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His hands are impossible to resist as he draws me to his chest. I give in. Completely.

“Ero,” I whisper his name, he melts against me, enveloping me.

“Circe,” he says mine, and I fall apart.

His kiss is a riptide, sweeping me out to sea. The swell of that tide rises, tossing me high, then dragging me under.

But his depths are not cold. They are alight with fire, blossoming in my core. Heat radiates over me from him as he comes alive. Urgent fingers grasp at clothing, eager to remove the barrier between us. My shirt goes first.

His silk-soft lips trace my jawline up onto my cheek, his fingertips trailing along the cup of my ear, tilting my head back, exposing my throat and my neck for him to ravage. Then lower along the top of my shoulder, turning me around to nuzzle the back of my neck.

The animal attraction that we share rumbles beneath a softer, more vulnerable touch. He’s gentle. Thorough. Tenuously holding back the rush of avid desire to work his way across my skin.

And I thoroughly savor the process.

Fingers graze my sides, up my back, lighting my nerves, firing off zaps of tingling shivers. My skin tightens, pebbling to his worship. When he breathes across my neck again, I can’t help curling my toes.

Shutting out any other thoughts, I hone in on Ero’s attention, on his body and mine. Nothing else matters right now.

And I need to block out the horror of what I’ve done.

My bra crumples forward as he unhooks the clasp, my breasts tumbling out into his waiting palms. We sway, the warmth of his chest radiating against my back, raising the temperature in the room by a thousand degrees.

He’s a furnace.

And he’s hard as steel, from pecs to prick.

His scent draws me in, his allure impossible to ignore. Whenever his attention is focused on me, I can forget everything. So I do.

We struggle lightly against one another, hands and arms dueling as I try to reach back, as he tries to envelop me in hisembrace. I need to feel how bad he wants me. I need to know that it matches my desire for him.

“You drive me insane,” he growls, rumbling through my entire being.

“Must be contagious,” I laugh softly, sliding my ass up his front.

“You calling me crazy?”

“A madman.”

He flips me around without another word, swooping in for a kiss, lifting me off the floor with arms that could crush me. Yet I’ve never felt safer. Or more alive. The blaze of his desire licks my skin, scours my soul.

Fire spreads through my limbs, my lungs, igniting me into the frenzy only he can fuel. Our essences intertwine, becoming a single inferno.

I might die for the want of him. Addiction doesn’t begin to describe it.

All I want is for him to fill me, consume me, and leave me so utterly exhausted that I can’t feel, can’t stand up.

Like he can read my mind, the bastard does exactly the opposite. In the best way.

His lips pull away, his hands turning me toward the archway in the wall. Guiding my hands forward, he places them on the wall to each side, dragging my hips back until I’m bent at the waist slightly.

“Don’t. Move,” he orders, and a shiver zips up my spine. He’s sultry, but something in his voice snaps like a whip crack, promising pleasure and pain and everything in between.

Ero starts on my back. Only his lips never quite touch me. And every time I try to push back, to connect with him, he pulls away, forcing my hands back to the wall.

Minutes of him working his way down have me sweating, panting. At the lip of my skirt, he eases it down to the floor, thenproceeds to torture my ass with the heat of his breath, the tickle of taunting near kisses.

I flex, I writhe, I squirm.