Whatever he was, whoever he was, he was way too rich for her blood. She was going to get mangled. She had no defenses whatsoever against the solid male power she could feel streaming from him.

Desiring him was suicide.

She stepped back from him, as if backing off from a force field, clutching the electronic device in her hand.

He stepped back, too. Maybe he sensed how rattled she was and knew he had to back off. He nodded at the device.

“Keep that close to you at all times and don’t hesitate to use it if you feel faint. Don’t lock the door,” he repeated, as she started closing the door in his face.

No, she wouldn’t lock the door. It was his home and anyway, he looked like the kind of man who could pick any lock in a heartbeat.

She wanted him.

Drake eased himself into the steaming hot water in the bathroom off the living room, careful not to wet his bandages, sighing at the hot jets massaging his sore muscles.

Grace definitely wanted him, which was good, because they had to start their affair soon. Fucking her was a strategic necessity, something he knew he had to do, but it wasn’t a sacrifice. It was his deepest desire. Only now that he’d been close to her, touched her, could he admit openly to himself how much he wanted her. Like he wanted his next breath, that’s how much he wanted her.

And now she was here, in his home, naked, right this minute.

His jaw clenched, imagination running riot at the thought of Grace naked in his tub.

That long, white neck tilted back over the lip of the tub, all the jets firing, clouding the water, revealing then hiding that lovely pale body. He could almost see her beautiful face relaxing, the lines of pain and stress slowly disappearing.

It wasn’t like him to have to imagine a naked woman. Most women he’d wanted naked were only too willing to comply.

He’d noticed a change in naked women over the years he’d lived here. There was no softness anymore. Most beautiful women took pains to become buff, tightly muscled. Hard-bodies, the Americans called them. It puzzled him so. Who wanted a hard woman in this hard world? The whole point of having a woman of your own—not that he’d ever wanted one—was to have some softness in your life.

But the women he’d been with over the past few years had been hard, inside and out. Totally invulnerable. The complete opposite of Grace Larsen, with her smooth, soft skin and even softer heart. She was right to keep away from the world, because the world was one giant hammer, just waiting to come smashing down on someone like her.

It had almost smashed her today.

He clutched the rim of the tub tightly, feeling a little flare of pain in his shoulder. Not much. Ben had given him something that dulled it, while letting him have as much use of his hand and arm as possible. And anyway, pain was nothing. Learning how to disregard pain had been his first lesson learned.

The biggest pain in his body right now was his straining erection at the thought of a naked Grace in his home. More nights than he cared to think about, he’d jacked off to thoughts of her. All he had to do was conjure up the fleeting glimpses of her from the alleyway and instant boner, as the Americans would say. And that was when what he knew of her was those brief flashes in the gallery, separated by heavy plate glass, as she talked to Harold Feinstein. There had been no way for him to know how amazingly soft her skin was, how the touch of her hand could send his pulse racing, how every cell in his body came to a point in her presence, like iron filings to a magnet.

God, she was beautiful. She was smart and brave and kind, but fuck, she was so beautiful, too, with the kind of beauty that didn’t dissipate with wear and tear. Muddy, bloodied, wet and bedraggled, she’d simply taken his breath away.

Everything about her seemed designed specifically for him, starting from her eyes, the most beautiful he’d ever seen. Large, slightly tilted, not blue, not green—the exact color of the Mediterranean at noon.

Or her breasts, clearly visible underneath the wet sweater she’d been wearing. It had also been clear that she wasn’t wearing a bra, because she didn’t need it. Her breasts were perfect as they were.

Grace Larsen was so fucking dangerous. Just wanting to see her had placed him in mortal jeopardy and now a big part of him understood how much she was going to cost him.

Everything. Everything he’d built and worked for, gone. She was going to cost him everything he had, including life as he knew it. Thirty-four years of existence, gone.

He couldn’t mourn his life, though, because there wasn’t enough room in his head for that. Right now the most intense sensation in his body was the tightness between his thighs. He looked down at himself and sure enough, he was as hard as stone.

He held himself with his uninjured hand and gave an experimental tug, running his hand from the base to the tip, imagining that Grace held him, and he nearly came out of the tub from the intensity. God!

His jaw clenched. He sometimes jerked off when it was too much trouble to find a woman. He found it a pleasant stress reliever. But touching himself now, with the recent, up-close images of her right there in his head—it felt like he’d lost a layer of skin.

Another pull and he clenched his jaws at the intense sensation. He’d seen her, touched her, breathed her air. It wasn’t hard at all to imagine that they were in bed together. She’d look at him out of liquid eyes, naked on his bed, and open her legs for him. He could see it behind his closed lids, he could feel it.

Feel her arms coming around him, the soft huff of breath as he mounted her. She’d be soft and slick for him, because in this half-dream state she wanted him just as intensely as he wanted her, which meant that she was weeping in her cunt for him, just as he was weeping for her.

He’d push into her, fast, because though he was known to be a controlled lover, he wasn’t feeling in control at all. Just mount her, pull her legs apart and shove in fast, feeling every delicious inch…

Whoa. Rewind.

That wouldn’t work. He knew it wouldn’t work from fucking hundreds of women. He was big and he had to take care. In his world, he’d seen way too much brutality to women. Even the thought of hurting a woman made him nauseous. And this was Grace. So no, he wasn’t going to open her legs and thrust as hard as he could.

First he’d touch her, softly, gently. Carefully feel her cunt in all its soft folds, while kissing her breasts. Feel her open up, soften for him. Hear her sigh with longing—

No, that wasn’t working, either. Because he couldn’t get the image of fucking her out of his head. He was in her, fucking her hard, hands clasped to her hips, watching her head move up and down on the pillow with his thrusts.

His hand was moving faster now as he saw the two of them on his bed, her pale slender legs curled around his as he pumped in and out of her. His fist worked hard and fast as the images of them intertwined on his big bed burned in his head.

He closed his eyes, hand working faster and faster in the water, as he imagined moving in a hot and slick Grace, listening to the puffs of her breath in his ear, her low moans, her arms tightening as she screamed and her cunt started clenching around him—

It was too much. Overload. Hot prickles raced down his spine, his toes curled and his jaw clenched as his cock swelled in his hand. It was impossible to resist the heat, like trying to stop a freight train. The climax just barreled right through him. He started spurting hot jets into the water as he arched his back with a pleasure so intense it was almost pain, one of the most explosive orgasms he’d ever had.

It took long, long moments for him to settle down, for his breathing to go back to normal, for him to be able to open his eyes and see his bathroom and not the naked pair of them on his bed.