“Eli said that’s against the rules.”

“Then no.” The mattress dips again. He’s moving, coming closer. His hot breath grazes across the skin of my neck when he speaks. “I don’t need to call you Melody or Candy or some other fake-ass name. We’ll just be strangers for a while. That square with you?”

“Yeah, I—I guess.”

In the darkness my skin is alive. So are my other senses. My nose keeps on whispering to me, hints of mint and the ocean. Whoever he is, this guy smells incredible. Not a whiff of cigarettes on him at all, which means that voice…that voice is one hundred percent natural. I’m curious about him in the most detached way.

“You done this before? Like this?” he asks me.

“Never.” My breath actually catches in my throat. I’m so spaced out that I can barely think straight, but the lack of lighting in the room is making my heart race. Maybe it’s because this guy could be a serial killer. He could still be a serial killer with the lights on, but at least I’d have the chance to see it in his eyes and run for my life.

Mystery Guy exhales, sending another warm breath across my chest. My nipples harden even though I’m not cold. I’ve never experienced that before. Never. Probably because I’ve never been this close to a guy before. “Place your hands in your lap,” he tells me.

I do it. I jump a little when I feel his hand reach out and touch my leg. “Scared?”

“No.”

He laughs, and it’s a cruel and wicked thing. His hands gently trail up my leg until he finds my hand, where he fingers curl around my wrist. “You’re braver than most girls.”

“You do this with a lot of girls?”

“Yes.”

Well at least he’s honest. He lifts up my hand and brings it toward himself, and stubble prickles against the sensitive skin on the inside of my wrist.

“You smell like flowers. What perfume do you wear?”

“Afresia,” I tell him.

“It’s clean. Not too heavy. I like it.”

So glad you approve. I feel like giggling. His nose brushes against my wrist and then the soft touch of his lips follows soon after. The kiss is barely even there, soft and gentle, but I can read a lot from it. His lips are full and he’s gentle with his mouth. That’s unexpected. I fidget on the bed, wondering where this is going. Where his mouth will be going next.

“Have you ever thought about what it would be like to be blind?” he rumbles.

“Why? Are you blind?”

“No. Answer the question.”

“I suppose so. Sometimes.”

He guides my hand upwards and takes it in both of his, uncurling my fingers so that my palm is open. He does it slowly, running calloused fingers down the length of my own, and I can’t help but shiver. It’s a fairly simple thing, but the way he does it feels intimate and considered, not just grabbing and touching for the hell of it. I hold my breath as he guides my hand again, until my fingertips meet his hair, and then down to his face.

“Tell me what you think I look like,” he says, his voice a resonating growl. He lets go of my hand, and I have to lean forward to reach him properly. I shimmy closer, tucking my legs under my butt so I can balance properly, and then I raise my other hand to his face, too.

His hair is short, a little stiff from the styling product he’s got in there; his facial features are strong, pronounced. Jaw’s a little square, nose mostly straight apart from a slightly flattened part near the ridge of his brow. His eyelashes are surprisingly long, and his lips…I was right. His lips are full and way softer than any guy’s lips have a right to be. Especially a guy with a voice like his. From the tingling pads of my fingers, I can sense this guy has the face of an angel. A barbaric one—maybe like one of those guys who did a lot of smiting back in Babylon.

“What do you think?” he asks.

“I think you’re probably very attractive,” I admit.

He grunts. “And what about the rest of me?”

He applies a little pressure to my forearms so that they travel down to his chest, where my fingers meet with smooth skin and hard-packed, rippling muscle. His pecs twitch as my hands brush lightly over them, and then downward. I come across three horizontal ridges in his skin that shouldn’t be there, to the right of his abs spaced a couple of inches apart, and my fingers draw circles over them, trying to tease their story from them, trying to figure out where they came from. There’s an untold history of violence here, written in the planes of his formidable body. He shakes a little as I explore him, probing with a feather-light touch until I’ve traced my way across his washboard stomach and up over his obliques. He sucks in a sharp breath and tenses when I do that, and I smile a little. I actually smile. This guy’s ticklish. He doesn’t laugh or tell me not to touch him there, but his body tightens further still when I go over the area one more time to test the theory.

I move up to his shoulders, which are powerful and strong, and I lace my arms around the back of his neck, feeling over his shoulder blades. He’s huge, but I’m not really afraid of him. Of course I should be, yes, but I’m not. The valium has flattened out my fear, and besides, the way I’d imagined this, the guy was going to come in here and want to lay his hands on me; he’d poke and prod and examine every inch of me, and he’d most definitely want to see what he was paying for. So far, this guy has touched me sparingly and that was on the hand.