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"Why do you keep saying that?"

"Because we are strangers."

She puts her hands on my chest, but she doesn’t push me away. I lean down, staring into her eyes. “Just because we only met recently, that doesn’t mean we can’t have chemistry, passion, attraction… How do you think people get together at all, Vignette? They feel hard, and they give in to those feelings.”

“I wouldn’t know. My only love is art.”

“I’m not asking you to love me. Just not to hate me.”

“As annoying as it is, stranger, I don’t think I could hate you even if I wanted. Are we done?”

“Done?” I counter.

She squeezes her hands against my chest, her fingernails digging through my shirt. “Let… go.”

“Say that like you mean it.”

She shudders, then whispers something too quietly for me to hear.

“I don’t think I can say it like I mean it,” she snaps.

“Good.”

She talks a big game about stopping this, about us being strangers, blah blah blah, but when it comes to this pure uncontrollable passion, nothing can stop us. Our kiss is explosive. It shatters any ideas she might’ve had about keeping our distance.

One night? We can’t limit ourselves to that.

She opens her mouth, gasping as our tongues brush against each other. Lust erupts in the tiny space between our pressed-close bodies. There’s nothing but hunger. My length is solid as we stumble across the garden, toward the fountain.

I sit down and pull her into my lap. She straddles me, her warm crotch caressing my thickness through our clothes. Her hands smooth over my shoulders, down my back, as she rocks back and forth.

I growl with obsession as I rock back and forth, the tip of my hunger burning as it rubs against my pants. Her pussy presses against me, hinting at the pleasure we could share.

“What time is your mom home?” she asks, her lips red, her cheeks flushed.

“Why would you want to know a thing like that… stranger?”

She groans, half frustration, half pent-up pleasure, trying to find a vent. “Don’t be a jerk. Do you seriously want to tease your way out of this?”

“I don’t know when she’ll be back. But it sounds to me like you want to see the spare room.”

Her eyes glimmer with desire. She looks tipsy. I know the feeling. “What gave you that impressi?—”

She laughs in delight when I stand and cradle her to my chest.

“How strong are you?” she says, giddy.

“Not strong enough. I can’t resist you.”

“Have you even tried?”

I carry her toward the house. “The whole time you were painting me, I was trying not to get rock solid. I was trying not to fall for you.”

“Fall for me and get rock solid, hmm?”

I kick open the door to the hallway and carry her up the stairs. “Your passion for your art would make even a cold bastard fall for you. And the way you narrow your eyes, bite your tongue, shift that curvy body…”

Carrying her up the stairs quickly, I almost run to the spare room. A cynical part of me wonders if I’m hurrying because I don’t want Sienna to go back to what seems to be her natural state: distancing herself, resenting me, fighting this.