While he stood, she took off his sheath, stood the sword beside the bed. Came back and began unbuttoning his shirt.

“You’re that sure of your allure?”

“Allure? Please. I’ve got all the necessary girl parts. That’s allure enough, especially with a man who’s already cruised them.”

She tossed the shirt aside, gave him a little nudge toward the bed. “Sit down, big guy, and I’ll get you naked.”

“It didn’t trouble you that Sawyer or Bran might have walked in rather than me?”

Another nudge. “First, I’m covered. Second, you’re the only one who’d walk in without knocking. Sit,” she repeated.

“I didn’t come in here to have sex.” But he sat on the side of the bed.

“Life’s full of surprises.” She pulled off his boots, smiled as she unhooked his belt. “Surprise.”

“I can have sex and still be pissed at you.”

“Handy for both of us.” She gave him a shove to push him onto his back. Moving quickly, she tugged his jeans down, kicked them across the room.

Then climbed on to straddle him.

“What do you say we talk later?”

He gripped her hair, none too gently, to haul her down. As her mouth met his, he flipped her onto her back.

She expected him to simply take her, just pound away—and wouldn’t have objected. Instead he changed his grip from her hair to her wrists, yanked her arms over her head.

Instinct had her trying to tug free. “Hey.”

“Shut up.”

He ravaged her mouth, spinning her system into overdrive. She struggled—not in protest, but in the desire to get her hands on him.

She’d have to say no, tell him outright to stop, or she’d take what he gave her. Temper still burned in him, and burning with it was a scorching lust. She thought she could play him—and by God she had—but she’d know the full force of what he wanted from her before he was done.

He liked her helpless, for once, pinned under him, her hands cuffed by his. Her body quivering and bucking when he closed his mouth over her breast. When he used his teeth to hint at pain.

She could tie him into knots with those eyes. Now she’d know what it was to feel choice dissolve in outrageous desire.

He yanked her arms down, kept her wrists clamped in his hand. And moved ruthlessly down her body. She cried out when he used his tongue. Arched and writhed and cried out again when he didn’t relent.

But the word she cried wasn’t no.

It was yes.

She knew what it was to burn. Knew what it was to give in to needs, however feral. But this, now, spurred her beyond the known. He shoved her over the edge only to whip her onto another. And again until her lungs seared and her heart beat to bursting.

When he released her hands so he could use his own on her, to press and grip and plunder, hers could only grip the sheets and let what he did rage through her.

Everywhere, everywhere those rough hands moved shuddered, as if her nerves lived over her skin now.

When he jerked her up, her head fell back. Her body quivered, every inch, at the threat of more. At the welcoming of it.

“No, no, you’ll look. You’ll open your eyes and look at the one who takes you as you’re meant to be taken. Look at me, damn you, look at the one who knows what lives in you.”

She opened her eyes, looked into his, so fiercely green they were nearly blinding. But in them she saw that need and that knowledge. For her, of her.

She gripped his hips. “I see you.”

Half mad, he thrust into her. He plundered her as his blood burned and his heart leaped where it had no business falling. Because he saw her, he knew her, and she him.

And so he feared both of them were damned.

Taken over, she thought when they’d both gone limp as wax. That one step she’d never allowed with another, she’d allowed him. To take her over—body, mind, and all she was.

Once that step was taken, how did she go back?

How could she go back?

When he rolled away, to lie on his back beside her, her instinct was to curl in. But she quashed it, stayed as she was.

Keep it light, she warned herself. She knew how to address facts and keep it light.

“Maybe I’ll keep that shirt. It obviously works on me.”

“You can have what’s left of it.”

Puzzled, she looked down, noted the torn remains of it at the foot of the bed. “We keep this up, we’ll both be walking around mostly naked.”

He rolled, grabbed the bottle of water from her nightstand, drank half of it down. Almost as an afterthought, he offered her the rest. “I’ve marked you.”

She took stock. Bruises on her wrists, a couple more here and there. “Nothing much.”

But he got up and brought her jar of balm back to the bed.

“You pissed me off,” he said, even as he stroked the balm onto the bruises.

“Bitch at me all you want because nothing’s going to reach the level of Sasha’s stern disapproval.” Now Riley hissed out a breath. “It flattened me. We should’ve told somebody what we were doing, where we were going. Sawyer wanted to get the makings of an engagement ring for Anni, and—”

“I figured that out on my own, though I figured you’d gone for a ring altogether. Doesn’t excuse it.”

“Message received, loud and clear. It was a slap to the whole unity thing, and thoughtless. Even with that, all of this . . . old habits. I’m sorry. Best I can do is I’m sorry.”