Gideon’s jaw tightened and his gaze darkened dangerously. “I’m beginning to fear for your safety, Eva.

Grab your stuff. There’s a hotel around the corner.” Neither of us changed and we were outside in five minutes. Gideon walked briskly and I hurried to keep up. When he stopped abruptly, turned, and dipped me back in a lavish heated kiss on the crowded sidewalk, I was too stunned to do more than hold on. It was a soul-wrenching melding of our mouths, ful of passion and sweet spontaneity that made my heart ache. Applause broke out around us.

When he straightened me again, I was breathless and dizzy. “What was that?” I gasped.

“A prelude.” He resumed our dash to the nearest hotel, one I didn’t catch the name of as he pul ed me past the doorman and crossed straight to the elevator.

It was clear to me that the property was one of Gideon’s even before a manager greeted him by name just before the elevator doors closed.

Gideon dropped his duffel on the car floor and busied himself with figuring out how to extricate me from my sports top. I was slapping his hands away when the doors opened and he scooped up his bag.

There was no one waiting on our floor and no one in the hal way. He pul ed a master key out of somewhere and a moment later we were in a room.

I pounced, pushing my hands up beneath his shirt to feel his damp skin and the hardness of the muscles beneath it. “Get naked. Like now.” He laughed as he toed off his sneakers and yanked his tank over his head.

Oh my God…seeing him in the flesh—al of him, as his shorts hit the floor—was synapse frying. There wasn’t an ounce of excess flesh on him anywhere, just hard slabs of honed muscle. He had washboard abs and that super sexy V of muscle on his pelvis that Cary cal ed the Loin of Apol o. Gideon didn’t wax his chest like Cary did, but he groomed with the same care he showed to the rest of his body. He was pure primal male, the embodiment of everything I coveted, fantasized about, and wished for.

“I’ve died and gone to heaven,” I said, staring unabashedly.

“You’re stil dressed.” He attacked my clothes, whipping my loosened top off before I took a ful breath. My pants were wrestled down and I kicked my shoes off in such a hurry that I lost my balance and fel on the bed. I barely caught my breath before he was on me.

We rol ed across the mattress in a tangle.

Everywhere he touched me left trails of fire behind. The clean, hardworking scent of his skin was an aphrodisiac and intoxicant at once, spurring my desire for him until I felt like I was about to lose my mind.

“You’re so beautiful, Eva.” He plumped one breast in his hand before taking my nipple into his mouth.

I cried out at the scorching heat and the lash of his tongue, my core tightening with every soft suck. My hands were greedy as they slid over his sweat-damp skin, stroking and kneading, searching for the spots that made him growl and moan. I scissored my legs with his and tried to rol him, but he was too heavy and too strong.

He lifted his head and smiled down at me. “It’s my turn this time.”

What I felt for him in that moment, seeing that smile and the heat in his eyes, was so intense it was painful.

Too fast, I thought. I was fal ing too fast. “Gideon—” He kissed me deeply, licking into my mouth in that way of his. I thought he could real y make me come with just a kiss, if we stayed at it long enough.

Everything about him turned me on, from the way he looked and felt beneath my hands to the way he watched me and touched me. His greed and the silent demands he made on my body, the forcefulness with which he pleasured me and took his pleasure in return, drove me wild.

I ran my hands through the wet silk of his hair. The crisp hairs on his chest teased my tightened nipples and the feel of his rock-hard body against mine was enough to make me wet and needy.

“I love your body,” he whispered, his lips moving across my cheek to my throat. His hand caressed the length of my torso from breasts to hip. “I can’t get enough of it.”

“You haven’t had very much of it yet,” I teased.

“I don’t think I’l ever have enough.” Nibbling and licking across my shoulder, he slid down and caught my other nipple between his teeth. He tugged and the tiny dart of pain had my back arching on a soft cry. He soothed the sting with a soft suck; then kissed his way downward. “I’ve never wanted anything this badly.”

“Then do me!”

“Not yet,” he murmured, moving lower, rimming my navel with the tip of his tongue. “You’re not ready yet.”

“What? Ah, God…I can’t get any readier.” I tugged on his hair, trying to pul him up.

Gideon caught my wrists and pinned them to the mattress. “You have a tight little cunt, Eva. I’l bruise you if I don’t get you soft and relaxed.”

A violent shiver of arousal moved through me. It turned me on when he talked so bluntly about sex.

Then he slid lower and I tensed. “No, Gideon. I need to shower for that.”

He buried his face in my cleft and I struggled against his hold, flushed with sudden shame. He nipped at my inner thigh with his teeth. “Stop it.”

“Don’t. Please. You don’t have to do that.” His glare stil ed my frantic movements. “Do you think I feel differently about your body than you do mine?” he asked harshly. “I want you, Eva.”

I licked my dry lips, so crazily turned on by his animal need that I couldn’t form a single word. He growled softly and dove for the slick flesh between my legs. His tongue pushed into me, licking and parting the sensitive tissues. My hips churned restlessly, my body silently begging for more. It felt so good I could’ve wept.

“God, Eva. I’ve wanted my mouth on your cunt every day since I met you.”

As the velvet softness of his tongue flickered over my swol en clit, my head pressed hard into the pil ow.

“Yes. Like that. Make me come.”

He did, with the gentlest of suction and a hard lick. I writhed as the orgasm jolted through me, my core tensing violently, my limbs shaking. His tongue thrust into my sex as it convulsed, rippling along the shal ow penetration, trying to pul him deeper. His groans vibrated against my swol en flesh, goading the climax to rol on and on. Tears stung my eyes and coursed down my temples, the physical pleasure destroying the wal that kept my emotions at bay.

And Gideon didn’t stop. He circled the trembling entrance to my body with the tip of his tongue and lapped at my throbbing clit until I quickened again. Two fingers pushed inside me, curving and stroking. I was so sensitive I thrashed against the onslaught. When he drew on my clit with steady, rhythmic suction, I came again, crying out hoarsely. Then he had three fingers in me, twisting and opening me.

“No.” My head tossed from side to side, every inch of my skin tingling and burning. “No more.”

“Once more,” he coaxed hoarsely. “Once more, then I’l fuck you.”

“I can’t…”

“You wil .” He blew a slow stream of air over my wet flesh, the coolness over fevered skin reawakening raw nerve endings. “I love watching you come, Eva. Love hearing the sounds you make, the way your body quivers…”

He massaged a tender spot inside me and an orgasm pulsed through me in a slow, heated rol of delight, no less devastating for being gentler than the two before it.

His weight and heat left me. In a distant corner of my dazed mind, I heard a drawer opening, fol owed swiftly by the sound of foil tearing. The mattress dipped as he returned, his hands rough now as he yanked me down to the center of the bed. He stretched himself on top of me, pinning me, tucking his forearms on the outside of my biceps and pressing them to my sides, capturing me.

My gaze was riveted to his austerely beautiful face.

His features were harsh with lust, his skin stretched tight over his cheekbones and jaw. His eyes were so dark and dilated they were black, and I knew I was staring into the face of a man who’d passed the limits of his control. It was important to me that he’d made it that far for my benefit and that he’d done so to pleasure and prepare me for what I knew would be a hard ride.

My hands fisted in the bedspread, anticipation building. He’d made sure I got mine, over and over again. This would be for him.

“Fuck me,” I ordered, daring him with my eyes.

“Eva.” He snapped out my name as he rammed into me, sinking bal s-deep in one fierce drive.

I gasped. He was big, hard as stone, and so damn deep. The connection was startlingly intense.

Emotional y. Mental y. I’d never felt so completely…

taken. Possessed.

I wouldn’t have thought I could bear to be restrained during sex, not with my past being what it was, but Gideon’s total domination of my body ratcheted my desire to an outrageous level. I’d never been so hot for it in my life, which seemed insane after what I’d experienced with him so far.

I clenched around him, relishing the feel of him inside me, fil ing me.

His hips ground against mine, prodding as if to say, Feel me? I’m in you. I own you.

His entire body hardened, the muscles of his chest and arms straining as he pul ed out to the tip. The rigid tightening of his abs was the only warning I got before he slammed forward. Hard.