“Tell me what you want,” he growled, and I grew wet.

“You,” I breathed, caught up in him and the heavy music notes flooding my senses. His scent, his touch, him.

“Me what?”

“You. I want you inside me,” I whimpered as my knees buckled. Hunter’s hands clenched around my waist, his fingertips digging so deeply it nearly had me cringing with pain.

“Erin, from the first moment, I…I should have told you…fuck.” His eyes shot up and caught mine. I stood there with quiet anticipation, until his eyes seemed to harden with resolve, and he finally spoke. “I want to shoot you tonight.”

My eyes widened before my head did a slow nod in ascent. I couldn’t speak, could hardly breathe, but I could agree. There was a flickering awareness in my tummy that I would soon know what it felt like to be on the opposite side of his lens.

Hunter swayed my hips back and forth in his warm palms, his thumbs hooked in the waistband of my shorts, and with his lips at my ear, he whispered the words and hummed along to the tune while the cotton slipped down my thighs to the floor.

Within minutes, my body felt like smooth silk and melted butter as my hips swayed of their own volition and Hunter’s palms disappeared. Seconds later, he was laying me back on the inky black couch. My heart ached and my stomach fluttered as he twisted from his crouch on the floor, looking at me through the different angles of his lens. He snapped pictures, tipping his head to one side or another, that slight frown I’d grown to adore appearing on his face as he lost himself in thought.

“We need to take more off.” His eyes bore into mine and gone was the mischievous sparkle that was normally present. “Do you mind?” Hunter’s crooked smile glanced from the vee at my thighs up my body to land on my eyes. “Just the panties.”

I breathed in a few slow, torturous breaths. Just the panties. Whoever heard of just the panties? My nerves screamed for oxygen and the relief that it carried, the much needed lifeblood that would allow my brain to function normally again.

“Okay.” My stomach flipped painfully, unsure whether to run to the bathroom and toss up my lunch or wrap myself in his strong, golden arms and ride him until we were both coming and screaming and sated. “Okay,” I said again more confidently and hooked my thumbs in my panties.

“Let me.” His deep voice carried in the cool air between us, and my stomach coiled and unfurled again, slow circles twisting up my insides with nervous bliss. The pads of his fingers hooked beneath my panties for the second time today, and my thighs rocked back and forth, waiting and wanting like a whore.

“Still,” he whispered, and without reservation, I did what I was told. I held my breath as he peeled the black fabric down my thighs and slowly revealed my glistening pussy to his eyes. His lower lip pulled taut between his teeth as his eyes flicked open and closed a moment before turning up to me.

“Perfect,” he murmured and then pulled a string of pearls from his pocket.

“So perfect,” he breathed as he draped the string along the damp folds between my legs. The cool stones tingled and buzzed as arousal surged and pulsed.

“Do it for me,” he instructed, and without being told, I knew what he wanted. I took the string of freshwater stones from his fingers and trailed them across my core, dusting them along my abdomen, coiling them in the dip of my navel. And all along, he snapped away, hundreds of pictures I guessed by the time we were done and from every single angle I could have imagined.

I relaxed when he finally sat back on his ass, legs crossed and eyes riveted to the LCD screen, the beeping of the button as he reviewed the photos he’d taken the only sound over the drugging music.

“You’re fucking stunning, Princess,” he murmured and wrapped me in his warm arms, pulling me into him. “I’ve been warring with myself,” he said as he drew me towards the bed.

“Why?” The breathless word fell from my lips as my brain built up with pleasurable excitement.

“I’m bad for you, Erin.” His hands cupped my jaw, his lips hovering against my own. “But then I think maybe I’m the best thing for you.” His fingers kneaded at my waist and ran delicious circuits, lighting a current of lust in my body.

“What are you talking about?” I struggled to grasp his meaning. He was complex, his words always brewing with hidden meaning and innuendo. Was he good for me? Wasn’t he? Did I care?

“Soon. I’ll tell you soon,” he said, and with both his hands wrapped in my hair, I fell for him.

His hard body caged me in on the cotton duvet, fingers digging into my sides, hands running between my thighs, and lips everywhere. His tongue flicked at the hollow of my waist, licked around my navel, trailed along the concavity of my ribs, and then scraped at the lace covering one nipple.

“God, yes,” I whispered on wasted breaths as my fingertips trailed up his arms and over the dark ink that I’d been yearning to touch.

Raised flesh flowed under my skin as I roamed his biceps. Across his shoulders I found more. Over the inked forearms, still more.

He was covered in scars.

My eyes shot open as a ball of pain lodged in my throat. Every single tattoo that decorated his body covered a mark that he’d wanted to forget. Or remember. Was he living through the pain every time he saw them in the mirror?

My fingertips tightened around his upper arms, and I forced my mind to focus on him as his large hands roamed my curves while the music pumped on. Up my thighs he kneaded and placed kisses until finally he pulled the lacy fabric down my breasts and his lips attached in long hard sucks. I arched and clutched at his head and moaned before his fingers slid between my legs and massaged between my soaked folds. The muscles of my core bunched and tightened as my hips thrust off the bed while Hunter’s expert fingers worked me to a frenzy.

“Cum on me, Princess,” he hummed in my ear before one finger slid deep inside, curving and massaging relentlessly while his thumb turned figure-eights at my clit. My breathing grew shallow at his words, and just as I was about to unravel, his fingers were gone and his palms were fisting at my hips as his tongue drove into my pussy and licked in feverish strokes.

I rocked my hips, but his heavy hands held me in place. I couldn’t move if I tried. I didn’t want to. With my hands in his hair, fire pulsed through my body and strung my muscles into tightly bunched masses of useless energy. Hunter’s hand kneaded at my breast and pinched and twisted at my nipple as the ripples of pleasure burned from my toes to the hairs standing up at my neck.

The world swam, and before I could think twice, I was tucked under Hunter’s arm, my head across his broad chest. “Go to sleep, Princess.” His hand stroked delicately across my hair as he pressed his nose into my waves and inhaled.

“I still want you,” I mumbled, drunk with the promise of sex.

“You have me,” came his simple reply. “Sleep.”

I sighed, my eyes falling closed, one palm spread across his chest and fingering the dog tags that lay beneath the cotton. And for the first time, I felt him. Not the mystery, not the boss, not the man I pined over and rubbed myself to between the sheets at night. Despite my fucked up history in life and love, I felt him, and despite it all, it didn’t terrify me.

eleven

I woke snug under Hunter’s arm, an alarm bleating in my ear. We were departing from LAX at six and by the time we were back in Chicago, we were cranky and exhausted. I was looking forward to crashing in my own comfy bed when Hunter’s hand slipped up my thigh in the backseat of his car. A corner of his lips lifted and his eyes warmed. I fell into them a little more then. I saw nothing of the bad boy he projected to the world, and everything of the genuine, warm, and compassionate man that sat across the leather from me.