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His bedroom is cooler than the rest of the house, the silvery moonlight spilling across the floor from the massive floor-to-ceiling windows, but I barely notice any of it. I am too busy looking at him.

I watch the way the light catches the dark ink winding up his forearm. The effortless way he kicks the door shut behind us with his heel, never once taking his eyes off me, refusing to put me down on the floor.

He keeps me cradled close to his chest until we get to his massive bed in the center of the room, lowering me onto the mattress.

The plush covers move around me, cool and soft against my exposed back. I lean backwards, watching him. For the first time since this whole strange and intense thing started between us, I feel completely relaxed. I am not afraid of him, or of this, or of what it actually feels like to finally let go and stop desperately trying to hold everything together. I am choosing to stay right here in this room with this man, without a backup plan or a shield. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else on earth.

Julian doesn’t stand over me. Instead, he drops to his knees—actually kneels between my legs until he is right at eye level with me.

Slowly and deliberately, he begins slipping the shoes off my feet one by one, setting them aside on the floor. I watch his fingers delicately touch my ankles, and I don’t have words for what that simple act does to me. Something fundamental has shifted in his dark gaze, stripping away every last trace of his arrogant shell.

“Are you okay?” Julian asks.

“Yes, more than okay,” I say, my voice steady, even as the dark intensity of his eyes threaten to completely consume me.

He watches me as he slides his hands up from my ankles, tracing the curve of my calves, sweeping over my knees, up my thighs, and resting on my waist. He leans forward, hovering over me so close that I can feel the heat of his skin and the solid length of him pressing against my stomach through the thin black silk of my dress.

“Good,” he rasps, his thumb tracing my bottom lip. His eyes are dead steady and intensely dark. “Because I have no intention of being gentle with you anymore.”

The night becomes something that I do not have the vocabulary to accurately describe.

His mouth. His calloused hands. His long fingers. Him.

The obsessive, possessive way that he maps every single inch of my body—entirely present in every second. He takes me apart and puts me back together over and over again, and every time I think I couldn’t possibly lose myself any further, he finds a devastating new way to prove me wrong.

I scream his name more than once, completely unbothered by who might hear us in this sprawling estate, and I forget my own name entirely as he holds me through it, driving me far past my limits.

But the part I was not prepared for is the exact way that he holds me after. The way his heavy arms stay wrapped around me, his palm flat against my back, keeping me anchored to him. His voice whispers things in the dark—confessions so quiet and true that I can’t even repeat to myself yet, needing to keep them safely hidden for just a little longer.

The silver moonlight becomes an early sunrise before I notice.

The sheer curtains flutter slightly in the faint draft, casting long, pale gold lines of morning light across the ceiling above the bed. My body aches from a whole night of being thoroughly consumed by Julian Thorne, but I don’t have a single complaint.

Well, almost none.

My left shoulder is protesting the loudest. My wrists are tight and throbbing, and my hips feel like they’ve been ground down to the bone. My hypermobility is officially making its feelings known—its revenge for a night of uninhibited motion. I should have thought about this. My anti-inflammatory meds are back in my room in New York.

I turn slowly onto my side to face him, wincing as a sharp spike of pain shoots through my shoulder, only to find that he is already awake, lying on his side, silently watching me.

“Good morning.” I whisper, leaning across the small space between us to press a soft kiss to his lips.

He groans low in his throat, a sound of pure satisfaction, and stretches the sheets just enough so that the covers dip dangerously low on his hips. I take in the view immediately, making zero effort to be subtle about it.

His dark eyes find me in the heavy morning light.

“Hello, beautiful.”

Beautiful.

“You haven’t called me that before,” I say quietly. “Not complaining.”

A small smile touches my lips.

“Well, I haven’t spent the whole night fucking you senseless before, either.” He grins, a sudden flash of white teeth breaking through. “I’m not complaining about that, either. You are something else, Ellise Vance. Something else entirely.”

I open my mouth to respond, but a sudden shooting pain travels from my shoulder down through my arm, making me bite my lip.

“Ow,” I wince.