Erin squeaked. “What the hell are you doing?”

He covered her, all that sleek, male flesh, his weight feeling so good on her, his cock along her ass, and one leg between her thighs. “I’m going to fuck you.”

“Oh, no, you’re not, not like this.”

“Oh, yes, I am. You want it.” He slid to one side, then traced a finger down the crease of her ass. “Exactly like this.”

“It’s disgusting.” Her heart beat faster, in anticipation as much as fear.

“You want to feel me stretch you. You want me to take you to heights you’ve never been.”

“You’re not good enough.” He was silent a moment, and she feared she’d gone too far, shot off one too many cruelties she didn’t really mean.

His tongue teased the shell of her ear, his breath caressed her, and his words made her crazy. “Your ass is mine, baby. I own it. I’m going to fuck it. And you’re going to love it.”

Warm liquid trickled between her cheeks. She shivered as he rubbed in the lube, playing with her tight hole, massaging. She clamped down to keep him out and turned her head to glare over her shoulder.

“Let me in,” he whispered. “You’ll feel better than you ever have in your life.”

He seduced her with his naughty touches and soft words. But it wouldn’t do to give in too easily. He might think she wanted this, had fantasized about him forcing her to take it this way. That was giving him far too great an advantage. “I’m going to hate it.”

He licked her cheek, kissed her ear. “But I’m going to love it, so who the fuck cares what you want.”

Oh, he was really enjoying the role of pirate. “Asshole,” she murmured. Of course, it didn’t take him down at all because her ass was exactly what he wanted.

He probed, then breached her with the tip of his finger. Oh. Oh God. It was different, unique. Maybe even good.

“No,” he muttered at her ear, “this”—he rotated his finger slowly—“is a pretty little asshole.” Then he worked his hand beneath her belly, stroked down to her clit and played her from both sides.

She gulped, suddenly beyond words. He caressed, slid deeper, backed out, stretching her, all the while taking her clit, making her burn hotter.

“I want this,” he whispered, pushing deeper once more. “I need this.” His cock was hard and pulsing along her thigh. Body half covering her, he buried his face against her neck. His skin was musky with testosterone and spicy with a hint of aftershave.

As if she weren’t even in command of her own body, her hips tilted, giving him better access to her clit and her ass. She rocked with him, rolled, let him take her with his finger in the most intimate of places.

“How does it feel?” he whispered against her ear.

“Oh God.” She couldn’t have come up with an insult if she’d used every functioning brain cell.

“It’ll be even better with my cock in there.”

She was just nerves, skin, heat, wet, grinding with him. He very well might be right about how good it would be.

“Beg me.” It almost wasn’t his voice, just an elusive tendril of smoke wafting by her, a drug beckoning her.

“Fuck me,” she whispered.

“Fuck you where?” he pushed.

“Fuck me there.”

He didn’t let up, massaging her back and front, turning her boneless.

She couldn’t hold out against the sensations. “Please,” she begged. “Force me, make me do it. Just do it.”

“Soon, baby,” he murmured. “Feel how deep my finger is.”

She felt him inside, outside, everywhere. “Now” was the only other word she could manage.

She felt him ease away, pad to the bathroom, water ran. He returned with a warm washcloth, cleansed her, soothed her, warmed her.

Reaching above her head, he tugged on the Velcro at her wrists, freed her. Her arms ached slightly. Molding his chest to her back, he folded the vibrator into her hand, his words just a breath against her ear. “Use it.” Whether he ordered or urged didn’t matter. He wrapped an arm beneath her breasts, hugged her close, then raised them both to their knees.

Her heart galloped. Her pussy pulsed. He slathered them both with lubricant, then she felt the nudge of him.

“You’re too big,” she whispered, suddenly afraid.

He leaned over her. “I won’t hurt you. You want it, you need it, take me, please.” He eased a fraction deeper until she felt full, but not good yet.

“The vibrator,” he urged, tugging her wrist.

She turned the vibrator on one-handed, the buzz filling the room.

“That’s it. Use it on your clit.”

He rocked gently with her, moving their bodies together, getting her used to him. With the first touch of the vibrator on her clit, she moaned, sensation swamping her. She eased back, taking a little more of him.

“That’s it, baby. That’s good. God, yes.”

He covered her, surrounded her, and inside, she felt him pulse, throb. “Oh yeah,” she murmured, tipping her head back.

He leaned in to suck the flesh of her neck, licked the perspiration off her skin.

“Fuck me,” she whispered. “Make me do it, force me.”

He surged forward, and she took him deeper. “Christ, you feel so good, baby, so tight.” His groan rumbled against her back, her ear, setting free an answering tremble inside her.

It was good, unlike anything, something new, something beyond. Her legs shook, her body quivered. “Harder.”

She let him take control, deeper, faster, harder inside her. The pain was past, the pleasure overpowering, the vibrator and his cock working magic.

“Oh God, oh God,” she chanted, over and over, until finally the voice seemed to be coming from someone else.

“Baby, baby, baby.”

Her orgasm rushed up and over like a tsunami. There was only his flesh quaking inside her, heat streaking through her, swamping every sense, then the roar of his climax.

She was lost. Or maybe, in this moment, she was found.

But last night was better, so good his blood was still singing. It was beyond the physical, it had grabbed hold of his heart, soothed something deep in his soul. He didn’t think she was ready to hear that, though. “What’ll you have, honey?”

Erin studied the menu, then raised just her eyes. “Half your bacon and half your toast.”

He snorted. “Forget it. Order your own.”

“Tightwad,” she muttered.

“Hey, I’m springing for breakfast.”

“Right, and I paid for the hotel. So that makes you”—she stabbed a finger in his direction—“a complete tightwad.” Then she went back to the menu.

An eavesdropper would think they were fighting, but after last night, there was an easy camaraderie between them. She’d even held his hand on the two-block walk from the hotel. Like normal people. He felt ridiculously warm and content.

When the waitress came, Erin ordered her own bacon and toast. “Well,” she said when they were alone again, “that was an exceptionally naughty evening.”

“Over the top,” he agreed, trying to downplay so she wouldn’t realize how truly immense it had been for him. He was surprised she’d actually mentioned it. In the light of day, she usually pretended the nights of sex didn’t exist.

Despite the bliss of a great orgasm and fucking fantastic sex, he’d lain awake with her in his arms, thinking, analyzing. It was an engineering term, but it was how he approached problems, whether business or emotional.

“But did you like it?” he asked. “Do you want to do it again?”

Pouring creamer and sugar into her coffee, she didn’t answer right away. Time to think, time to decide.

Sometime during last night’s musings, he’d hit on the idea that she wanted him to force her to feel. It wasn’t the sex, so much as it was the emotions she wanted. It hadn’t been that way in the beginning, when she’d first started reaching for him silently in the dark. Then, she’d sought mindlessness. He understood that. But something had changed. Maybe in Orlando; maybe it had begun even before that. The idea had been rolling around in his mind after she’d gone ballistic about the through-coat patent. Just fix it. There’d been something desperate in her words, more than a way to end an argument. The more he thought about it, the more meaning he ascribed to it.

“I don’t know.” She used the end of her spoon to trace the silvery swirls in the Formica.

“You don’t know if you liked it or you don’t know if you want to do it again?”

She shrugged, still tracing patterns on the tabletop.

She was reaching out to him even if she didn’t know it. That’s what she wanted, for him to fix things. His heart ached that what she needed most was something he could never give her. He couldn’t fix losing Jay. He only knew that making her feel emotion, any emotion, was better than letting her go on like a robot. He’d taken her that way because she’d never let him do it before, and her acceptance of it, even as she fought him verbally, her aweinspiring orgasm, was a testament to her desire to push her limits. Force me. Take care of me. They were the same thing.

Propping her elbow on the table, she laid her chin on her hand and looked at him. “Maybe now that I’ve had it, I need something else.”

Didn’t she feel the enormity of what had happened between them in that hotel room? Yes, he believed she did. That’s what drove her crazy. She wanted him to help her, fix things for her, take care of her, but she was terrified of actually letting him do it. Wanting desperately yet being equally afraid. He gave, she threw it back. He couldn’t help her with that, couldn’t force her to hold on to any steps forward they made together.

But he would not give up. He’d push at her until she had to give him something to work with. “Trust me with what you want next then.” He used the word intentionally, specifically, because he couldn’t be sure how much she truly trusted him to provide for her. There was so much difference between what you wished for and what you thought you had.

Before she could answer—and he was damn sure she was glad of it—their waitress arrived, tray balanced on her hip, and slid their plates onto the table.

After the waitress was gone, Erin slathered marmalade on her sourdough toast. He picked up a crispy piece of bacon. “Come on, Erin.” He leaned in, dropped his voice. “You know what dirty, nasty thing you want next. You’ve been thinking about it, fantasizing about it, and now you’re crazy with wanting it.”

She stared at him, toast halfway to her mouth. “You think you know me so well. You think you have me all figured out.”

He smiled, swallowing the bite of bacon, the smoky flavor delicious. “I do know you, baby. I know exactly what you had in mind last night, what you were trying to do when you blindfolded me, tied me down, and didn’t say a word.” Luckily the noise around them seemed to seal them off, and no one paid attention.

She snorted. “Oh yeah? You knew? You had no idea.”

He wondered if she had any idea what she’d been trying to accomplish. “You wanted me to doubt that it was you. You wanted me to think it was some other woman you gave me to, wanted me to say how hot it was doing someone else, just so you could slam me down in the end.”

She stared at him a long moment. “Yes. You’re exactly right,” she agreed mildly, then added without a missing beat, “can I have a bite of hash browns?”

He laughed. “I didn’t expect you to be honest about it.” He shoved his plate toward her.

Chewing the forkful of hash browns she’d scooped off his plate, she wriggled her shoulders. Then she put a finger to her lips, swallowing. “I wasn’t sure about it being a test and all until after I’d done it and I was back in the elevator.”

“So you were going to get back on BART and leave me up there to spend the night alone?”

She raised a brow, nodded her head, and smiled. “I thought the whole silence thing was very sexy.”

It would have been if she hadn’t fucked him silently in the night so many times before. She didn’t have a clue how that tore him apart. “What made you come back?”

She stabbed a small cube of toast with her fork and dipped it in his egg yoke. His chest tightened. She hadn’t eaten off his plate like this in a long time, not since they used to go down to the corner Denny’s for Sunday breakfast, where kids could eat for free. It used to piss him off how she always stole his food; now, he relished it, wanted to shove his plate at her and tell her to take everything she wanted, everything he offered.

“I came back because I didn’t have”—she glanced around—“the big O,” she mouthed.

She’d returned because it hadn’t been enough. She’d needed more than a silent quickie just as he had. But she wasn’t going to admit it.

He’d learned something essential though. “Delightful as what you planned was, from now on, I’ll be in charge.” They both needed his dominance. That was the simplicity of her greatest fantasy, to let him take care of everything.

Elbow on the table, she propped her chin on her hand. “You’re free to think you’re in charge.”

Still feisty, that was good, but she hadn’t challenged him by saying she wouldn’t play at all. Even better. “You’re free to give me suggestions,” he prompted.

“No. No suggestions.” She stole more of his hash browns. “That way if I don’t like it, I can blame you.”

Once again, she was being completely honest without even realizing how close to the truth she was about their entire relationship since they’d lost Jay.