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And there he was…completely and utterly naked.

My gaze dragged down before I could stop it, snagging on the thick, rigid length of his cock jutting up against his stomach, flushed dark and slick at the tip, pulsing with the same furious rhythm as the cords in his neck. He was hard, achingly hard, the sight punching the air from my lungs and flooding slick arousal straight between my thighs.

Fucking hell.

My mouth fell open, a sharp inhale catching in my throat as I continued to stare at him. I’d lost the ability to look away. His cock throbbed, and a bead of precum slid down the flushed head, and fuck if that didn’t make my pussy clench hard enough that I was wondering if I could orgasm from this sight alone.

His eyes suddenly snapped open. They locked on mine across the room, and the world narrowed to just that stare, predator and prey, monster and the girl stupid enough to walk into his lair.

“Sienna,” he growled, my name ripping out of him raggedly. There was something needy in his voice, almost broken, like saying it was the only thing keeping him human.

He shook his head hard. “Go back to your room,” he rasped. “Don’t⁠—”

But my feet were already moving.

One step. Then another.

I couldn’t stop. I didn’t want to. Every warning screaming in my head was drowned under the pounding of my pulse and the slick rush between my thighs as I closed the distance between us. His scent hit me harder the closer I got, his sweat and rage and that dark, addictive edge that was purely Sterling.

His nostrils flared, and his body went rigid as I stepped right up to the edge of the bed.

“Sienna, fuck—get out,” he snarled through gritted teeth, but his eyes betrayed him.

They were devouring me.

His cock jerked against his stomach again, leaking more, and a tortured groan tore from his chest.

The way he looked at me, like I was salvation and ruin all wrapped in one, lit me up inside and made me throb for the moment he finally snapped.

I wanted him to snap.

I wanted those cuffs to break and his hands to be on me, claiming me, I wanted him to fuck my body until we were both too wrecked to care about anything else.

Because I wasn’t afraid of the monster or whatever he was right now.

I was becoming obsessed with him.

CHAPTER 31

SIENNA

“Sterling,” I whispered. “Look at me.”

He did, slowly. His eyes were tortured and hungry and terrified all at once. My voice wavered. “Do you—do you want me to leave?”

Silence stretched between us, and I braced myself to walk away.

“No.” The word slipped from him on a rough exhale, and when he spoke again, it came out lower, like it had been dragged from somewhere deep inside him. “No. Fuck, no.”

My far too relieved breath shook as it left me, the sound loud in the dark.

“If you stay, though,” he said, “I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up.” His wrists shifted against the cuffs, not fighting against them, just reminding me that they were the only thing holding him back.

Slowly, I climbed onto the bed, and I was pretty sure his breath stopped. Literally stopped.

“Sienna—” he groaned, staring up at me like I was sunlight he didn’t trust to be real.

I settled near his hip, my knee brushing the mattress beside him, and his entire body jolted like I’d set fire to him as my hand hovered above his chest. He was trembling, and his reaction slid through me in a dizzying wave. The unsettling, intoxicating knowledge that I could make him react like this.