I didn’t know where my lack of inhibitions came from. Maybe it was because of the way he’d looked at my stomach, so differently from anyone else. I’d had a handful of people stare at it after The Incident. The doctors. The nurses. Pam. Darren. All of them were horrified and sickened. It was the exact opposite of what I wanted to see on people’s faces. I was hoping for an ‘it’s-not-so-bad’ look, as opposed to ‘someone-pass-the-emesis-bag.’ But Roman looked at me like I was still pretty. I could see in the bob of his throat under his bushy beard that he thought more about my flat stomach and curvy waist than he did about the scars that covered them.

And that gave me strength.

I wasn’t proud of what I had done—seducing him against his will. But it made some kind of backward logic in my mind, that I was the one chasing sex with the most sexual man on the planet, who happened to think us sleeping together was a bad idea.

Maybe it was.

But no one said we needed to touch each other to get off.

Bane looked tortured. I’d never seen him look that way before. He was always assertive, ruthless, and confident beyond belief. Dark energy crackled around him, like he’d been struck by lightning, split in half, and filled with rage. He was simmering, shimmering, and glowing.

He was lusting.

His desire for me empowered me, because he didn’t take, like all the rest.

Hell, he didn’t even ask.

Another reason why he was the perfect sexual partner.

I circled my clit with my index finger, feeling anxious, elated, turned on, and on fire. Yes. On fire. Him watching me ignited every match in the pit of my stomach and had me burning for him like the brightest torch.

I’d seen him around women. They had to be surgically removed from his environment. And I knew all about his affairs. His married and influential lovers. I told him I didn’t care, and to an extent, it was true. I cared more about healing than about what he did in his recreational time. About being able to writhe under a man without panic tightening around my throat like a coarse rope and my limbs flailing, begging for me to flee.

I needed him inside me with a passion that scared me. A need so basic, I wasn’t above begging for it.

I slanted my chin up, rubbing my sensitive bud faster and faster. At first, he didn’t react. Just stared, like he was trying to calculate his next move, his palms frozen on the table, his eyes ablaze. My heart flipped inside my chest, a warning that this was more than sex for me. I chose not to listen.

I needed him to fix me.

I needed him to make me come.

“What the fuck are you doing, Jesse?” He moaned, his voice so thick with sex, that lust dripped between us.

“Seducing you,” I said simply. I opened my thighs wider and moaned, knowing that he liked what he saw. Agony colored his face. I looked down, watching his cock swelling in his surf shorts behind the small table. I waited for fear to grip my body, but it never came. I wanted to slip his shorts off with my teeth, take his thick ridge into my mouth, and show him I wasn’t broken. Not beyond repair, anyway. Not like I’d previously thought.

What are you thinking? What are you saying? Do you even know yourself anymore?

But it was exactly who I was. The old Jesse took. She’d demanded and claimed the things she had wanted.

And she came out to play in the storage room.

I pinched my nipple through my shirt, knowing it was puckered and visible even through my sports bra. Normally, I gulped the space Bane allowed me with thirst. He didn’t try to change who I was. The Untouchable. But today, I wanted to be taken, to be possessed and devoured. I wanted to show myself that I could do it.

I could be touched.

I could feel.

I could break in someone’s arms without feeling broken.

“Jesse,” he growled, his forehead falling to the table on a sigh. His breaths were deep, heavy. Like he was losing an inner battle. His knuckles whitened as he tried his best not to flip the table aside and charge toward me. I wanted him to. I didn’t care about all those people outside.

“Do you want me?” I coaxed.

“Want you?” The table nearly flew to the other side of the room from the impact of his slap on it. “I’m way beyond want. I’m somewhere between need and desperate. And I don’t like that place, Jesse. I don’t like it at all.”

“Take me, then.”

He stared deep into my eyes, like he was trying to communicate something to me, a thought that even sounded stupid in my own head. What would he try to tell me?

“You’re not ready.” Emotionless. Indifferent. Too bad I didn’t buy it for one second.

“Who the hell are you to say?” I grinned.

“Your only lucid friend,” he deadpanned, blinking at me slowly. “And I’m not fucking up what we have for a fuck.”

“You’re a jerk,” I groaned.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Bane.”

“What part of the word no don’t you fucking understand?”

All of it, apparently. I didn’t understand why we couldn’t do it. The attraction was obviously there—I saw it in his eyes. And he was the only man I wanted. The only man I felt safe with. If it wouldn’t be him, it wouldn’t be anyone—and that thought scared me.

Everyone needed someone. Even The Untouchable.

Lust sizzled between us like fire, hot and heavy and red. I pushed two fingers into myself, spreading my lips and showing him how pink and normal and unscarred I was from within.

His throat bobbed again.

“Tell me you don’t want to be the one doing this to me,” I hissed, a knot of pleasure tightening in my belly. I trailed my index finger around my clit, watching his eyes sparkle as the pink bud swelled under my touch.

“Jesse…”

I didn’t answer, licking my lips as I brushed my fingertips up and down my slit. I did it a few times, then opened my palm and offered it to him from across the room. He stared at my fingers, glistening with my need for him.

“I’m ready,” I whispered.

He shook his head, but didn’t have it in him to utter the rejection aloud.

“Fine. I’m sure Hale will do what you are hesitant to.”

I didn’t know where it came from. Maybe it stemmed from the fact I saw Bane’s jaw jerking every time Gail mentioned Hale’s name. In all honesty, I knew I would never date or lead Hale on, but I felt like all Bane needed was a push. If he really didn’t want me, he’d be happy for me to move on with his friend.

But if he wanted me for himself…

“It’s okay if you don’t want to touch me, Roman.” I dipped a third finger into myself, rolling my head against the wall behind me. “I can already feel you everywhere.”

Bane straightened up, pushed his surf shorts down, just enough to take out his cock, and squeezed it hard. Something glinted, and I almost fell off the crate. He was pierced. The Prince Albert on the tip twinkled like a royal diamond. He began to pump himself punishingly, and I noticed how his shaft was fat and big everywhere. And beautiful. Jesus, he was beautiful. I wanted it in my mouth, and I didn’t even care that I’d never agreed to do that to Emery. I didn’t care about anything at all other than Bane.

“Let’s start over. Take your fingers out, and push one in very. Fucking. Slowly. Now.” His voice changed from pissed off to commanding and cruel. I did as I was told, pushing one finger into myself and rubbing my clit back and forth with my thumb.

“No one said anything about your clit. Fuck yourself for me, but not enough to come. Because this is how I feel, Jesse, when you torture me.”

“I don’t enjoy torturing you.” Our eyes met and what passed between them was pure magic, like fireworks exploding all at once in multi-colors. I was going back to watching his beautiful cock being milked in his iron fist in just a second, but I needed this message to hit home. “I’m inviting you to do anything you want to with my body.”

“Fuck.” He pumped harder, squeezing his eyes shut. “How wet are you?”

“Soaking.”

“Show me.”

He opened his eyes, and I pulled my finger out slowly. It was coated with my heat.

“Suck on it.”

“You suck on it.”

“If I come over there, I’ll bite it off. Just—” he sucked in a sharp breath, nearly begging, “for once in your life, do something you’re asked to do, Jesse.”

I did, but only because it felt good to see him like that, dangling off the cliff of self-control, ready to crash and burn with me.

“Oh, Snowflake. What the fuck am I going to do with you?”

“Pounding me like the pavement would be a good start.” I grinned, and he let out a tortured laugh. The base of my spine tingled at the sound of his coarse voice. This man could slice you into ribbons with his words alone. I wanted so badly to know what he could do with his hands and arms and teeth. With his entire gorgeous body.

“Three fingers,” he ordered. I complied, dipping three fingers into myself, the stretch painful and delicious at the same time. He pumped himself harder, one hand bracing the table—the coffee capsules on top of it dancing in rhythm with his thrusts—and the bulgy bicep of his other arm flexing with every stroke.

I bit down on my lower lip and pushed four fingers into myself, knuckle-deep, teasing the hell out of him.

“Jesse.” I saw his resolve not to touch me as it unraveled, string by string, tattered between us on the floor.

“I’m so wet.” I arched my back until it hurt, fingers still inside me, the base of my palm squeezing into my sex.

He darted toward me, still stroking himself furiously. I loved seeing him this way, vulnerable with need. And it was when he showed me his weakness for the very first time that I realized I was already halfway in love with him. With us. That the only thing I needed to push me off the edge and into the arms of complete obsession was for him to just…touch me. Feel me. Claim me.

Bane positioned himself between my legs, stroking his cock inches from my hand, plastering his sticky forehead to my damp one. His fine blond hair mixed with my thick raven locks, and the tips of our noses brushed, but we didn’t kiss. We wouldn’t kiss. Not because I couldn’t bring him to it, but because I chose not to break him all the way.