Groaning from her throat, Jackie hissed with pleasure when his fingers found her sex and split her wide again, and he brought her to the brink of orgasm with his hand when the car pulled to a stop.

"Come for me," he demanded, his voice low and insistent.

It was the strangest thing to be commanded to come, but her sex was already responding, answering him like an underling to her master. And his hand closed around the back of her neck as he pulled her close, kissing her roughly as the impossible heat of release built in waves that swallowed her and spun the essence of her around in circles, heady with desire as her passion burst forth, slow and hot like warmed honey, as her pussy said yes to his demands, and she came, rapturously. Again.

~

The old Jackie would have balked at the idea of giving head and being finger fucked in a limo that probably had a surveillance system and gave sure access to the driver if he decided he wanted to watch the show.

But she wasn't the old Jackie, anymore.

Even if she'd had the slightest doubt when she'd first embarked on this little adventure.

It was as if the universe answered her call, matching her with the sex-god guardian at the gate sent to initiate her into the tawdry world of raw intimacy that plunged her into sexual depths she didn't know existed.

Every glance he gave her dripped with sex, pulsed with need and the promise of a hunger that wouldn't be easily sated. It was all she could do to keep her wits about her as they entered the palatial East Tower, home to several celebrities she'd postered on her walls once upon a 'teen heart throb' loving time. Epicenter of the privileged.

She was overwhelmed with the luxury of it all.

That of his touch. The platinum-plated wall paneling and plush, sea foam carpeting. The lagoon at the lobby's center, where a man-made waterfall poured into waters that shone turquoise, clear to the bottom where several, Koi fish expensively ensured the place's feng shui was on the level.

Liam had held her hand when they'd entered, but as soon as he released her fingers, her body tensed reactively at the parting. She had to remind herself that this wasn't about emotions.

This was about empowerment.

She knew full well the road that emotions ended in, and she was done traveling those byways.

New path. New Jackie.

Maintain your head.

Still she couldn't help but celebrate the grace of his gait, the way he sauntered to the reception desk like a wild cat and dazzled the lotus-eyed, check-in girl without seemingly trying. She felt a twinge in her gut that shouldn't be there seeing how the girl looked at him, but she turned away from it. She was an old hat in the game of becoming hopelessly infatuated, and as a result, she knew all of the red flags.

Pre-emptive jealousy was one of them. Possessiveness another. Jackie was going to enjoy Liam tonight. She was going to bond her body with his with an intensity that few people knew, but she was going home after that. Whether that night or immediately in the morning, she was going to sacrifice him to a shrine in her memory.

There'd be no disappointments. No fitful hours waiting for him to call the next day and reassure her slut-fearing conditioning that he didn't consider her a whore. She was going to be completely uninhibited and unapologetic about it.

Her own woman.

Just as he was surely his own man. Neither of them owed one another a thing after tonight.

She steeled her gut when he made his way back to her, and pushed back against the voice that told her she was making the wrong decision. She could feel it gnawing at the edges of her consciousness, assuring her that it would be different with him.

But she knew that trick, too, and she wasn't about to let the "good angel" reassure her into complacent stupidity for the flimsy hope of "what might be." She was only concerned with what would be, once they made it to their room.

Liam

He was consumed with her already, still savoring her taste, relishing the feel of her lips on his, his mind replaying the way her eyes fucked him as she'd taken him into her mouth. His cock was on high alert around her, fevered with need to take her, to wrap the tight core of her around every inch. Frowning, he was struck with the thought that this could only end badly.

He'd fallen for a girl once. She'd been your stereotypical femme fatale. Yeah, she'd almost killed him with her intensity, and he couldn't let her go, even when he'd realized how poisonous she was. Liam had followed her to the edge of hell and actually peered into the abyss, considering free-falling in after her, but in the end, he'd learned something about himself.

Something that saved him from sacrificing everything about him that was worth holding onto: He knew how to break patterns, and she had been a pattern.

She'd been a beautiful, fuckable version of the archetype his mother had taught him to pine for, praying on some tortured, unconscious level to win her love and attention in return. She'd been the girl he could patch up, and send back into the wild, fix again when she came back, and then finally attempt to cage until she gnawed her way free of her binds and nearly bit his off hand in the process.

Liam had zero desire to be anyone's savior now. Shit, he'd barely saved himself. He was still working on that part actually. Being the punching bag for your mom's asshole boyfriends most of your teen life creates a monster that's hard to rein in when it's roused.

Liam fought everyday to keep it tethered. Whenever some asshole looked at him wrong, or he had to remind himself of the differences between over-reaction and the likelihood that someone had just gotten the sun in their eye and really wasn't trying to challenge his manhood.

You'd have thought stabbing a man thirteen times and nearly killing him would have sated the part of him that needed to prove he wasn't weak, but you'd be wrong.

Maybe that was because his mom had gotten back together with the bastard in the end, even after that worthless fuck beat his little brother bloody for "stealing" a cigarette. To add insult to injury, she'd utterly frozen Liam and Corey out of her life.

Clenching his jaw, he shook himself off of that line of thought, marveling at how just a glance from those gorgeous, onyx eyes relaxed a part of him he usually had to hit a punching bag at the gym to calm.

She had all the affect of a Tibetan mantra on a foul mood. Which was dangerous. She was too good. Too close to something he'd surely become addicted to if he didn't find a way to erect some sort of barrier.

Because those eyes of hers, dark and innocent in the same beat, told him unequivocally that she wasn't here to join souls.

She was here to enjoy him

Physically.

And that had been all he'd set out to give her tonight, hadn't it?

Letting the door to their room close behind him, he reached out to cup her cheek and pulled her to him, dropping the room keys in the slot.

That kiss.

She kissed him liked her soul was in it, even if it wasn't, and it appealed to him on a level he couldn't talk down. Made him want more already, before he'd even had her. Maybe that was the greed in him. Maybe it was just fear.

The fear of loving something so hard you didn't think you could live without it, and coming to the very real conclusion that you'd have no choice if that thing didn't want to be kept in the "cage" of commitment.

Pulling back from her, he searched her eyes.

"How do you like the place?"

She grinned.

"I don't know. I haven't had a chance to look around."