“Do you still want to have sex with me?” I whisper, tangling my fingers in a handful of his shirt.

His eyebrows pull low. “Right now? You’ve got to be kidding me,” he murmurs.

I grit my teeth, grab a fancy-looking suede pillow from the couch, and hit his arm as he steps back. “Do you?” I cry.

His jaw is absolute granite as he stalks to the corner of his apartment and presses some sort of alarm code at a receiver on the wall. Then he grabs a cordless phone, punches two numbers, and he whispers, “No visitors.”

He hangs up, and with purposeful strides heads back to me.

“I’m a bastard, Rachel, but I’m not the bastard who’s taking advantage of you tonight.”

“You’re not taking advantage. You are so not taking advantage.”

“Yes, I am. Look at you. Look at your face, Rachel. If you only saw yourself the way I see you right now, the last thing you need is a fuck.” He laughs at himself, curses under his breath, then gathers me in his arms and turns my face up to his. Our noses bump, and I gasp from the feel of his lips so close.

“Saint,” I whisper, grabbing his jaw. “Please.”

“Tell me why you came tonight.”

“You know why.”

“For sex?” he asks in a rough voice, rubbing his thumb along my cheek.

I swallow and press my face back to his chest. “Why don’t you do something?” I moan.

His arms feel amazing.

“You’re as close to a god as we have in this town,” I whisper. “So many people wake up one day to find their lives will forever be changed, that they’ll live trying to fill up this emptiness. . . . You have all this power—you can do something. Talk about it. Bring it to people’s attention?”

He’s quiet. Then he takes my hand.

“Come here.” We head down a hall past many doors, and then walk into a huge modern bedroom done mostly in dark woods and light fabrics. “Get comfortable.”

He hands me a men’s shirt from his closet and disappears into a spa-size bathroom, rolling an oversize mahogany pocket door closed behind him. My heart aches as I grip the shirt and impulsively smell it. I hear the shower water, and I wish I had the balls to just strip naked, walk in there, and join him.

Instead, after smelling his shirt to my heart’s content, I remove my dress and briefly wonder if I should remove my underwear. I keep it on, which I’m glad of seconds later, because nothing prepares me for the intimacy and panty-wetting sensation of slipping on his shirt.

I feel a strange tingling awareness when it envelops me. I hadn’t realized how much I missed his damn shirt. A part of me still hoping I can change his mind, I try to run my hands down my hair, wipe my tears, and slide prettily into his bed. His mattress is huge, the kind that feels like heaven beneath you.

When Malcolm steps out of the shower, my stomach’s gnarling with all kinds of warmth and need. He’s in slacks and bare-chested. His hair is wet, and he’s barefoot as he lowers himself and stretches out on the bed beside me. I press up to him, closer. The scent of his soap reaches me as he gathers me even more tightly to him. His skin has a scent and I’m addicted, pressing my nose to it. Suddenly I want to make him breathless and groan, feel his big body against me, feel him quiver for me.

He’s in bed with me.

God, it’s like a dream come true. All these nights dreaming.

I tip my head back.

He regards me quietly, his lips quirked. “Livingston, if you could read my mind, you would start feeling really shy around me.”

No. He can’t possibly know what I want. How crazy I feel. How much I want him. How I can’t stop thinking about him. But the intensity in his eyes mystifies me, and the air crackles with so much desire, it’s hard to lie here and do nothing but look at him and want him and feel crazed with desire for him. He doesn’t move closer, but he doesn’t move away, he keeps me in the bestest embrace that’s ever been around me. His lips are here, so very near, two inches from my mouth, as he studies me with an expression of utter determination.

“So tell me about these plans of yours,” he says, and though his voice is low with desire, I can hear the sincerity in his tone as well.

“We don’t have to talk, we can go for the other option,” I whisper. But when he only smiles ruefully down at me, I sigh and snuggle back against his chest. “I’ve never in my life managed to feel safe somehow. But you’re not afraid of movement, you always keep moving. . . .”

Silence.

“Why?” I ask pensively. “Why are you always after something?”