I smile, nod. “Did you tell Otis that you are?”

“I did. You sure it’s okay?” His eyes twinkle. “We won’t get much sleep if I stay.”

“Who needs sleep with you in bed?” I grin; then he makes the bed squeak as he rolls to his side to watch his hand caress my abdomen on the way up. I watch my own fingers crawl up his throat, his jaw, and I whisper in his ear, “Help me keep quiet. I don’t want us to make noise.”

He rolls me to my back and sinks his hips between my thighs, his palm spreading over my cheek. He presses his thumb between my lips and strokes it against my tongue so that I can suck it instead of make noise. There’s such raw need in his eyes. Suddenly I’m jealous thinking of him giving this to anyone else. I’m so jealous I can’t claw my way close enough. A moan flows out of my mouth as I press my body upward. “Come closer. Come closer and tell me what you want, say it dirty,” I beg in his ear.

“Tell you?” he says in his quiet voice. “I’m going to show you.”

Watching me, his fist slides over the length of his erection until he’s grabbed the base; slowly, he introduces the head into my body. “How dirty?” he coaxes, eyes gleaming in the lamplight. “Rachel?” The desire in his voice excites me even more. “How dirty do you want it? How hard?”

He slides, inch by inch, between my legs, and stops midway. Warm hands take the backs of my knees, and then he spreads my legs over his square shoulders. The move opens me up like a flower, my pussy exposed. His hips settle between my thighs, deeper this time, and he enters me the rest of the way, and I take him with a long, erotic moan, the pressure of his cock entering me robbing me of my breath.

Alight with exquisite pleasure, my body’s throbbing for him. We both begin rocking in unison, seeking the ultimate closeness.

My nails sink into the back of his neck as my legs loosen so he can fold me over and get as deep as possible. His powerful body moves above mine in a ripple of muscles and a flex of hips and arms. God, the friction. The friction brings him balls deep. Every in-stroke brings his body to stimulate my clit. Slowly, but with expert control and powerful thrusts, he moves above me. Inside me.

The pleasure is exquisite torment: my senses attuned to his breath, warmth, weight, I don’t want it to end.

He fucks me hard, every controlled thrust bursting with power, his growls a low vibration in his chest until he has no choice but to duck his head and bury the gruff sounds against my hair, and me, in his throat. We undulate together, straining to get closer, and it feels so good, so right, that instead of slowing down, I let my virgin little bed scream for mercy.

There’s something so intensely good, a fierce connection—invisible but intimate—in waking up to find a man watching you sleep. It’s not the first time I catch Malcolm watching me, but it’s the first time I don’t start. The first time I open my eyes, meet his quiet stare, and feel a pool of heat in my stomach build and build as I slowly start to smile.

“Hey,” I say.

“Hey.” He cups my cheek, and the brush of his thumb over my lips makes me turn my head into the touch and savor it a little. “Hmm,” I say, admiring how adorable he looks recently awake.

We have officially hit the “four” mark in the sex department, and a part of me wonders if this is it.

He looks at me with respect this morning, as if he liked all the sides of myself I showed him yesterday, and I can’t miss that glint in his eye that somehow silently tells me, I know how you like it. Lazily, he asks me about work, specifically he asks me what I’m working on. It’s the second time he’s asked me—the first was at the Tunnel. My heart leaps a little bit, but he’s too relaxed after all the night’s sex to notice.

I turn the topic around with a frown mixed with a smile. “Don’t you have work too? What are you doing in bed with me?”

“Getting hard.”

I laugh.

With a wry smile, he tilts my chin. “I had a good time last night.” He kisses me softly, no tongue, and it feels as intense as if he’d tongued me.

I count down to ten. Then I groan in protest as I wiggle out of his arm. “Be a good boy and wait,” I say. “I don’t want Gina to have a heart attack.”

I kick the sheets off, slip into my terry robe, and pad out into the kitchen to put coffee on. I come back into the room to brush my teeth and wash my face, then I ponder whether I should put on some makeup. I stare at my reflection. I look bare . . . my skin pale, my sad-panda eyes all dark and tired after last night. But my irises are glowing bright and I can’t really keep my lips from curling upward at the corners. I grab a lipstick and a brush, but then stop myself. It’s not like this is going anywhere, is it? It’s not like I want him to fall in love with me—it was just a hookup. So I force myself to drop the brush and to leave the lipstick where it is. Shaking my head at myself, I don’t bother primping when I go back out to check on coffee and then come back to my room with a cup for each of us in my hands.

In true man-form, Sin’s spread on the bed, completely useless and clearly spent from fucking this lady right here. The duvet is at his ankles, every inch of him bare, one muscled arm behind his head, the other stretched out under the pillow I was on. Fucking god, he’s glorious. I want to catalogue every detail of him—I know Gina will want to hear all about it . . . so will Wynn . . . but he’s in my bed, and I don’t even want to share the details about how he looks in it with my internal journalist.

“What’s that?”

Checking out the goods I carry, he sits up, the muscles of his arms rippling with the move, and smiles at me. When I automatically smile in return, I feel vulnerable, real . . . and human. Why I chose to open up to a guy like him is beyond me. But I feel like my walls are still not erect. I don’t want to put them back up yet.

“Coffee, or me?” I lift the coffee cup and my eyebrow at the same time.

His laugh is soft and raspy as he drags a hand through his rumpled hair, looking even more handsome as he tsks and shakes his head. “You don’t know by now?”

“How greedy you are? You’re right, I do know. I bet you want both.”

He flashes an all-mischief smile as he pats the side of the bed, calling me back to him.

I head over with the coffee, and when he takes his cup, I slide into bed with him. We sip coffee in silence.

Before I’m finished with mine, he takes my cup and sets it on the nightstand closest to him. In one smooth, strong move, he presses me down on the bed and I fall back, breathless as he braces himself above me, his arms long and taut. He takes my fuzzy socks off. His fingers brush my arches, and I can’t hold back a choked little laugh. “Your feet are ticklish, Rachel?” He’s amused. I love how he says Ray-chel.