I’m pretty sure it’s a hotel key with an offer for double your pleasure, double your fun. Ugh.

Hell, most of the time I’m game for anything and would never judge someone else but something about the setting, about the random offer, about the whole damn situation is rather disturbing to me. Maybe it’s the fact that knowing the person for a whole five minutes before sex is offered is of importance. Call me crazy.

I’m distracted from the eye-roll-worthy display when Luke puts his hand on my waist and pulls me into his side. I didn’t even realize that Vince had moved on to the next fan. “That was so fucking cool!” he exclaims squeezing me in tighter. He starts rambling on and on and I look up to watch the animation on his features as he talks.

And then his voice falls quiet when he notices the lead singer mere feet away from us. I follow his gaze to find mine locked with Hawkin’s.

I swear my breath is stolen momentarily; all I know is I have to tell myself to draw in air from the quizzical look he gives me, a mixture of surprise, disbelief, and you’re with him?

Luke lifts his chin to Hawkin in an I’m-a-cool-guy kind of way and Hawke pulls his eyes from mine and acknowledges him with his own head tilt. He glances back to me and I just shake my head subtly as my eyes flicker to the road-hos beside him, my lips pursed in judgment. I know he reads the disdain in my eyes and yet his arms remain on the women.

As our connection is broken, one last glare passes between us—I know why I’m glaring but am unsure why he’s pissed—when one of them asks for an autograph. I watch the three of them separate as Hawkin reaches for his beer with one hand and slides the hotel room card in his back pocket, which of course begs my eyes to take in the way the denim frames his ass.

He grabs the Sharpie offered and smiles big for the camera phone as he signs across the top of the woman’s right breast. I watch, not surprised by the behavior of some of the women as he moves on from group to group greeting them, because it’s not like I haven’t seen women throw themselves at a man before. The difference is this time it’s not my dad or my brother, it’s the man I want.

Or rather the man I wanted before I saw this behavior. I get it’s part of his job, but after Delta Sig and now the boobsie-twins, I’m determined to keep telling my hormones to quit humming over him.

I watch another woman offer herself to him, dignity obviously a foreign concept to her, and I look up to Luke. “I’m going to run to the bathroom really quick.”

“What?” His eyes are wide and he shakes his head back and forth. “You might miss meeting Hawkin Play!”

“I’ll be back in time,” I tell him, secretly hoping I won’t. “Don’t worry, all that beer is hitting me all of a sudden.”

I can see an internal tug-of-war going on within Luke. “Let me take you.”

And I realize he’s trying to be a gentleman and take me even though it means possibly missing meeting Hawke. Why can’t I feel that buzz for this man and his considerate ways? Maybe it’s one of those things that takes time when it comes to him. I wish I believed that.

“No. Really. I’ll be fine. I don’t want you to miss meeting Hawke in case I don’t make it back in time.”

“You sure?” His hesitancy speaks volumes of his character as a man.

“I’m sure.”

When I start to walk away, Luke calls my name. “Quin?”

I turn to find his mouth meeting mine. It’s a soft gentle brush of lips that he takes a bit further before stepping back. “Thanks for tonight. I’m having so much fun.”

I smile gently at him and nod my head, wishing I felt something more for him than just platonic warmth. I turn to go and in my periphery see Hawkin standing there, ignoring the women at his side to watch me.

I quickly avert my gaze and hustle down the hallway where I ask a roadie on the way where the nearest bathroom is. I’m confused and sick of the tumultuous feelings that are so foreign to me, the back and forth between sense and lust, head and heart, desire and prudence.

I go through a doorway that leads me into a dressing area of sorts and see the partially opened bathroom door across the room. I have my hand on it, pushing it open timidly, making sure that it’s not occupied when all of a sudden a larger hand slams the door open from behind me.

A startled gasp falls from my lips as I’m jolted forward from the connection of our bodies. He pushes his way into the bathroom and then slams the door behind me.

I know I should be scared shitless, yet not an ounce of fear falls over me because every attuned nerve in my body senses it’s Hawkin. It’s the heady buzz and fluttering in my stomach that I get every time he’s near that gives it away.

This. This feeling is what I should feel for Luke, but don’t.

“Do you have any idea how hot you are?” He growls the words in my ear, the heat of his breath against my skin. “I can’t take my eyes off you. You want me just as bad and yet you don’t want him to know that you’re going home with me tonight do you?”

Every part of me lights up in relief at his statement but at the same time I can’t just up and leave my date. I may be a bitch for wanting Hawkin while I’m with Luke but I’m not that cold-hearted. “I can’t,” I tell him, voice strained with the desire I feel coursing through me, an obvious tell to him how I feel.

“Can’t and want are two different things,” he says, “and I’m not accepting a no.”

I shake my head to contradict him, the “No” about to pass over my lips as he spins me around, backing me up not so gently against the door, and before I can even meet Hawkin’s eyes, his mouth is on mine. I don’t have time to think, only react, and oh how I react.

We become a mass of hands groping, lips bruising, and tongues tasting in a savage union of frustrated lust. Nothing is static for more than a beat as we try to feel our way into each others’ lives. His hand squeezing my ass. My nails digging into his biceps. Teeth nipping lips followed by not so soothing licks because we are so desperate to claim and tempt and take.

All I can think of is more—all I want is more. I know minutes must pass but I swear it feels like fleeting seconds before he drags his lips from mine so that he can stare into my eyes, his labored breaths panting over my lips, swollen from his kiss. “You can tell me no all you want, Q. You can push me, pull my hair … bite me even … but you can’t deny that you want me as much as I want you.”

His words are an incendiary match to the emotions simmering within me. I want to act on them, but he’s just annihilated my wits with his mouth—words and kisses. I shake my head side to side as I try to process, not realizing that he thinks I’m disagreeing. Before I can speak he leans in closer and says, “Make me believe you don’t want me.”

In a heartbeat his mouth is back on mine with a volatile intensity that even if I wanted to resist, I wouldn’t be able to. My body tingles with need to the point where I feel like I can never get enough of him.

“Hawke?” Axe’s muted voice breaks through our libidinous haze.

Hawkin swears out a curse, his forehead against mine. He removes his hand from where it was wrapped in my hair and forces my chin up as we separate.

“In the head,” he yells out, irritated at being interrupted.

“You okay? Vince is asking. They need you back at the meet and greet.”

“Yeah man, just zipping up. Tell him to hold his fucking horses, I’ll be right out.”

Hawke drops his head forward, eyes squeezed shut, hand still holding my hair hostage as we stand here in this suspended state of time. It’s not long but just enough for reason to start seeping through the haze of what I’m doing.

And the women from earlier flash in my mind, but then Hawkin does something so unexpected and yet seemingly intimate that the images dissipate. He takes the tip of his nose and runs it from my collar bone up the column of my throat and to beneath my ear.

“You’re coming to the after party. I don’t care how, I don’t care why, but I need more of you than this. You want me and then you don’t want me and frankly I don’t give a flying fuck anymore what your reasons are, because I want you. And I guarantee that once I have you, there will be no more back-and-forth because I’ll leave your body so fucking high on me there will be no other option but to want more of me again.”

I draw in a ragged breath as I try to take in his words that are erotic and possessive and downright assuming all at once but holy hell am I a trembling ball of need. And yet I say nothing.

He gently pulls my hair so that when he leans back he’s looking straight into my eyes with unfettered intensity and unbridled desire expressed in his stormy irises. “It’s taking everything I have right now not to tell Axe to fuck off, to tell them to wait so I can lift up this sexy skirt of yours, pull aside the panties you wore for him to discover, and finger-fuck you breathless. Claim you first. Show you just a taste of what we could be like together.” He leans forward and tugs on my bottom lip gently with his teeth until they scrape along it and it falls free. “But I want to take my time with you Quinlan, edge you out so that by the time you come the only sound on your lips is my name, the only thought in your head is me, and the only thing you want filling you is this.” He presses his dick that’s hard and straining against the denim of his jeans into my hip.

My heart is pounding, and I gasp out when he roughly yanks down the neckline of my tank so that the lace of my bra is exposed. The possessive growl in the back of his throat is seductive and arousing and hotter than hell in so many ways. His eyes meet mine, then he lowers his head, fingers pulling the lace down farther before his mouth dips to the top part of my breast. I open my mouth again, the soft mewl of need falling from my lips as the warmth of his mouth glides over my skin.