I press against his chest and lean back, my eyes seeking his. “If you’re trying to scare me off, it’s not working.”

“Not yet,” he says, dark certainty to his tone, to the lines etched in his handsome face. It is as if this is simply a seed already planted that cannot be stopped.

“Not at all,” I counter.

He doesn’t immediately respond, and his expression is a mask of hard lines, his jaw set, tense. Slowly, his fingers slide from my neck to caress a path down my arm until his fingers lace intimately with mine. “Never say never, Sara,” he murmurs and starts walking, pulling me with him.

Anticipation sizzles through me, as we walk toward the automatic doors to be greeted by a man in a dark suit with an earpiece and buzz-cut.

“Evening, Mr. Merit,” he says, and glances at me. “Evening, Miss.”

“Evening Jacob,” Chris replies. “Pizza coming our way. Don’t frisk the delivery guy.”

“Not unless he’s a delivery woman, sir,” Jacob comments, and I get the sense these two are familiar beyond the casual exchange.

I lift a tentative hand at Jacob. “Hi.”

“Ma’am,” he replies, and there is a slight shift in his gaze I’m certain he doesn’t intend for me to notice, but I do. I read it as surprise at my presence, and I can only assume I am far from Chris’s normal choice in women. It isn’t hard for me to imagine Chris being a blonde bombshell kind of man, and where I hadn’t felt insecure moments before, I suddenly do now. I am angry at myself for feeling such a thing when I’ve promised myself no more self-doubt. When I crave the escape, the freedom, I was so close to experiencing only moments before.

The elevator is right off of the fancy lobby and past a security booth. Chris punches the button and the doors open immediately. I follow him inside, and watch as he keys in a code. The doors shut and he pulls me hard against him.

My hands settle on his hard chest, inside the line of his jacket, and warmth spreads through me. “What just happened?” His hand brands my hip.

My br**sts are heavy, my ni**les aching. “I don’t know what you mean?”

“Yes. You do. Second thoughts, Sara?”

I scold myself for being so transparent. “Do you want me to have second thoughts?”

“No. What I want is to take you to my apartment and make you come and then do it all over again.”

Oh…yes please. “Okay,” I whisper, “but I think you should feed me first.”

His lips curve into a smile, his eyes dancing with gold specks of pure fire. “Then you can feed me.”

The bell dings and the doors begin to open. Chris wastes no time pulling me to the edge of the elevator, and I watch in surprise as a gorgeous living room appears before me, rather than a hallway. Chris has a private elevator and I am entering his private world, a world very unlike my own.

Chris releases my hand, our eyes lock, and I read the silent message in his. Enter by choice, without pressure. On some level I sense that once I enter his apartment, the decision to do so is going to change me. He is going to change me in some profound way I cannot begin to comprehend fully. I think he might know this and I wonder why he would be so certain, what is etched with such clarity to him beneath the surface.

He has misplaced doubts of me in this moment, as he’d doubted me at the gallery. I can see it in his eyes, sense it in the air. I refuse to allow his lack of confidence in me, or anyone else’s for that matter, to dictate what I can or cannot do ever again. I’ve been there and I ended up on the sharp edge of a cliff, about to crash and burn. I’d recovered, and I am beginning to see that locking myself in a shell of an existence isn’t healing. It’s hiding. Regardless of what happens at the gallery, I’m done hiding.

My chin lifts and I cut my gaze from Chris’s and exit the elevator.

My heels touch the pale, perfection of glossy hardwood floors and I stop and stare at the breathtaking sight before me. Beyond the expensive leather furniture adorning a sunken living room with a massive fireplace in the left corner is a spectacular sight. There is a ceiling to floor window, a live pictorial of our city, spanning the entire length of the room.

Spellbound, I walk forward, enchanted by the twinkling night lights and the haze surrounding the distant Golden Gate Bridge. I barely remember going down the few steps to the living area, or what the furniture I pass looks like. I drop my purse on the coffee table and stop at the window, resting my hands on the cool surface.

We are above the city, untouchable, in a palace in the sky. How amazing it must be to live here, and wake up to this view every day. Lights twinkling, almost as if they are talking to each other, laughing at me as they creep open a door to the hollow place inside me I’ve rejected only moments before in the elevator.

I swallow hard as the song ‘Broken’ from the band Lifehouse fills the room because Chris doesn’t know how personal it is to me. I’m falling apart. I’m falling to pieces, barely hanging on.

This song, this place with the words, and I am raw and exposed, as if cut and bleeding. Who was I kidding with the refusal to hide anymore? This is why I’ve hidden. The past begins to pulse to life within me and I am seconds from remembering why I feel this way. I refuse to process the lyrics and shove them aside. I don’t want to remember. I can’t go there. I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to seal those old wounds, desperate to feel anything but their presence.

Suddenly, Chris is behind me, caressing my jacket from my shoulders. His touch is a welcome sensation and when his arm slides around me, his body framing mine from behind, I am desperate to feel anything but what this song, no doubt aided by the wine, stirs inside me.

I lean into him and hard muscle absorbs me. There is a strength to Chris, a silent confidence I envy, and it calls to the woman in me.

His fingers, those talented, famous fingers, brush my hair away from my nape and his lips press to the delicate area beneath, creating goosebumps on my skin. And still, I barely block out the words to the song, and their meaning to me.

As if he senses my need for more—more something, anything, just more - he turns me around to face him and his fingers tangle almost roughly into my hair. The tight pull is sweet, dragging me from other feelings, giving me a new focus.

“I am not the guy you take home to mom and dad, Sara.” His mouth is next to mine, his clean male scent all around me. “You need to know that right now. You need to know that won’t change.”

But the song does change and this time to another track on what must be a Lifehouse CD. ‘Nerve damage’ begins to play. I see through your clothes, your nerve damage shows. Trying not to feel…anything that’s real.

I laugh bitterly at the words and Chris pulls back to study me. And I am not blind to what I see in the depths of his green eyes, what I’ve missed until now, but sensed. He is as damaged as I am. We have too many of the wrong things in common to be more than sex, and the realization is freedom to me.

I curve my fingers on the light stubble of his jaw, the rasp on my skin welcome, and I have no idea why I admit what I have never said out loud. “My mother is dead and I hate my father so don’t worry. You’re safe from family day and so am I. All I want is here and now, this piece of time. And please save the pillow talk for someone who wants it. Contrary to what you seem to think, I’m no delicate rose.”

A stunned look flashes on his face an instant before I press my lips to his. The answering moan I am rewarded with is white-hot fire in my blood that he answers with a deep, sizzling stroke of his tongue. He slants his mouth over mine, deepening the connection, kissing me with a fierceness no other man ever has, but then, Chris is like no other man I’ve ever known.

His tongue plays wickedly with mine, and I meet him stroke for stroke, arching into him, telling him I am here and present, and I’m going nowhere. In reply to my silent declaration, his hand cups my ass and he pulls me solidly against his erection. Arching into him, I welcome the intimate connection, burn for the moment he will be inside me. My hand presses between us and I stroke the hard line of his shaft.

Chris tears his mouth from mine, pressing me hard against the window, and I know I’ve threatened his control. Me. Little school teacher Sara McMillan. Our eyes lock, hot flames dancing between us and some unidentifiable challenge.

Some part of me realizes the window behind me is glass, and all things glass can break. He knows this too, it’s in the dark glint of his eyes, and he wants me to worry about it. He’s pushing me, testing me, trying to get me to break. Because I slid beneath his composure? Because he really believes I am out of my league? And maybe I am, but not tonight. Tonight, as the song has said, I am broken and for the first time perhaps ever, I am not denying the truth of all of my cracks. I am living them.

I lift my chin and let him see my answering rebellion. His fingers curl at the top of my silk blouse and in a sharp pull, material rips and the buttons all the way down pop and clamor in all directions. I gasp, in unfamiliar territory, and burning alive with the ache I have for this man.

He turns me to the window, and my hands flatten on the glass. Wasting no time, Chris unhooks my bra, and it and my blouse, are off my shoulders in moments. He is behind me again, his thick erection fitted snugly to my backside.

“Hands over your head,” he orders, pressing my palms to the glass above me, his body shadowing mine. “Stay like that.”

My pulse jumps wildly and adrenaline surges. I’ve been ordered around during sex, but in a clinical, bend over and give me what I want kind of way I tried to convince myself was hot. It wasn’t. I hated every second, every instance, and I’d endured it. This is different though, erotic in a way I’ve never experienced, enticingly full of promise. My body is sensitized, pulsing with arousal. I am hot where Chris is touching me and cold where he isn’t.

When he seems satisfied I’ll comply with his orders, Chris slowly caresses a path down my arms, and then up and down my sides, brushing the curves of my breasts. He’s in no hurry, but I am. I am literally quivering by the time his hands cover my breasts, welcoming the way he squeezes them roughly, before tugging on my nipples. I gasp with the pinching sensation he repeats over and over, creating waves of pleasure verging on pain, and the music is fading away, and so is the past. There is pleasure in pain. The words come back to me, and this time they resonate.

His hands are suddenly gone, and I pant in desperation, trying to pull them back.

Chris captures my hands and forces them back to the glass above me, his breath warm by my ear, his hard body framing mine. “Move them again and I’ll stop what I’m doing, no matter how good it might feel.”

I quiver inside at the erotic command, surprised again by how enticed I am by this game we are playing. “Just remember,” I warn, still panting, still burning for his touch. “Payback is Hell.”

His teeth scrape my shoulder. “Looking forward to it, baby,” he rasped. “More than you can possibly know.”

Chapter Fifteen

He unzips my skirt, sliding it down my hips. “Step,” he orders, and my sex clenches with the command.

Obediently, I step out of the clothing, and I am now stretched out across the window for him to do with me what he will, wearing only my panties, black thigh-highs and heels. The possibilities of exactly where this will lead are driving me wild. I have never been so turned on in my life, never so eager to be touched. It’s illogical. I have a deep dislike for being ordered around, despite a past some might say indicates otherwise, except it seems, when it’s by Chris. Deep down though, I know those journals call to me for reasons I prefer to ignore. Until this moment. Until Chris opened a door I’d left sealed.

“Beautiful,” he murmurs, his voice gravelly, laden with evident desire. His hands curve around my hips, his palms exploring my backside, tracking the silk line of my panties down my cheeks before trailing lower until he reaches between my thighs, grabs the cloth and rips them away. My lips part in surprise and I am panting. I arch forward and my ni**les press to the cold glass, a bittersweet friction, part relief and part tease.

His palm flattens firmly onto my back, holding me in place, and oh God, the fingers of his other hand slide between my thighs, curving so that he cups my sex and strokes my cl*tat the same time.

“That’s it, baby,” he murmurs, widening my legs, teasing the sensitive, swollen flesh. “Hot and wet and ready for me. Just the way I want you.” His hand on my back caresses over my ribs and he moves to palm my breast, flicking my nipple.

I am still lost in sensory overload when his mouth presses to my neck, his breath a warm tickle, and his hands, oh his hands and fingers, are doing such delicious things to my cl*tand ni**les that I am on the edge of something intensely wonderful and he’s not even undressed yet.

His teeth scrape my lobe and I feel it in my sex, where I want him. Where I am almost desperate to have him. “I’m going to lick you all over before this night is over, Sara,” he says in a seductive purr. “Suck your ni**les until you are crazy with need, then spread you wide and lick you until you come and then, I’m going to do it all over again. I’m going to make sure you are so thoroughly f**ked that being f**ked has a new meaning.”

I moan with his words, with the boldness of this man, with the ease at which he can spin my world around and drive me wild. I am close to the sweet spot, moving against his hand, arching into his touch, when he shifts to my side and goes down on one knee.

He slides two fingers inside me, filling me, stretching me, as if he knew that is what I needed. A swell of need has me widening my legs, moving with the sweet rhythm of his strokes. I am panting and not quietly and I don’t care. Tension curls inside me and my orgasm comes in a hard spasm around his fingers that erupts into such pleasure my body jerks.