I swallow back the urge to touch her. Smell her, taste her...stop it, Hudson. I'm noticing everything about Gracie and I can't turn it off.

“Come closer,” she coaxes. “I want to show you something.” She pats the cushion right next to her.

I scoot over as casually as I can. My cock is already starting to twitch to attention, but I should at least try to keep acting normal.

Fortunately, my mind jumps right back out of the gutter when she opens her laptop on the coffee table. On the screen is the website for the online dating service she'd been talking about. And at the top right, there's a “23” hovering over her envelope icon. She has twenty-three new messages. Twenty-fucking-three.

I clench my jaw. Of course men would jump all over a piece of fresh meat, especially a beauty like Gracie. She'd be a textbook girl-next-door type if she weren't so striking. Gentle, sweet...and innocent. How many of these pricks are just aiming to take advantage of someone like that? How dare anyone touch her?

Oblivious to my growing rage, Gracie clicks around, opening two new tabs. Each shows the profile of a different man. They look ridiculously wholesome and bland, like stock photo models or athletes on cereal boxes. “These are some of the guys I've been talking to. See, this one likes writing poetry and training his dog. And this one volunteers at a soup kitchen...would a serial killer do that?”

She probably picked the most harmless-seeming guys on her list to show me. Not that that stops me from wanting to growl at them.

I shake my head—at myself more than her. I need to pull my shit together. She's just trying to ease my mind, make me stop worrying about her safety. There's no way for her to know that this is pissing me off all over again. “It's not that easy to tell,” I say. “Somehow I don't think a psycho would list 'duct tape' and 'blood' under his hobbies.”

“Somehow I don't think an evil person would love animals and homeless people,” Gracie fires back. She raises her eyebrows at me: See, I can play this game, too.

“Hitler was a vegetarian who cried when his dog died.”

She gives me a weird look. “How do you know that? And why is everyone trying to keep me from living my life? For Christ's sake, I'm twenty-two. Are you going to stop me from getting on city buses next?”

I shift to sit facing her, willing to risk losing myself in her wide blue eyes. “No, Gracie. I just don't understand. Look...why do you want to do this? Really?”

Chapter Three

Gracie

I still can’t believe I’m sitting here with Hudson Stone. In my little apartment on my hand-me-down couch. His large frame seems to take up more room than necessary in the space, masculinity radiating from him like a powerful cologne. Just being near him is an aphrodisiac. He’s staring intently down at my computer screen and there’s a tick in his jaw again.

Showing him these one-dimensional men on the dating site only heightens my awareness that none of them measure up to the man seated beside me. He’s all I've ever wanted. He’s smart, kind, driven, and intuitive—once I get him away from my ornery brother, that is. Picking up on my moods and doing his best to cheer me up seems like more than most men would do. Especially for their friend’s kid sister. When he and my brother went off to college, I saw him less often. But he still found ways to make me feel like I mattered. He started leaving presents for me again on his visits home, as if he felt safer with some distance between us. A book under my pillow at Christmastime, another one for Easter.

But there were still the hard times. Like when he went to Mexico for spring break and I had to endure the dozens of photos on his social media pages, each with a blonde, busty sorority girl hanging off him like he was her own personal jungle gym. I hated seeing stuff like that. It was one thing to know they happened, but another to actually see the women I was sure he was sleeping with.

And then, of course, these last several years while I was in college and he and my brother were busy building their empire. I didn’t see much of him then, either. Which was just as well—I threw myself into my studies, earning dual degrees in architecture and structural engineering. It left very little time for dating, and because of that, I never really outgrew my secret Hudson Stone fantasies. But now that he’s here, in the flesh, those dreams feel so potent and dangerous.

“I just don't understand. Why do you want to do this? Really?” he asks, his voice tense.

Somehow I can’t help opening up. Maybe it’s the alcohol, maybe because it’s been a long and stressful week of work as I got acquainted with my new professional life. But mostly it’s the effect Hudson has on me. He’s like a truth serum.

“Because I...” I look down at my hands. “I’m tired of being a virgin and I just want to meet someone and get it over with.”

His hand slides under my jawline and he lifts my chin until my eyes are on his. What I see in those honey depths makes my breath catch in my throat.

“You were serious. What you said at the bar...you’ve never been with a man?” he asks, his voice tender.

Thankful for his sympathy, I shake my head. “No one.”

He suddenly looks angry, like he wants to punch something, and I don’t understand why. “How is that even possible?” he asks.

I shake my head again, mesmerized by his stare, because I’m really not sure how to answer that. I spent too much time studying? Too much time lusting after him? Neither of those are good answers.