Brenna dressed down even more than last night—Damon had told her the club they were going to wasn’t much more than a hole in the wall on the south side of town, so she took advantage of the situation, given that she’d already pretty much worn everything in her stylish new A&R rep wardrobe. Damon also asked if they could take her car tonight instead of a cab, which she didn’t mind—but she let him drive, not particularly wanting to navigate the traffic on Las Vegas Boulevard.

When they walked into a small, dark building called Lefty’s just after nine, she felt right at home in her simple black tank and jeans. Of course, Damon’s usual jeans and vintage tee—tonight’s featured the Doors—seemed to fit in anywhere. A few people at the club recognized him, but the beer-and-peanuts crowd was friendly and thrilled to have someone they considered a celebrity in their midst.

Over two Coors, they watched and listened to a band called the Outsiders, which featured a pink-haired girl with nose piercings, backed up by four garden-variety headbangers in their late thirties. The tip on the band, she learned, had actually come from Anthony, last night, while she’d been changing clothes, yet she and Damon quickly agreed that while the Outsiders were a decent bar band, they’d likely never find fame and fortune.

As they departed the bar only an hour after arriving, Brenna found herself reflecting on the previous night. Until Anthony’s name had come up, the memory of Caligula’s had seemed more like a dream than something that had really happened. The pleasure had been unsurpassed—and not just physical pleasure but the intense joy of feeling so bold and brave, so much like a free sexual creature, set free by Damon.

And as they drove through the darkness—the car soon leaving the retail and residential area for a landscape more sparse and empty—she thought about the fact that had she done something so spontaneous, so extreme, with any other man she’d ever met, she’d be swimming in doubt now, worried sick that he would see her differently than he did before, that he would no longer respect her. But with Damon, there simply were no worries.

She knew what they had was temporary, but she also knew it was more than purely physical, that he truly liked her and maybe even cared for her. And that he was sincerely gratified to see her reveling in her sexuality so completely.

“Um, where are we going?” she asked as the headlights cut through the night, revealing that they’d abandoned the city completely now—for the desert. On either side of the road, she saw nothing but dry earth dotted with low green-brown bushes, and a moment ago a tumbleweed had even gone rolling across the two-lane highway.

“Here,” he replied lowly as he eased the car off onto a side road that was actually nothing more than a dirt path.

“Um, where is here? Since this kinda looks like nowhere.”

He stopped the car, turning to peer at her, the dashboard lights illuminating his expression. She’d seldom seen him look so serious. “I guess I just…wanted to be alone with you tonight. Really alone. Not just in the suite, but…away from everything.”

Brenna didn’t answer, because she didn’t know what to say. She’d worked pretty hard to keep the parameters of their relationship straight in her mind. Even though she’d fallen in love with him, she’d known it was going nowhere. Even if he did care about her, she’d understood that it was not romance.

This, though, sounded strangely like romance.

He let his gaze drop briefly, a slightly self-deprecating grin stealing over his face as he raised his eyes back to hers. “Is this weird? Or just…boring? After everything else this week, all the other places we’ve fucked? Is it strange that I brought you out here? That I want to be inside you with no one else around, no other distraction—just me and you?”

She swallowed, hard. She’d never heard him speak quite so tenderly—or ever sound even remotely sheepish. “No,” she managed to whisper. “Not at all. I…like it.”

Because he’d been right last night—no matter how wild or brazen she became, she would still always appreciate a loving, caring, romantic man.

“Come outside with me,” he said. “I want to be outside with you, feel the night with you.”

As Brenna walked with Damon into the stark desert landscape, she began to experience that tiny feeling, that way you could feel standing at the shore peering out over the vast ocean, the way she’d heard people felt at the Grand Canyon. It was like being immersed wholly in nature, forced to feel it, see it. Even in the dark, the rims of the mountains in the distance were visible in dim silhouette, the sky above just a shade lighter in midnight blue. A warm breeze stirred the night air around them.

She’d likened the “Grand Canyon feeling” to Vegas in a different way upon her arrival here, but this…this was so much deeper, better. She realized she wanted to be alone with him, too.

Finally, Damon stopped and turned to face her. “I like being out here. No lights, no noises—nothing but you.” Then he lifted his hands to her face and pressed his mouth to hers. It was as hot and arousing as the first kiss he’d ever given her—in the closet at Fetish—and she immediately needed something else.

“Fuck me,” she breathed more gently than she’d known such words could leave her.

And as Damon drew her to her knees on the desert floor, as he slowly pushed up her top and bra and kissed her breasts, as he gently peeled off her jeans and his own and eased his way into her warm, wanting body, she realized she’d never known fucking could be so sweet.

They moved together, slowly at first, but then harder—she lifted against his cock, her hips bucking, seeking that hot friction she loved. And he kissed her as he slid in and out of her, kissed her and caressed her and made her feel worshipped from head to toe.

“Ah, God—you feel so damn good tonight,” he said on a heated breath. “Your naked pussy’s so soft and smooth when I slide in.”

Mmm, she’d forgotten that she might feel a bit new, different to him now. It turned her on just to think about it.

“You feel better than anyone, ever,” he went on.

And her chest contracted at his words. “Ever?” she managed. Now he fucked her slowly again, his erection seeming to stretch to impossible lengths inside her.

“Ever,” he repeated. Then he whispered, “You’re the only woman besides Angie I’ve ever fucked without a condom.”

The statement left her stupefied—for multiple reasons.

He hadn’t been wearing a condom. How the hell had she missed that? She’d realized, of course, that he hadn’t, but why hadn’t it alarmed her? Too much time married, feeling perennially safe in that way, she supposed. And she’d been too consumed by all that was happening this week. So what did this mean? Had they made a fatal mistake? And why? Why was he not wearing a condom?

“I’m on the pill, you know,” she reminded him, peering up into those beautiful eyes, “but that doesn’t protect from…”

He lifted one warm palm to her cheek, still moving ever so slowly inside her. “Don’t worry, babe. I’m safe. Because like I said, I’ve always been careful. Always. And I know you’re safe just because…I know you’re safe.” He smiled softly.

Beneath him, still soaking up the friction he created with his sweet cock, she bit her lip. “Why? Why did you not…?”

He brushed his mouth across hers. “It was an accident at first. But after that…you felt so amazing, and I just…wanted to be that close to you. Nothing between us. Nothing.”

She pulled in her breath, utterly amazed by the depth of his tenderness. And by what she could have sworn she’d heard in his words. The same thing she felt. Love.

Although maybe she was crazy. Maybe she was reading too much into it. Maybe this was just…his way of ending it. Tonight was their last night together, after all. Their last night in Sin City.

Yet she couldn’t help remembering that tonight, he’d put a little distance between them and the city of sin.

“I don’t want this to end,” he told her, his voice deep, gravelly.

Oh God. Had she heard that right? “Wh-what do you mean?”

He combed his fingers through her hair. “Just because we’re headed home to L.A. there’s no reason we can’t keep this good thing going, Brenna.”

“But I thought you…I mean…”

Again, he kissed her. “Yeah. Well, usually I don’t. But maybe now I do. I can’t make you promises—I haven’t been in a real relationship in a lot of years. But I don’t think I can be with you and not want you. I don’t think I can see you as just a friend.”

Brenna feared her heart would explode through her chest. Had he really just made her dreams come true? Really just told her this wasn’t ending? “You have no idea how happy that makes me.”

“Then you feel the same way? You don’t want this to stop?”

“God, yes, I feel exactly the same way. I…I love you.”

Oh no, what had she just said? It had just come out, unstoppable! Stupid, stupid, stupid.

But then Damon’s mouth covered hers again, and this time his tongue twined around hers, and her desire seemed to double somehow in that moment, making her pull him closer, wrap her arms around him as tightly as she could. And when finally the kiss ended, Damon leaned down near her ear and whispered the sweetest words she’d ever heard. “I think I’m falling in love with you, too.”

“Oh. Oh God,” she said, peering up at his beautifully handsome face.

And almost convulsively, she pumped against him, hard, needing to feel him still deeper. She didn’t even care if she came—she just wanted to feel him, filling her up. “Come in me,” she breathed, desperately begging him. “Come in me, hard.”

She needed to make it happen, needed to draw that pleasure from him—and she needed him to leave part of himself inside her.

“Oh yeah,” he groaned. “Oh yeah—I can’t stop. I’m coming in you. I’m coming deep inside your sweet little pussy.” And he thrust hard, hard, hard, pressing her ass to the ground, somehow making her smell the dry scent of the desert more, feel the moonlight more intensely.

No sex in her life had ever left her more satisfied. In a different way than last night or the night before. That had been so physically intense, and the mental part had been about her, about her daring, about her feelings for Damon. But this—this was about him. About him loving her. And about her wanting to give him pleasure so very freely, without any want or need of her own.

Although a moment later, he apologized. “I’m sorry, babe. I didn’t make you come.”

“I don’t mind,” she whispered, smiling up at him. “I couldn’t feel any better than I do right now anyway.”