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  It hasn’t settled yet, though. No, settled is definitely the wrong word for being dry humped against a boulder in a national forest. Topless. Soon to be pantless, too, because the way Will is kissing me means one thing: it’s going down. No turning back. I don’t want to, either. My shorts are still saturated from the river, but they grow wetter the old-fashioned way every time Will leans back and looks down to watch his erection grind between my legs.

  “By everything holy,” I say, my voice shaking. “Please take off our pants. M-mine and yours. Both.”

  He snags my mouth in a blatant kiss, teasing my tongue with his until I don’t know whether to slap him or beg for more. “Woman, how am I supposed to do that when your thighs are wrapped around me like a boa constrictor?”

  I nip at his bottom lip. “Figure it out.”

  There’s only a split second to savor his heated amusement, before my legs are pushed down Will’s powerful hips, my feet meeting the ground with a crunch of foliage. Not an inch of space is put between us, though, as Will continues to abuse my mouth with growling, provocative kisses, his big fingers busy on my zipper. When he lowers it with a metallic zing, I expect him to shove my panties off and get down to business. But he lowers them slowly, his fingertips trailing lightly down my hips. A slow, slow, never-ending drag of flesh on flesh raising goosebumps on my skin, head to toe. I’m panting by the time the material slips down to my ankles, my vagina singing falsetto.

  I make quicker, clumsier work of his fly and lower the front of his briefs, groaning like a damn lady when his thickness bobs free, slapping off his stomach and loitering there. Just like the night when I knelt for him on the motel balcony, I have a strong urge to fall to my knees and serve. To please. So I don’t fight it. But as soon as my knees dip, his grip closes around my throat and I’m positioned back against the boulder, pinned by the single hand.

  “None of that pretty mouth for me this time.” His free hand separates my thighs, his knuckles rubbing against my sensitive skin. “I’m saving all my misery for this.” His middle finger surges up into my entrance hard, his hand tightening on my throat at the same time—and in the space of two seconds, I’m trembling, my loins constricting around his one long finger. “Remember that, baby. Remember that your man’s pleasure is tied up in pain. Every little bounce of your cunt is going to feel like heaven and hell. Like medicine and murder.” He adds a second finger, pressing deep until I scream through clenched teeth. “I love the way we’ve been getting each other off, but the hunger for fucking you only builds every time. So if it seems like I’m angry with you, try and remember I’m just trying to get through pain to pleasure.”

  “Okay.” I wobble around on my toes, sucking in a breath every time the heel of his hand grazes my clit. “O-okay, I’ll remember.”

  “Good news is, it’s going to be all pleasure for you.” Will steps close and yanks up my left knee to waist level. He doesn’t take his eyes off mine as he dips down, positions his blunt-headed erection between my thighs…then drives home, lifting me off the ground. “Yeah!” he roars. “Fuck.”

  My scream is trapped in my throat, eyes watering from the intrusion. But he’s right. Oh God, he’s so right. Despite his size, there’s nothing but blinding, impossible pleasure, probably because I’m a human lubricating device and Will could turn a nun into a sinner. “Move, please.” I open my thighs wide, my backside propped on the boulder, writhing, writhing. “Move. Please.”

  “I got you, baby.” His hot breath pelts my neck, hips dropping and punching upwards again, making me see stars. “Christ, Teresa. You’re like threading a fucking needle.”

  “Thread it harder,” I whimper.

  His groan is ragged. “You planning on making me feel guilty later, telling me your pussy is sore?” He starts to thrust in tight, even pumps. “It’ll work like a charm, you know. My girl pouts and can’t get comfortable in her seat because I fucked her too hard? I’ll sit you on my lap, apologize, rub your clit through your panties until you’re smiling again.” He gives me a savage drive that rattles my wisdom teeth. “Yeah, I’ll massage the ache until you forget my dick is the bad guy and you want him to fill you up again.”

  The words fill you up make my eyes fly open. “Oh. We didn’t…condom.”

  “Shit.” He tilts his open mouth against mine, our gazes locked. “Shit.”

  I can’t manage a swallow. “Huh.”

  “I’ll pull out.”

  With a wince, he starts to ease his hips back, but denial clamors through my blood, my legs locking around him involuntarily. “No.”

  He slams back into me with a vengeance, roaring into my shoulder. “Remember what I said about the pain, Teresa,” he grates at my mouth. “It’s going to get worse. I have to wrap it up now, or stopping to leave you is going to kill me. It’s so hot and tight…” Another series of desperate thrusts. “Jesus, I thought I knew how good you’d be, but I had no idea.”

  “I do have an idea,” I whisper brokenly, working my hips, my bare backside scraping on the boulder, but barely a hint of pain registers next to the epic, increasing pressure between my thighs, all centered around Will’s smooth, swollen flesh. “Feels so good.”

  “Goddammit.” He slants our lips together, kissing me long and wet until I’m lost in a fog of impending climax, no idea where to focus. His mouth or his pumping erection that seems to grow larger with each drive. “Can you get pregnant, baby?”

  “No. I’m taken care of.” Thank God he’s asking. That must mean this isn’t about to end, even for a second. I’ve been on the pill since I can remember and it seemed like a waste during my long stretch without sex, but I’m so grateful I stayed on it now I could cry. “Don’t stop. Don’t stop.”

  “Can’t. I can’t.”

  I don’t realize until this moment that he’s been holding back. Compared to how he claims my body now—raw, deep, hard and fast, fast, fast—before was only a muted preview. One muscular arm bands behind my backside, the other braced at my back, so my bare skin is no longer rubbing the huge rock. The intimacy of being pressed to Will so tightly, his arms wrapped around me to possess, protect…it makes it hard to breathe. His eyes bore into mine like he’s trying to read my mind, all while he pounds into me like a man with little control.

  “Feel me, Teresa. You can’t walk away from this and neither can I.” He angles his hips and rolls into me, dragging his hard flesh over my clit. Like our bodies were molded with the specific intent to please each other. “There’s no end date on this. Every time you try to put one on us, it’s going to end with you moaning and telling me I don’t need a rubber.”

  The buildup to my climax is too intense to stand. I’m looking right at Will, but I’m seeing gold plumes at the edges of my vision, my thighs beginning to shake violently. “Don’t move. I’m coming. I’m…please.”

  His growl and the stuttered pace of his hips tell me he’s close, too. “No end date. Say it.” He crushes me closer, our wet mouths raking up and down together. “Say it.”

  Even though my common sense is firing warning shots, I would say anything in the world he needed to hear right now. I’m an animal desperate to be pleased and to please her mate. “No end date,” I wheeze.

  “Good girl.” He dips his head, bathes the side of my neck with his hot tongue. “Now tell me you can’t walk away from this cock, either. Tell me it services your dick-tease body just the way you need it.”

  My climax begins to pump through me in dark, radiant waves, choking off my air supply, so I can only gasp the words. “Can’t walk away.” I throw my head back and moan, grinding the back of my skull against the boulder. “Need it. Need it.”

  “Get used to having soaked panties,” he rasps against my ear, giving me crude upward drives, bouncing me and holding there, exploiting the elevated peak I’m living in. “I’m going to keep them that way. When I’m not fucking you, I’ll make damn sure you’re thinking about when and how it’s going to happen.”

  I’m limp by t
he time he finishes speaking, head lolling, barely capable of keeping my thighs wrapped around his waist. It’s sheer pride keeping them in position at this point. Pride and that still-fierce need to give him the same bliss he’s given me. My hands lift and cup my breasts, my teeth sinking into my lower lip, and I watch in satisfaction as his nostrils flare, a curse scraping out between his teeth. “You like the way I feel, Will?”

  “I fucking love it.”

  “Filthy man,” I whisper, not sure of the woman I am in this moment, but so comfortable and confident with her, I think she’s been waiting in the wings. Waiting for Will to free her. “You big, filthy man. You need to come so bad, don’t you?”

  “Yes.” A tremor moves through him, his pumps turning violent. “Jesus. Yes.”

  With his breath growing more and more labored at my forehead, I clamp down around him with my inner walls—and his answering groan is the hottest thing I’ve ever heard. It’s a masculine battle cry that fades into surrender, cracking at the end as he comes. “Goddammit. Teresa. Shit.” His mouth opens wide over mine, his eyes squeezing closed. And I’ve never been more satisfied in my life than I am for the next few seconds, his heat flooding me, my intimate muscles flexing around his flesh—tighten, release, tighten, release—milking him dry. A stream of dirty speech comes out of Will, slurred and incoherent. Words I would slap any other man across the face for saying out loud, but this man who accepts my fantasies without flinching makes them…right. Praise spoken in the heat of passion, singular to us, whether it’s truth or fiction meant to heighten the moment. “Fuck. That’s a greedy pussy you’ve got, woman. Stealing the come right out of me.” Will bares his teeth as more liquid warmth releases. “Little liar. Want my baby, don’t you? God. This body tells me the truth. Take it.”

  “Yes,” I moan, licking salty sweat off his face. “Give it to me.”

  One final thrust and Will collapses against me, his face finding a home in the curve of my neck. My legs lose their battle and drop, Will’s embrace keeping me upright, pressed between heavy male muscle and stone. We stay like that for long minutes, catching our breath, until we hear the jingle of Southpaw’s collar approaching. We glance over to find Southpaw watching us, head tilted, a moss-covered stick in his mouth.

  A laugh climbs my throat, Will’s low timbre joining me a second later.

  “All right, buddy.” Will presses a slow kiss to each of my cheeks, humor dancing in his eyes. “My stick has been looked after, now we’ll worry about yours.”

  “I knew that was coming.” I shove Will off me with a laugh, but he comes right back, whipping his shirt off over his head and carefully pressing it between my thighs, his earlier humor fading away. It’s such an unexpected move that I suck in a breath, unable to move as he cups me through the fabric, dragging it up and back, then moving lower to collect the stickiness on the insides of my thighs.

  While he completes the task, his eyes never leave mine, the intensity in their depths holding me in thrall. “Mine now.”

  I nod like I’ve been hypnotized. Or Will-notized.

  “Can you stand to put those wet clothes back on for a few minutes?” He kisses me slowly, thoroughly. “I’m going to jog back to the visitor center to get you something dry to wear.” His lips twitch. “Pretty sure I saw a tie-dye dress in there that says Nature Girl across the front.”

  “It won’t match my shoes, but I think I’ll live.”

  His thumbs brush my cheeks, a shadow crossing his face. “Too soon after I pulled you out of the river to go making jokes about living and dying, woman.”

  Stepping back with a low sound of reluctance, he tucks the T-shirt in his back pocket, zips up and leaves me to dress.

  And I know that no matter what happens, whether he wants me or not when the dust settles, I am his. The question is whether or not he’ll still want to be mine.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Will

  I lift my hand to knock on the doorframe of Teresa’s room, but I pause in the action, literally unable to do anything but stare at her and breathe. God, she’s fucking beautiful. The lamp glow highlights her sun-reddened cheeks, her hair has dried messy from her dip in the river. She’s sitting cross legged on the end of her bed—which she hasn’t and won’t be sleeping in—still wearing the tie-dye dress I bought her today. After we played with Southpaw in the park until late afternoon, we came back to the hotel and now I’m focused on feeding her. But she seems more focused on the laptop she’s holding.

  She looks up when I clear my throat. “Hi.”

  “Hey.” I walk into the room, noting the way she watches me with an air of anticipation. As if she’s wondering if I’ll push her backwards on the bed and take more of what she gave me in the woods. Make no mistake, after she wrecked me for every other woman today, I want back inside her as soon as possible. Want her bucking and twisting and scratching. I’m more than a little obsessed with this woman, actually. But I have one more night to make my mark, and that requires more than fucking. “I came to ask what you want for dinner.”

  I set the room service menu down in front of her and she picks it up, setting it on her laptop keyboard. “Mmm.” She looks up at me through a squinted eye. “Want to get a bunch of appetizers and share them?”

  “Read my mind—”

  “And then…maybe I can show you some of my work over dinner?” She slaps her hands over her face. “Oh my God, that sounded like a bad pick-up line.”

  Laughing, I sit down beside Teresa on the bed and pry her hands off her face. “It would have. If we weren’t well past that point.”

  “Are we?” Her face is scarlet. “I’ve got that nervous first date feeling all of a sudden.”

  The mere implication that she’s been on dates tightens my skin all over my body. “You don’t seem the type to get nervous about dates,” I manage.

  “I would with you, I think,” she says slowly, easing my strain. “If we’d met and gone through that whole process of exchanging numbers and feeling each other out…I think I’d be nervous on our first date.”

  She’s hedging because she doesn’t want to show me what’s on the laptop and I’m perfectly content to let her get there in her own time. “Do you really think we could ever go through a patented dating process?”

  A beat passes. “No.”

  “No.” Leaning in, I drop a kiss on her shoulder. “I couldn’t date you, Teresa. Dating implies I don’t have you locked down. Until we were solid, the gaps between us seeing each other would drive me crazy.”

  “Yeah?” She turns her head, bringing our faces an inch apart. “So you would just take me hostage until I agreed to be your…”

  “Girlfriend. Yeah.” I’m not sure I’ve ever said that word out loud. It sounds pretty damn good when I’m looking at Teresa. “You wouldn’t realize I was holding you hostage. I’d simply keep inventing reasons for you to stay.”

  She tosses her hair back, feigning only mild interest, but I can tell she’s interested as hell. Might have something to do with the pulse going wild at the base of her neck. “What kind of reasons?”

  A series of images flips through my mind. Bringing Teresa a glass of champagne while she soaks in my bathtub. Fucking her on hands and knees in front of my fireplace. Stuffing dozens of drawers with ridiculous French underwear for her to wear. This desire to treat someone like a queen is new. It’s specific to her. “If I talk about spoiling you, baby, I’m going to get turned on. And if I get turned on, we’re not going to talk about what’s on that laptop.”

  As if on cue, the computer tilts and almost falls off her lap, but I catch it, forcing myself not to look at the screen. Teresa chews on her lower lip, splitting glances at me and what she’s clicking on, until I finally sense her turning the device in my direction. “Okay. Okay, so I work with this girl at the parlor. Mara. She’s kind of an unofficial manager. Doesn’t say much, but her word is law, you know? She’s a single mother with two kids and she takes three buses to get to work.” Her expression
warms. “I admire her a lot. She’s tough, but this…good just kind of pours out of her when you least expect it. Once, a customer was giving me a hard time because I cut him off. He owed the house too much already. But he wouldn’t let up. Kept demanding I change his money into chips and he was getting belligerent. Mara grabbed a bag of Lays out of her purse, ripped them open with her teeth and dumped them on his head. ‘There’s your chips, asshole,’ she said.”

  We share a quiet laugh. “If she made you feel more safe in that place, I’m grateful for her.”

  “Yeah. She did. More than once.” On the screen, the arrow hovers over a movie, Teresa’s finger shaking where it gets ready to click. “I asked if I could follow her around for a day. She took my best shift as payment, but…I—it was worth it.”

  She clicks, and images roll. Mara getting her children dressed. Making breakfast. Sitting on the edge of her bed staring into space. Transferring buses. Arguing with a man outside a supermarket. Cursing over a rip in her stockings. Counting poker chips. Rolling her eyes behind a customer’s back. Picking up her children from the babysitter and fawning over artwork they present her.

  The film is only about five minutes. Just bites out of a woman’s life. But that’s part of what makes it so poignant. It’s like I know Mara—everything about her—because Teresa found this way to introduce her in a careful, realistic and sensitive way. “Did you edit this, too?”

  Teresa snaps the laptop shut and nods, seeming to chance me a look. “Yes.”

  I could lead with how perfect and wonderful the short film was, but I want to hear her talk about it first. More than that, I’m interested in her answers. “How did you know which angles to shoot from? Do you try more than one?”

  “Sometimes.” She sits up a little straighter. “On the bus, I—”

  “She sat in the back. But you shot from the very front.”

  “Yeah, I…wanted whoever’s watching to see how easily someone who’s struggling, but so important to their family can just blend in. And seem not important to the casual observer. That’s why I included all the other passengers in the shot.”