I force my mouth to move down, kissing along her stomach. “You’re so responsive. I could spend all day sucking your gorgeous tits.” I push her down to the bed. “But there’s so much of you to adore.”

I remove her shorts and panties. She asks about her shoes. I glance down at them. They’re at least three-inch heels. She looks so goddamned delicious wearing them—I want her wearing only them. “I want them digging into my back when you wrap your legs around me,” I tell her.

She shivers, and I’m euphoric. I already learned she likes it rough. Now I know she likes to be dominated as well. I’d have given her whatever she wanted, but rough and dominant are how I like to fuck the best. Pleasing her is going to be easier than I thought. And a shit ton of fun.

“Lean on your elbows,” I command. She does and I bend her legs up and part her thighs. Jesus Christ. I let out a long stream of air as I trail my hands up the inside of her legs. “You’re so fucking sexy like this. All spread out for me.” I see her cunt clench as I run my fingers down her slit. “You want me. Look how your pretty pussy throbs.”

I want her too. My cock is pulsing.

But I barely notice it. My focus is completely on Alayna. I continue to tease her with my fingers. When I can’t stand it anymore, I replace my hand with my mouth, licking her, tasting her, sucking her. She comes quickly, but I want her to have more. I want to give her more.

“Again.” I plunge my fingers in her hole and fuck her with my hand while I suck and tug on her clit. She’s close—I can feel her trembling under my tongue—so I reach my hand up and pull on her nipples. This sends her over the edge. Her cunt clenches around my fingers as she thrashes against the bed. I’m so mesmerized by her beauty that a part of me wants to watch her until she’s ridden the entire wave.

But more than that, I want to be inside of her. I take off my pants and find a condom. She’s still quivering by the time I climb over her. I lean on my forearms. “You’re ready for me,” I say, more for myself than her. My cock is pressing at her opening, and I know I can’t hold back any longer. Yet, the moment I enter her, I fear I will lose everything of myself.

I hope I will lose everything of myself.

It’s the hope that allows me to push my tip in. “Jesus, Alayna.” I’m already in heaven and I haven’t even fully entered her. “You feel so goddamn good.”

She’s so snug, so tight. I push her thigh back, widening her, and I slide the rest of the way in. “So good.” Alayna’s adjusted to me now. I pull out all the way slowly. I consider taking my time working up to a steady tempo. But that isn’t how either of us wants it. So when I drive back in, I thrust hard.

She cries out, her face twisted in pleasure. I lean down and kiss her, fucking her mouth with my tongue as I continue to pound into her cunt. Though I’m lost in the complete ecstasy of her, I’m ever mindful of her needs. Soon she’s rocking against me, writhing to meet each plunge. I need to get her where she wants to be.

Without slowing my barrage, I direct her to wrap her legs around me. She does, and the new position opens her up even further. The heels of her shoes dig into my ass. I’m so deep inside her.

And it’s then—as my balls slap against her with each drive, as her body tightens and contracts against my cock, as I reach the peak of my own release—it’s then that my fears and hopes are realized. I am completely lost in Alayna Withers. Figuratively and literally. Completely and inescapably lost.

She trembles beneath me. Does she know what I’m thinking? Is she as moved by this revelation as I am?

“I’m going to come,” she groans.

“Yes. Yes, come, Alayna.” Because I can’t hold on much longer and I want to go with her.

I want to go with her wherever she goes.

Her orgasm crashes through her and I follow, shouting her name, flying with her. And I feel a release that transcends the climax of our sexual activity. A release of unspoken words. This moment we’ve just had together, it’s the most I’ve shared with any woman. As though we weren’t simply fucking but communicating. As though we’d invented our own language, and through it, I was finally able to speak emotions that I never knew dwelled within me.

Or I just had a really good fucking orgasm and I’m poetic with hormones.

I collapse onto Alayna, my head cradled in her neck. I hope it’s more than hormones. I hope I’m not waxing poetic. Whatever the cause of my emotional epiphany, the experience was really, really good. I’m more intrigued by her than ever. More tied to her than I ever thought possible.

This, though—this is the only way I can have her. In a bed. With my body. Because I have nothing else to give to her. I have nothing else that I can share with her. The want to be with her elsewhere is fantastical. It’s a whim, a silly impulse that must be controlled.

And since this is all we will have that is real, I cling to it in a way that makes me think of a little child clutching a security blanket. It’s overdramatized and slightly pathetic but genuine all at once.

I whisper into her skin, needing to share this feeling with her in whatever way I can. “I knew sex with you would be like that. Powerful and intense and fucking incredible. I knew it.”

It’s a lie, though. I had no idea it would be that good. No fucking idea at all.

Chapter Ten

She’s sleeping.

I went to the bathroom to clean up and came back to her gentle rhythmic breathing. The softness of it—of her skin, of her hair, of this moment—it makes me yearn for something I can’t name.

I tug the blankets from underneath her and cover her.

Alayna struggles to sit up.

“Sleep, precious.” I like the idea of her sleeping in my bed. Even though it’s not the bed I tend to spend many nights in. It almost bothers me to see her in this place where I’ve had other women. She seems out-of-place.

But where else would I have her? Certainly not at The Bowery where I live. I bring no one there. Still I can’t help but picture her in that bed…

The strange yearning is about to take over, and I refuse to let that happen. Though there’s a part of me that wants to explore it and study it the way I’ve studied and explored the emotions of others, I know this isn’t the time or the place to do so. It’s not fair to Alayna. I want her to come out of this unscathed, and these notions are not healthy for either of us.

I need to focus on that, focus on the real, and abandon thoughts of the impossible.

I brush a kiss on her forehead. “I need to order dinner. Chinese okay?”

“Sounds delicious.”

She stretches and her tits pop out from under the covers. They’re gorgeous and are distracting me from food, but Alayna works later and I need to take care of her. “I’ll call it in.”

I feel her eyes on me as I leave the room, and I very nearly let them pull me back to her. Except I’m a man of discipline. I can abstain from the things that I can’t have and Alayna Withers…I can only have her in this way—in measured doses. In fragments of time.

But when I am with her, I will be with her completely.

I make the call to the Chinese place on the corner. They’re on speed dial and know me well.

Then I take a few minutes to gather my thoughts, to remind myself of the games I’m playing and the games I refuse to play. When I return, I need to distance myself from her. This evening can’t be construed as anything but what it is—a simple fuck. She can’t believe there is anything more to my desire than that.

Because there’s not. I won’t let there be, no matter what ideas are shaping in my mind.

I collect the clothes we’d discarded earlier in the living room, not letting my mind recall the details of the hot memory. When I return to my room, she’s half-dressed. It should be a good thing—she understands exactly what this was supposed to be and she isn’t cleaving to the physical act, making it something meaningful, like most women would.