“When did you get the nose job?” He narrowed his eyes.

Surprise shifted in her pale blue eyes. “Months ago.”

He shrugged. “We don’t have shit to talk about. Get your things and get out or I can have them delivered to you tomorrow.”

“Really, John, you act as though you had no clue as to what was going on.” She sniffed coolly. “You should have known. As perverted as you are, do you really believe any decent woman of class is going to want anything more than the bankroll backing you?”

He let his gaze drift slowly down and back up her reed-thin body. “You made a lousy whore then.”

Her lips thinned as she pulled the engagement ring from her finger and laid it calmly on the antique table next to her. “Very well, then, if that’s how you feel. Once you sober up, you’ll call.”

“Don’t bet your nose on it,” he grunted. “Get the hell out of here, Marlena, before I say something I’ll regret.”

“No doubt you will,” she sighed. “Really, John, you should do something about those nasty roots showing. Just because you come from hick stock doesn’t mean you have to live down to the name.”

“Beats living down to yours,” he informed her caustically. “Have fun with Gerard. Maybe he’ll like the ice-queen act.”

Her lips curled. “He didn’t have the ice queen, darling. I was there for fun. You were the responsibility.”

“Lucky him,” he drawled. “Now go ruin his perfect little life instead.”

Her tinkling laughter grated on his nerves as she turned and walked out the way she’d come. Damn. As relieved as he was that the engagement was over, the taste of betrayal was still thick in his mouth. His best fucking friend and fiancée. How classic was that? The cliché was enough to drag a mocking snort from him.

He stared at the whisky then poured another drink.

He’d no more than shot that one back when, son of a bitch, the door opened again. He was seriously going to have to collect the keys he had given to the penthouse. This was getting out of control.

The place was fucking Grand Central Station tonight, and he’d just about had his fill of it.

And there she was.

Imp.

The little demon sprite.

The torment of his life.

Too fucking young, but getting a head start on experience.

She’d been running with a promiscuous set of friends for years. Friends that had no problem bragging about the privileges she allowed.

He didn’t blame her for them. Hell, she was a beautiful woman. She was almost family. That was the problem. She was “almost” family. That tormented him, because he was damned for wanting exactly what she had gifted those other men with. He wanted that and more. So much more that he kept as far away from her as possible.

He didn’t hold it against her. Hell, he’d done worse in his sexual past, but it burned in his gut like a sore because he wasn’t one of the lucky ones. How fucking brutal was that?

“Go home, Sierra.” He was too drunk for this. He’d had his life nicely planned out, and as much as he felt relief that the engagement was over, still, it had been his plan, and she’d fucked it up. And he was just drunk enough that his logic capabilities weren’t at their strongest.

“I don’t want you to hate me.” She was braver than Marlena. She actually stepped into the main room and faced him boldly.

With her hard nipples.

With her lush lips and hungry slate gray eyes.

“Why the hell did you have to make it your business?” He growled.

The same reason he would have made it his business, of course. It was happening, it was wrong, and they were friends. Close. They hungered for each other, and they both fought it.

“Because I care about you,” she whispered. “You’re my friend, John. When Gerard asked me to the restaurant, I knew what he was doing because your mother had told me you and Marlena were supposed to be there tonight. They were going to stand and lie to your face. They were rubbing your nose in it, and I hated that.”

Her hands were clasped tightly together, sincerity and that damned hunger flickering in her eyes.

“Bullshit,” he snapped. “You’re not my fucking friend, Sierra. Friends gloat later, they don’t give a fuck if you make a mistake while you’re making it.”

He should know. Other than possibly Sierra, it was the only type of friend he’d ever had.

Her lips thinned. He liked the lush look better.

“Then marry her already,” she charged back in anger. “If you’re so pissed at me, get down on your knees and beg her back. I’m sure she’ll be more than happy to watch you beg.”

“Fuck you, Sierra!” And only God knew how bad he wanted to fuck her.

His cock was pounding, hard and desperate. She always affected him like this, and now the alcohol was only intensifying it. He never drank around Sierra for a reason. It totally screwed with his self-control.

“Why did you even fucking care?” He couldn’t get it out of his mind. No one else would have told him, and he knew Gerard. Gerard hadn’t hidden it from anyone but John. And of all his so-called “friends,” only Sierra had dared to reveal the truth in a manner neither Marlena nor Gerard could deny it.

“Because I care about you, dummy,” she burst out in exasperation. “Do I have to beat that into your head?”

It was more. He’d seen it in her eyes at the restaurant and he saw it now.

He saw something he didn’t want to see. It went beyond a sensual awareness or hunger for him. It went beyond what he had wanted to see in the past.

“You’re jealous,” he accused her softly, the truth slapping him in the face. “You think you’re in love with me? Have you lost your mind, Sierra?”

Incredulity echoed in his voice even as it pulsed through his mind. He hadn’t seen it before. Why hadn’t he seen that emotion in her eyes before?

“I did that a long time ago.” Her voice was husky now, her eyes glittering with dampness. With tears. Fuck, she was not going to cry on him.

“Don’t you dare cry.” He moved to her, jerking her against him.

Big mistake, but there she was, against him. So fucking young and too damned tiny. And he was hungry for her. That hunger had pulsed inside him for too long, burned in his gut and tormented him. He didn’t want this, not with Sierra. With the only person in his life that he had counted on as a friend.

“I didn’t want this with you,” he snarled down at her. She was too soft for what he wanted and he knew it. Too vulnerable, even if she was experienced enough for it. But he was drunk. He was hard for her. And he’d fought it for too damned long.

“Why?” The vulnerability in that single word struck at his heart. As though he had just broken all her dreams, all her hopes. “Why not me, John?”

“Because damn you, I didn’t want to hurt you.”

He didn’t give her a chance to retort. His head lowered, his lips taking hers quickly, parting the lush curves as he slid one hand into the riotous curls that surrounded her face and gripped the soft strands to hold her to him.

The silken curls wrapped around his fingers as though hugging him to her. Like living strands of heat, they caressed his flesh, stroked it.

The taste of her, the adrenaline and hunger coursing through his veins, only made him drunker. Drunk on her. He’d known touching her would be hazardous, and how right he had been.

Growling at the surge of lust tearing through him, he dropped the empty glass to the floor and gripped the slender strap of her dress to drag it over her arm. It would only go so far. He couldn’t find the zipper. It wasn’t at her back. He didn’t want to look for it.

The sound of the material rending didn’t faze him; what it did do was give him entrance to the bodice of her dress and the swollen curves of her breasts, the tight, hard nipples topping them.

“John?” Pleasure and confusion filled her voice now. “Oh, God, John, what are you doing?”

What the hell did she think he was doing? Giving them both what they were hungering for.

His lips slid down her neck, moving for those tight little berries. The feel of them against his tongue sent a groan tearing from his chest.

Sucking one into his mouth, he laved it with his tongue and loved it with his mouth as he lowered his hand again, this time to his trousers.

If he didn’t release his cock, he was going to go insane. It pressed against the zipper of his pants, demanding to be set free. Like a ravenous beast, it throbbed and pulsed at the confinement, silently demanding attention.

Demanding her mouth, her fingers, the lush, hot folds of her wet pussy. He groaned at the thought of fucking her. Of pumping inside her, deep, hard, feeling the snug tissue rippling over his dick.

As he released her nipple, his lips pulled back.

His hand tightened in her hair as his gaze centered on her lips and he pressed her downward.

God, he wanted her mouth on his dick. Her tongue licking over the bulbous crest, her lips covering it, her mouth sucking him inside.

He wanted it with a hunger he had never wanted anything with before. He’d lost all reason, all logic. Objectivity was simply a thing of the past. Nothing existed now but getting his cock in her mouth.

Sierra lost her breath at the silent demand in his face, his gaze, as he tugged her lower. She knew what he wanted. With one hand he gripped her fingers and dragged them to the heavy length of his cock as it speared from the opening of his trousers. Long, thick, the heavy crest dark and flushed. It throbbed, glistened with dampness, and caused her mouth to water at the thought of the taste of him. Her fingers wouldn’t wrap around the width of the pulsing flesh, like silk over iron, it heated her palm and made her ache for the feel of it.

She could feel her pussy growing wetter, hotter. The ache between her thighs, her hardened clit, pulsed with the need for touch in ways it had never done before.

“I’ve dreamed of you sucking my dick,” he groaned as she went slowly to her knees in front of him. “Nights of it, Sierra. So many nights spent sweating at the thought of having you.”

He had no idea what he was doing to her—he couldn’t. He had no clue she had never done this before; all he had were the rumors he believed of her wild ways. Rumors she knew he believed because he teased her over it. Always gently, always with affection but always with a glimmer of some darker emotion in his eyes.

He believed them though. How surprised would he be when he learned she was a virgin?

Kneeling in front of him, her fingers caressing his hard flesh, she swallowed tightly, fighting to keep her mind clear enough to please him. She wanted to go hungry on him though. She wanted to lose the overwhelming need to simply devour him.

“Give it to me, Sierra,” he demanded, his violet-blue eyes darker, glittering with intoxicated lust.

His lips were fuller, his face flushed beneath his darkened flesh, his eyes glittering. She had never seen such need, such arousal in a man before. It should frighten her, but this was John. This was the man she had ached for since she’d been old enough to realize what aching was.

She was shaking at the sight of the thick, demanding crest, her chest tightening with excitement and fear. She’d never, ever touched a man like this before. Could she actually do it?

Leaning forward, she touched the tip with her tongue, licking over the dampness that collected on the wide head. The salty, stormy taste of him exploded against her tongue, and she swore she was becoming as drunk as he was.

Her fingers caressed the thick shaft, and she rubbed her tongue over the head as she fought past her fear and inexperience. She wanted to memorize this moment in time. Every taste, every feeling, every sensation.

“Damn you, Sierra, suck me. Let me fuck your mouth before I die for it.”

Her lips parted for him, a moan slipping from her throat as he filled her mouth, sliding slowly inside to burn against her tongue.