I drop my head to her shoulder and drag in a labored breath. I push forward into her hand because I just can’t help it. She strokes her hand up the length, and I attack her neck with my mouth. Suddenly impatient, I kiss my way down to the valley between her br**sts, and nip one curve when she squeezes my erection.

She slides down off the counter, and I step back to make room, but only just enough. She reaches beneath my waistband and wraps her small hand around my dick.

“Tell me,” she says, and I f**king love that she’s turned the tables on me. “Tell me what you want.”

The last thing I want to do is stop her, but part of me thinks she’s doing this on purpose. If she focuses on other people, on what they want, she never has to decide for herself.

“I don’t know if you’re ready for what I want, baby.”

Her eyes are wide and even though she probably knows I’m right, she asks anyway. “What?”

“I want to bury my hands in your hair while you take me in your mouth. I want to see those perfect, rosy lips wrapped around my cock. I want to tell you every dirty thing I imagine doing to you, and then I want to do whatever you’ll let me do.”

She licks her lips and f**k.

Fuck.

I’m so hard it’s painful, and her grip is too light, too still.

“Um,” she mutters.

“Told you it was too much.”

She’s got this determined look in her eyes, even as she looks terrified. And I almost want to see how this plays out, see how far she’s willing to go. But considering she’s the only thing in my life right now that doesn’t make me feel like shit, I don’t want to scare her off too fast.

And I don’t want this to just be about me.

I kiss her on the cheek, and then pull her hand out of my shorts.

My dick f**king hates me, but it will keep until I’ve got her comfortable.

“Wait, I—”

“Later,” I answer. “I believe I promised you something else.”

I gather her skirt up and drag it up to her waist, then I lift her up onto the counter again. I lean over and kiss her inner thigh as I curl my fingers around the waistband of her dark blue thong. I groan because I wish I’d gotten a look at her ass in it before I put her up on the counter.

Another time, I tell myself.

Impatient, I drag the scrappy piece of fabric down her legs and shove it in my pocket. Dylan’s legs stiffen, but I place a hand on each thigh to hold her open for me.

“You asked me what I want. This is what I want. I’ve been f**king dying to taste you. I want to make you do more than breathe. I want you to scream for me.”

It’s more than that, though.

I want to make her come so hard that for the rest of her life, she remembers me anytime someone touches her. I’m going to leave my mark on her perfect body, beneath the skin where she’ll never get me out.

I want to ruin her for anyone else.

And I’m pretty damn good at ruining things.

I drop to a knee to get a better angle to do just that, but before I even touch her, the front door bangs open, and I hear Torres and Brookes heading our way.

Chapter 12

Dylan

His mouth is so close to me, and I can feel his breath. Henry never did this, and even though I’m terrified and self-conscious, I feel greedy. Henry and I didn’t exactly have an explosive sexual relationship. It was . . . normal. Regular.

Whatever else Silas Moore might be . . . regular, he is not.

Just the anticipation of his mouth down there puts most of the sex I had with Henry to shame. My eyes are squeezed shut, and I’m in danger of biting straight through my bottom lip when Silas jerks back and stands up.

I whimper, wondering if he’s going to just keep playing these games with me until I’m so far gone that I let him do whatever he wants to me.

And there’s a real danger I will let him do whatever he wants to me.

Then he pulls me down off the counter, and I stumble into him, my legs too numb and unprepared to stand. My skirt is up around my waist, and he’s just begun pulling it down over my rear when two guys walk in the kitchen.

For a few seconds, I don’t do anything. My mind starts screaming at me to move long before my body actually manages the action. I dive behind Silas at the same time that he steps over to cover me.

“Oh my God,” I mutter as I try to get my shaking hands to button up the shirt that had been wide open when they walked in.

One of the guys is the Hispanic guy who’d been walking around without a shirt at the party. The other is a super-tall black guy who’s staring at Silas with an expression that makes me wither, and it’s not even directed at me.

The first guy, Torres, I think, was his name, says, “Ah, man. What did we say about sex in the kitchen? Anywhere else but the kitchen, dude.”

I nearly rip the button right off my blouse. I wouldn’t have had sex with him in the kitchen. Would I? Oh God, what I was going to let him do was hardly any better.

Silas is right . . . I do feel a bit like I’ve been suffocating. I think that’s part of why the breakup with Henry didn’t upset me as much as it should have. We’d been together so long, and our families loved the idea of us together, and it started to feel like my future was already written in stone. He would propose, I’d say yes, we’d have kids, and get old, and that would just be it. The end.

Normal.

Thinking back on that now, I almost want to cry with relief that he ended things. Because I don’t want to be normal.

But just because I was feeling trapped isn’t a good enough reason to go jumping off the first cliff I see.

Silas’s other roommate speaks next, and his voice is low and reproachful. “You really think that’s the best way to deal with this?”

Silas shakes his head. “It’s not what you think it is, Zay.”

What does he think it is? And what actually is it? Because I’m not sure I know myself. We’d made some kind of weird bargain, and I knew what I was doing for him . . . sort of. But I was still a little unclear exactly what he was doing for me.

Other than turning me into a hormonal, lecherous mess.

“I told you. I f**king told you that you do this to yourself.”

Silas drops his head, and instinctively I place my hand on his back in support. They might not see it, but I know how torn up he is over this. He was so different today. I could be imagining it, but I think Silas stands up a little straighter under my touch.