His demands ring through me.

Listen to everything he tells me.

Do exactly what he wants.

When he wants.

No questions asked.

I don’t know what I was expecting, but something inside of me balks. This is a lot of trust to give to a man after what Robbie just did to me. But another part of me—the part that’s stretching through me like something sleek and purring that’s just woken up—wants Connor more than anything.

I’ve come too far to turn back now, but I can’t help resisting, even a little. “You said there’d be one condition. You just listed quite a few.”

Connor merely chuckles, nearly a growl, as he moves around the desk, taking his time. All the while, he runs his gaze over me like a lazy caress that leaves my blood simmering.

“You came here because you want to give me exactly what I ask for, didn’t you?” he says. “Wasn’t that your true intention?”

His gritty tone scratches down my skin, leaving me burning for him.

I pause, still hesitating to give all the way in, but then I nod.

“I want to hear you say it,” he tells me.

“I came here because I want to give you exactly what you ask for.”

“Good. And, for the next week, you’re going to give what I want to me when I want it.”

“That’s why I signed the Highest Bidder agreement.”

He stops at the front of his desk and leans back against it, his arms folded over his chest. He looks at me, almost as if I’ll never be good enough for him. And maybe I won’t, with the hot mess I was last night. Is he remembering that? Does the memory turn him off?

“Remind me, Allyson,” he says. “Who came in here asking for another chance?”

“Me.” I swallow again, and his gaze lingers on my throat. My skin grows moist. “And I thought you were giving it to me—under the conditions we had before under the agreement I signed.”

“The terms have changed. I now require no questions asked, but you seem to be questioning me right now. Which is making me wonder if perhaps it’s a mistake to give you another chance.”

I purse my lips and look at the floor. My pulse is swamping me, and I’m aching for him so desperately that my pussy…yeah, my pussy…is responding in a way it never has before. It feels swollen and drenched, needy and voracious

I’m already saying yes, and I think he knows it.

When I look up again, Connor is still watching me, and my heart jolts as we make eye contact. He grins in that enigmatic, slightly cruel way of his and uncrosses his arms, then moves away from his desk, slowly closing the charged distance between us. I freeze as he passes me, all heat and prowl. He’s so tall, so intimidating, and as he circles me I clench my fists by my sides. There’s an erotic scream welling up inside of me. Touch me! Do whatever you want but do it now!

He pauses behind me. “Are you ready to give me what I want, no questions asked? This is the last time I will ask.”

His quiet words send a thrill down my spine, fear and excitement mixing. I nod as my heart races. “Yes, I’m…I’m ready,” I whisper.

The scream growing in my chest turns into a wild, unchained laugh, and I press it down.

Nerves. This man makes me so nervous, makes me so crazy.

I can feel him waiting in back of me. My flesh feels as if warm water is flowing down it, trickling over every vulnerable inch.

He leans down so he can whisper in my ear. “The first thing I want you to do is sit on my desk, pretty Allyson.”

I know something bigger and naughtier has to be coming, and I want it so much that my clit feels plump and stiff at the same time, in sore need of something to massage it and make the sweet pain go away.

I want that something to be him.

So I walk to his desk. The only sound in the room is the hum of electricity in the air, the hint of activity outside his doors. I turn to him and brace my hands on the furniture, then bring myself to sit on top of it.

“Very nice,” he says. “I like your restraint, Goldilocks, because I know you’ve got questions about what I’m going to do to you. However, I’m going to leave that to your imagination for a few moments.”

As my pulse flails, marking the seconds, I only swallow again.

His gaze intensifies. “Now take off your panties.”

I hesitate, my heart in my throat. His command makes me throb all the harder for him everywhere, especially between my legs.

“What’s wrong?” he asks coolly. “Are you thinking that no man has ever asked you to do this for him?”

“No one has.”

He stays silent until I feel compelled to say something else.

“I wrote in my application for Highest Bidder that I’ve been with one guy all my adult life. But you know that I don’t mean been with him. Because I haven’t. With anyone.”

More silence greets my babbling. My heartbeat fills the room.

“I mean,” I say, “before we split up, we kissed, he once touched my breasts, but we never did…this.”

Robbie was always so hell-bent on us remaining virginal, he never wanted to do anything that would even remotely lead us to sex. Even the kisses between us had always been chaste, cool, almost familial at times.

Now I am faced with something that is the complete opposite of everything I’ve been groomed for.

“And what I am going to do to you?” Connor asks softly.

A flush roars over my skin. “I think I know, but I’m not sure.”

Connor smiles, and it’s just as ravenous as his gaze. He’s pleased at my purity. He wants it for himself, and a violent, wet throb from my clit shakes me up at that thought. An unfamiliar yet delightful pressure starts to swirl and thump in my belly as he turns around and moves toward the door.

The sound of the clicking lock echoes through the room.

He turns to me with both of his hands in his pockets, unmoved, utterly in command.

“Take off your panties, Goldilocks,” he says again, his tone lower this time, his piercing blue eyes fixed on me.

After a breathless pause, I inch up the skirt of my cute butterfly-print dress. His gaze burns as he watches me. A muscle in his jaw ticks.

I’ve never seen this kind of confident need in a man before, and it gives me the courage to reach under my dress, loop my thumbs under the sides of my undies, and pull them down. My skirt covers me as I modestly draw the satin down my legs and sandals then drop the fabric.

My slippery, bare pussy beats even more as Connor indolently moves toward me, his hands still in his pockets. He stands in front of my closed knees, and his body heat suffuses me. When he takes one of his hands out of a pocket, I hold my breath.

“Relax,” he says. “That’s what I want you to do next.”

I try, but as I let out my breath, it shakes. He doesn’t seem to notice as he slips one of my ruffled tank straps down my shoulder.

I bite my lip as the cotton slumps to reveal part of my strapless bra and the curve of a breast.

Carelessly, he runs a fingertip over my shoulder. “Soft skin,” he says as I tremble. Then he explores me further by tracing his finger down to my bra and sliding inside the cup.

At the wicked sensation of his finger against my nipple, I rock off the desk a little.

“That’s right,” he murmurs. “Don’t be afraid to show me how much you like it.”

And I do. God, I do. I can’t believe this is actually happening now. This can’t be real—except it is, and it’s totally overwhelming.

He eases my dress down more, along with my bra, exposing my breast. As he gently strokes my nipple I grip his arm. My pulse seems to have taken over my pussy, killing me with every agonizing beat. His other hand is still in his pocket, but he takes it out now, resting his thumb on my bottom lip.

As he continues to tease my breast, he sensuously strokes the pad of his thumb back, forth. I shift on his desk, holding in a moan. When he pushes the tip into my mouth, I part my lips on a gasp.

I breathe. I wait.

Then, with a searing look, he skims both hands down my body while he gets to his knees in front of me.

What’s happening? I think. But I know what’s going on, what’s coming.

His hands stay on my thighs for only a ragged heartbeat before he pushes up my dress and urges my legs open.

I gasp louder this time. He feasts his gaze between my legs as air caresses me there, his eyes going hazy and darker.

“Fucking Goldilocks,” he murmurs.

He brushes his knuckles over my wet center.

As he keeps stroking, I shift on the desk again, my clit so achy that I can hardly stand it. The anticipation is splitting me in two slowly, tortuously. When he uses his one hand to urge my thighs even wider, opening me to him with a wet sound, a scream pushes through my chest again. But it only comes out as a jagged whimper as he separates my slick folds with his fingers, then leans forward and uses his tongue to stroke up and through me.

I arch and cry out, shocked through and through.

As he presses his mouth full against me, I feel him make a sound that sounds like a growl. The vibration makes me murmur incoherently until he tastes me again, kissing me down there as if wanting to take in all of me.

I just can’t stop myself from pushing the pleasure down inside myself, because it’s pulsing inside of me like something that needs to get out, freed to scream and run and do whatever it wants.

Hooking his arms under my thighs, Connor begins a slow assault that scrambles my mind, making time melt into itself so that I don’t know just how long he pleasures me. His tongue sucks my throbbing lips until I can’t breathe. He circles my beating clit until I bite my lip. He even flirts with the place above my clit—a spot that I didn’t even know I had, a spot that makes me fall back onto his desk, my arms flailing and knocking things off the surface to the floor.

My hips wiggle with every one of his erotic kisses, and as he keeps working me, I feel his finger slip inside me, crooking up until it hits a place that makes me cry out once again, lifting myself off the desk. Then he does it again, as if enjoying my torment, and it feels as if I’m about to burst, but not quite. Not yet.

As he keeps pressing that sensitive button inside of me, he uses his mouth to give me more wet, intimate kisses, to gnaw at me. Every once in a while I feel a brutal tickle on my clit, as if he’s using his tongue to stroke me horizontally, in a different direction. It’s as if he’s brushing me with different sexy colors, creating and building something that makes me swell inside, spiking me with a rising sensation that’s hot and wet and getting bigger and bigger—

Everything explodes, painting the backs of my eyelids with a million different colors that blind me, then leave a white-hot blankness that drifts and drifts until I finally get my breath back.

As I do, I feel Connor’s hands stroking the tops of my thighs, as if he’s watching every moment of my afterglow. But when I actually open my eyes, his expression is as cool as always while he rises his feet, pulling my skirt over my nakedness.

At his detachment, I close my legs and struggle to a seated position, tugging up my bra and dress so that they cover me. Heat is still racing over my skin, but most of it travels to my face in what I know is a humiliating blush.

I came for him, and I came hard. The only evidence of it is the arrogant little smirk he’s wearing.

As I wonder what’s going to come next with Connor Kenyon, that familiar mixture of fear, excitement, and uncertainly tears me in a hundred different directions.

But this time, I’m not sure if I’m ready for it. Yes, I’m ready to have sex—more than ready.

It’s the feelings I have that I didn’t expect.

Feelings for him.