Whatever the battle was about, she watched as he finally made up his mind. Turning along another hall, he dragged her to the nearest room, opened the door, and pushed her inside ahead of him.

Shadows surrounded her, but there was enough light falling through the floor-to-ceiling windows to identify the room as a sort of living area. A television, couch, sofa, and two recliners took up the center of the room, while antiques appeared to occupy the space along the walls.

“What the hell are you doing here, Lyrica? I can’t believe you’d actually show up at a party like this,” he growled, following as she crossed the room to one of the huge, uncovered windows that looked out on the lake.

She watched his expression in the glass, her heart tripping at the hunger in his face, in his dark gaze. He was watching her as though he was dying for her.

“And what kind of party is it?” she asked. Barely admitted anger that he hadn’t visited, hadn’t checked up on her, ignited inside her.

She was crazy. She should have never allowed him to drag her up here.

“A free-for-all fuck night,” he threw back to her. “You know what kind of parties Collier has.”

“He’s as much of a head case as you are.” She curled her lips angrily. “Tell me, do you share your bimbos or just your taste for bimbos?”

“Don’t push me, Lyrica. You should remember what happens when I get too damned hungry for you,” he reminded her, his voice harsh. “Why are you here?”

She turned to him slowly, aware that his arms bracketed her, his palms flat against the windows as she stared up at him.

“I’m here for my free-for-all fuck night,” she said sweetly. “I wanted to try the bimbo role out before I actually accepted the position.”

Something flared in his eyes. Heat and hunger, anger, and male demand. And for a second, she wondered exactly what she’d managed to free inside the man whose control always seemed so tightly held, so intent.

—

Graham was being pushed too far, too close to the limit of his control. The hunger that raged through him was wearing at the determination to keep his hands off her. Watching her sitting there with Sam Bryce, the other woman watching Lyrica with the same interest and hunger men watched her with, had been too much for him.

Sam was a friend, a damned good friend, but if she touched Lyrica then she’d become an enemy he could never forgive, just as any man would.

Lyrica was his.

That thought shocked him. She was stronger than he was. Strong enough to say no, to stay away. And even knowing he should do the same, still he couldn’t quite shake the hunger raging through him.

The need for her only grew daily, dreams of her haunted his nights, and he swore his cock had been hard since the day he met her. Definitely harder since her far too short stay at his home.

“Lyrica, you shouldn’t be out like this, honey.” He sighed, trying like hell to keep from actually touching her. “You should be more careful right now and you know it.”

Shadows haunted her eyes at his statement, raged in the emerald depths, along with a vulnerable need that sank tender claws inside his chest.

She shook her head once. “They weren’t after me. The investigation . . .”

“Lyrica, don’t,” he whispered. “You know there was more to that, just as I do.”

“No. If there was, Dawg would have—”

“Put a tail on you just like he did?” He sighed. “Even I’ve seen your bodyguard, sweetheart. Dawg knows better. He simply can’t prove it.”

“Or maybe you just can’t accept the truth,” she said accusingly as she lifted her hands from her sides to push against his chest. Not that he moved, despite the strength she put behind her insistence that he do just that. “Sorry, Graham, I’m not so interested in being bimbo number twelve. Try me next time, why don’t ya?”

“Damn you! You’re so stubborn you’d walk into a bullet before you’d give in, wouldn’t you, Lyrica?”

Jerking her against him, one hand at her hip, the other in her hair, tugging her head back, he glared down at her, knowing he was destroying himself just as he’d destroy her innocence.

“I’m stubborn? Oh hell no, you have me so beat. At least I can admit when I want something. Just because it’s the worst thing I could want doesn’t mean I’m not honest enough to admit to wanting it.” She just couldn’t let it go. She couldn’t stop, couldn’t understand how ragged his control was. “Damn you, Graham. Damn you for making me want what we both know I can’t have.”

The pain that filled her emerald eyes struck at his chest, at the guilt he couldn’t seem to shed, no matter how he tried.

“Do you really believe I think you’re anything like any other woman I’ve had in my bed?” he rasped, the sound of his own voice almost shocking him. “You know better than that. Damn you, Lyrica, I’ve never led you to believe such a thing.”

“I think you’d cut your own dick off before you’d ever let any woman mean anything to you, Graham,” she retorted angrily. “Especially me.”

The sound of the explicit words falling from her lips had that organ swelling impossibly harder, throbbing furiously.

Lowering his head slowly he watched the slumberous arousal that began to transform her face, erasing the anger as her lips parted. But god, he didn’t dare take what she offered. If he kissed her, the battle would be lost.

Only sheer, desperate will kept him from taking those pretty, parted lips. Moving to her ear instead, he nuzzled the sensitive flesh just beneath the lobe, inhaling the scent of her as his body tightened further.

“So innocent,” he whispered, his free hand gripping her hip and pulling her closer to the fiercely engorged length of his arousal as it throbbed behind the zipper of his jeans. “Too innocent.”

Sharp little nails dug into the thin cotton of his shirt to prick at the flesh of his sides as she drew in a hard, desperate breath.

“You don’t know that,” she said roughly.

“I’ve had my tongue up that sweet pussy, baby. I know you’re a virgin.” As he spoke, Graham turned her quickly, moving her until he was pressing her against the wall.

The shadows of the room he’d pulled her into surrounded them, locking them into an intimate swirl of heat, hunger, and music pulsing from the rooms below them.

—

“I told you I was a virgin, asshole,” she snapped, though the hunger raging through her made her voice far too soft, too needy.

“You didn’t have to tell me,” he admitted softly. “I knew. It was what was in your voice when you told me, Lyrica. All the dreams of happily ever after and prince charming. I’m no prince charming and happily ever after doesn’t happen, baby. But that doesn’t mean we can’t mean something to each other. That we can’t steal at least the edge of the fairy tale.”

The edge of the fairy tale?

She wanted it all. The handsome prince, the castle in the air . . .

No, she wanted the fairy tale where Graham loved her just as deeply, just as fiercely as she loved him.

—

Her voice was dazed, her body melting against him, melting for him.

How much was she melting? he wondered, the craven demands sweeping through his senses as lust, barely controlled, raged through his body in waves of desperation.

“Dawg will kill me.” He nipped at her lobe, lifting her against him until he could push one heavy thigh between hers.

The thin material of her panties beneath the light chiffon of her dress and the denim of his jeans were no barrier between him and the sweet heat of her intimate flesh.

“Graham.” The soft exclamation of need filled the air around him and clawed at the fragile threads holding his hunger under control.

Barely in control.

“I could eat you up right here.” He flexed his knee against the sensitive pad of her sex, grinding gently, working against the tender bundle of nerve endings hiding there. “I could spread you out and make you scream for me, Lyrica. Until you realize how hungry I am. Until you realize nothing can prepare you for an animal. One far too hungry and far too desperate for every perverted desire one man could have for a woman.”