I moved my mouth along her jaw, down her neck, and all sense of public decency lost, I nuzzled into her cle**age, her warm, quivering br**sts welcoming me as she arched with a moan.

Why wasn’t there a f**king alley nearby? I wondered.

Fucking Vegas, with its strip malls, all the buildings connected, no alleys in sight.

It was f**king inconvenient in the extreme.

I nosed her shirt aside, sucking at her crested nipple through the filmy material of her useless bra, nudging my erection insistently against her giving flesh with every draw.

I’d lost it. Lost all sense of place or public decency.

Lost it with all rational thought.

Because I was f**king out of my mind with lust.

I took my mouth away from her skin again, panting hard, still keeping my hands full of her, hard-on still raging against her, a second away from exploding.

“We need to go somewhere private,” I told her firmly, my tone gone beyond polite and brooking no refusal. “Now.”

“I can’t. I want to go with you, and even though I’m not sure I should want that, that’s not what’s keeping me away.”

I blinked at her, trying to make my slowed mind process what she was saying.

As it began to sink in, I felt my teeth grinding together, my hands kneading hard at her flesh, which was clearly giving me a different story than her mouth.

I didn’t know what to address first.

Both of her statements bothered me.

“Why aren’t you sure?”

“Things didn’t exactly end well between us, Dair. You hurt me. I gave you my best, and you thought the worst of me. I’m not sure we should do this again.”

My nostrils flared, eyes going wide. It was odd, but lust channeled very naturally into anger.

Or perhaps the anger had been there all along, just below the surface, bowing down to the stronger urge.

“You didn’t give me the truth,” I told her pointedly. I’d given this a lot of thought. “You gave me the you that’s too good to be real. I need the real.”

“This is real. I gave you real. Listen, my life’s a mess you don’t need to get mixed up in, but I’ve been real to you from the get-go. I wanted you. I still do. More than anything.”

The anger went under the surface again, superseded by her admission of wanting me.

Her hands had been gripping my shoulders from the moment I’d pressed her to the wall.

I needed more.

I put my mouth to her ear. “Touch me,” I breathed. My hands were full of her, and I had no intention of letting go.

She gasped. “Things will get out of hand if I start touching you, I guarantee it.”

My laugh was a choked bark of a noise. “You think they aren’t already?”

One soft hand touched my cheek, while the other stroked down to my chest, my stomach, then lower, to feel between our bodies.

“Touch my skin,” I breathed into her ear, moving my mouth down to suck at her neck.

She moaned and plunged her hand down my pants, gripping my straining length, her arm noticeably trembling.

She’d barely begun to stroke the thick curve of me when a loud cleared throat had me pulling back enough to glance behind me.

I started cursing as I extricated myself and straightened away from her.

A police officer stood not four feet away, arms crossed over his chest, looking stern.

I dragged an agitated hand through my hair as I took a pointed step away from Iris.

My mind started going over all of the things we’d been doing openly, in public, in broad daylight.

I cataloged every debauched thing we’d done against that building.

It wasn’t good.

Shit.

Were we about to be arrested for lewd acts in public?

It seemed more than feasible.

I cursed again, glancing around, as though just seeing our surroundings for the first time.

There weren’t too many people around. And at least there weren’t any children within sight.

It was something.

“Sorry to disturb you, Mr. Masters,” the police officer said, making me stare at him more closely. He knew my name, and he sounded more sheepish than authoritative.

I studied him and was thrilled to see the signs. He was a fan.

Best case scenario, all things considered. A stroke of luck.

“I’m just going to need you to go ahead and take this someplace private,” he said gruffly, glancing at Iris, and then back at me.

I was nodding before he even finished talking.

“Yes, officer,” I said, unable to look him in the eye anymore, because even his interruption hadn’t been enough to distract me from my need.

I was still hard and throbbing.

Out of control.

I glanced at Iris, which was a mistake.

She was essentially covered. It wasn’t like she was naked, though the amount of cle**age she was exposing was hard to ignore.

It was the way she was leaning against the wall, eyes glazed, back arched, that was completely indecent.

I pulled her front into my chest by the shoulders, to hide her luscious state.

I couldn’t stand anyone else seeing her like that.

“Sorry about that, officer,” I said, still not looking at him. “We were just about to leave.”

He cleared his throat again, shifted on his feet a bit, and finally, walked away.

My hands on Iris’ shoulders moved to rub her back as I hugged her against me. We just stood like that for a long time, until the cop had left our sight, and we’d somewhat caught our breaths.