“You are.” My voice quaked just as much as my flailing legs as I tried to scoot up the bar and run away from the wild orgasm that had threatened to riven my body. “You’re doing the right thing, Dean. Whatever it is.”

“I hate her,” he said, his tongue penetrating me, deep. His lips, his fingers, his teeth devouring me completely. He was talking about another woman while being with me. That should have made the alarm bells in my head go off, the red sirens to spin at three hundred miles an hour. But it didn’t.

It didn’t, because it was him.

“Then I hate her, too,” I cried out, feeling my knees shaking and my body going numb as a hot wave of pleasure washed over me, cocooning my body. I howled, a mauled animal, pulling at his hair, my thighs clenching his head until he had to pry them open with his strong fingers. Then I lay there for a second, motionless, and watched as he unbuckled his belt, stepping out of his pants before he grabbed me by the thighs and scooted me up.

“I’m angry.” The green in his eyes danced like flames.

“I know.”

“If you want to walk away—do it now. For what it’s worth, I think you should.”

“I’m staying.”

“You’re not going to like what you see.”

“What am I going to see?”

“The side of me that I’m not too proud of.”

I gulped, my mouth falling open. “I’m in, no matter what part of you you give me.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” he sneered. “I’m going to hurt you.”

“Good.” I placed a hand over his chest. “That’s what I like about you. You treat me like a capable human and not like a wilting Rose.”

And just like that, everything changed. Darkness sucked the sunset from the city that watched us, broken glass crunched under his shoes, promising pain, his eyes shut down, and I was left alone with a stranger. With a savage.

The lights were switched off and he pulled me into him, but when I thought he was going to catch me…that was when he let me fall. A throne of colorless glass underneath me. Even my bones moaned in protest as he grabbed me by the arm and hauled me to his bedroom, dragging me along his pristine black and white floor. My skin split from being dragged against the glass. Black velvet rug greeted me when we entered his domain, beneath an extra-large, king-sized bed from the variety you only see in the movies. I’d never been in his bedroom before, and I gulped when I thought about all the women who had. All the Kennedys. All the Natashas.

All the uncomfortable and painful truths.

He let go of my arm and gave me a little kick with his leg toward an ottoman by the floor-to-ceiling window.

“Elbows,” a metal-cold voice that wasn’t his demanded, and I scooted up on my knees and placed my elbows on the settee, staring out to the twinkling, artificial lights of New York. Dean stood behind me, but I couldn’t see what he was doing. My ass was bare, but I still had my bra on. I figured he was hovering somewhere in my vicinity, but couldn’t tell for sure. I didn’t turn my head and look. He wanted me to be scared. I wanted me to be scared. This was happening.

“The funny thing is,” he started, pacing behind me in his room, and I shivered at his beautiful voice. I heard the whoosh of thick liquid as he took another drink of his brandy. “They all called me Ruckus and The Joker in high school. The Jester. The fun guy. The clown.”

And he was none of the above. I realized it now, but back in high school, I bought into that image, too. He could I not? He was damn good at selling it, and at a very high price.

“But you know what I am, Rosie?” He stopped moving behind me.

I closed my eyes, sucking the masculine scent of his room into my desperate lungs and feeling my heart disjoining inside my chest.

“You’re a Pierrot,” I whispered. “You’re a sad, lonely clown.”

“Always smart and perceptive.” A hint of his own voice trickled into his tone. He took three or four steps toward me—I heard and counted—and even though I was still mostly naked and couldn’t see him through the reflection of the too-spotless window glass—I felt safe.

“Do you know why the Pierrot is sad?” Dean asked.

“Broken heart.” I swallowed, fighting tears. “He is pining for love that can never be his.”

I wanted to turn around. To hug him. To undo the last few hours that made him the way he was. But I did none of those things. I felt his hand caressing one of my ass cheeks, his breath tickling the valley between my neck and shoulder.