“Tough day?”

I almost jump out of my skin. Colton steps out of the shadowed alcove, and it takes everything I have to remember to breathe as he leans against the wall behind him. My eyes greedily scrape over every defined edge—every inch of pure maleness—of his body, covered only in a pair of red board shorts hanging low on his hips. My gaze roams up his chest and over inked reminders to take in the lopsided ghost of a smile, but it’s when our eyes lock that I catch the spark right before the dynamite detonates.

And from one breath to the next, predicated by a carnal groan, he is on me—body crashing into mine, pressing me against the door, mouth doing so much more than kissing. He’s taking, claiming, branding me with unfettered need and reckless abandon. I immediately reach up and fist the hair at the back of his neck while one of his hands does the same to me, the other is on my hip, his desperate fingers digging into my willing flesh. My breasts pillow and pebble against the firmness of his chest, the warmth of his skin adding heat to the blaze building inside of me.

An inferno of need rises inside me that I don’t think will ever be sated.

We move in a series of fervent reactions, his hand holds my curls hostage so my mouth is at the mercy of his dexterous lips. So his tongue may delve and tantalize and taste like a man savoring his last meal, like a man saying fuck off to his restraint and accepting gluttony as a welcome sin.

My hands graze down the blades of his shoulders as he gasps—so grateful to have the chance to feel again—before he hikes my leg up and over his hip. I moan, the change in position allowing his rock hard erection to be perfectly placed against my aching core. I throw my head back against the door as the muted friction swamps me, and Colton takes advantage of my newly exposed neck. His mouth is on the tender flesh in the beat of a heart, his tongue sliding against nerves, bringing them to life and then simultaneously singeing them with desire.

My fingers grab onto flexing biceps as his hands make quick work of the button on my jeans. I wiggle my hips when his hands slide between the fabric and my anticipatory flesh. I step out of them as his fingers roam, feathering over my swollen folds to tempt but not take. His other hand palms my backside, a barrier between me and the door, and presses me further into him.

Need swells to unfathomable heights as the parasitic strains of desperation consume every part of my body.

“Colton,” I groan, wanting—no needing—him to complete our connection. My hands grope his torso and tear apart the Velcro on his board shorts. I hear the hiss of his breath as my hands find and encircle his tortured length. His whole body tenses at the feel of my skin on his.

“Ry …” He pants my name as I slide my hand up and down him. His hands find their way beneath my top, stripping it off me and making fast work of my bra clasp. “Rylee,” he says between gritted teeth. He’s so overwhelmed with the sensations ricocheting through him that he stops kissing me, stops moving his hands over my flesh, and braces them against the door on either side of my head. He presses his forehead against mine as he vibrates with the need coursing through him, his breath coming out in short, sharp breaths against my lips.

He says something so quietly I can’t hear it underneath the heavy breathing filling the otherwise silent room. I move my hands again, enjoying the feeling of him trembling against me. “Stop,” he says quietly against my lips, and this time I hear him. I instantly stop and move back to look at him, fearing that his head is hurting. And I am immediately unnerved by the sight of his eyes squeezed shut.

He draws in a pained breath and opens his eyes slowly to meet mine, as his fingers gently knead my ass. “I’m fucking desperate to bury myself—feel, lose, find myself—in you, Ry …” he says, the strain in his neck visible and his desperation audible. “You deserve soft and slow, baby, but all I’m going to be able to give you is hard and fast because it’s been so fucking long since I’ve had you.”

My God the man is so damn sexy, his admission such a turn on, that I don’t think he realizes I don’t care about soft and slow. My body is strung so tight—emotions, nerves, willpower—that a single touch from him will undoubtedly break me, shatter me into a million fucking pieces of pleasure that oddly will make me whole again.

I angle my head up to him, lean in, and brush my lips to his. I hear his pained intake of breath, feel the tension in his lips as I pull gently on his bottom one from between my teeth. When I pull back, I meet his lust-laden eyes.

“I want you,” I whisper to him, one hand wrapped around his iron length and the other fisted tight in the hair at his nape, so he can feel the intensity of my desire. “Any way I can have you. Hard, fast, soft, slow, standing, sitting—it doesn’t matter so long as you’re the one buried in me.”

He stares at me for a beat, disbelief warring with the need raging in his eyes. I can see him try to rein it in, can feel him tremble with need, and know the instant his resolve crumbles. His mouth meets mine—bruising lips and melding tongues—as he takes, tastes, and tempts as only he can. Strong hands map the lines of my torso, thumbs brushing the underside of my breasts already heavy with need, before descending back down the curve of my hips.

If I thought the seeds of desire planted before had bloomed, I have never been more wrong because right now—right now—I’m a garden of need.

He grows even harder in my hand as I rub my thumb over the moisture at his crest and am rewarded with a groan from deep in his throat. My other hand scratches up the skin of his back as my lips brand his with just as much fervor. In an instant, Colton has his hands on my hips, lifting me up and pressing my back against the door. My legs try to wrap around his waist but he holds me up, suspended so the one connection I want the most isn’t made, so the steeled length of him against my thighs is a torturous tease to my begging apex.

He sucks in a breath as I reach between my legs and grip him, wanting to control the man who is uncontrollable. Needing him in the worst way. The best way. In any way.

His eyes flicker with some undecipherable emotion, but I’m so pent up, so preoccupied with what’s going to happen in the next few moments I don’t even give a second thought to what it is.

I release him momentarily and reach between my legs to wet my fingers with the pool of moisture within before encircling his crest and coating it, preparing him physically and showing him figuratively what he does to me, and what exactly I want from him. And my little demonstration weakens all of his restraint.

His fingers dig into my hips and lift me up a little higher as I line him up before he pulls me back down and onto him. We both cry out as our connection is made. As my wet heat stretches past its limits to accommodate his invasion.

And it feels like it’s been so long since he’s filled me, my body has forgotten the pleasurable burn his presence can evoke. “My God,” I breathe as my body takes him in. “I’m so tight,” I tell him, chalking it up to the fact that it’s been over three weeks since we’ve been intimate.

“No, baby,” Colton says, mirth dancing in his eyes as he stills his hips so I can adjust. “I’m just that big.”

The laughter fills my mind but never makes it to my lips before I see a flash of his cocky grin and then his mouth is on mine again. But this time as his kiss claims mine, his hips begin to move, hands begin to guide, and his cock begins to stroke over every attuned inch within my nerve-laden walls. He is in complete control of our movements, our motions, our escalation of sensations.

I lift my head up from its leaning position against the door and take in the sight of him. His own eyes are closed, lips slightly parted, hair mussed from my hands, and shoulder muscles rippling as he moves us in rhythmic motion.