She could only get her hands on useless things, and we were just messing around, so no harm done. Neither of us had lied about our intentions. It wasn’t as though she’d backstabbed me.

Sprawled on the sofa, I tapped my thigh, dropping my head to the heap of fluffy pillows behind me. “C’mere.”

She peered from under her wet lashes, looking shy for the briefest moment. I wondered if it was because of what we were going to do, or what she thought was going to happen. Bane had said she wasn’t vanilla, but what he really meant was she wasn’t vanilla for him. Me, I was different. A dark, deprived animal lived inside me. Whenever I let it out—and I always let it out in bed—it bloomed. Freedom gave the savage inside me a good buzz, which was why I sometimes got a little carried away.

I couldn’t lose control with Edie. Not with her.

Edie walked over and straddled me like she was a stripper on her first day and wasn’t sure what to do. It was awkward because we weren’t a couple. We weren’t intimate. We weren’t even friendly. I didn’t comment on this, because familiarity was off the fucking table with everyone, but with her specifically.

Instead, I dragged my hands up her thighs to the curve of her ass, and we both watched, her fair skin under the dusk of mine. Lust didn’t have color. But it did have a face and it looked at me, blinking rapidly to the rhythm of her hammering heart.

“I like Luna,” she said quietly, wrapping her arms around my neck, her fingers trying to grasp at my very short hair. For a second there, I wanted to kiss her, just for saying that.

Instead, I squeezed her ass, slamming her body into my erection, my denim and her shorts brushing together.

“She likes you, too,” I retorted.

“Yet, I don’t like you,” she continued, grinding against my cock deliberately, and since when was I doing third base on a regular basis? I’d had multiple chances to fuck Edie, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. To take this girl—so different from my usual mature, curvy type—and do grown-up things to her.

I wanted to bite her lip and watch her bleed on me.

Instead, instead, in-fucking-stead, I locked my jaw, feeling my Adam’s apple bobbing with a swallow. One hand still on her ass, I reached with the other one to the coffee table by the couch, opening the child-proof drawer and retrieving a joint. I tucked it between my lips and cupped the tip with my hand, lighting it.

“I don’t like you, too,” I answered casually, clicking shut my Zippo and placing it back on the stainless steel table.

“But I like how you make me feel.” She rode me through our clothes. The aching need for her escalated torturously slowly, reminding me why sex as a teenager was so much more fun than it was in your thirties. The anticipation made my dick twitch. “You make me feel wild. Fearless. Like I’m someone. Someone strong.” Her lips dragged along my neck, hot and soft.

I exhaled a ribbon of smoke upward, leaning and sweeping my lips against the side of her neck. “What’s your fascination with power?” I ran my hand up her arm, thumbing the hem of her shirt. I wanted it gone. Her nipples were erect under her top, begging to be licked and sucked and bitten. Her tits were so small—so fucking tiny—the idea of kneading them in my big hands made my balls tighten, knowing there wasn’t enough of them, that I’d be left hungry for more of her.

“It’s less of a power thing, more of a strength issue. Why wouldn’t I want to be strong? Isn’t that what everyone’s after?” She tilted her head, slipping her fingers to clasp my joint and take a hit. I let her. I let the eighteen-year-old on my lap, rubbing her wet pussy all over my Diesel denim, smoke with me. It’d been years since I’d given a woman the time of day, and I’d never, ever done anything illegal with a chick who straddled the line between barely legal and hot-as-shit-and-worth-the-self-loathing.

But Edie wasn’t a chick.

Edie was the fucking end of me.

She exhaled the smoke straight into my face, and I took the opportunity to pluck the joint from her hand and place it in an ashtray. I yanked her top off and threw it on the floor, admiring her bare tits for the very first time. Her nipples were two pink coins. She shuddered with pleasure when I cupped one of them, rolling the plump skin beneath my fingers and staring at her like a hungry hound.

“If you want to be strong, be,” I hissed.

“Easy for you to say.” She thrust her tits into my face, losing every ounce of control over her self-restraint. I held her back, my fingers feathering, skimming on her ribs as I took one of her nipples into my mouth, sucking on it ravenously before biting the tip and feeling her pull her breasts away but grind into my dick harder. I stopped when I felt the goose bumps around her nipple and sucked the pain away, and she moaned louder.