Nomatterhowhot I turned the water, the scald wasn’t enough.
I’d been standing under the spray of the shower for God knows how long, and I still hadn’t managed to burn the feeling of her touch from my skin. I felt her everywhere like shadows on flesh, lurking and foreboding, constricting a darkness around me I couldn’t get a grip on.
Her tiny hand around my throat, squeezing and provoking. Her legs locked around my torso, guiding my hips right the fuck between hers. And her eyes. God, I’d seen fuck me eyes before, but never like that.
That was something else.
She was something else.
She was…
God, what was she?
Dangerous.
The word flashed across my mind, a bright neon reminder of exactly what Scarlett Avery was. She was a mind-fuck of temptation and blind persistence tied together with foul words and a blistering beauty to hold her broken pieces intact.
She was chaos embodied.
I ran my hands over my face, ducking my head beneath the water in whatever attempt I could to drown out the thoughts of her. She was everywhere inside my head, taking up space that had a ‘KEEP OUT’ sign rusted into place over the last three years. She busted her way through, no questions asked, and kicked up her feet like she owned the place.
For the last seventy-two hours, she had.
“Fuck,” I cursed, the word getting pulled down in the rush of the shower.
The steam was beginning to fog up not only the cramped four walls of the shower but my head too. My thoughts were trapped in a haze, bright green eyes being the only light to give me focus, and I hated it. I fucking hated how embedded she was already.
I ducked my head out of the curtain, gulping down cool air to clear my mind, sweat trickling down my forehead. I left a crack in the curtain as I pulled back under the stream of boiling water, needing the occasional chill to keep me upright.
A groan rumbled up my chest as I looked down to see my cock still hadn’t gotten the message that I was trying not to think about her.
I was stiff as fucking stone and not even turning the shower ice cold would help at this point. I’d been hard since I got out of bed this morning and glimpsed Scarlett asleep on her bed.
The sheets had ridden up on her smooth legs as she slept on her side, showing too much skin to be healthy for my sanity. The dip of her curves was burned into my memory, and not only that…
But she’d taken off her fucking pants again.
My cock strained for attention as I pictured her perky ass, barely covered by the red lace panties she’d made me buy in Vegas when we stocked up on clothes. I was pissed to hell when I saw them sitting in the pile on the checkout counter along with a black pair but swallowed down my anger when I realized cheap lace panties were all Vegas had to offer.
It was fucking torture knowing she was walking around in those, and I fisted my hand around my shaft and squeezed, trying not to think about it. Trying not to think about her and the tiny fabric clasped between her thighs, or the pout of her cherry-red mouth and the depraved demands that fell from it.
Hurt me,she begged.
Choke me, she pleaded.
Put me out of my fucking misery.
I wasn’t sure what she wanted from me up until she said that last part. Until she stopped breathing long enough to tell me through strangled pleas what she really meant.
Pain. Real pain.
Maybe the kind that came with the territory of rough sex, but also a sick kind of pain that only a monster would inflict and a glutton for punishment would ask for.
The more time I spent with Scarlett, the more I realized she might be just that—a woman aching for pain and punishment—but I wouldn’t be the monster she was looking for.
Pleasure spiked in my gut, and I hissed, realizing a moment too late that I’d started stroking myself while thinking about my hellion out there sleeping soundly. Shit.
I splayed my free hand against the shower wall for support, self-loathing burrowing beneath the building pleasure for what I was about to do, and what I already knew I didn’t have the self-control to stop.