Dean Cole was nothing like people pegged him. He was the worst kind of devil. One that hid behind a polite smile, preppy clothes, and good manners.

“Shit, Dean,” I panted hard, losing my grip of reality, of my senses, of myself. “You’re going to kill me.”

“No, Rosie. I am going to save you,” he growled, placing his thumbs on my sex and stretching me open to the point of delicious pain. He then plunged his tongue into me, fucking me mercilessly while I held onto the edges of his bar and screamed. For help or from pleasure, I wasn’t sure.

“Jesus. Oh, God.” I wiggled left and right, trying to escape the profound thrill that hit me.

“Tell me that I’m doing the right thing,” he snarled, clasping the sensitive flesh of my folds and slowly pulling it between his teeth until I cried out again. Delicious pain swirled between my legs. I wanted him to do it again, and he did, before saying, “I don’t want to know him, Rosie. I can’t deal with him right now.”

What was he talking about? Who was he? The little working cells of my lust-fogged brain were anxious to know. Who was crazy enough to hurt this gorgeous, kind man? And more importantly, who held the power to do so?

“You are.” My voice quaked just as much as my flailing legs as I tried to scoot up the bar and run away from the wild orgasm that had threatened to riven my body. “You’re doing the right thing, Dean. Whatever it is.”

“I hate her,” he said, his tongue penetrating me, deep. His lips, his fingers, his teeth devouring me completely. He was talking about another woman while being with me. That should have made the alarm bells in my head go off, the red sirens to spin at three hundred miles an hour. But it didn’t.

It didn’t, because it was him.

“Then I hate her, too,” I cried out, feeling my knees shaking and my body going numb as a hot wave of pleasure washed over me, cocooning my body. I howled, a mauled animal, pulling at his hair, my thighs clenching his head until he had to pry them open with his strong fingers. Then I lay there for a second, motionless, and watched as he unbuckled his belt, stepping out of his pants before he grabbed me by the thighs and scooted me up.

“I’m angry.” The green in his eyes danced like flames.

“I know.”

“If you want to walk away—do it now. For what it’s worth, I think you should.”

“I’m staying.”

“You’re not going to like what you see.”

“What am I going to see?”

“The side of me that I’m not too proud of.”

I gulped, my mouth falling open. “I’m in, no matter what part of you you give me.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” he sneered. “I’m going to hurt you.”

“Good.” I placed a hand over his chest. “That’s what I like about you. You treat me like a capable human and not like a wilting Rose.”

And just like that, everything changed. Darkness sucked the sunset from the city that watched us, broken glass crunched under his shoes, promising pain, his eyes shut down, and I was left alone with a stranger. With a savage.

The lights were switched off and he pulled me into him, but when I thought he was going to catch me…that was when he let me fall. A throne of colorless glass underneath me. Even my bones moaned in protest as he grabbed me by the arm and hauled me to his bedroom, dragging me along his pristine black and white floor. My skin split from being dragged against the glass. Black velvet rug greeted me when we entered his domain, beneath an extra-large, king-sized bed from the variety you only see in the movies. I’d never been in his bedroom before, and I gulped when I thought about all the women who had. All the Kennedys. All the Natashas.

All the uncomfortable and painful truths.

He let go of my arm and gave me a little kick with his leg toward an ottoman by the floor-to-ceiling window.

“Elbows,” a metal-cold voice that wasn’t his demanded, and I scooted up on my knees and placed my elbows on the settee, staring out to the twinkling, artificial lights of New York. Dean stood behind me, but I couldn’t see what he was doing. My ass was bare, but I still had my bra on. I figured he was hovering somewhere in my vicinity, but couldn’t tell for sure. I didn’t turn my head and look. He wanted me to be scared. I wanted me to be scared. This was happening.

“The funny thing is,” he started, pacing behind me in his room, and I shivered at his beautiful voice. I heard the whoosh of thick liquid as he took another drink of his brandy. “They all called me Ruckus and The Joker in high school. The Jester. The fun guy. The clown.”

And he was none of the above. I realized it now, but back in high school, I bought into that image, too. He could I not? He was damn good at selling it, and at a very high price.

“But you know what I am, Rosie?” He stopped moving behind me.

I closed my eyes, sucking the masculine scent of his room into my desperate lungs and feeling my heart disjoining inside my chest.

“You’re a Pierrot,” I whispered. “You’re a sad, lonely clown.”

“Always smart and perceptive.” A hint of his own voice trickled into his tone. He took three or four steps toward me—I heard and counted—and even though I was still mostly naked and couldn’t see him through the reflection of the too-spotless window glass—I felt safe.

“Do you know why the Pierrot is sad?” Dean asked.

“Broken heart.” I swallowed, fighting tears. “He is pining for love that can never be his.”

I wanted to turn around. To hug him. To undo the last few hours that made him the way he was. But I did none of those things. I felt his hand caressing one of my ass cheeks, his breath tickling the valley between my neck and shoulder.

“Run, Rosie,” Dean hissed. “Run before I fuck it up and ruin us.”

“Try me,” I insisted. “Break me. Use me. Fight me. You’ve chased your prey for months. Years. A whole decade, goddammit. Are you just going to let it go?”

The smack to my ass cheek made me tumble forward and shocked the living hell out of me. I’d never been spanked before. Not because I was against it. I guess it was one of those things I never got around to. Like bungee jumping or watching Schindler’s List. Perhaps it was the fact that all the men I’d been with always treated me like a fragile thing that was about to die in their hands. Or maybe it was due to the fact I was never completely stripped of my self-conscious and shame when I was in bed with anyone else.

But Dean wasn’t anyone else.

He was the one.

I groaned, the desire and sting swirling in my body, scooting my ass toward where I’d last felt Dean, begging for more. It felt dirty, but I didn’t mind being dirty with him. He never judged me. Come to think of it, he was possibly the only person in my life who accepted me for who I was. Even Millie tried to convince me to move back to Todos Santos.

The sound of flesh beating flesh assaulted my ears before I felt the second smack, and this time it was somewhere between my butt and pussy. Drool pooled in my mouth and my head sank to the ottoman, my eyes rolling in their sockets. Why did it feel so divine when the man who claimed he wanted to “save” me hurt me? Maybe because a part of saving sick little Rosie was by showing her what she was capable of suffering without breaking.

“Scoot up.”

I scurried up the ottoman until my upper body was draped over it and my ass was in the air. Dean squatted down behind me—I felt his naked body against mine—and shoved four fingers into me all at once. It hurt, but I sucked in a breath and pulled through. He played with my arousal a little before taking it out and serving me my juices.

“Taste your pussy.” His voice was detached. “Taste what I fucking do to you,” he added.

Even though that was another definite first I’d never thought of doing, I brought my lips to his shiny fingers and licked them. Shoving them into my mouth, he demanded after a brief moment, “Suck them clean, Rosie.”

I tasted sweet and warm. Not half as bad as I thought it would be.

He wiped the remainder of my juices on my ass and smacked it again. This time, I leapt forward, but didn’t whimper. I think he liked that I didn’t bitch about it. His groan told me so.

When his tip started teasing my entrance from behind, I lolled my head from side to side, waiting for him to plunge in. But he didn’t. He did this for a whole minute, driving me out of my mind, before I begged, “Dean…”

“Mmm?”

“Don’t torture me, please. Do it.”

“Do what?”

“Get in.”

“Wrong terminology. Try again.”

Holy hell.

“Fuck me, please.” I gulped.

“Condom?” he inquired. His tone was edgy. Like he was expecting something.

“I’m on the pill.” The lie was bitter in my mouth, and I was already breaking the rules we agreed on yesterday. The honesty part. I didn’t need to be on the pill. But he didn’t need to know that. Not until I was ready to tell him, anyway. Apparently, we both didn’t need to know a lot of things. What a fucked-up start to a relationship that was.

“You are? Because in Vegas, you weren’t.”

Jesus, with this guy.

“I am,” I whimpered, waiting for more. Whatever more entailed.

“If you say so,” he taunted, placing his palm flat against my throat at the same time he thrust himself into me in one go from behind. I cried out as he pounded into me, the blood in my body rushing to my head, my sex, everywhere. Dean wasn’t kidding when he said he was going to hurt me. This time he didn’t hold back. He fucked me so hard, I was sure my inner thighs were going to burn and my insides throb for weeks later.

“Turn around,” he ordered out of nowhere, still riding me, pumping in and out. Was he that drunk that he didn’t know what he was asking me? I managed a little frown between moans.

“I can’t. You’re on top of me.”