Her legs trembled atop his. He stood, letting her stumble backward. Her breasts bounced, reminding him what she’d come to him for. Certainly not to hear his fucking sob story.

“If you’re smart, you’ll run while you still can.” His warning was valid. He was losing his grip on humanity. On the line between morally acceptable and hideously reprehensible.

She remained rooted where she stood.

“Can’t say I didn’t warn you. Time to pay the price for that pound of flesh. Bend over the bed, cowgirl.”

She did as he’d said, and the view was enough to ground him momentarily. The heels presented her to him perfectly—her ass peach perfect and on display. Those delicate wrists bound in red sent his heart hammering pure adrenaline through his veins. He exhaled loudly.

“No safe word, remember? I’m invoking that rule now. It’s your fucking problem if you can’t walk out of here upright.”

“Take what you need, Van. I can handle it.”

Fucking hell.

He raked his fingers hard down her arms. “I get tested regularly since I haven’t typically been too discriminatory when it came to blowjobs. And I was tested again when I checked in. I’m clean.”

“Okay,” she whispered. “Me too.”

He chuckled lightly. He wouldn’t have thought for a second that the woman who probably only had the kind of sex that involved multiple contraceptives and the missionary position wasn’t clean.

“I’ll pull out though.”

“I’m on the pill.”

Bonus. “Well, then brace yourself, beautiful.”

Her stance widened slightly and he slid his heavy cock between her ass cheeks.

“What if I fucked you hard in the ass right now? How mad would you be? Scale of one to ten?”

She breathed loudly. “I’m supposed to be the one giving the survey, Mr. Ransom.”

He pressed against that tight opening and it flexed against him. She whimpered, and he moved north to her already wet opening.

“Fortunately for you, I don’t have the patience necessary to prepare you. But soon, cowgirl.”

His full length shoving inside of her pushed a sound from her throat. He needed that sound again and again. So he withdrew and plunged inside her clenching walls as hard as he was physically capable of until she was panting beneath him. She was so damn tight he struggled for breath right along with her.

Feeling himself reach the threshold of his orgasm, he pulled out and took a few deep breaths.

Suddenly she stood and turned to face him. Pissed-off green eyes met his amused ones.

“Help you with something, cowgirl?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Un-fucking-tie me.”

He shook his head. “I’m disappointed, Stella Jo. I thought we agreed. No stopping.”

“Oh, we’re not stopping. But if you’re going to hate-fuck me to death, you will damn well let me watch as you do it.”

He smirked. “As you wish.” He untied her wrists and watched her fight the urge to rub them. “Take the pain, Stella. It’s a feeling. Feel it. It will make the pleasure that much better.”

She propped herself against the foot of the bed and dropped her legs open slowly. “All this big talk of yours. I’m still waiting for the pain.”

Every curse and cry of joy he knew flitted across his mind.

“Get on the bed. All the way,” he growled. “Let’s see how far you can get those perfect fucking legs over your head.”

Van came to in a dark room. He blinked until his eyes adjusted. He was alone in his bed. Panic seized his chest.

He’d told her. Shown her who he really was and what he was capable of. Pulled back his flesh and exposed the garish, gaping wounds in his soul.

Sitting up, he looked around, listening closely for any sign she might still be with him. There was only silence.

He swallowed the thickening knot forming in his throat. He’d fucked her more ways than should’ve been humanly possible. He was pretty sure he’d blacked out during. Exhausted himself right into a loss of consciousness. She was probably never going to even look at him again other than with disgust.

Stretching sore muscles, he stood and switched on the bedroom lamp.

Bright red lipstick decorated his vanity mirror. He moved closer to read what she’d written.

I walked out of here just fine. Guess you’ll have to try harder next time.

Something foreign swelled in his chest.

Next time couldn’t come soon enough.

Stella sat in a hot bath, the heat simultaneously stinging and soothing her ravished skin. The pain was strangely satisfying. The burning ache she felt between her legs as well as on her wrists, ankles, and back was like nothing she’d ever experienced.

She’d lost her virginity to Nash. It had been quick and mostly painless. Maybe some discomfort, like a gynecological exam, but that’d been about it. She’d stared at herself in a mirror afterward, expecting to feel different. To feel something. Anything.

But nothing had changed. She hadn’t changed. She’d felt defective. It was such a monumental event—so she’d been told.

This experience had been totally different. Her shoulders seemed to remain taut, as if her spine had been tightened and screwed into place. Even her teeth-mark-marred breasts were proudly thrusting themselves forward.

She was changed all right. Finger-shaped bruises dotted her upper arms and lower back. Passion marks colored her neck and inner thighs. Merely glimpsing the bite marks on her hips turned her on so hard a breeze could’ve blown between her legs and sent her into the relentless spiral of a heaving orgasm.

She had been fucked. Possibly for the first time in her life. It felt like being switched on. From autopilot to manual.

She groaned as she stood in the tub and reached for a towel. Van Ransom had marked and claimed her. He owned her—mind, body, and soul.

And even more importantly, at some point while he’d been pounding the hell out of her, tearing orgasm after orgasm from her core, she’d been permanently altered. She’d been what he needed, been strong enough to give him everything. His gratitude had come in the form of whispered confessions and professions as he roared to a release and came inside her.

You’re so fucking perfect, he’d said more times than she could count. Stay with me, baby. Please. I need you. God, you’re so damn perfect.

She wasn’t. She knew that. But maybe she could be perfect for him. Be what he needed, because he was exactly what she needed. His words had given her renewed strength each time, strength to climb atop him and take even more. But they’d taken something too.

The fear. The fear of getting hurt, of failing, of disappointing. It was all…gone.

Which meant she had a horse to see. And sooner than later, she’d have to go home and face the people she’d spent her entire adult life avoiding. She’d gotten her answers from Van, now she needed them from someone else.

Van made his way to the barn. For the past week, they’d stolen every free moment they could. His place, her place, her office, the stables.

The only place he hadn’t had her was his apartment in LA and he was planning to correct that in three weeks when he checked the hell out of this place—an event he was both anticipating and dreading.

He was still picturing the many places in his apartment he could tie her to when he started to walk past her door. She bounded out of it as if she’d been watching for him at the window.

“Come on. I want to show you something.” Her eyes were bright and her entire body seemed to be humming with energy. As if she were made of electricity and someone had thrown the switch. Normally, he’d credit himself for her excitement. But he couldn’t think of anything he’d done lately that would have her so worked up.