply, pressed into my neck as he slides his left hand along my arm. When he gets to the end, he meshes his fingers with mine against the window. Our clasp forms a heated cloud of condensation. “Do you really see?” He scrapes the corner of my jaw with the edges of his teeth. “Or should I show you?”

Yes. Please show me.

“No. Th-That’s okay. I-I believe you.” I push through the haze of lust, clinging to my last thread of pragmatism. “Reece. We need to…get back to work…”

In my head, it sounds like badass management girl. On my lips, it’s more like lusty French maid and worse. The syllables break into breathy pieces as he sweeps his lips up and down my neck.

“Work? What is this strange ‘work’ you speak of?”

I push out a dry laugh. He doesn’t. In the dark world beyond the glass, where our figures still tangle, he hunches over me like a forest beast examining its prey—before deciding the best way to kill it. I marvel at how tiny I look compared to him. How helpless. How stunned. Enthralled by my predator’s power…

“Emma,” the beast softly snarls. “Emma, Emma. How did I go so long without this? Without you?”

That isn’t supposed to make it all right.

The goo of my kneecaps tells me otherwise.

I sag against him, startled when my bare backside scrapes the prominent bulge in his pants. How the hell has he hiked my skirt and dropped my panties before I’ve realized it? And why the hell didn’t I heed Neeta’s advice and not borrow some housekeeping uniform pants for this duty? And what the hell am I doing now, letting myself tremble and whine at the sight of his long fingers against my bare thigh…before he slides them toward my core…

“Oh!” My cry is answered by his growl—and the swipe of his fingers over the hot pearl between my legs.

“Yesssss.” He hisses into my ear. “Goddamn. Yesssss.”

“No. Reece, we—oh, shit.” My head falls back as he pinches the most illicit part of me. “W-We can’t. I-I’m your—”

“You’re my more.” He shifts his hand away, encouraging my right knee to settle onto the ottoman he’s pulled over with his corresponding leg.

“Regardless, this isn’t…and you’re—”

“The man who’s going to be inside you.”

“No. No. This isn’t right.”

“Oh, this is very right.”

“I work for you!”

“All right, then. You’re fired.”

“Damn it!”

“All right, then. You’re hired again.”

I’d slap him, if his words weren’t so damn true. This is very right. My mind resists every syllable, but every cell of my body and instinct of my spirit can’t scramble fast enough to embrace it. To seize the gem of desire forged in the caves of fate from the moment we first set eyes on each other.

Fine. So it might be true. Doesn’t mean I have to be happy about it.

I pulse my left hand, still locked against the glass by his. He pushes harder, forming his body over mine. I don’t want to be happy about how good that feels either. With his chest molded over my back and his face tucked against my shoulder, it’s impossible to keep animal tendencies from taking over.

Ravage me…please…

“I hate you,” I grit out instead.

“I crave you.” His stubble burns my neck.

My head plummets again. “I can’t want this.”

“No.” The grate of his zipper cuts the air. “You don’t want it.” The heat of his groin flares across my ass. “You need it. Like I do.”

“Hell.” It’s a line of bitterness that really isn’t, a punch I long to give him but won’t—a resolve dwindling faster as he pushes down his pants and briefs, freeing the fire of his erection. He tilts his hips in again, fitting his hot flesh between the swollen lips of my pussy, and I’m certain I’ve just uttered my own fate. A cock that feels this good can only belong to the devil. And here I am, willingly rocking my soaked center back and forth along that sinful stick. But if this is what hell’s like, who needs heaven?

“Fuck.” The strain in Reece’s voice lends a sliver of vindication. His composure is balanced on just as thin a rail as mine. For a tiny moment, I let myself believe all his words are more than just pretty poetry to get my underwear open. Does it even matter if they aren’t? The bastard has gotten his way. My panties are a puddle around my left ankle. My resistance is a few grains of sand washed away by his lusting flood. My senses are tossed like jetsam in the surge—flipped and tossed and drowned until I can’t figure out where to come up for air. Every breath is full of his smoky, musky scent. Every heartbeat is synched to the hammering in his chest, pounding against my spine. Every move I make is dialed in to making him swell bigger against my pussy, moan deeper into my ear, grab tighter onto my thighs.

“Fuck.” His echo is borne on a chest-deep groan as his body tightens and shakes. His lips are hot and brutal at my ear. “Fuck me, Velvet.”

I release a shuddering sigh. “Is that a question or a command?”

“You really need that answer?”

But once more, we both know that reply, as he grabs my thighs, spreading fingers along my tender flesh and pulling my body harder against his. I shake and moan and gasp, swearing this heat and need and lust are the most intense storm my body’s ever been through—and he hasn’t even entered me. How is this possible? How is he doing this to me, simply with the scrape of his mouth and the force in his fingertips? His touch is like lightning. His body is like thunder. He’s a monsoon around me. A calling to my core…

“Emma. Emma.” His voice moves through me, vibrating along my skin and senses. “You…”

“No.” I sigh, savoring how our muscles coil together. How our bodies form to each other. “No…you.”

His low, lusting breath flows with his long, slow slides. “You…drive me.” He works a deep kiss into the bottom of my neck. “You illuminate me.”

I shudder and smile as he works his mouth back up to my jaw. “It’s my super power.”

I swear, just before his short chuckle, I feel a jolt take over his body. But his voice is smooth smoke when he drawls, “It probably is.”

“You know what that means, don’t you?” I wait one short beat, not giving him time for another comeback. “Now you have to show me yours.”

There it is again. The silent but incessant jolt through his frame, covered by another laugh. It’s sharper this time, probably because I waste no time in demonstrating exactly what “power” I need from him. Am beyond needing. Am beyond even thinking about. He’s turned me inside out. Pulled me beyond my defenses. Taken me to the point of no return. I’m wanton and uncaring, riding my pouting sex along his engorged shaft, lost in a vortex of climbing need and growing fire and pulsing passion.

“Damn. Fuck. Emma—beauty—wait. Wait. I have to—”

“Hurry,” I gasp as he slides his hand from my thigh and fumbles with something behind him.

“Christ.” But it sounds more like “rice” because he’s tearing a foil packet with his teeth. The next moment, the latex is a cool column between our bodies. As he slides the condom over his length, he dictates, “Say that again. Just like that.”

“Hurry.” I willingly oblige because one, I mean it, and two, I yearn to make him sound like that again. Like he can’t take a breath until I speak again. Like he won’t move without my begging gasps. “Please…just…hurry and—oh!”

It’s a moan of surprise and fulfilment, of pain and pleasure, of joy and sorrow. In his single lunge, I’m finally filled—but as he slides his cock out, retreating until his head teases at my tender lips again, I now know what it’s like to be without him. Tears stab my eyes. Everything aches. He hasn’t just taught me about the emptiness of my body. He’s left me in a deeper darkness. An existence without his passion, his laughter, his energy…

His more.

“Reece.” I don’t care how pathetic it sounds. If he wants to hear me beg, that’s damn well what I’ll do. “Please. Please. I-I need—”

“I know,” he husks. “I know.”

A moan, deep and dark, pours out of me. He doesn’t know. If he did, he’d give me more than just his tip, searing at the first few inches of my channel, teasing back into my weeping depths with painstaking seduction.

“But…but…”

“Close your eyes.”

I do it because he could ask me to whistle Mary Had a Little Lamb right now, and I would. I do it especially because his commanding growl is the sexiest thing to ever enter my body. Okay, the second sexiest.

“Both your hands. Flat on the glass.” He pulls the ottoman over a little more, enabling me to reposition my body and comply. “Now both knees up on this.”

A serrated snarl leaves him as I obey once more. The new alignment of our bodies seats him deeper, though the penetration isn’t close to that first incredible lunge. I need him like that. I need him so far inside, it hurts. I need him to dominate every thought I have, electrocute every cell in my being, fry every circuit in my senses. With every new inch he takes over, my blood sizzles. My skin ignites. My pussy is white-hot from his branding. And still I crave more. I need more…

The lust spreads through me like a virus. I’m fevered with it. Delirious from it. I need relief but never want to be healed. It consumes me, driving every move I make. My limbs writhe and roll, thrusting my channel back over his stalk, a physical plea for his full invasion once more. He answers with sharp, shallow stabs, swirling me into enraged insanity. No. Not insanity. I’m indignant. Enraged. I didn’t remotely want this. If we’re discovered, he’ll be banished to run an ice hotel in Mongolia and I’ll never work in this city again. But now that he’s turned my body into a raw frenzy, he refuses to give me the right antidote.

“Damn.” He grits it as I pump faster. The timbre of his voice is a fireball to my sex, stretching the walls of my restraint, making me cry aloud.

“Please.” My fingertips curl against the window. My shoulders snap back, molding against the perfect wall of his chest. He curls around me, draping me in his longing, firing the electrons of our passion even faster and hotter. His thighs are powerful and slick against my ass. He rakes his hands up my arms and slams them on the glass outside of mine. His cock conquers new depths of my body—a piston of such intensity, I wonder if I’m glowing from within. “Please!” I beg again. The piston needs to connect—now. The rod needs to strike—now.

“Damn.” His own echo is nearly a groan. “So hot,” he snarls. “So tight. I need to be deeper.”

“Do it.” So finished with begging.

“I don’t…know if I can hold it in for much—”

“Then don’t.” Really, really finished.

“It’s…been a while for me.”

I almost hurl back a glare of disbelief. “You trying to say you’re out of practice? Because I call bullshit.”

“I’m trying to say…dear fuck”—the oath escapes him as our bodies fit tighter—“that I don’t want to hurt you, and…fuck.”

I exclaim the word with him—as his cock takes over everything left inside me.

For a moment, just one moment, we just are. We’re locked. Tied by the connection of our bodies, the bond of our breaths, the electrons of the air swirling around us, through us, into us.

It’s crazy—at least that’s what I try to tell myself—but there’s no other way to describe the marvel of the starscape bursting to life beyond my closed eyelids. The sexual race of my body is now the blazing force of my mind, shooting texture and color to my vision. Blue, gold, and silver streaks consume the valley of my passion, colliding so hard that I’m overwhelmed—but when I open my eyes to escape the cataclysm, there’s more impossibility for my mind to wrap around.

Are his fingers, still slammed to the glass beside mine, glowing? Is that same indigo hue igniting the crux where our bodies are joined? And why can I see every vein in his body as if they’ve turned into lightning?

“Reece? What the—”

But I can’t get the question out. My scream slices the air as he thrusts fully once more.

Holy. Shit.

Every inch of my tunnel is invaded, every neuron of my body is detonated.

“It’s okay, Velvet. It’s okay.”

Though his words are hoarse rasps, I believe every syllable. Though all of this is beyond surreal, I accept it. Maybe it’s even easier that way. Remembering it as something like a wild dream will make it easier to forget.

Because once we leave this room, I have to forget.

Reece’s breaths are rough in my ear. He bends one of his knees onto the ottoman, tilting his cock for even deeper plunges. A stunned choke falls out as my pussy flares with pleasure, my eyes squeeze shut, and my senses are lost. The light ribbons are gone. In their place is a solitary glow, a sun into which my senses melt. The heat funnels toward my pussy until the dam of my restraint is nothing but rubble.

And I drown.

Liquid light, all around.

Molten completion, slamming through.

My sex is pure lightning. My senses are raw resonance. My lips open on a soundless scream as the torch inside me brings wave after wave of perfect fire, sparking pleasure so good it’s nearly unbearable.

“Reece. Reece.”

“Right here.” His growl is my ark in the flood, my refuge from damnation. We’re a pair of fallen angels, marking a path through the stars with the fire of our fucking. “I’m right here, Velvet.”

“Wh-What’s happening?” I hear my voice as if through a fog. I sound totally toasted, though the electricity in my pussy counteracts that theory. I’m not drunk. This feels too damn good for drunk.

“I don’t know.” His grate is filled with just as much wonder. His cock swells at my walls, foretelling his own approach to the cliff of climax.

“You don’t know?” I’m incredulous. Maybe a tinge scared.

“I’ve never felt anything like this before.”

I believe him but don’t want to. Hasn’t he felt everything before? But as he continues to fuck me, the answer is irrelevant. “Oh,” I choke, as new arousal drives my pussy toward a new mountain of awakening. “Oh!”

How is this possible? How am I this tightly strung, this stunningly turned-on, once again?

“It’s okay.” He meshes his fingers with mine, squeezing until it hurts. I welcome his shackles, embracing the pain. It ensures me this is real. Achingly, blindingly real. “It’s okay, beauty. Let it happen. Let it take you.”

“Says the guy who doesn’t know what’s happening?”

I feel his smile against my cheek. “Then it’s an adventure for both of us.” He slides his grip along my body, sizzling heat following his fingertips all the way back to my waist. “An uncharted sea.” His hold tightens. He controls our pace, ramming my body back over his with faster urgency. Then even faster. “Sail it with me, Emma.”

“Yes.” No other response makes sense.

“Come with me, Emma.”

“Yes!”

We plummet together, descending into our own River Styx, where flames consume us—and then rocket us back to the stars. But now, we don’t just zip between the cosmos. We are a star, made of light and heat and brilliance, flaring with such force, the supernova is inevitable.

“Christ,” Reece snarls.

“Yes.” I return the plea.

“I’m going to come.” His voice wavers. Something about his moan snags at my senses. “I can’t stop,” he grates. “God help me.”

What’s going on? Why does he suddenly sound like he’s confessing murder? But even those thoughts vanish as I burst once more, caring only about the convulsions of my walls around his gushing cock.

“Oh,” I stammer. “Oh…oh!” And though my logic knows there’s a layer of latex between our bodies, I swear I can feel every drop of him spill into me. A thousand filaments of energy spread through my sex, as if I’ve become one of those plasma balls at the geekboy stores at the mall. The sensation intensifies when that electricity branches out, filling Reece’s fingers now spread against my hips, as he keeps pumping, rubbing out his scorching conclusion.

“Fuck.” He finally breathes against the back of my neck. “Fuck.”

“We sure did.”

My humor is met by Reece’s thick silence, pricking a sixth sense in me. Why has the weight of the air doubled in less than half a minute?

Before the next thirty seconds are up, he curls around to swiftly kiss the edge of my jaw before muttering, “I’ll be right back.” While there’s affection in his voice, its twinge of regret still lingers—but by the time I can turn around, he’s already disappeared into the bathroom, closing the door with a whump.

Confusion hits. It’s followed at once by curiosity. Enough to make me surge to my feet, yank my skirt down, and pad across the room. But once there, I hesitate in front of the closed bathroom door. Through the portal, I can hear his pronounced hiss. Then a slippery fwick, as he pulls off the condom. He whooshes out a breath. Whispers to himself, “Thank fuck.”

My forehead bunches. What the hell?

“Errrmmm… Everything okay in there?”

A fast thunk—the used rubber hitting the waste can, I assume—before the door is flung back and the man himself fills the opening.

I don’t disguise my sharp intake of breath. By all that’s holy. Probably the unholy stuff too. I don’t expect this new arrogance from him. Or its crazy effect on me. How can a male wearing his nerve like a second skin, though still covered by every stitch of his clothing, make me want to hump him again already? I can’t deny that truth as I take in his sultry smirk, half-lidded gaze, and tumbling hair. His arms are spread, elbows braced against the doorjambs. He crosses one ankle over the other, drawing my gaze downward—to the open V of his zipper and the gasp-worthy body part still bared in that gap.

“Right as rain in here.” His gaze matches his tone, alluring and steady. His sultry scrutiny dips down my body. “How about out there, bunny?”

I compel my own composure to stay even, though that means letting my blush run rampant. And no, the irony isn’t lost on me. After what I just let him do to me, on the company’s time—his company’s time—my system shouldn’t be granting me blush privileges right now. Yet there it is, acutely conscious of his bare crotch. And mine. The skirt might be down, but that stops none of his effect on everything beneath it. I’m wet all over again, my juices tickling as they slide toward my pussy. Reece’s stalk, which has never gone fully flaccid, bobs half an inch the moment my arousal scents the air.

“Just…peachy.”

Reece curls a smile, making me want to groan. Holy shit. The man’s generous lips are as mesmerizing as his proud cock. “Peachy, hmmm? Glad to hear that.” Just as swiftly, the mirth fades from his mouth…as fresh lust smokes his eyes. “You have no idea how glad.”

“Oh, I have some idea.” My effort at cute and coy is destroyed the moment he reaches over, dragging me close. In the same motion, he finds the top of the zipper at the back of my skirt. Before our bodies touch, he has the enclosure open. As our mouths tangle, the whole garment plummets to the floor. We’re flesh-to-flesh once more, my soaked slit cushioning his stiff length, my hungry moan absorbing his harsh grunts. I’m dizzy with disbelief but high on gratitude. How is this even happening? How is my body, my spirit, my very core already so ravenous for him again? This isn’t me. At least this never has been me. I’m the female with needs beyond my clit. The vanilla-town girl with the kaleidoscope-colored dreams. The one who can count past lovers on one hand and be fine—hell, be proud—of that fact.

“Yeah?” But his silken growl has me forgetting all concept of pride, especially as he sweeps me up, parking my ass on the marble vanity top. “Tell me about your ideas, beauty.”

His mouth, so elegant and entrancing, hovers less than an inch above mine. He doesn’t leave the space empty for long. At once his mouth sweeps down again…then his tongue spears past my lips, demanding a new, wicked dance. Though he leads the tango with smooth mastery, I’m struck once more by his urgent desire, which leads me to actually believe his earlier disclosure. It’s been a while for me…

“Yours fascinate me more.” The words quiver as he yanks me forward, nearly unseating me from the vanity, before wrapping my legs around his waist.

“Uh-uh.” His tone is as thunder-dark as his gaze. “Not as fascinating as you, Emmalina Crist.” He dips in as if to kiss me again but hovers instead, raking those thunderheads across my face. “I want to know everything about you.”

He speaks with such reverence, I don’t know whether to be swept away or scared shitless. Then there’s the option behind door number three. Total bewilderment.

I funnel all the confusion into a muttered question. “Why?”

He pulls back a little and looks at me with such perplexity of his own, I wonder if he’s having second thoughts about this whole conversation—or whatever the hell this exchange is.

But he’s still serious, even resolute, as he murmurs, “Why is there gravity, Velvet? Why does the sun come up every morning? Why do stars fall and mountains rise?” He pulls himself closer to me. “Some things are just inevitable.” He slides his hips against mine. As he rocks, stroking my clit with the boldness of his cock, I swear his gaze flares with a million points of iridescent light. “Some things are just meant to be.”

Well…hell.

Forget fighting the leap of my pulse. The sprint of my heart. The complete swoon of my better senses, turning my I-am-woman-hear-me-roar into I-am-bunny-let-me-melt.

“Meant…to…be.” I push out the words between hoarse, heavy pants. “Like the fact that I need you to fuck me again?”