If I couldn’t use him for the money, then maybe I could use him for the experience my body had been craving since he first touched me.

He moved up to me then, with hard eyes and stiff posture, a hand working at his side. He looked into my eyes, first one and then the other.

“Emilia,” he breathed. My eyes fluttered closed. “Look at me.”

I opened my eyes and tilted my face to him. I wanted him to kiss me. I wanted this tension between us to ease. And the fierce ache rising up from the center of my being told me I wanted his hands, his body on mine. No more talking. No more arguing. No more discussion of a “deal.”

As if he read my thoughts, his mouth sank to mine, his hand steadying me at the back of my neck, curving around my bare flesh there. Goose bumps prickled down my arms and legs.

His kiss was so overpowering, it sucked me into him—like I was caught inside a raging hurricane, wrapped inside this force of nature called Adam and could not find my way out. When he pulled away, we were both panting. “There,” he said in a hoarse voice. “Would you mind telling me what was ‘sick’ about that?”

I fought for breath and he pulled me to him again, another powerful, consuming kiss. I shivered in his arms and his hands went to my shoulders. With two swift movements, he pushed my sundress off my shoulders and it slid to the floor. His mouth was on my neck, running his tongue and lips along the sensitive skin. The touch struck molten sparks through my body. I wrapped my arms around his neck. One of his arms locked around my waist. The other went around to the back of my bra, unfastening it easily.

“I need you,” he said.

My eyes closed and my body heeded his call. “We shouldn’t,” but my voice was weak, faltering, because I could not put the full force of my belief behind it. His mouth, hands and tongue were too convincing otherwise.

His head came up, taking my ear between his lips, running his tongue over the lobe. Heat shot through my body. “Can you deny this?” he said in a harsh whisper. “Can you just walk away from whatever this is between us?”

And then he backed toward the bed, pulling me along with him. I stepped out of my shoes. My nerves pulled taut like harp strings. His eyes were flame and frost from one moment to the next—anger, passion, pure lust.

“I’m going to show you what we can be like together.”

He pulled me to him again and we kissed and my body responded to the sensual promise in those words. I trembled. “You’ll hate yourself if you do this.”

“I’ll hate myself more if I don’t,” he said between clenched teeth.

He turned and laid me gently on the bed. Wearing nothing but panties, I looked up at him, feeling vulnerable as his burning eyes raked over me. They scorched me like errant embers from a bonfire and he made quick work of unbuttoning his shirt and losing it, along with his pants.

He freed his erection from his underwear and he was naked. My breathing slowed. He was beautiful—every developed crease, every curve of firm, packed muscle. His ready shaft, a potent reminder of his maleness.

“Take off your underwear,” he said. And slowly, my eyes locked on his, I did. Somewhere in the back of my mind I doubted where this was appearing to go. We had been here before—several times—and he had always pulled away, always stopped himself with an iron grip on his self-control. It would happen again, despite that ragged wildness I saw deep in his black eyes. He’d fight for control and he’d win. And he’d do nothing he’d regret.

Under his scrutiny, my nipples came to hard points and damp heat pooled between my legs. Slowly, he lowered himself to sit at the edge of the bed, running an almost reverential hand over my breasts, my belly, my thighs, my sex. “So beautiful. Emilia. You are so damn beautiful.”

I closed my eyes. I’d just been thinking the same about him. “Thank you.”

He took a deep breath and spoke the words haltingly, as if some part of him still fought and struggled to keep them inside. “If you tell me right now you don’t want it, we won’t do this.”

My gaze fixed on his, unwavering. It was time to tell the truth. The consequences be damned. “I want this, Adam. Not because of money, and not because anyone is making me. I want it because I want it.”

He moved so fast it was almost a blur. He was on top of me in seconds holding my arms against the mattress as his body pressed me down with his. His mouth was on mine again, but at that moment, I realized it wasn’t going to be long. He wouldn’t spend another second on foreplay because we’d been engaging in the most frustrating game of foreplay for a month.