A chill rushes over my body the instant I can catch my breath, cooling the fire on my skin. Chris follows it, enclosing me with his big body, and then he is kissing me. I can taste myself on him, salty and sweet, and I know this is his intent. And I know I’m not pushing him at all. I’m only going where he lets me. As if validating my thoughts, he moves, then is gone, leaving me wanting more. Controlling everything, controlling me.

He’s standing above me, taking off his boots, and my heart thunders in my chest to realize he is undressing. I sit up straight, watching him, my mouth dry with anticipation. His jeans are gone in a flash, and his underwear with them, or else he was commando. I don’t care. He is na**d and hard and hot, his c**k jutting forward, thick and heavily veined with arousal. For me. I want to touch him but before I can move, he turns and snatches his jeans, searching in his pocket and I hear the crinkle of paper, but it barely registers. I am spellbound by the man’s backside and I am still staring when he drops his pants and sits down next to me.

He hands me the condom, a silent challenge in his eyes. “Now I’m here. What are you going to do with me?”

Shifting to my knees, I wrap my fingers around the condom and blink at him. I am confused by the way he commands me when it comes to my pleasure, but he isn’t commanding me to do anything to him. I have been commanded, ordered to my knees, ordered to do things I didn’t want to do. I despised those moments in time and I wasn’t turned on. But Chris could order me to do just about anything and I believe I’d melt with pleasure. I want to do many things to this man, and I am wet and ache with the fantasies I’m wickedly conjuring in my mind.

I feel empowered, sexy. I like this feeling. My gaze lowers to his c**k and then lifts. “Do you want me to put this on you now or do you want me to lick you there first?”

His eyes darken. “Ah, my pretty little school teacher. I’m beginning to wonder, who’s corrupting who?”

I am no more corrupting him than he is truly at my mercy, while I most definitely am at his. In fact, I’m not sure he ever could be at my mercy and there’s a part of me that feels I will never know this man until he is. The desire to show him I can handle whatever he throws at me is a seed taking root.

I let the condom drop to the couch, and one of my hands settles on his thigh, the springy hair there tickling my palm in a surprisingly erotic way, but then I am ultra-sensitive, my body tingling all over. I wrap my free hand around the base of his erection, and his flesh is softness covering solid steel. I lean over him and lick the salty sweet drop of arousal there. It explodes on my taste buds and he moans. The sound of him turned on ignites my desire. I lick a circle around him, and suckle him between my lips.

I can feel his thigh tense beneath my palm, and I am enthralled with my ability to please him, but I want him to touch my head, to need this so badly he can’t bear the idea of me stopping. Driven by this goal, I begin a slow glide up and down his length and his h*ps lift with me. I can almost feel his need to hold me in place, but still he does not. I increase the pressure, and scoot closer, intentionally nestling my breast to his leg.

A low moan slips from his mouth. “Enough,” he orders, reaching for me.

No, I scream in my head, determined to take him all the way, but it’s too late. He’s too strong for me to fight. I am already flush against his chest, his hands in my hair, his mouth over mine. He was lethal, a drug…in some part of my lusty fog-laden mind, I remember the words of that first journal entry I’d read. Chris is quickly becoming my addiction, a drug I will never get enough of.

I can feel his erection press against my backside and I reach behind me to stroke him. He caresses my breasts, teases my nipple. “Get the condom, baby.”

“We don’t need it,” I whisper, so ready for him I hurt with need. “I’m on the pill.”

He stops kissing me and goes utterly still. My palms flatten on his chest and I’m not sure whose heart is beating faster, his or mine. Dread forms inside me with his reaction and I instinctively know what he is thinking. I push back and stare at him.

Anger and hurt collide inside me. “You think I’m on the pill to sleep around. I don’t believe you. Well, for your information I haven’t slept with anyone in...a long time...and I won’t be tonight again either.” I try to get off of him and he holds me. ”Let me go, Chris.”

“Not a chance.” He slides a hand up my back and neck, forcing me into submission and this time I resent it. “I told you I wasn’t ready to let you run away and I meant it.”

“Let go,” I demand. I’m hot and it’s not all about anger and that makes me furious with myself now, too.

“I’m not that complicated, Sara. I wear a condom and I protect myself. I f**k and I get fucked, Sara. That is who I am and what I am. I told you that.”

His words are hard and they wash over me with icy clarity. I drop my gaze and I feel like I’m going to crack into pieces. He’s right. I’m being emotional and no condom is stupid. How did I let myself drift into this territory? This is an escape, it’s sex.

His fingers lace into my hair, palms framing my face, as he forces his gaze to mine. The stormy, hot turbulence in his eyes, a total contradiction to the ice of his words, steals my breath. “Damn it, woman,” he hisses. “What are you doing to me?” He presses his forehead to mine, and his voice rasps with eternal struggle. “I didn’t think about safe sex when you said you were on the pill. I wanted to know who the guy was who had you and lost you when I have no right to care. I don’t want to care. I don’t want to want to know.”

But he does care, that’s what he is telling me, and suddenly, I can breathe again. “He’s the past,” I answer, as he had told me about the tattoo artist.

“How past Sara? How long since you were last with a man.”

“Are you sure you really want to know?” My heart thunders in my chest. “Because if I tell you, I think you’re going to-”

“How long?”

My throat restricts. “Five years. I stayed on the pill because...I just did.”

He pulls back to study me. “No one for five years?”

I cut my gaze. “I don’t want to talk about this.” I repeat what I’ve already said. “That’s my past and you’re now.”

His hand slides to my face and he studies me, and seconds feel like hours. I fear he’s going to think I can’t handle this no strings relationship. “That’s right, baby,” he finally whispers. “I’m now.” He kisses me, his tongue sliding against mine, stroking me into a softer, needier place, where thinking thankfully isn’t an option.

His hands are low on my back and his touch on my body affect me in a way I have never experienced. Every inch of my skin, every nerve ending, is tingling and alive.

“I need to be inside you,” he growls near my ear, his breath warm on my neck, before his lips brush the sensitive area.

My body clenches with the words. As impossible as it seems considering how hot this man has made me several times over, I have never been as aroused as I am in this moment. “Yes,” I whisper. “Please.”

He shifts my weight, and presses into me. I gasp at the sensation of him entering me, stretching me, pressing all the way to the deepest depths of me in ways beyond the physical. Chris affects me deeply, intensely, completely.

“Damn, you feel good, baby.” His voice is rough, intoxicatingly aroused. Again I think, because of me, this idea is immensely pleasing.

One of his hands glides lower on my back, a possessiveness to his touch that brands me, as he presses me down against him. I arch into the movement, the stroke of his c**k inside me a sultry play on my nerve endings.

He nips my bottom lip and licks the same spot. “You taste like honey and sunshine,” he murmurs, and then surprises me in such an intense moment by smiling and adding, “And pizza.”

I laugh and lick his bottom lip. “You taste like-”

“You,” he finishes for me, and my stomach clenches in reaction as he softens his voice, “I taste like you, Sara.”

The air seems to thicken around us, and the connection I’ve felt with Chris from the moment we met shifts and evolves into a living, breathing thing. It’s controlling us now. It’s claiming us. We are no longer ourselves, no longer the damaged, thinking creatures who can hold back and control what we say and do. We are simply two people who have lost the world around us, and found this powerful, passionate moment.

Our mouths come together in unison, our tongues tangling in a wicked, emotionally charged kiss that is like nothing we’ve shared until now. I feel this kiss in every part of my body and beyond, and there is an unfamiliar emotion in my chest; on some level I know this is dangerous with this man. Falling for him is a mistake I don’t intend to make and I don’t want to make, but I can’t fight the feelings overwhelming me. I can’t escape the way he overwhelms me with sensations though I have no real perception of really trying.

We are moving together, a sultry dance of passion, touching each other with hot, needy caresses and I want to crawl under this man’s skin. There is a desperateness growing inside me, in the way I touch him, the way I kiss him. The way I press against him. Sensations build within my sex, spread through my nerve endings. I crave the place they are taking me with bittersweet desire as I yearn to savor this experience, not end it.

Release comes over me too soon, and without warning, and I cling to Chris, burying my face in his neck. He moans as my body clamps down on his shaft and pushes me hard against his thrust. His arms are wrapped around me, holding me tightly when he shakes with his release.

When we both relaxed, wine and pleasure have collided with body-numbing effects, so much so that I am a wet noodle as Chris frets over cleaning us up and then lays down on the couch and takes me with him. His heart beats beneath my ear and with the fireplace throwing warmth over us, my lashes grow heavier by the second.

Chapter Eighteen

Tonight I felt like I’d finally found him again. He was different. We were different. It was just he and I, alone in his playroom. I was so relieved, so tired of him sharing me. It hurts when he shares me, when he makes me feel I am not enough for him. He says that isn’t the case. He says I fulfill his every fantasy. That I am a perfect sub.

I will remember tonight forever. Only my hands were bound and I stood in the middle of the room. He was na**d and commanding, and it is in those moments that I would do anything to please that man. I was wet and aching with the burn for him to touch me and finally, finally, his fingers brushed my cheeks, then trailed down my neck, over my breast and nipple. I shivered from the caress, and goosebumps had lifted on my skin. That’s how much he commands my body.

His fingers returned to my face, trailing over my lips. “Suck,” he ordered and I drew his fingers into my mouth, ran my tongue around him. His eyes heated and…

My eyes snap open, a vague sense of awareness washing over me, and I blink into a beam of sunshine. Dreaming. I think…I’ve been dreaming about one of the journal entries again. I swallow against the dryness in my throat and the wet ache between my thighs. Realization comes to me in a cold blast of awareness. Oh God. I’m not home, I’m at Chris’s, and I’ve managed to have an erotic dream which may or may not have included him as a witness to me talking or moaning or…I sit up quickly.

A blanket I don’t remember pulling over me falls to my waist at the same moment as I bring Chris into focus, his back to me, and become instantly aware of him being fully dressed in distressed jeans and a brown tee of some sort, while I am completely na**d. His hand is pressed to the living room window as he gazes out over the glorious new morning rainbow of red, yellow, and orange in the skyline I can’t truly appreciate. Not when the dreaded morning after has arrived, glaring with its own colorful glory, complete with my wet dream that I’m hoping I haven’t shared without my knowledge.

Chris seems to sense I’m awake and begins to turn. Reflexively, feeling exposed beyond my na**dness, I pull my knees to my chest and the blanket to my chin.

Discomfort does nothing to stop my reaction to this man. He is truly gorgeous. I drink him in like fine wine, savoring every detail. He’s wearing the biker boots he’d been wearing at the coffee shop and his shirt has a Harley logo on it. His jaw is unshaven, shadowed with a sexy stubble, his longish dirty blond hair slightly damp, framing his handsome face. And his eyes, those intelligent, unreadable eyes, glisten green and gold in the sunlight.

He’s staring at me too, his expression stark and unreadable. I will him to speak, to say one of his witty, light comments I find so soothing. He doesn’t and I am about a hair away from launching into the rambling habit I’m determined to leave behind in this new life of mine.

“Hi,” I say when the silence drives me crazy, but hey, I’ve contained myself to one word. Progress is happening.

He leans against the window, clearly unworried about it breaking as I had been the night before. Well, for a short bit. I’d forgotten my fears pretty darn quickly when he’d started touching me. My body heats with the memory of him pressing me against that very same glass, and I remember the night before with feverish clarity—his hands, his fingers, his mouth. My breast are suddenly heavy, my ni**les aching. My cheeks burn with the impact of my thoughts.

Chris, on the other hand, remains more stone than man with tension banding around him. It whips and twists around the room, and begins to suffocate me, and old faithful becomes my only defense. I begin the dreaded rambling. “I, ah, it’s morning, but you know that since its daylight and well, it seems that…I…didn’t go home.”