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And I’m thinking about what an asshole I am for putting those troubled shadows in her eyes.

  Her brow creases as she searches my face. “I don’t know what your problem is, other than that bottle in your hand. But for your own sake, I hope you get some help.”

  “Get some help?” Instead of laying out all the truths she won’t want to hear, I settle on a sharp chuckle that sounds as brittle as it tastes. “Nothing’s wrong with me that another drink won’t take care of.”

  “No,” she says, apparently unaware of how threadbare my control feels right now. “Another drink seems like the last thing you need right now.”

  “What I need? What the hell would you know about that?” I sneer down at her, my breath gusting through flared nostrils. My hand tightens around the neck of the whisky bottle, if only to keep from wrapping my fingers around the fiery tendrils of her long hair so I can pull her against me like I want to do.

  She swallows, those luminous eyes of hers changing from uncertain, apprehensive blue to a tempest of dusky gray as her pupils darken and enlarge under my stare.

  “What’s the matter, Ms. Laurent? Afraid to take a guess? Or are you just afraid to say the words out loud?”

  She doesn’t have to speak for me to read what’s going on behind her silence and her disapproving stance. I can see her pulse beating in the pretty hollow at the base of her throat. I can feel the heat of her skin intensifying, practically burning me across the scant distance separating us. Her nipples are tight beneath the soft cotton sundress she’s still clutching together in one small fist over her heart. Her lovely, all too tempting body vibrates with enough awareness to charge the air like the coming of a storm.

  She knows damn well what I need, all right. She knows what I want.

  She knows, because she wants the same thing.

  A breath leaks out of her. “I should leave now.”

  Her quiet murmur is far from convincing. I should step away from her, but I can’t convince myself to do that, either.

  “Our session’s not over yet.”

  “I can’t be here if you’re going to be like this. I won’t.” She gives a tight shake of her head. “I don’t care that I signed your damn contract. I don’t care about your money. I’ve been doing just fine without any help, and Daniel will have to clean up his own mess somehow. As for you, you’ll have to find another outlet for your anger and abuse, because it’s not going to be me.”

  Her words are raw, her vulnerability as she hurls them at me strike me harder than a physical blow. Vibrating with the force of her emotions, she starts to turn away. My free hand moves before I’m even aware of it.

  “Hey.” I halt her, wrapping my fingers around the delicate firmness of her arm. She freezes in my grasp, wary and untrusting, her gaze flying up to mine.

  I scowl down at her, struggling with the self-directed fury that’s still running hot through my veins, and the remorse I feel for subjecting her to any part of it.

  “I’m sorry,” I mutter, my voice like gravel.

  Sorry for being an asshole. Sorry for frightening her. Sorry for wanting her more than I have any right to.

  Part of me knows I should let her go. I never should have brought her into any of this in the first place.

  But it’s too late for that.

  Too late for either one of us. There’s no undoing the connection that’s been smoldering between us since our eyes locked for the first time. Now, those flames are on the verge of exploding into something neither of us can control.

  If my desire for her was only about taking something of Hathaway’s, I’d already be inside her. But this need is something different. It’s something deeper. Something she’s not ready for.

  Maybe neither of us are ready to give in to what we both want from each other.

  Maybe neither of us are ready to let someone look inside all those dark corners. God knows I’ve kept my demons locked up tight for years. That’s where they need to stay.

  That’s why the right thing to do would be to let her go—from the contract, and from my grasp. Instead, my fingers flex a little tighter. A possessive urge floods me, overriding logic and what thin sense of decency I may want to pretend I still have.

  “Why didn’t you run when I gave you the chance, Melanie?”

  She pulls in a breath through slightly parted lips, but it’s nothing close to a denial. The slender bicep caught in my loose hold offers no resistance at all. She won’t fight this any more than I can.

  I’m still holding the whisky bottle in my left hand, but I move my right up the curve of her shoulder, then into the warm silk of her hair. Her breathing speeds in time with mine. Her eyes pull me in as I lower my head to hers. Our mouths meet and a rough groan rumbles out of me, half in curse for my own weakness, and half for hers.

  Her lips are softer than I imagined, giving way beneath mine as I curve my palm around to the back of her head and pull her closer. I want to be careful with her. I’ve already scared her enough. I want to be gentle, even though this desire inside me burned right past that marker the instant she followed me out of the studio.

  She moans against my lips, and her indrawn gasp is all the permission I need to sweep my tongue into the sweet inferno of her mouth. Her hands move up to my shoulders, and for the briefest second I wait to feel her push me away. She doesn’t kiss like a woman who belongs to another man. She kisses like a woman created specifically to drive me mad.

  Still, I can’t ignore the fact that she’s isn’t mine. No matter how right she feels in my arms, against my questing mouth, she doesn’t belong there.

  I wait to feel her retreat, but it doesn’t come.

  Lifting up on her bare toes, she brings herself closer. Her palms create two points of heat that root me in place as I deepen our kiss. I try to rationalize it’s the whisky burning away my control with this woman, but that’s a lie.

  It’s her. It’s the incandescent flame that is Melanie Laurent.

  It’s us, on fire together.

  And I fucking can’t get enough.

  Arousal pounds in every pulse point in my body. I’ve been enduring the agony of that lust since the minute she arrived at my Lenox Hill address this morning in another prim summer dress, her naturally beautiful face pink and fresh, devoid of makeup or artifice, looking for all the world like a virgin on her way to be sacrificed.

  And I am the Beast lurking in the dark, intent on devouring her.

  A fitting growl unfurls in my throat at the very idea. The erection I’ve been trying to ignore all morning has surged to rampant life now. I can’t get enough of the taste of her kiss, my tongue thrusting and demanding, my hips crushing against hers.

  I drag her closer with my right hand still tangled in the soft hair at her nape.

  I need her.

  I think I’ve needed this woman even before she had the misfortune of walking into my club those weeks ago. Christ, I needed her even before I heard the name Daniel Hathaway and set out to claim some overdue payback. I just didn’t know how much I’d need her, need this, until I met her.

  I let go of her neck and bring my hand around to the front of her. She’s free to move away, free to leave, and some desperate part of me hopes like hell she will. Instead, she moans against my questing mouth and I am lost.

  Her sweet summer dress is already half-opened in front. Her breasts are bare beneath it, her nipples peaked and hard as pebbles under my palm as I run my trembling hand over one, then the other, caressing another moan out of her parted lips.

  She’s hot against me, her breath deep and rapid, her heart galloping at a pace to match my own. Her soft belly contracts as I skim my fingers downward. Her skin is impossibly soft, as warm and smooth as velvet under my rough fingertips.

  Without breaking the contact of our mouths, I let my touch drift lower, down into the trimmed, silky curls of her sex. The fact that she’s not shaved bare as a baby or waxed into the mere suggestion of a grown woman had made me hard as granite when I first watched her
strip for me in my study back in the city. Now, with her body arching against me and the sweet, earthy scent of her arousal swamping my senses, I am beyond erect.

  My cock throbs with hunger for her.

  Everything male in me is gnashing with the need to taste her. To take her.

  She gasps into my mouth as I cup her pussy in my palm and give the tender flesh a possessive caress. She’s drenched and hot, searing my fingertips as I delve into the wet seam of her sex. I push inside, groaning at the snug fit of her around my finger.

  She moves with me, not fighting the invasion as I explore her tightness. She melts into my palm, her juices searing my skin. I can’t resist seeking out the swollen bud of her clit. With one finger inside her, my thumb caresses the taut pearl until her breath pants into my mouth as I kiss her and a climax shudders through her.

  “Oh, God,” she whispers brokenly around my fevered kisses.

  My curse is guttural, a strangled noise. It’s all I can manage when every cell in my body is ablaze with the need to get my aching cock inside her. “Christ, Melanie. I want to fuck you so bad.”

  If her breathless moan in response is meant to be a denial, my lust-fogged brain isn’t getting the message.

  One hand on her isn’t enough. Not when the animal in me is gnashing with the impulse to throw her over my shoulder and drag her off to my lair.

  The half-empty bottle of whisky feels like it’s made of lead as I lift it toward the nearby countertop without interrupting our kiss. My hand shakes with the effort. I should recognize the odd sensation in my fingers by now. In some dim, desire-choked corner of my mind, I feel the tremor.

  At the same time, my grip on the bottle falters.

  Fuck.

  I grab Melanie and swing her out of the way about a second before it hits the floor.

  Glass shatters around her bare feet, glittering shards and spilled whisky flying everywhere. She lets out a small yelp, but it’s barely audible next to my furious bellow.

  “Don’t move,” I snap at her when she starts to step away from some of the mess I’ve made.

  “It’s okay,” she says, her voice a soft rasp after I’ve plundered her mouth and body for the past five minutes. “Let me help you clean this up.”

  Another snarl rips out of me. “Damn it, I said don’t move!”

  She freezes, staring at me in confusion. That look of wariness is back again, along with something else, as she watches me hunker down and begin sweeping the largest of the shattered pieces away with my bare hands.

  There’s no hiding the shakiness of my fingers, even if my explosive rage might mask the tremors as something other than evidence of the neurological flaw I know them to be.

  I bite off another hard curse under my breath and tear my gaze away from hers.

  I hear her shallow inhalation as she continues to watch me. “Jared . . .”

  “We’re done here.” My reply is short, dismissive.

  It has to be. Another moment of her tender scrutiny—of her undeserved kindness and concern—and I’m going to put my fucking fist through a wall.

  “Today’s session is over,” I tell her gruffly, keeping my fury aimed at the floor. “Once I clean this shit up, I’ll arrange for your return to the city.”

  16

  MELANIE

  Twenty-seven hours have passed since Jared Rush brought me over the edge of a shocking climax with his kisses and his wicked touch. Twenty-seven hours since that bone-melting moment abruptly ended when he exploded like a grenade over a broken whisky bottle and practically shoved me out of his beach house studio.

  One full day and I’m just as blindsided and confused as I was when it happened.

  After furiously cleaning up the shattered glass, he’d called for an Uber to take me all the way back to my house in Queens. The pleasant middle-aged woman behind the wheel filled the silence of the two-hour drive from Sagaponack with chatter about her kids and grandchildren, a welcome distraction, but one I’d barely registered.

  While I had nodded and smiled when expected, my thoughts had stayed fixated on Jared, my emotions running the gamut from outrage to concern and everything in between. Not the least of them being the banked, but still burning, desire that kept its grip on me for the duration of the ride home.

  I’m still not sure what triggered the change in him from the man I was only starting to get to know as I explored his studio and the growling beast who stormed out a moment later for another drink. Where he’d seemed open to talking about other aspects of his past, it was clear I’d ventured too far when I asked him about growing up in Kentucky. The loss of his family’s farm, and his father’s evident role in it, obviously carved a deep wound in Jared that still wasn’t fully healed.

  Yet there was something more, something else that flipped the switch on his fury. When I caught up to him in the kitchen, his hands were visibly shaking with the force of his rage. And somehow, my noticing that seemed to set him off even more.

  Why?

  By the time the driver dropped me at my house I’d finally managed to convince myself that whatever Jared Rush’s problems are, whatever trauma may lurk in his past, for my own sanity—for my own self-preservation—I need to keep my distance from him.

  I’d like to say I’m long over the effects of his kiss and his strong hands on my body, but my reaction to the carnal side of him has proven the hardest one to shake. His total domination of my senses was like getting swept into a hurricane. Powerful. Dangerous. Electric.

  I can’t remember the last time I’d been kissed like that.

  Never. That’s why I can’t remember it. Because the answer is never.

  Jared kissed me as if he’d been wanting to do it forever and couldn’t get enough. He claimed my mouth as if I belonged to him, and nothing else mattered. Foolishly, I tumbled right under his spell. I would have fallen much further if reality hadn’t brought me crashing back to my wits.

  I frown into my plate of grilled seafood, idly chasing a bite of mahi mahi around with my fork. When I glance up, I find my two best friends still gaping at me across our table for lunch at GC.

  Evelyn’s pale green eyes are lit with shock against the buttery mocha glow of her beautiful face. “Let me get this straight. You posed nude for Jared Rush and this is the first we’re hearing about it?”

  “Twice, technically,” Paige Johansson adds in a mock disgruntled tone. “Our girl Mel’s gotten nekkid for Hottie McDark-and-Deviant two times, Eve, and this is the first we’re hearing about it.”

  A former model, like Evelyn, Paige is gorgeous, too. Now, she’s perpetually auditioning for film roles and commercials, so it’s no surprise to see her short black hair is growing out since I last saw her. The messy crown of choppy layers now falls around her impish face in inky waves as she reaches for a third slice of her flatbread pizza.

  “You think he’s deviant?” The question leaps off my tongue, despite that I’m sure I don’t really want to know the answer. And if anyone would know these things, it’s Paige.

  She munches on a bite of pizza, giving me a look that says I’m an idiot just for asking. “I’ve heard he hosts private orgies at his mansion on the regular. And in case you didn’t notice when the three of us went to his club, Muse, a couple of weeks ago, there were people having actual sex behind all those walls of one-way smoked glass overlooking the dance floor.”

  Oh, God. I’d wondered if all those bodies moving in erotic positions behind the brief flashes of strobe lights and semi-opaque glass had only been an illusion, some titillating effect meant as a play on the fantasy-themed name of the club. Part of me knew it was real, but hearing Paige confirm it sends a note of shock into my veins.

  Was Jared Rush one of those unclothed, undulating bodies that night? As for the rumored orgies at his house, it takes more effort than I care to admit to avoid picturing him being pawed at and pleasured by a den full of eager women. How many has he seduced with his dangerous, yet magnetic sensuality?

  Dozens,
I imagine. Hundreds? I wouldn’t doubt it.

  I stop myself from trying to guess, because it doesn’t matter. All I know is I’m not going to be one of them. What happened at his beach house couldn’t have driven that point home with any sharper clarity.

  And that goes double for the fact that I refuse to be around another man with a drinking problem. Growing up with my father and his brutal binges was terror enough to last me a lifetime. I’ve got the scars to prove it, both inside and out.

  Paige reaches for her glass of beer. “Tell us again how you ended up with Jared Rush’s tongue down your throat and his hand up your skirt yesterday.”

  “Paige,” Evelyn gasps. “You’re kind of missing the point here, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t know. Am I?” she asks, one brow arched as she eyes me over the rim of the glass.

  Where Evelyn is measured and elegant, with a natural poise instilled in her from her modeling days, free-spirited Paige flouts conversational and societal guardrails wherever possible. Next to these two creative, successful women and their colorful lives, I’m the wallflower of our trio. I’ve long been the practical, quiet one who spends all her time either studying or working.

  That is when I’m not doffing my clothes for an arrogant and tormented, possibly alcoholic artist to bail out my closet-gambling boyfriend. Oh, yeah. Let’s not forget, letting him thrust his tongue down my throat and his hand up my skirt.

  My pulse throbs at the remembered heat of those incredible moments. It’s been more than a full day and I can still feel the intensity of Jared’s lips burning against mine. I can still feel his hand on my sex, his strong finger moving inside me until I came. I feel it so vividly it makes my thighs squeeze together under the table even now.

  The truth is, I wanted him to kiss me. To touch me.

  I wanted him. Only the unexpected shatter of that liquor bottle and his unhinged reaction that followed was enough to jolt me back to my senses.

  Thank God.

  Any longer in his arms and I’m all but certain I would have let him do a lot more than he had, and then my stupid mistake would have become a disastrous one.