I lift my fingers, touch the hard square of his jaw, abrading my fingertips with his five-o’clock shadow. “Break me. As long as you’re touching me. Shatter me. Use me. Just want me.”

Malcolm. Powerful and in control. I touch his lips with my fingertips, he’s tense and still. I shudder inwardly touching him, but he doesn’t move.

I lower my hand, burning red that he doesn’t move his hand on my bare skin.

He rasps out, watching me through narrow eyes, “You still respond to me like before.”

“I’m the same. I never lied to you.” My heart pumps in fear of his rejection, but I can’t stop myself from needing his forgiveness. “I wanted to be with you and to see you. I didn’t want to stop,” I admit, easing my hand up his silk tie. I feel his abs bunch under my fingers.

I let my fingers wander, never once taking my eyes off his stormy green ones.

He lifts his hand to tug on my ear. I squeeze my eyes shut when he speaks, surprising me with his thick voice. “I remember this ear . . .” He tugs it a little.

I open my eyes to find him staring at me.

I melt.

“When you tease me, it hurts.”

“No, this hurts.” He curls his hand around my arm and I respond a little, moaning in my throat. “If I put my hand on you, you arch to my touch. You push closer so every inch of my hand is on you. You look at me like I’m a bastard, like I gave you your every dream and then took them all away. But you still want my hands on you?”

“Yes. But I want you to trust me.”

“Trust you? Rachel, I don’t trust myself with you.”

I wipe a stray tear. “I want dibs on you,” I whisper, broken.

Our eyes meet for the slightest second and the moonlight hits his face so that he’s so beautiful it’s otherworldly. He grabs my face and inches his head closer, tilting his mouth to my ear.

“I miss you,” I blurt out, reddening when I hear myself say that.

“Do you? Miss me?”

“I miss you so much. I can’t forget you, and I don’t want you to forget me either.” I swallow.

He grabs my face and inches his head closer, and when I open my mouth to say more, he says, “Shh.” Careful like I’m fragile, he draws my face to his.

I shudder as his lips ghost over the corner of my mouth.

His voice is so textured, it’s hardly understandable. Warmth from his big hand seeps into my cheeks as he edges back and strokes his thumb over my lips. “We’re going to start back up slow and easy.” The forests in his eyes are deep with intensity. “And when I’m ready, I’m going to ask you to be my girlfriend, and it’s going to be the last time I ask, Rachel. If you say no, that’ll be the last no you say to me about anything.”

God, I want him to ask me now. I turn my face and press a kiss on his thumb and he uses my action to rub his thumb along my lips a little, like he did when he fed me wine.

Longing unfurls inside me like a ribbon, soft and warm. I can’t even describe the way I want him to kiss me again.

“Don’t tease me,” I whisper.

“I’m not teasing you.”

My eyes well up. “I want you to be greedy, to want all of me, like before, Saint.”

He grabs my face firmly in both hands. “Go out Friday with me.”

“Yes,” I gasp, “I’d love to.”

“It’s black tie. Do you have something to wear?”

I look at the violent tenderness on his expression, my lungs like rocks in my chest as I keep on nodding and nodding. “I . . . I’m sure I have something here to wear.”

“Go buy a dress, it’s on me.”

“No!” I laugh. “Sin.”

“Yes,” he insists. “There’s no more saying no, remember.”

My breathless voice is barely audible. “At what time should I be ready on Friday?” I ask.

“Quarter to nine? Starts earlier but I’ve got a long week ahead too.”

I know why, Saint. I know it’s because you need more and more and always more and I want you to want me like that, all of me.

And I know why you want me at M4, Saint.

Even when you were mad at me, you were trying to protect me. You still are.

“Still getting the moon?” I ask.

He’s quiet. Then, “Something like that.”

And silence again.

I step out his door, peering inside. “Thank you for my lifetime collection of wine,” I add with a little smile.

His smirk is back. “You’re welcome.”

We stare for a minute. From the shadows, his eyes gleam a pure male gleam as he looks at me. I hurt thinking this isn’t real, it can’t be real.

“I’m a challenge to you, Saint. You’ll finally get me and then you’ll be done with me.”

Before I can turn around to walk away, he grabs my hand in his. He pulls me closer to the door. Reaching out with his free arm, he snaps open the glove compartment, and brings out a pen.

My heart stutters when I recognize the pen.

It’s the pen from the hotel room.

I’m singed by his fingertips on mine as he brings my palm to his lap. His eyes blaze between his lashes when he notices me tremble, and his gaze never leaves my face as he scrawls something on my palm. Then he curls my fingers closed.

“Don’t underestimate me,” he whispers.

I savor the possessive way he looks at me as he speaks, so thickly it’s almost inaudible, as he slowly—torturously slowly—lets go of my hand. “Good night, Rachel.”

I feel his eyes on my retreating back as I head toward my building.

When I turn by the door, my sexy parts tingle as I see him one last time; he’s lounging back with an arm draped on the passenger seat, predatorily, with deceptive relaxation, but I’ve never seen eyes look at me so intensely as he stares at me through the open car window.

Helpless to free myself from his gaze, I feel for the door handle, manage to open it, and then exhale when I’m inside.

Shutting the door, I put my fingers on the glass. I can feel Saint through it and the rumble of his car as he starts it back up. I feel his chest under my fingertips and the energy of his being, like a bolt of white-hot liquid lightning flowing through my veins.

I force myself to go upstairs, then walk into my apartment and then lean on the shut door, breathless and I open my hand to read what he wrote.

Dibs.

BLACK TIE

“I say the baby blue.”

“I vote the light pink.”