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“You looked scared.” His eyes are red with alcohol, but uncomfortably sharp nonetheless. “Why would my friends make you scared, Abby? Is there something you’re not telling me?” He advances toward me, a nasty gleam in his eye.

Oh, fuck.

I’m suddenly horribly aware that I’m alone in the café. And that Miguel looks like he’s drunk far more than he should have.

Then a quiet voice comes from the entrance. “Abby.”

I almost faint with relief when I look up to find Dimitry standing just inside the door. He’s wearing black suit pants and a white dress shirt open at the neck, sleeves rolled up just far enough to show the ink on his arms.

For once, he isn’t smiling.

He’s staring at Miguel with hard eyes and an expression which clearly implies he views Miguel as a bug that he’d have no issue crushing under the heel of his very nice Italian leather shoe.

I’m so relieved to see him that he might as well have flown through the door in a superhero costume.

“Dimitry! Baby! ” Pulling off my apron, I run across the café and fling my arms around his neck, for all the world as if we’ve been dating for weeks. “You’re late!” Aware that Miguel is watching our every move, I kiss Dimitry like I really fucking mean it.

Which is supposed to be just for show. A blunt way of proving to Miguel that I have, without any question, moved on. Not to mention a simple way to prevent Dimitry from committing whatever act of violence I’m fairly sure he’s contemplating.

Except that the second my lips touch Dimitry’s, he takes my mouth like he’s been waiting for me forever.

His huge arms lock me into him like a vise, one hand splayed on my lower back and the other grasping the nape of my neck, making me feel more cradled than I ever have in my life.

And he doesn’t just kiss me back. He possesses my mouth with such fierce heat that by the time I come up for air, I’ve forgotten Miguel even exists, let alone standing barely ten paces away.

“Hey, Skip,” Dimitry says, grinning down at me.

“Sorry I’m late. I should have called earlier.

” Pulling me to his chest, one hand wrapped around my head, he tilts his chin at Miguel over my shoulder.

“Think my girl here wants to close up, champ.” His voice rumbles against my cheek.

He smells of smoke and spicy aftershave, and I want to melt into him.

Miguel doesn’t answer, just stalks past us, slamming the door on his way out. I don’t look up from Dimitry’s embrace until he’s gone.

He leans over me and locks the door behind Miguel, still holding me close.

“Thank you,” I mumble against his chest.

“I think it’s your ex I should be thanking.” I peek up to find him grinning down at me. “I suppose I’ll have to buy that idiot a beer next time he’s in Pillars, just to keep the peace.”

I half laugh, half sob. “Don’t bother. He’s an asshole. Pillars is full of them, like you said.”

“I don’t want to talk about Pillars. Or about your idiot ex.” He tilts my face up. “I’d far rather do this again,” he murmurs, then lowers his mouth to mine.

Holy shit.

The man doesn’t just kiss. He turns it into a fucking art form.

His hand is in my hair, and his tongue is toying with mine like I’m some kind of sweet he can’t wait to devour.

His mouth dips and dives, taking mine and teasing it in equal parts, his large hand resting on the base of my spine, his fingers slipping into the top of my denim shorts to grasp my ass and push me harder against him .

My breasts are crushed against the rock-hard slab of his chest, my nipples are about to burst through my bra, and if I was any wetter, my knickers could wash the walls.

“Where are the lights?” he murmurs against my mouth.

“No,” I protest feebly, trying to squirm out of his grasp. “We can’t—not here—and I need to have a shower—”

“Fuck all that,” he growls against my ear. “You’ve been driving me nuts in those damned hotpants for months. I want them off, and then I want to fuck you, and after that, we can talk about who’s place we’re going to so I can do it again, slowly.”

I moan. I can’t help it.

The fact is, I was lost the minute his mouth hit mine.

Or maybe I was lost the first time he strolled into the café and called me Skippy.

And I couldn’t care less where he takes me, so long as I get the hard, throbbing shaft behind his suit pants inside me as soon as possible.

I hit the lights, and Dimitry punches the button that lowers the steel shutters outside the windows. Then he picks me up and sits me on the counter. “Arms up,” he orders.

Giggling, I raise my arms, and he pulls the T-shirt over my head and throws it. It lands on one of the bottles behind the bar, and a moment later my bra is hanging over the glasses tray.

“You know,” he says, cupping my breasts in his hands, “I’ve given a lot of thought to what these would look like.

” He bends down, his clever tongue rolling first one, then the other nipple, making me gasp and clutch his hair.

“I’m pleased to report,” he says as he lathes my swollen flesh, “that the reality far surpasses my imagination.”

His tongue sends a lightning pulse from each nipple straight to my groin. I’m so swollen that even the seam of my shorts is driving me crazy. I’ve gone from utter terror to wet, pulsing arousal in a matter of minutes, and for once, I seriously don’t want to wait. I just want Dimitry, hard and fast.

I wrap my legs around him, pressing him in close to me, reaching for his shirt. He pulls back, his eyes roaming over me as I unbutton it with not-quite-steady fingers.

“You’re fucking beautiful, Abby.” He’s not grinning anymore, and his eyes have turned from steel gray to the leaden darkness of a winter sea.

I push the shirt from his shoulders, my fingers tracing the ink and scars that cover them. “So are you,” I whisper.

I touch a twisted circle of scar tissue, and Dimitry shivers slightly. His hand covers mine, moving it away from the scar and slowly downward, to his belt buckle. His other hand twists the button of my shorts.

“Off,” he commands, and I wriggle my ass as he pulls them down, taking my underwear with them. He kisses me again as I open his belt, and I moan into his mouth as one big hand spreads me open, the calloused fingers as delicious on my skin as I’ve been imagining them to be for weeks now.

“Your hands feel so good.” I writhe against his touch, spreading my legs as he slips his palm over my mound, slowly massaging my swollen heat.

“My hands, huh?” He slips one large finger inside me, and I gasp.

“Jesus.” He kisses me fiercely. “You feel unbelievable.”

He goes to work in earnest, his mouth on my breasts, his thumb slowly rotating my pulsing clit, his fingers filling me until I’m open and moaning, ready to fall if his hand wasn’t behind my back, holding me up.

I pull his trousers open and reach for him, savoring his grunt of satisfaction as my hand closes around him.

“Oh, God,” I moan into his mouth. He’s huge in all the right ways, his shaft so wide my hand doesn’t close around it, broad to the base and tapering to a firm, spongy head that leaps at my touch. My pussy clenches in anticipation, slick arousal coating his fingers in unmistakable longing.

“I can feel you, Abby.” His fingers crook inside me, and I cry out. “You’re like magic on my hand.”

He groans as I stroke his raging cock. “Fuck this,” he says roughly.

Lifting me off the counter, he walks me across to one of the corner booths and lays me across it. “Next time we’ll do this slowly.”

I nod, unable to think of anything but having him inside me. He looms over me, dipping his mouth to mine.

“I don’t want to rush you,” he murmurs, the head of his cock teasing my entrance until I’m squirming.

I surge upward in answer, pulling at his hips. “You’re not.” I reach for him, my entire pussy throbbing with need. “I want this,” I whisper.

He enters me agonizingly slowly, inch by tantalizing inch, stretching me impossibly wide, touching places inside me I didn’t know existed.

“The feel of you,” he mutters, holding himself above me as he slowly fills me.

“ Christ .” He settles home, the ridge of his pelvis right against my clit, like it was made to fit me perfectly.

I cry out as he moves subtly, and I feel him jerk inside me, growing even larger, so deep I can feel every movement like it’s an earthquake.

He lifts one of my legs, folding it behind him, then runs his hand along my calf, to my thigh, his fingers closing almost all the way around it. He slips the hand under my ass, then begins to move in a slow, unbearably hot rhythm.

“Abby,” he groans, kissing me with devastating intensity, his mouth as slow and languorous on mine as his cock is inside me. “Why the fuck did we wait this long?”

Because I knew it would be like this with you. And because it terrifies me .

“Don’t close your eyes,” he says, surging inside me. “Don’t go where I can’t follow you. Look at me.”

He thrusts so deeply I cry out, my arms sliding over the iron cords of his shoulders, pulling him down, wanting to feel him against every part of me.

His mouth takes mine again, and then we’re moving together, the dance so slow and sweet it breaks my heart and drives me insane at once.

There’s no urgency in it, but so much intensity I feel like I’m being broken apart and rebuilt with every stroke, like he’s taking me somewhere I’ve never been before.

Every slight adjustment hits some new place inside me, as if I’m discovering my own body for the first time.

He fucks me with a slow, luxurious complexity, layer upon layer of sensation.

His mouth is hot and silken on my breasts. His fingers slip between us, opening me to just the right angle as his cock slides even deeper, his thumb gently teasing my swollen clit with a subtlety I never could have imagined from so powerful a man.

“Oh, Jesus.” My eyes roll back into my head, the first tremors coming from deep inside me.