“Just let you take care of everything?” I ask wryly.

“Nah, I’m not saying that. I’m saying worry about the things in your control.” His hand keeps sweeping across my forehead and his face lowers until it is only inches away from mine.

“Are you saying I have other things to worry about?” I ask hoarsely.

“Yes. Right now you should worry about getting me inside your apartment before we shock everyone in the building.” He smiles, but it’s a dark one full of promise.

I gulp but grab his hand and pull him inside. We don’t talk. There’s nothing to say, or at least nothing I want to give voice to. Masters must feel the same way. He grips my hand tightly, but stays slightly behind me as if he’s willing to let me lead.

The apartment is quiet and dark. A slight hum can be heard from Riley’s bedroom. I note the sound and give myself a little reminder to be quiet. These walls are paper thin.

Masters shuts the front door behind him with one hand and jerks me against him with the other. His mouth is on mine in an instant. It’s wetter and hotter than the bookstore kiss. I fist my hands in his T-shirt, pulling it up and over his head. Our lips separate for a second and then we’re back, fused together with our tongues doing battle. My hands rub themselves all over the ridges and valleys of his tightly defined chest and abs. Holy Jesus, he is ripped. My knees go weak.

His hands feel just as hungry. They cup my breasts, squeezing them, molding them together, and then releasing them to roam across my back and down to cup my buttocks. He lifts me upward and I jump on him, wrapping my legs around his waist until I’m flush against his hard erection. It feels bigger than it did when he jerked off in the bathroom—and back then, it looked like a monster. God gave with two hands when it came to Masters. His arms are as big as my thighs and they hold me up effortlessly.

He swings me around and presses me against the door, grinding that big body against mine.

“My room,” I croak out. I need to be horizontal. I need to have him driving that large powerful frame into mine. I have never felt so alive and full of need as I have in this moment. I’m wet between my legs and feverishly hot. I rub against him and repeat my plea. “My room. The bed.”

We stumble toward the room still fused together, not wanting to separate for even a second. The door latches shut, but once inside the dark, small space, lit only by a low light on my desk and patches of moonlight streaming between the cheap mini blinds, he doesn’t immediately fling me to the bed.

Instead, he drops his head to my neck and then my shoulder. He drags his mouth down my shirt and then lowers to his knees. He’s so tall that even in that position, he still seems massive. I rest my hands on his shoulders because I don’t have the strength to stand on my own.

He tilts his head up and an impish grin appears on his face. “You tell me if you don’t like something. It’s my first time, you know.”

He lowers himself even more to kiss my thigh. I lock my knees and pray for some strength. His first time? Holy mother, those words are an incredible aphrodisiac. His tongue licks its way up toward my sex and then feathers down the opposite leg. There’s nothing tentative in his touch. No lack of surety when he pulls down my panties and pushes my short knit skirt up to my waist.

There’s a heavy groan. I look down to see him biting hard on his bottom lip.

“Sweet Jesus, baby, you are so gorgeous.” He places a big palm over my trimmed hair and rubs. The heel of his hand places exquisite pressure on my clit. I start to shake. “You like this?” He glances up for approval.

I nod and then nod some more, feeling like a bobble head. I’m only capable of one motion right now.

“Can you get off with just this?”

I’m so close I could get off with him holding me.

“Then how about this?” He replaces his hand with his mouth and the moment his hot breath and wet tongue makes contact with my skin, I go off. I shove my fist into my mouth as he lashes me with his hard tongue. My knees completely give out but his right hand shoots up to brace my butt while the left reaches up to squeeze my breasts. If this is how good he is his first time, I might not survive the second one.

My heart pounds against the thin wall of my chest and I fear it will burst out. Every surface of my skin feels like it’s on fire, and I’m a hot, needy thing filled with incoherent sounds and pleas for more. He doesn’t relent. He doesn’t ease off as my body trembles from one high into another. He keeps feasting on me as if he’s never had anything better touch his tongue.

“You taste so fucking good,” he groans. “So wet and tart. I could stay down here all week.”

I’ve given up stifling my own sounds. I push my hands in his hair, tugging on his short strands while he still holds me up, exposing me to his ravenous mouth. I feel greedy but I want more.

“Masters,” I whisper. “I need you.”

He pauses, mid lick, mid suck, and draws back.

“What’d you say?” His voice is gravelly and rough and rubs across my sensitized skin as surely as his hand.

“Let’s go to the bed,” I beg. He lets me sink to the ground in front of him. I kiss the side of his neck, salty with his sweat. When his still body doesn’t move, I sense something is wrong.

“What is it?” I ask.

He frowns. His face glistens from the moisture of my body and I feel both embarrassed and aroused.

“Did you just call me Masters?”

I shake my head, but we both know I did.

“Shit.” He pushes to his feet.

I reach for him and reflexively he helps me up, but as soon as my feet are flat on the floor, he turns away. Searching a moment, he finds his T-shirt and rubs it across his face.

I grab for him again.

“I’m sorry. It slipped out,” I babble.

“Why is this so hard for you?” He pulls on his shirt and shoves his big feet into his flips I hadn’t realized he’d even kicked off.

“I don’t know,” I say miserably. “Why can’t we just sleep together?” I sound like a whiny five-year-old and I kind of feel that way, too—like my favorite toy has been snatched from me.

“You know why.” He’s irritated. He places his hands on his hips and stares down.

I run my hand on his biceps and am perversely pleased when he trembles almost imperceptibly under my touch. He’s so, so fine. “You just had your tongue between my legs. I’ve watched you jerk off. Yet this one little thing you can’t let go?”

Masters rubs the side of his neck, the action shaking off my hand. “If it’s one little thing then it shouldn’t matter if we don’t have sex.”

“What do you want from me?

He hauls me up against his body and his unabated need nearly burns a brand against my stomach. “I want you to admit that this is something more than a casual fling. That it means something. I’m not giving it up for a one-night stand or even a one-semester stand. I could’ve done that the minute I walked onto campus. Hell, there were girls available during my recruiting trip. I had a girl ready to ride my jock after the game.”

My mouth drops open. I don’t like the thought of that at all.

He smiles grimly at my displeasure. “And not just one. Two, three. Whatever I wanted. And I could have that right now. I could walk out into the hallway of your apartment building and there’s someone out there who will take me up on an offer to fuck me silly. If that’s all I wanted, I wouldn’t need you.”

His brutal honesty is killing me.

“I do care about you.”

He shakes his head and sets me aside. I follow him out of my bedroom and down the hall to the door like a puppy in desperate need of affection. I can still feel him between my legs, his hard jaw working against my thighs, the suck of his mouth. The sounds, oh God, the sounds he made.

At the door he stops. “I didn’t wait for religious reasons,” he informs me. “I waited because if I wanted a physical release, I had my hand. I waited for the right girl.”