I cried out when he pushed two fingers inside me, my feet flexing, lifting me onto my toes. My knees weakened, my legs quivering with the strain. The air in the elevator felt thick and steamy, heavy with the need that pumped off him in waves.

“Ah, Christ.” He groaned when my sex tightened around him, his h*ps rolling against me to grind his erection into my bu**ocks. “I’m going to bruise this sweet cunt, Eva. I can’t stop it.”

His arm banded around my waist and lifted me, pulling me back so that my arms were straight and I was bent over. He kneed my legs apart, his fingers sliding wetly from my cleft. I felt his hand graze my hip, and then he was dragging the wide crest of his penis through the seam of my bu**ocks and notching it between the lips of my sex.

I held my breath, squirming against that plush pressure. I’d wanted him all day, craving the feel of his big c**k inside me, needing him to make me come.

“Wait,” he groaned, reaching for both my waist and my shoulder, his fingers flexing impatiently. “Let me—”

My sex clenched, tightening around the thick head.

Gideon cursed and thrust, one hard stroke that shoved him deep. I cried out in pleasured pain, arching away from the rigid fullness, feeling the burn of stretching inner muscles and tender tissues.

“Yes,” he hissed, yanking me back into him until the lips of my sex hugged the thick root of his penis. His h*ps circled, his balls lying heavily against my engorged clitoris. “Fucking tight . . .”

I moaned and tried to hold on to the handrail; my body rocked as he began to f**k. The sensation was devastating, being filled so completely, then emptied abruptly. My knees gave out, my core spasming in delight as he reamed me hard and thoroughly. All the emotion he’d pent up inside him was hammered into me, the relentless drives of his c**k massaging every sensitive nerve.

I was coming before I knew the orgasm was on me, gasping his name as pleasure racked my body in violent trembles.

My head dropped between my arms, my muscles weak and useless. Gideon held me up with his hands, with his erection. Using my body. Taking it. Grunting primitively every time he hit the end of me.

“So deep,” he growled. “So good.”

In the periphery, I caught movement, my dazed eyes focusing on our reflection. With a low, pained cry I started coming again, if I’d ever stopped. Gideon was the most searingly erotic thing I’d ever seen—his biceps thick and hard as he supported my weight, his thighs straining with exertion, his ass flexing as he pistoned, his abs rippling with power as he rolled his h*ps with every stroke.

He’d been built to f**k, but he had mastered the skill, using every inch of his amazing body to enslave a woman to pleasure. It was innate to him, instinctive. Even drunk and near feral with anguish, his rhythm was tight and precise, his focus absolute.

Every thrust took him deep inside me, hitting the sweetest spots again and again, driving the ecstasy into me until I couldn’t resist the onslaught. Another cl**ax churned through me like a tidal wave.

“That’s it,” he groaned. “Milk my dick, angel. God . . . You’re making me come.”

I felt his c**k thickening, lengthening. Tingles raced across my skin; my lungs heaved for air.

Gideon threw back his head and roared like an animal, spurting hotly. Gripping my hips, he pumped me onto his ejaculating cock, coming hard and forever, filling me until se**n slicked my sex and inner thighs.

He slowed the thrust of his hips, gasping, bending over to press his cheek to my shoulder.

I started sinking to my knees. “Gideon . . .”

He pulled me up. “I’m not done,” he said roughly, still thick and stiff inside me.

Then he started again.

—

I woke to the feel of his hair brushing over my shoulder and the press of warm, firm lips. Exhausted, I tried to roll away, but an arm around my waist pulled me back.

“Eva,” he rasped. His hand cupped my breast, clever fingers rolling my nipple.

It was dark and we were in bed, although I barely remembered him carrying me there. He’d undressed me, washed me with a damp cloth, and rained kisses over my face and wrists. They were bandaged now, slicked with ointment and wrapped with care.

It had turned me on to feel his tender caresses over the chafing, the mix of pleasure and pain. He’d noticed.

With eyes hot with lust, he’d spread my legs and eaten me with an insistent demand that robbed me of the ability to think or move. He’d licked and sucked my cleft endlessly, until I lost count of how many times he made me come around his wicked tongue.

“Gideon . . .” Turning my head, I looked at him over my shoulder. He was propped on one arm, his eyes glittering in the faint light of the moon. “Did you stay with me?”

Maybe it was reckless to hope he’d stayed with me while I slept, but sharing a bed with him was something I loved. And craved.

He nodded. “I couldn’t leave you.”

“I’m glad.”

He rolled me over and into him, taking my mouth, kissing me softly. The coaxing licks of his tongue stirred me again, made me moan.

“I can’t stop touching you,” he breathed, gripping my nape to hold me still as he deepened the kiss, his teeth tugging gently on my lower lip. “When I touch you, I don’t think about anything else.”

Tenderness blended with the love. “Can I touch you, too?”

Closing his eyes, he begged. “Please.”

I surged into him, my hands sliding into his hair to hold him as he held me. I brushed my tongue against his, our mouths hot and wet. Our legs tangled, my body arching to press against the hardness of his.

He hummed softly and slowed me down, rolling to pin me to the bed. Pulling back, he broke the seal of our mouths, nibbling, sucking. Tracing the curves of my lips with the tip of his tongue.

I whimpered in protest, wanting deeper, harder. Instead, he licked leisurely, stroking the roof of my mouth, the lining of my cheeks. I tightened my legs, dragging him closer. He rocked his hips, pressing his erection into my thigh.

Gideon kissed me until my lips were hot and puffy and the sun was rising in the sky. He kissed me until he came in a hot rush against my skin. Not once but twice.

The feel of him coming, the sound of his low pained moans of pleasure, knowing I could bring him to orgasm with just my kiss . . . I slicked his thigh with my need and ground against him until I cl**axed.

As the new day began, he closed the distance he’d put between us in the elevator. He made love to me without sex. He pledged his devotion by making me the center of his world. There was nothing beyond the edges of our bed. Only us and a love that stripped us bare even as it made us whole.

—

WHEN I woke again, I found him sleeping beside me, his lips as kiss-swollen as mine. Gideon’s face was soft in repose, but the faint frown between his brows told me he wasn’t resting as deeply as I would wish. He lay on his side, his body stretched long and lean across the mattress, the sheet tangled around his legs.

It was late, nearly nine, but I didn’t have the heart to either wake him or leave him. I hadn’t been at my job long enough to miss a day, but I decided to do it anyway.

I’d been putting my needs first when it came to my career, giving it the power to someday put a wedge between us. I knew my desire to be independent wasn’t wrong, but at that moment, it didn’t feel right, either.

Pulling on a T-shirt and boyshorts, I slipped out of the bedroom and down the hall to Gideon’s home office, where his smartphone was bitching that he was ignoring the alarm to wake him up. I turned it off and went to the kitchen.

Mentally checking off the things I needed to do, I called and left a message for Mark about missing work due to a family emergency. Then I called Scott’s desk and left a message telling him that Gideon wasn’t going to make it in by nine and might not be there at all. I told him to call me and we could talk about it.

I hoped to keep Gideon home all day, although I doubted he would agree to that. We needed time together, alone. Time to heal.

I retrieved my smartphone from the foyer and called Angus. He answered on the first ring.

“Hello, Mrs. Cross. Are you and Mr. Cross ready to go?”

“No, Angus, right now we’re staying put. I’m not sure we’ll be leaving the penthouse today. I was wondering, do you know where Gideon gets those bottles of hangover cure?”

“Yes, of course. Do you need one?”

“Gideon might when he wakes up. Just in case, I’d like to have one waiting for him.”

There was a pause. “If you don’t mind me asking,” he asked, his Scottish burr more pronounced, “does this have something to do with Mr. Vidal’s visit last night?”

I rubbed at my forehead, feeling the warning signs of an impending headache. “It has everything to do with it.”

“Does Chris believe?” he asked quietly.

“Yes.”

He sighed. “Ach, that’s why, then. The lad wouldna been prepared for that. Denial is what he knows and can handle.”

“He took it hard.”

“Aye, I’m certain he did. It’s good he has you, Eva. You’re doing the right thing for him, though it may take him time to appreciate it. I’ll get that bottle for you.”

“Thank you.”

With that accomplished, I turned my attention to cleaning the place up. I washed the empty decanter and tumbler I found on the kitchen island first, then took the broom and dustpan into the foyer to clean up the shattered glass. I talked to Scott when he called while I was picking up all the crap that had fallen out of my purse, and when we hung up, I turned my attention to scrubbing the foyer wall and floor to remove the dried traces of brandy.

Gideon had said he felt shattered the night before. I didn’t want him to wake up and find his place that way.

Our place, I corrected myself. Our home. I needed to start thinking of it that way. And so did Gideon. We were going to have a conversation about him trying to kick me out. If I was going to make a better effort at entwining our lives, then he had to as well.

I wished there were someone I could talk to about it all, a friend to listen and give sage advice. Cary or Shawna. Even Steven, who had a way about him that made him so easy to talk to. We had Dr. Petersen, but that wasn’t the same thing.

For now, Gideon and I had secrets we could share only with each other, and that kept us isolated and codependent. It wasn’t only innocence our abusers had taken away from us; they’d also taken our freedom. Even after the abuse was long over, we were still caged by the false fronts we lived behind. Still caged by lies, but in a different way.

I had just finished polishing all the smudges off the mirror in the elevator when it began descending with me inside. In only a T-shirt and underwear.

“Seriously?” I muttered, yanking off my rubber gloves to try to put order to my hair. After rolling around with Gideon all night, I looked like an epic mess.

The doors slid open and Angus started to step in, his footstep halting midair when he spotted me. I shifted position, trying to hide the cord still tied to the handrail behind me. Gideon had cut me loose with scissors, freeing my wrists but leaving the evidence.

“Uh, hi,” I said, squirming with embarrassment. There was no good way to explain how I happened to be in the elevator, scarcely dressed and holding yellow rubber gloves, when Angus had called it down to pick him up. To make things worse, my lips were so red and swollen from kissing Gideon for hours that there was no way to hide what I’d been up to all night.

Angus’s pale blue eyes lit with amusement. “Good morning, Mrs. Cross.”

“Good morning, Angus,” I replied, with as much dignity as I could manage.

He held out a bottle of the hangover “cure,” which I was pretty sure was just a shot of alcohol mixed with liquid vitamins. “Here you go.”

“Thank you.” The words were heartfelt and carried additional gratitude for his lack of questions.