My pulse kicked up in anticipation of his touch, but all I said was, “Tyler.”

“I liked the way you looked up there,” he said, then moved his hands to rest them on my bare knees. “I liked the way you looked at me.”

“All those men,” he continued, his voice low and intimate as he gently spread my thighs, making me just a little crazy. Making me just a little wet.

“Watching you. Wanting you. And you wanted me.”

“Yes. Oh, god, yes.”

One hand began to gently stroke my thigh, teasing me, but moving no higher than where the hem of the jacket brushed my skin. With his other hand, he reached for the jacket, and cleverly flipped open the top button.

“That’s your opening offer, isn’t it?” He popped the other button open. “The deal you came to negotiate? I let you dance at Destiny, and you let me touch you?”

He used both hands now to push apart the lapels of the jacket, revealing my breasts, my abdomen, and those pretty silk panties. “Isn’t that like making a deal with the devil?” he asked, as his hand trailed down, making me tremble, then over the panties to find me so very, very wet.

“Or maybe you just like playing with the bad boys,” he said, as he slipped a finger deep inside me.

I arched back, gasping.

“Hook your legs over the chair’s arms,” he ordered.

“Tyler, no—”

“Do it.”

I did, and he lowered his mouth to my sex, using one hand to pull the panties and G-string aside, and the other to tilt the chair back until it seemed like I would fall. I was head-down, completely at his mercy, open and wide and essentially helpless.

And I was desperately, hopelessly, turned on.

He ran his tongue the length of me, and I shook as a storm of sparks rocketed through me, the sensation all the more spectacular because of the way the chair rocked with my arousal.

“This won’t work,” Tyler said.

“No,” I moaned. “Don’t stop.”

But he was opening the desk drawer, pulling out scissors. “I need both hands to keep the chair from toppling,” he said, then cut the panties right off me before tossing the scissors onto the floor with a metallic clank.

I laughed, the sound a burst of shock and pleasure. He met my eyes, his grin mischievous and deliciously sexy. “You taste good,” he said, then once again sank between my legs.

His hands stayed on the chair, so that he was touching me only with his mouth. He teased me, licking and sucking, playing and tormenting.

And with each touch, each stroke, the pressure inside me built and built.

I was open to him—wide and open and I wanted this. Wanted whatever he had to give. Wanted to lose myself in whatever pleasure he could share, whatever wicked, sensual torment he could devise.

In that moment, I think I would have done anything if only he would swear that this feeling would never stop.

Little tremors shot through me, making my body shake, the chair tremble. Precursors of an explosion that was close, so close, so close—

And then the world shattered, the chair rocking, my body clenching. I cried out for him to stop because I didn’t think I could take it anymore, but he was relentless, taking everything from me, pulling every drop of pleasure out of me, taking me so high I was breathless, then crashing me back down to earth again where he scooped me into his arms.

“Wow,” I murmured, finding myself curled against his chest, my body bare against his shirt, the jacket hanging open around me. “Wow.”

“Very wow,” he said, as he carried me across the room and laid me on the couch. “I may have to put one of those chairs in every room.”

I laughed. “I wouldn’t object.”

“Tell me you liked that,” he said, as he sat on the edge of the sofa beside me.

“Yes. God, yes.”

“I knew you were a cop, Sloane. I knew you were a cop, and I fucked you. I played you. And you were so damn pissed at me.”

I squinted at him, unsure about this change in direction. But his expression was still soft. Gentle.

I propped myself up on my elbow. “Yes,” I said. “I was.”

“Would you have preferred me to have you removed from the party? To have never touched you? Never put my tongue on your cunt, my hands on your breasts? Would you rather I’d never made you come, and never felt you explode in my arms?”

“No,” I whispered, my body hot and needy.

“Or what about the waiter? Do you regret that? Sitting bold and naked and open and turned on, so desperately aroused, not because of him but because you knew that watching you made me hard?”

I wanted to lie. So help me, I did.

But I couldn’t bring it to my lips. “No.”

“I know it,” he said simply. “I know you.”

I tilted my head to him. “Tyler,” I said, not even certain what I wanted, what I was asking. I simply needed the sound of his name on my lips as some sort of proof that this was real.

“Shhh.” He gently pressed his fingertip to my lip. “I started out just watching you. I must have watched the damn security video a dozen times. Then at the party. I couldn’t take my eyes off you, even though I knew what you were. What you are.”

He stroked me gently, and I closed my eyes, rolling on a wave of pleasure so intense I thought I would surely drown in it. “By everything I know, you are not the woman that I should want,” he said, as he trailed his finger over the wound on my hip. “Detective Sloane Watson, with just over a week of medical leave remaining. A cop, of all things. And I find myself in the unexpected position of wanting you desperately. Of wanting to stoke this fire that rages between us, hot and wild and so very combustible.”

He traced his finger along my collarbone, then over my side, along the curve of my waist, following my silhouette all the way to my hip.

“I want to burn with you, Detective. And, Sloane, you should know that I make it a point to get what I want.”

He smiled at me, slow and easy and full of confidence. “So this is the deal I’m offering you. While you’re on medical leave, you’ll dance at Destiny, you’ll have free access to the club. But during that time, you are mine.”

“Yours?” I repeated.

“Completely,” he said. “With everything that entails. To pleasure. To punish. To tend. I won’t hurt you and I won’t scare you. But I will use you,” he added, as he slipped his hand between my legs and slid two fingers inside me. “For my pleasure and for yours.”

I squeezed my legs around his hand, my body clenching tight, drawing him in farther.

“Agree, and you can dance at Destiny. Say no, and you walk away tonight.”

“I’m at a disadvantage here. I’m naked. Your fingers are inside me.”

“You’re the one who took off your clothes, Sloane. That was your move, remember? I’m only playing the game. And now it’s checkmate.”

He thrust deeper inside me, and as he did, he leaned forward to lightly bite my breast. I gasped in surprise, but also in pleasure.

“I know you like risk,” he said, and there was seduction in his voice. “You like excitement. And, my darling detective, you like the way I make you feel.”

I licked my lips. After what I’d done with him, I could hardly argue.