But the arousal Saint stokes in me is so powerful, I’m nearly paralyzed in sensations, shivering.

His eyes are a green no living plant can compete with. He kisses my breasts, suckles me, sucks me. He pets and rubs my clit, the pleasure out of this world. I come quickly on his fingers. He holds me in his hand. “God, look at you go off for me,” he rasps. “You’re beautiful—do you know how beautiful you are?”

“I feel beautiful right now.”

When he reaches for his slacks, I whisper something encouraging like “please”—god, I’m so unoriginal. But I can’t think. I’m throbbing with need, desperate for him to fill me.

The frustration of all these nights and days, the knowledge that this is only a stolen moment, temporary, only makes me ache for it more.

He tugs the zipper of his slacks downward, and I’m in complete museum-quality silence. He looks like he works out every day of the week, his chest ripped, tanned, gloriously defined and perfectly shaped, muscles rippling with every yank. A sound of need leaves me as he pulls down his slacks and I get to see him. A storm of desire racks me as he comes closer. His cock is bigger than anything I imagined. I lick my lips, anxious, my eyes running up his length, up to the swollen head and the glistening drop of semen at the tip.

I can’t . . . I can’t wait. I want every inch of that inside me. Every inch of him.

He smiles when he notices my blush and leans over me, caressing my pussy. His fingers quicken, and then he replaces his finger with his thumb, the pad rolling my clit in little circles while he tastes my mouth. I’m galloping to the brink again.

“You’re so responsive, Rachel, you get wet with a look, soaked before I get to touch.” He slowly wedges himself between my thighs.

I claw at his arms. “Saint,” I moan breathlessly, rocking my hips as he opens a condom packet and sheathes himself.

He curls his fingers around my waist and pins my hips down, pushing the first few inches of his cock inside me. I yell, and he holds me pinned, watching me as he plows inside a few more inches. Ecstasy sweeps through me. I rock my hips in my greed to get more of him inside me, pulsing. He flexes his hips, moving his cock in deeper. I lock my ankles together at the small of his back, clasping him to me. Tightness. Fullness. He pulses inside me. I clench my fingers in his hair, wanting more, afraid of more, and he makes a sound that rumbles in his chest and that I can actually feel against my breasts. In my ear: “Can you breathe now?” he husks.

A sound tears out of both of us as he immediately withdraws, prolonging the moment, watching me with those burning green eyes—then he thrusts all the way in, our stomachs slapping, our bodies arching. A sound rumbles up his chest, low and deep. There’s this hunger. This need to feel him, connect to him. There’s nothing else. Only us moving. The sounds of the sheets rustling beneath us. Our breaths. Our mouths as we suck, taste—lips, nipples, skin.

“A little. Oh god, Saint.”

With every thrust I feel so full, my spine arches, my nails claw at the taut skin and muscle at his shoulders.

I’m between screams and pleas, laughter and tears. I don’t know what to think or say or do. It feels like a dream, or a nightmare. Powerful . . . his pull to me is undeniable. I’m scared out of my mind and at the same time I’m helpless to resist. I want more. I bite his neck. I claw at his back. Saint, Saint, Saint, I cry, thinking incoherently that nothing is enough, nothing until I get his every secret, every name of his lovers, his fears, his dreams, his heart, until he comes for me, in me.

My breasts bob between us, his body powerful and more precise as he prolongs every thrust. “And now?” Making me nod as he takes me higher and higher. His muscles bulge. His head ducks and he tastes the tips of my breasts again, tugging with his teeth, smoothing with his tongue.

The brief teasing we’ve enjoyed, the little playful flirting and foreplay, those were tentative questions, born of curiosity on both our parts. This is an avalanche of ravaging desire. He thrusts again, his mouth on mine, his body relentless, neither of us letting the other breathe, or think, or stop. I won’t last another minute. How can I have gone years without this?

“And now, Rachel?” he growls through his harsh breaths.

Arching upward, I sink my nails into the back of his neck. “Please, Saint,” I moan out.

He rubs my clitoris a little bit with the pad of his thumb, and my eyes shut in bliss as my orgasm thunders through me. My skin melts; I fly away, ecstasy ripping through me. I clutch myself to him and feel him groan in my hair as he comes, his body tensing and flexing powerfully against me.

After a few minutes of lying together, I’m obsessed. I’m addicted. I’m bewildered. I want to know how many girls he’s made out with. I want to rank as one of the best. I want to do it again. I want to touch his body. I want to let him do whatever he wants with mine. I want to stop breathing forever. “What do you like? Blow jobs? Making out . . . ? ” I whisper into his neck. “Teach me, Saint.”

“You know what I like?” he whispers huskily in my ear. “I’ll show you what I’d like to do right now.”

He’s a beautiful man, with a beautiful, muscled ass that makes my mouth water as he disappears into his spa-like bathroom. I sit up on the bed, studying his bedroom. I hadn’t really been paying attention before. It’s pretty minimalist—bare. Almost emotionless. Almost icy, like his eyes.

There are no photographs, not even of his mom or of his buddies. But there are pictures of race cars all over the room, old vintage Ferraris. I suppose to a guy who grows up with more toys than people, the toys become important somehow.

“You should get some sort of fancy fur-like coverlet for this bed,” I say, loud enough that he can hear me in the bathroom, I hope, shivering as I tug the sheet to my breasts. Things that make love to you.

Suddenly I look at him at the threshold and he just looks like a man who needs to be made love to often. Not because he’s sexy, because now that he’s made love to me, his energy is calmer, more subdued.

I like that lazy, half-lidded look he wears when he comes back out of the bathroom naked and grins when he sees me in bed with my hair falling down my shoulders and the rest of me pretty much naked under the covers.

“You felt good, Rachel,” he says, his eyes—god, my heart—his eyes look more thirsty than anything I’ve ever, ever seen.

I blush completely.

“I’d bet anything that you taste just as good too,” he says.