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The things I don’t want? Like every inch of me explored? To feel those hands under my clothes? To be pleasured into madness? But it’s all in my mind, my private, troubled mind. Hiding.

“I thought all you wanted was for me to shut up, and now you’re asking me to talk?”

He shoves his fingers into my mouth, pulling my jaw open. “What this little mouth does is up to me.” I bite down. He grunts and rips his fingers away with a laugh. “You can’t get enough. Tell me what else.”

I can’t play his game. I can’t form the words he wants, bring those thoughts to life. They’re mine. “Does it really take you this long to get hard? Hurry up and fuck me already.”

“I’ve waited too long for this not to play first.” He pinches my nipples through my shirt, fingers like clamps. “What first?”

I exhale, a sound of ecstasy escaping me. Nothing else seems to matter—the before, the after, the what-ifs or the how comes. It’s me and him and the heat between us. “Shit…everything.”

“That’s cheating.” His arms trap me in place, inescapable.

“I-I want…” Desire chokes the words from me. “I can’t.”

He hugs me closer. “I guarantee whatever dirty little thought is in your head, I have it too. I want it too. I want it more. I’ll fuck you deeper and harder than you can imagine—after you come on my hand. That’s what I want—your juices dripping all the way down to my elbow.”

Oh,this man.

He slides his tongue into my ear and back out—an unwelcome invasion of warmth and fullness, forbidden sensations. “You think you can run from me? Go ahead and try, misbehave,” he hisses. “I’ll track you down and chain you up, and we’ll do this again and again until every perfect bit of you accepts that you’re mine.”

Why do I want him to do exactly that so I can fight him over it, defend myself, have the voice and strength he brings out in me?Thenfuck him. I whimper and attempt to pull myself together, studying the tree rings on the stump in front of me and shifting my knees on the cold ground before I speak. “You’re a fucking fool if you think that’ll scare me into behaving.”

But I only see a man finally letting go of all his pain for a minute—being himself.With me.

“And this means nothing,” I remind him, wanting him to negate it, to admit I’m more than a find-and-fuck fling.

“Nothing,” he assures me again, locating the bottom hem of my shirt and slipping his hand inside. My abdomen shudders at his touch, and he probes further, his fingers walking up and up. He pauses. “And now what?”

I squirm at the pulsing between my legs, at the way he wants me all to himself, what he’ll do to have me, his raw scent, the things I don’t want to say—the things hewon’tsay. But his hovering, waiting, teasing hands have all the control, and I need them.

“Fucking touch me already.”

He runs his fingers along the bottom of my bra, my heart skipping every other beat. “Never”—a nibble on my neck—“you’re going to have to be a little more specific.”

“You’re going to have to go fuck yourself.”

“I have you for that.” He traces the curve of my breasts and tucks his fingers between my legs, curling and prodding over my pants. Every inch of me awakens beneath his touch—the ache of desire and the burn of fury mixing and melding into a single pending explosion, unchecked, my mind wrecked and raw. And I cave.

Chapter

Thirty-Nine

“Put your damn hands on me, in me, everywhere. I want my nipples between your teeth. Your tongue on my stomach. Your head between my thighs.” My body folds in on itself at the image that hits me, and as though someone else were drawing the thoughts from the marrow of my mind and putting them into words that aren’t my own, I say, “I want to suck you then fuck you until I come so hard I cry.”

I slam my mouth shut.

He broke me. “I didn’t…” The pending lie fights my tongue.

Eli’s groan thunders against my back. I’m a hot, throbbing, humiliated mess when he slides his hand inside my bra, cupping my breast, his fingers above the hidden treasures tucked inside. But his hand retreats just as quickly as it slid in.

“One thing at a time.” He exhales and pulls my hips into him, anchoring himself to me, his hard cock pressing against my ass and his palm smashing my mound. Knowing, feeling that he wants me like that—it destroys me.

He growls in my ear. “Spread your legs for me, little Never.”

I freeze, his words as pleasurable as his touch. “No,” I say, to hear them again. He hesitates, unmoving. “Do not make me wait,” I hiss, spurring him to release a breath.

“I said spread them.” He forces my thighs apart, two rough palms pressing outward. I try to shut them tight, but he holds me open and slips a hand under my waistband. It’s cold. Goosebumps crawl over my skin as he shoves his finger inside me. I cry out at the icy pleasure, my hips bucking forward, my knees parting.