We start kissing feverishly again. I push my tongue into his mouth and grab his hair, suddenly needing him more than he needs me. He tears his lips free, stares down at me with liquid metal in his eyes, takes my hand, unlocks the bathroom, and leads us out of there.

♥ ♥ ♥

MAVERICK SITS BESIDE me in the back of a cab. Devouring me with his eyes. And I sit here. Devouring him with mine. My diaphragm hurts when I try to breathe. He’s cloaked in shadows, but some of the lights outside fall on his neck, his square jaw. His lips. As I grow accustomed to the dark, I slowly study the clear-cut lines of his features. He’s so handsome with those platinum eyes and a secret expression, dark and brooding. He looks like he just committed murder and is daring the world to come lock him up. No, actually . . .

He looks like he’s ready to take a girl to bed and fuck the living daylights out of her.

God, and that girl is me.

To lead me out of the cab, he takes my hand.

My hand, in his hand.

I like his touch so much I feel an internal combustion from this alone.

Tomorrow, I won’t be a virgin anymore. I wanted to wait for it to mean something. I wanted to feel beautiful and to give it to Miles. And instead . . . I need this like I need oxygen right now.

His grip is strong and rough, like Maverick Cage.

I follow him across the lobby, and his grip is as firm and steady as his stride, and my heart is pounding like a living drum inside my chest, and wherever it is he’s taking me, I can’t believe how much I want to go.

We take the elevators and he leads me into a room on the second-to-top floor. I step inside as he shuts and locks the door behind me. It’s a nice room that I’m sure he’s easily affording now, thanks to the fighting money. His duffel bag sits in a corner. It’s misleading to think that’s all he owns. That everything he is and wants is tucked inside the bag. Because when I turn to look at him, I know he is so much more. I know he wants so much more.

And I want him more than I’ve wanted anything.

He starts forward. My knees grow weak. I want to take a step back but I hold my ground because I want his touch more than I want to take a step back. I hate him for making me feel like this, and I love him for making me feel so alive too. The air crackles between us as he stops a few feet away. Pure anticipation floods me. I stick my chin a little higher, meeting his gaze, holding it.

He reaches out to grab the back of my neck. He sets my nerve endings on fire beneath his fingertips. He never takes his eyes off mine as he draws me the rest of the way to him. I don’t miss the meaning. He brings me to him—he doesn’t come to me. It excites me and I don’t know why.

He bends and nibbles my lip, barely getting started, his head bent to mine. Reason checks out as waves of feelings rush through me, and I feel my hands fill with his hair, my throat close with things I want to say that I have never said—dirty things, sexy things, and intimate things, and just . . . things. I can’t. I feel rawer with this man than with anyone.

He walks me to the bed, and when he sits me on the edge, the rough fabric of his jeans grazes my jean-clad thighs; I can feel his hard quads beneath. Liquid fire warms my body, consuming. My heart skipping, jumping, fluttering.

His fingers brush over the tips of my nipples and shoot a delicious shockwave through me. A seductive smile touches his mouth. His fucking perfect mouth.

I shouldn’t be here.

I shouldn’t want him like this.

But not a single part of me—of the ones that are working right now—cares.

I grab him, and the muscles in his shoulders tense under my fingers, and the air is burning, primal. When we kiss, there’s no hesitation or uncertainty. Our lips fit perfectly, his body crushes me into the bed, his erection against my stomach, and as he’s kissing me, he doesn’t tease, or play, he just takes.

My fingers slide over the back of his neck, and it’s warm beneath my fingers, and I want him to touch more, touch everything at the same time. He eases his hand to the small of my back, and I feel alive, the touch firm but achingly gentle, intimate, possessive, and our control starts slipping when he shifts and fits his erection between my legs. I can feel him through my jeans. His fingers skim over my top, then he pulls it off.

I unhook my bra, discarding it.

There’s no one else here, just us, and I am a hostage to this, this lust, as he fills his mouth with a breast and shifts again, the move bringing his hips closer, nestling his erection deeper.

My eyelids shut. He handles my breast a little roughly, sucking the nipple. Stars flicker across my eyelids and I convulse from the pleasure. He eases back and jerks off his T-shirt and kicks his jeans aside, and I can’t believe how good his skin feels under my fingers.

God, he’s so gorgeous, my eyes ache when I look at him. His muscles hard as granite, hot as fire, smooth as velvet.

He’s sucking my breasts again, both. Hungrily as he spreads above me. Soon we’re all hot flesh and hands and mouths on the bed. And he’s prepping me with his fingers. I don’t need prepping; I’m so ready I can’t see, my vision is hazy, and all I know is how warm and male he smells, how much I love the way he’s breathing fast, how totally he melts me in every spot he puts his mouth on.

Then Maverick reaches out and puts on a condom. And I devour him with my eyes, my first time seeing a guy. I will never be able to love the look of one like I love the look of Maverick, naked and hard.

“I’ll make it good for you, Reese,” he promises as he stretches out his long muscles above me, and I nod breathlessly and touch the scar on his face.