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After years spent growing bored with girls after the first taste, I want to gorge on her. A meal so divine, it seems impossible I could tire of her.

Francesca stirs, making a soft snuffling noise, and fuck. The things she does to me without trying.

Without even being awake.

For a long time, I stand and stare at her sleeping face, grateful she handed me an excuse to pay another visit so soon.

CHAPTERTWENTY-TWO

FRANCESCA

“Wakey,wakey, Francesca. You’ve been a bad girl.”

The sound startles me from the midst of a dream. I barely have time to register the voice is real—someone’s in myroom—then a hand closes around my upper arm, shaking me. My pulse explodes into high gear.

Kincaid flicks the lights on, smirking as I struggle to work out what’s happening, my mind still dazed with sleep.

“I thought I laid the rules out in simple terms, but it appears there’s been a misunderstanding.” Steel fingers grip my chin, forcing me to meet his eyes. They’re cold at first glance, devoid of humanity. Then he blinks and they fill with golden-tinged fire. “We’re going to play a quick game and by the end of it, we should be on the same page. Okay?”

No.

Fuck.

I thought he would wait until morning.

I leap to the side, but Kincaid snags my shirt and pushes me back on the bed.

“Let’s start with an easy one. When I give you an order, what do you do?”

“Nothing.” I kick behind me, my heel connecting with his ankle. “I’m not your dog and this isn’t your house. You can’t walk into my room whenever you want.”

“Yet, here I am. Such misplaced confidence.”

He grips my upper arm and hauls me from the bed, setting me on my feet and tugging at his rugby jersey that I’m using as a nightshirt, and I’m appalled he’s caught me wearing itagain.

“What’s this, Francesca?” he asks in a mocking voice. “Are you wearing my number to bed, hoping for a grubby dream?”

“I always wear the ugliest clothing to bed. The stuff I’d be ashamed for anyone else to see.”

He wrinkles his nose, smirk widening by the second. “In which case, you won’t mind if I take it back.”

Before I can move, he gathers the hem in both hands, yanking it up and over my head in one smooth motion, discarding it on the floor.

“That’s better.” His gaze fixes to my wide eyes and crawls with agonising slowness down the curve of my neck, along my jutting collarbones before coming to rest on my breasts. “I’ve never seen a prettier pair of tits.”

My nipples tighten at the praise. I want to think it’s because of the cold—and the air is chill enough to see my breath—but watching his hypnotic gaze travel across my body also makes heat pool between my legs.

My self-disgust rises at the same time as my desire and rather than cancelling each other, the two effects grow in tandem, leaving me in a confused mess.

“You look thirsty, Francesca.” He moves forward, crowding me until my head fills with static. “Is there something you want?”

“For you to get out of my house.”

A pinch on my nipple makes me yelp, and his face bends closer to mine, eyes still ablaze. “Try that again.”

“For you to leave me alone until I forget I ever met you.”

He pinches the opposite side, the sharp sting easing into a low-level burn. Even as they throb, recovering, part of me craves the same again, and I put my hands flat on his chest, pushing with all my might. “Get out!”