I pretended his words didn’t affect me and looked for an excuse.

“I’ve been kinda busy,” I told him.

“That’s not it.”

“I’m a lesbian?” I tried.

He stared at me like he thought it might be a good idea to call a certain kind of doctor.

Then he twisted his torso around, turned off the faucet, came back and put his hands on the wall on either side of me.

“No one has ever touched you?” he asked, his voice still sounding angry, intense and I didn’t know how to react.

I mean, this wasn’t exactly the end of the world, was it?

Was I that bad?

“No one’s ever touched me,” I answered softly.

“No one?”

I shook my head.

“Put their mouth on you?” he went on.

“Vance!” I exclaimed.

“Answer me, god dammit!” he clipped, his eyes flashing, the intensity escalating and my heart began to race.

“No!” I yelled, confused and beginning to get freaked right the hell out.

When I said no he moved quickly, yanking my body to him and his arms went around me tight, his mouth came down on mine in a hot and heavy, full-on-tongue-action kiss.

It took my breath away.

He pulled away but only to yank my nightgown over my head and throw it aside. I noticed his nakedness then, forgetting my own, and stared in amazement at his body for the second he gave me before it was against mine, pressing me to the wall, hands everywhere, mouth on mine.

My belly was fluttering again, wildly, and I went with it, exploring his skin with my hands.

Okay, so, maybe I was wrong about my virginal status being a turn off.

It was out of control, even though we’d just finished, we started again and it was not like before. I thought that had been intense but this was. It was violent, unrestrained, we were all over each other and it was f**king amazing.

Within minutes I was alternately panting, kissing him, tasting his neck, his collarbone, his shoulders and my hands were running over his ass when he bent, lifted my leg, swung it around his hip and slammed into me.

My head went back when he filled me and cracked against the wall.

He heard it, picked me up with his hands at my behind, still inside me. I wrapped my legs around his h*ps and my arms around his shoulders. He moved us into the hall, his head tilted back and mine tipped down, our mouths locked together.

He went to his knee on the floor and dropped me to my back. He moved over me, I kept my legs and arms around him and he started immediately moving inside me, hard, fast, deep, my body jolting with his thrusts. It felt good, beyond good, straight to magnificent.

His hands went to the sides of my head, fingers in my hair and he looked down at me while he moved. I tried to kiss him but he dodged my mouth.

“Never,” he said, his voice gruff, his h*ps stopping their thrusts and grinding into me.

“Never what?” I murmured, one of my hands sliding down his back, the other one went into his hair.

“Outside my bike, never has anything important in my life been just mine.”

My body stilled, so did my heart, and my eyes locked with his.

He started moving again, slowly, deeply and he kept talking. “Always castoffs, leftovers, used, sometimes even food from dumpsters.”

My heart started beating again, only to trip over itself; my breath came fast, not only from what was happening to my body but what he was saying.

“Vance –”

His lips came to mine, his hands moved out of my hair and went to the sides of my face and he stared in my eyes, pressing deep inside.

“Mine,” he muttered, his deep voice hoarse, that fierce undercurrent there.

His tone caused a shiver to run through me, straight through to my soul.

Then he kissed me.

* * * * *

“I’ve got to get to work,” Vance said to me (or, more appropriately, against my neck).

We were back in bed, comforter up to our waists. Vance had his arms around me; I had my hands pressed against his chest.

Boo was sitting on the end of the bed staring at us with barely concealed impatience at what he considered the unacceptable delay in the arrival of his morning wet food breakfast.

After we were done on the floor in the hall, wordlessly Vance had carried me up to the bed not like last time but cradled in his arms. He’d managed that feat too, gracefully. He pulled me into bed, yanked the comforter over us and he held me, still silent.

I was silent too. My body was completely sated after three earth-shattering, back-to-back orgasms, so much so, I could barely move.

My mind was blank with shock and, if I admitted it to myself, pure unadulterated fear.

I pulled my thoughts together, tossed my emotional Rottweiler a juicy steak and twisted my head to look at Vance. “We have to talk.”

And we did. We so had to talk.

He kissed me quickly then looked in my eyes. “Is this one of your whisper-sweet-stories-about-your-life-and-smile-at-me talks or something else?” he asked.

“Something else,” I told him.

“Then we don’t have to talk.”

“Crowe.”

He kissed me again.

“I’ll call you later,” he said.

“Crowe –”

“We’ll go out to dinner before the meet with Darius.”

“Crowe!”

He leaned in, kissed my forehead, let me go, moved swiftly and disappeared off the edge of the platform.

“Crowe!” I shouted.

I scrambled to the end of the bed, wrapping the comforter around my na**d body. With effort and absolutely no grace I threw my legs over the side of the bed, stumbled, corrected myself and jumped down, pulling the bulk of the king-sized comforter with me

I went charging into the living room, Boo hot on my heels but Vance was gone.

“God dammit!” I shouted at the empty room.

“Meow!” Boo concurred.

* * * * *

I arrived at King’s nearly an hour late and the minute I came through the door May bore down on me like I was a clueless tourist wandering into the street in Pamplona and she was the bull.

She was followed, to my complete surprise and absolute mortification, by Daisy and Roxie.

“Well?” May asked after she arrived, looking at my face closely.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I stated, walked right by the trio and stomped across the room, ignoring the kids who were staring at me.

The ladies caught me at the entry to the hall and hustled me, protesting all the way, into the yellow counseling room. Roxie shut the door and May drew the blind on the window to the hall.