No part of me escaped his thorough and attentive ministrations; no one had ever been as attentive to my body. I think he even managed to discover new spots, parts of me that I didn’t even know turned me on, like the back of my neck and the inside of my wrist. Everywhere his hands landed—the curve of the underside of my breast, my rib cage—his mouth followed, and it felt like he was trying to leave his mark on every inch of my skin so that no one else could ever be there. There was just something about the startling contrast between the soft caress of the tip of his tongue and the hard metal ball in the center that was more erotic than anything I had ever experienced before. There wasn’t a place on any part of me that didn’t get a nip of teeth, and by the time I couldn’t take anymore, by the time I was past wet and wanting, it was all I could do to keep it together when he pulled me up and over him.

I placed my hand over his heart. I felt the steady thump under my fingers and looked at the skeletal mask of the angel of death peeking out at me from between my fingers. Jet put his hands around my waist and lifted me up like I weighed nothing. Before he could pull me back down, before he could impale me with all the burning flesh that was stretched out taunt between us, I hissed out a breath between my teeth and dropped my forehead down so that it was resting against his.

“This is going to change everything.”

Those words were strangled out as just the tip, and that damn little ball, pressed into places that were greedy for it all. I could feel his stomach contract under me and feel my own reaction. It burned in the best way possible. He was hot, he was hard, and he touched places inside me that I swore had never been touched before. That little ring at the tip of his cock dragged and pulled across tender flesh that couldn’t resist the sensation, which made my breath come faster and my heart race. I wasn’t going to last long at this rate. Between the wait for this to happen, and just the fact that this was Jet, I was going to be over the edge between one stroke and the next. Flutters ran along the length of his cock that I felt all the way to my toes as he pulled me all the way back down, and we both gasped at the intensity of the contact. His dark eyes drifted shut as I began to move, to find a rhythm that made me pant and had him growling at me low in his throat. Nothing was ever going to be this good, feel this right. I put my hands on the planes of soft and inked skin, stretched taut over straining muscles and let the way he moved, the way he touched me, like I was something precious, take over.

When I was getting close, he put his hands under my ass and flipped us over in one neat move. He kissed me long and hard, put his hands in my hair, and I discovered in short order that really, all I had to do was sit back and enjoy when it came to that ring at the end of his dick. The metal ball brushed against my clit one time, one single time and it was over. I caught my breath and let him manhandle me however he wanted, and when he was done and we were both lying spent and limp, he turned and looked at me out of eyes that were as dazed as I felt.

“Sometimes, things need to change, because there just isn’t any way for them to stay the same.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. We were supposed to do this, should have been doing this for the last year—that was all too clear now. Sex was incidental and forgettable. This was not.

After he came back to bed from cleaning up, he wrapped an arm around my middle and hauled me to his side. As he reached over my head to flick off the light, I thought this was a change that I liked too much for my own peace of mind. I fell asleep with him winding his fingers through mine across my stomach and humming the chorus to “Tennessee Whiskey” by George Jones. Jet was going to undo me in every way he could, and I just didn’t know if I was going to be able to stop him.

The next morning, the alarm on my phone went off and I had a moment of panic when I woke up surrounded by a lot of naked skin. I hurt in really good ways, and had to fight not to cuddle back into him instead of slipping silently away. It took me a minute to find my discarded clothes and get back to my own room. When I caught sight of myself in the mirror above my dresser, I cringed; I looked well and thoroughly debauched. My hair was sticking up everywhere and my eyes looked heavy lidded and dreamy. I had a very distinct bite mark on the side of my neck and there was no denying that I looked like I had been truly worked over.

There was no ho-hum with Jet. He knew what he was doing, and it was stamped all over me from head to toe. The fact that I had absolutely and completely lost control with him and gotten caught up in the moment was not lost on me or in my reflection, either, and that had me fighting back a heavy flood of panic.

I changed into running clothes and pulled my snarled hair up into a stubby ponytail. I was going to grab my iPod, but for some reason, listening to cookie-cutter songs about love and loss just didn’t sound appealing, so I dashed down the hall hoping Jet would stay asleep and that Cora would still be holed up in her room. I was filling my bottle of water in the sink when Cora’s singsongy voice came from the living room, “Someone looks well rested.”

I closed my eyes for a second and swore under my breath. I looked over my shoulder at her. She was still in her fuzzy pink jammies and her dual-colored eyes were gleaming with mischief.

“Yep.”

She wagged a finger at me and suddenly looked more serious. “You need to be careful, Ayd.”

I frowned because it was too early, both literally and figuratively, for this conversation. “Careful is my middle name, Cora.”

“But Jet’s is passion, and he can get really wrapped up in things that are important to him. If you don’t want to be wrapped up, you better be honest with him about it.”

I couldn’t talk about this with her, not when I didn’t know what I was doing myself, so I grabbed my lightweight fleece and zipped it up.

“Noted. I’ll be back in a few.”

“Hey, keep an eye out. Weird stuff has been going on.”

I lifted an eyebrow. “You noticed the guy lurking around, too?”

“What? No! But some creep tried to break in yesterday.”

A shiver of alarm worked from the base of my neck down my spine. Between the calls from Kentucky and the repeated sightings of the same guy over and over again, I couldn’t chalk an attempted break-in to coincidence.

“Did you call the cops?”

She shook her head. “I threatened to taze his ass and he took off. I’m sure he was just a crazy meth head or something, but you need to be aware of your surroundings if you’re going running alone.”

I nodded, but in reality I was thinking I had to be aware of my surroundings for a lot more reasons than that. I was walking to the front door, contemplating what could possibly have someone threatening my new life, my new home, when Cora called my name. I should have known by the glee in her tone that I was going to regret turning back around. She was standing on the couch with both her hands in the air, waving all ten fingers back and forth, and chanting, “You’re a ten!” over and over again. If I’d had something lighter than my water bottle on hand I would have thrown it at her. Instead I rolled my eyes and bounded out the door.

She was right. I was totally a ten and that sucked, because I just couldn’t get it in line with how after last night I was supposed to juggle just being friends with a whole lot more and not eventually cross the line into wanting more. I couldn’t deal with that. Jet made old Ayden want to get in on all of the good-time action and that was just dangerous to my peace of mind and carefully constructed façade.