He set me down in front of a glass-walled shower.
My legs wobbled.
He grinned. “Knocking you off your feet again.”
A blush rode up to my cheeks. “I’m not sure I’ll ever stop shaking when I’m standing in front of you.”
“You’d better not.” The sweetest kind of smirk rode around his full, full lips, as if another side of him was trying to break out.
Keeping a hand on my waist to keep me steady, he reached through the door and turned on the showerhead. I watched him, the profile of his masculine face, the bristling strength of his beautiful body as he removed the condom and tossed it into the trash.
The man was like raw, unedited art. The purest form of beauty.
Steam filled the room, and he stuck his hand under the fall of water as if he were checking the temperature the same way as I’d done for him.
There was something about it that felt the same. As intimate as that day he’d come into my salon.
The connection that stretched tight between us something neither of us could escape.
As if he felt the draw of it, he backed me into the spray.
Goosebumps crawled across my flesh.
From the change of the temperature or the sheer heat of his gaze, I didn’t know. All I knew was sensation was still racing everywhere.
Somehow growing even stronger.
The man had just obliterated me, heart, body, and soul, and I got the distinct sense that he was aiming to do it again.
His dick swung at half mast, and there was nothing I could do but reach out.
Touch him.
I fisted the velvet flesh, and my heart gave a quiver.
Overcome.
But I didn’t know how to stop. Not when I’d already been swept away.
He groaned out a needy sound, the man growing hard and long and thick where I held him in my hand.
I stroked him, relishing in the power of doing it. In being in control of his pleasure. Of his need.
He stepped closer, and my other hand felt along his hip, gliding down until I was cupping his balls.
His jaw came unhinged, and he dropped his forehead to my shoulder as I continued to stroke him.
“I thought you said you didn’t know what you were doing?” he rasped.
“The only thing I know is I don’t want to stop touching you.”
Pants rose into the air, at one with the steam that billowed between us.
I could feel it, the energy that lit into a frenzy.
Wild.
And I was stroking him harder and faster as need blossomed in my body, my belly shaking and center throbbing for him again.
Faster than I could make sense of it, he had my back pinned to the cold stone of the shower wall. The impact made me release him, and instantly he was the one in control.
A big hand gripped me by the chin, his fingertips sinking into either side of my cheeks.
There was some kind of war on his face, eyes flashing dark as they darted between my eyes and my lips.
“Fuck . . . Grace . . . what are you doing to me? You’re making me crazy. Making me want things I don’t fucking want.”
Pain.
It reverberated through the space.
The man giving me another glimpse.
My hand was trembling when I reached out and let my fingertips trace against his bottom lip in a silent question.
Why won’t you kiss me?
His mouth parted on a sigh, and his eyes closed, throat vibrating with a low, urgent sound.
In another flash, he had me spun away from him.
Whiplash.
My hands flew out to the wall, and I gasped out in shock when he tumbled his mouth down the length of my spine.
Desperate, needy kisses.
Flicks of tongue and soft, adoring lips.
Oh, God, he was undoing me.
Wholly and completely and permanently.
I had no idea how I was going to recover from this. How I would ever be the same when he gripped me by both hips, his rigid, hard cock sliding through the crease of my bottom.
“Ian.” It was a plea of confusion and need. His hands kneaded into my thighs, and my head turned to the side so I could watch him through the mirror.
He rocked his cock through the cheeks of my bottom like some kind of illicit threat.
Want gripped me everywhere.
Everywhere.
Everywhere.
A tight fist that squeezed my heart, so tight I thought it might shatter under the pressure.
“I want you everywhere, Grace. I want to fuck you until the only thing you know is my name. That sweet cunt and your mouth and this perfect ass.”
I was pretty sure what the man was fucking with was my heart.
He was taking over. Invading the places where I never should have let him go.
I should have known better.
I should have known better.
But none of that seemed to matter when he kept sliding along my bottom, grunts coming from his mouth. He dragged me by the hips farther from the wall and bent me over.
He shoved himself into my pussy.
So deep I swore the man destroyed me right then and there.
“I want to keep you,” he muttered in some kind of frenzy, so low and garbled I wasn’t sure I’d heard it right.
But that didn’t matter. It didn’t matter because I felt it. Felt that ferocity. The energy that wound and climbed and claimed.
He started to pound into me.
I couldn’t stop from watching him through the mirror, his cock drawing almost all the way out before he pounded into me again.
Over and over.
His body so strong and massive and in control. Big hands clenched down possessively on my hips, fingers sinking in.
He dragged me back to meet him with each trust.
All those scars lining his back flexed and curled, hidden in the ink, haunted memories that couldn’t be found. Demons howled as they dragged me into his darkness, the words written on his side gnarled and disfigured.
Never had I seen such a beautifully broken man.
And I wondered if he saw mine, the silvered stretch marks that were close to invisible on my bottom and hips. My marks treasures. My pain. My perfection.
Those arms came around to my front, and with one hand he gripped me by the chin as he tugged me up against his chest.
Fingers went to work on my clit.
Playing me.
Coaxing me.
He continued to drive into me from behind, this position leaving me a hostage to the power of his hands. No longer was I on solid ground.
“What are you doing to me, Grace?”
This time, he sounded almost angry. As if I was weaving my way into him, the way he was weaving into me, and he hated me a little bit for doing it.
I reached back and clung to the back of his neck while he held me up with the force of his body.
Pleasure gathered so fast.
A flashflood from out of nowhere.
I screamed his name when another orgasm ripped through my body.
Potent and wild and unending. Surging and possessing the same way as the man possessed me.
Before I could make sense of it, he had my hands planted back on the wall, and his hand was on his dick.
He stroked himself as he came all over my bottom, grunts tumbling from his mouth.
I guessed it was the first time that night that reality caught up to me. Still, I watched it play out like a horror story. Through a screen of steam that fogged up the mirror. Me losing absolute control. Forgetting myself. Letting this man who was little more than a stranger take me with no barrier between us.
He grunted and shook, then burrowed his fingers even deeper, freezing, those crazy-colored eyes blinking frantically as if he too had to break himself from the fog of passion that made us do stupid things.
He seemed almost horrified himself as he reached out a trembling hand and let his fingers swim through the mess he’d left on my body.
“Shit,” he cursed, a low, guttural wheeze, his throat bobbing. “What the fuck?”
Then he was cleaning me off, hurrying like he could erase the evidence, before he cut the showerhead and stepped out. He took my hand, helped me out, and wrapped me in a fluffy white towel. Without saying anything, he picked me back up and carried me to his bed.
Gently, he laid me in the middle of it, his brow knitted up when he did.
As if maybe he weren’t in control of his actions any more than I seemed to be.
Both of us lost.
Wanderers who’d forgotten their way.
“I’m so sorry,” he muttered, voice urgent. “I’m clean. I swear to you, I’m clean.”