Pressing his lips to my chest, Hemi follows the liquid trail, licking his way down to my nipple and pulling it into his mouth. “Mmmm, doesn’t feel cold to me,” he murmurs around my flesh, sending chills down my arm. He gives my nipple one hard suck, letting it pop out of his mouth as he moves on down my stomach. “Let me check elsewhere.”

Hemi’s lips and tongue make their way down my body to the crease where my hip and leg meet. He delves his tongue deep into it, following it in toward the apex of my legs. I feel the heat of his mouth against my skin and I spread my thighs, craving closer contact. Craving Hemi.

“This isn’t cold at all,” he whispers. “But if you’re hot…and you need it to be cold…”

Reaching into the bucket, Hemi takes an ice cube and puts it in his mouth. I see him hold it there for a few seconds before the action of his throat tells me he swallowed. Then, parting my legs farther and using the fingers of one hand to spread my folds, he bends his head.

Pleasure floods me when he touches his cool tongue to me, swirling it over my cl*tand then down to thrust it inside me. It feels like he’s touching me with wet ice, burning-cold, wet ice. “God, I love the way you taste. Sweet, like honey.”

Hemi reaches beside him for the water bottle. Holding it over me, he pours cool water between my legs, letting it run all the way down before he laps it up with his tongue. The hot and the cold, the trickle of the water and the pressure of his tongue, I’m about to spiral out of control when I feel Hemi’s fingers, cool from the ice, enter me. Just once. One sharp thrust and then he withdraws them.

“You’re so tight,” he says against me. “And I’m gonna stretch you so much tighter,” he moans, bending back to me, his lips and tongue devouring me while he penetrates me again with his fingers. “This first time, I won’t go deep. I don’t want to hurt you. But the next time? Next time, I’ll show you no mercy. And you’ll love me for it.”

Hemi’s words are a better aphrodisiac than anything in that club. They seep into my body and heat it up from the inside, making me writhe beneath his skilled mouth.

My body is awash with sensation—his cool tongue slipping in and out of me; his lips as they suck my flesh into his mouth; his teeth as he rakes them gently over me. And his fingers when they push deep into me.

Then he’s picking up my hips, holding me in his palms, up to his mouth. Feasting between my spread legs.

Sound fades, like it’s receding into a tunnel. Breath catches, like it’s been consumed by a vacuum. Eyes close, as if pleasure is pulling the shades on my vision. And then, under Hemi’s exquisitely agonizing touch, I fly up through the ceiling and out into the night, breaking apart and falling back down to Earth in a million tiny pieces.

I’m not even aware of burying my fingers in his hair. Or holding his head to me. Or moving my body against his mouth. Or screaming his name over and over again. I can only feel. Feel Hemi.

When he sets my h*ps back down, I look down. Hemi takes one of my legs and lifts it, rolling me slightly onto my side. He tucks my calf under his arm and moves in over my other leg, settling between them. I watch, fascinated, as he guides his thick head to my entrance. I feel it there, my body sucking at it as Hemi moves it in small circles, round and round, slightly in and back out again. I’m helpless to make him slide farther in. I’m forced to wait, anticipation curling every muscle in my body into a tight fist.

I feel the difference in the way he slips in and out of me in those shallow strokes, barely penetrating my entrance. I can feel how slippery he is now, coated in my desire. He eases it up, moving it between my folds, rubbing the slick head over my clitoris, making me breathless all over again. I feel a tightness in my chest. Maybe a whimper. Or a moan. Or a plea.

“Mmm, you like that, don’t you? Can you feel how wet you are? Can you feel how slippery my c**k is?” I make a strangled sound. It’s all I can muster at the moment. “That’s all you, baby. This time, when you come, I want that dripping off my balls. I want to feel it pouring out of you onto me.”

“Please, Hemi,” I manage. I don’t even know what I’m asking for. I just know I need something. And I need it now.

Air and sound and my heart jam up in my chest when Hemi moves back down to my entrance.

“I don’t want to hurt you, but I’m probably going to. But only for a second.”

“Do it. Now. Please.”

With one sharp flex of his hips, Hemi enters me and then he goes completely still. I feel a tearing pain that radiates into my thighs. It lasts for a few long heartbeats. Hemi doesn’t move. Neither do I. Finally, the pain eases into an incredibly, pleasurably full sensation.

I wasn’t aware of squeezing my eyes shut until I open them and look down at Hemi. He’s perfectly still, the veins in his neck standing out in his efforts not to move. I look down to where our bodies are joined. I see most of him is still not inside me, but the sight of such an intimate connection gets me excited all over again.

I feel my body twitch around him, then I feel an answering throb from where part of him is inside me. “Ffff—” Hemi hisses through his gritted teeth, throwing his head back and growling for a second. “Don’t do that.”

“Don’t do what?” I ask.

“Don’t move yet. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You’re not hurting me. I want you to move,” I confess, feeling the urge to swivel my h*ps against him. I don’t fight it. I just go with it.

“Grrr,” Hemi snarls, the fingers of one hand biting into my raised leg. “Sloane.”

I feel him inside me, hot and thick. And I want more.

“Please, Hemi. I want more. I want all of you. Inside me. All the way.”

Hemi glares at me. For a second, I think he must hate me. But then, he nudges his h*ps forward a little more and his expression eases into one of pained pleasure.

“How does that feel?” he asks.

“It feels so good,” I pant, angling my h*ps to accept more of him.

“Oh, God!” he groans, withdrawing and then thrusting a little farther in. “You’re so tight. Oh. God.”

He sounds like an animal, snarling and growling, but it doesn’t scare me. I want his claws. And his teeth. I want his wildness.

“Hemi, put your c**k in me, all the way,” I say, instinctively.

“Oh God…damn…that mouth.”

After a short pause, I hear his breath hiss through his teeth just before he gives in. To me. And then he gives me what I want.

Hemi eases back a few inches and then slams his body into mine, stealing my breath. I feel him all the way into my abdomen. He stretches me to a pleasure-pain place that I never want to leave.

“Hemi…more!” He rotates his h*ps and I feel the tension within me increase exponentially. “Just like that. I want it just like that.”

“You want my cock?” he asks through gritted teeth. “I’m gonna give you my cock. I’m gonna give it to you so hard, you’ll feel it all week. Every time you close your eyes, you’ll feel me coming all up inside you.”

As he speaks, he works his body into mine, harder and deeper, winding me up like a pocket watch. It’s when his free hand finds my cl*tagain that I tumble over the edge, my body squeezing and pulsing around him.

I’m panting and nearly blinded by pleasure as Hemi rolls me onto my back, pulling my h*ps to the edge of the ledge. He presses his palms to the insides of my thighs, spreading my legs wide and easing back into me.

Each thrust sends me toppling over a new wave of pleasure, prolonging my orgasm until I’m nearly crazy with it. “Can you take it deep, baby?”

I nod, unable to speak past my dry lips.

Hemi slides his hands up the backs of my legs, folding my thighs onto my chest as he leans over me.

“Good, ‘cause I wanna bury my c**k deep. So. Deep.” When he withdraws and plunges into me, I wonder for a moment that I might die from the pleasure of it. Just when I think there is nothing better, no more to experience from his body, he drives me to a new level. “And then you’re gonna watch me come. On you. All on you.”

Hemi slams into me two more times and then I hear him moan into the small, hushed room. Quickly, he pulls out of me, spreading my legs as he guides the slick and swollen head to my clitoris. I watch with fascination as he winds his fingers around the wide base of his shaft and arches his back, spurting hot fluid onto me.

I find myself panting as I watch him. It’s so naughty, so intimate. Hemi pumps his hips, squirting until there’s nothing left. I glance up at his face. His eyes are warm and intense. And then I feel his fingers. I look down to see him rubbing them over me. “This,” he says, wetting three fingertips on me, “is mine.” On the last word, he slips those three digits down and into me. “All mine. Next time, I’ll come inside you. I’ll fill you up with me. All of me.”

Already, even when I feel so sated, I can’t wait. I can’t wait until the next time he touches me, kisses me, puts his fingers or his tongue or…anything he wants into me.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR - Hemi

Gently, I let Sloane’s legs fall. I drag my fingertips over her smooth skin and feel the blood rush back into my dick. I could go again, but I won’t do that to her. She’ll be sore as it is.

“Are you okay?” I ask when she groans a little.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been better,” she replies, her voice soft and sleepy.

I smile. “Yet.” She turns her head and smiles at me. “But I won’t prove my point tonight. Tonight, we’ll get cleaned up and go watch a movie in bed. And order pizza. How does that sound?”

“That sounds like heaven,” she replies.

I give her a peck on her lips as I straighten and reach for the open water bottle. I pour what’s left onto one corner of the towel and use it to gently wipe between her legs. She flinches at first.

“You don’t have to do that,” she says, clamping her thighs shut on my hand.

“I don’t mind.”

“No, seriously, you don’t have to do that.”

I look up at her face. I can see the color in her cheeks. I lean forward, kissing her nose and her forehead and then brushing my lips over hers. “There’s no reason for you to be embarrassed. I’ve kissed and licked and sucked and touched every square inch of your body. Why would it bother you for me to clean you up?”

She shrugs, relaxing her legs a little. “I don’t know. I guess I’m just…embarrassed.”

“But why?”

She won’t meet my eyes. “I’m sure this isn’t a mess you have to worry about with the other women you’ve been with.”

I stop and give her my full attention. “Sloane, not only did we just have some kick-ass sex, but you gave me something that you’ve never given to anyone. I know how special that is. And you need to understand that it was special for me, too. I’ve never taken someone’s virginity. I’ve never even wanted to. But with you, I did. I wanted to take it. I wanted to be your first. I wanted you to be all mine. Just mine. I told you I was selfish and it seems that I’m only that much worse when it comes to you.”

Sloane relaxes her legs and tilts her head to the side, watching me as I go back to work wiping blood off the insides of her thighs.

When I’m done, I fold the towel over and wipe off myself as well.

“Thank you,” I hear her say quietly.

“For what?”

“For giving me this wonderful night.”

“It’s been one hundred percent my pleasure,” I tell her honestly. Her smile widens and then dies slowly into nothing more than a gentle curve of her lips. It looks almost…sad. It’s a look I’ve seen come over her face several times before and I always wonder what puts it there. But I never want to get involved enough to ask. This time, I nearly do.

Nearly.

But knowing what I’ve done and how Sloane would feel if she ever found out stops me.

“Come on,” I say, taking her hands and pulling her into a sitting position. “Let’s go upstairs and rinse off in the shower before we crawl into bed.”

She nods but says nothing. We walk up the steps in silence, stopping only long enough for me to pitch the towels into the wash machine for Cicely when she comes on Monday.

Sloane heads down the hall toward the room she slept in last night, the room her things are in. I follow her through the door, only long enough to grab her two bags and take her hand again.

“This isn’t your room anymore,” I say simply, leading her back out into the hall and down two doors to the master. “You’ll be staying in here. With me.”

I don’t give her a chance to argue. I set her things on the dresser and tug her on to the en suite bathroom where I turn on the shower and drag her with me into the warm spray.

Just for a few days, just while she’s here, we can pretend that this is all about us. And that nothing else matters.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE - Sloane

The first thought I have when I open my eyes is that I’m in Hemi’s bed. Where I spent the night. All night. Wrapped in his arms. Several times, I turned over on my side and, within seconds, he’d turn over and adjust to the way I was lying, curving his body around mine. It was the best, most comforting night I’ve ever spent. I’ve never felt safer. Or happier.

And, now, more worried.

I’m in love with Hemi. There’s no sense even pretending that I’m not anymore. Does it change anything? No. I wish it did, but I don’t think it will. Do I regret it? No again. I wouldn’t trade last night for a thousand good-yet-lesser experiences. Whatever heartache comes, it was worth it. It was all worth it. However long I may live, I’ll have this time. And like Sarah said, I plan to enjoy every second of it.