Unable to hold the swirl of arousal in check any longer, I reached between our hips and yanked up his T-shirt to reveal the rungs of his stomach, before returning to his face. His fire had grown even brighter, but I focused. Saw past it. Concentrated on the man behind the inferno.

Scooting back, I brushed my mouth over the smooth skin of his chest. Grazed my teeth over a nipple. Flitted my tongue and suckled.

The strap creaked against the strain of his hold, but he kept his word. He stayed tied to the chair, but I felt the struggle raging inside him. The rise of temperature. The tightening of muscle.

I let the shirt fall and turned my attention to his jeans.

Every move I made caused a burst of adrenaline to spike inside him. That, in turn, caused the exact same reaction in me. Every point of contact, every nuance of desire sent a ripple of ecstasy shooting to my core.

After I unfastened his jeans, I pushed them over his hips. He lifted off the chair for me, and I slowly lowered them to reveal his erection, swollen and rigid. To say I was impressed would have been an understatement. I pushed his jeans past his knees and wedged myself between them. I wanted to taste him. To graze my teeth over the length of him. To swallow his excitement until need gripped him so hard he had no choice but to come in my mouth.

But I didn’t. I wanted him inside me even more, and I was running out of time.

Instead, I leaned forward and ran my tongue from the base of his cock to the tip. He stiffened, his muscles tensed to the consistency of marble. When I crawled onto his lap, took his erection into my hand, and slid the entire length of it inside me in one smooth effort, his groan caressed my senses. Pushed me higher.

I wrapped my arms around his neck, grabbed handfuls of his hair, and moved. Slowly at first. Rocking my hips ever so slightly. Stoking the embers inside me, giving them time to ignite. Then faster. Letting the pressure in my abdomen grow with each stroke. With each driving thrust.

Then I felt it. The first quiver of orgasm. Just a tiny tremor, a spark in the deepest nether regions of my body like a white-hot pinpoint of energy.

He felt it, too. I could tell when he stilled. When he closed his eyes. When he clenched his jaw.

It grew with the speed of a lightning strike. Spread. Pooled in my abdomen like molten lava until the pressure exploded and spilled over me with the sweetest sensation known to mankind.

The strap broke, but Reyes kept his word. He wrapped his hands around the back of the chair, his knuckles solid white as his own orgasm rocketed through him. He groaned as the sting washed over him. Bucked as the last remnants pulsed through him.

I held him to me so tightly I feared he might suffocate, but he didn’t seem to mind. Then I realized I’d heard a sharp crack. I leaned back. He’d broken the chair. The metal chair. That was going to be difficult to explain.

The timer dinged, and he dropped the back of the chair and wrapped his arms around me. It surprised me at first. His hold was tight but tender, his breaths hoarse and ragged. I held his head to my chest for a long time, and I didn’t want to let go. I never wanted to let go.

If not for Sumi sneaking in to turn the slow cooker down as we sat entwined in the broken chair, then leaving without making a sound, pretending she didn’t see us, I might never have. But we both started laughing when she left, and the time had come for me to let him breathe again. I shimmied off him, scooped up my things, and headed to the bathroom to clean up while he pulled his jeans over his hips.

After grabbing his jacket, I waited as he turned off the kitchen lights. We walked out the back door, locking it behind us.

“I guess I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said as he walked me to Mable’s car. He slipped his fingers into mine and we walked like high school sweethearts, hand in hand.

He had what I realized was his black truck parked across the street or I would’ve offered him a ride.

“Why didn’t you want me to touch you?” he asked, his voice sincere.

Even though it was embarrassing, I told him the truth. “Partly because that would be giving you too much control over me.”

He nodded, not the least bit offended. “And the other part?”

“Because I don’t deserve your touch.”

“What do you mean?”

I dismissed it with a laugh. “Never mind. I don’t know.”

“Please, tell me.”

Even more embarrassed, I scraped my foot along the pavement. “I think I’m a bad person.” When he started to argue, I said, “I know this is going to sound crazy, but I can tell when a person is bad just by looking at them. I don’t know why and I don’t understand how and I don’t expect you to believe me, but I can tell when a person is bad. And trust me when I say I’m a bad person.”

“You’re wrong.”

“You know I’m not. You have good instincts as well. You have to sense what kind of person I am. Why else would I be here? Why else would I forget everything if not because I’d done something very bad?”

When we got to Mable’s car, he turned me to him. “You’re wrong.”

I was about to argue again, but he dipped his head and kissed me. It was soft and demanded nothing, and I fell another notch.

I heard yelling in the distance. High pitched. Angry. The tone telescoped until it was right in my face. I was back in my apartment and had jumped Denzel the minute I got home. So was I dreaming? Having another nightmare? I pried my lids apart to see an elderly woman in my face, a decomposing elderly woman, her eyes solid white, her mouth open as she screamed at me.

“Where’s my baby?” she asked over and over.

Bolting upright, I scrambled to get away from her and fell out of bed. The wooden crate that served as my nightstand slammed into my shoulder. Before I could get up, a coffee cup whizzed past my head and shattered against the wall on my right.

I crawled on my hands and knees to stay clear of the flying debris. My apartment had exploded, and at the epicenter was a very angry, and very powerful, lady.

The bathroom seemed like the safest place. I army-crawled to it and tried to kick the door closed. Instead, I cut my foot on shards of broken glass. I lifted my gaze to see hundreds of pieces of broken glass hanging in the air around me.

She’d shattered the mirror, and what little moonlight there was glinted off each hovering piece. The second she dropped them, I dived out of the bathroom. They showered the floor with tiny, musical clinks.

Since she was using Denzel as a battering ram and aimed him straight for my head, I scrambled to the living room. My bed crashed into the wall, shaking the whole house. I stood and started for the door and was busy praying Mr. Kubrick wasn’t taking pictures when a glass rocketed past me. It swam through Irma’s head and struck the wall on the opposite side. Pieces of it hit Satana, who’d been hiding under Irma’s feet. She hissed and darted off.

Anger exploded inside me. I bit down and glared at the woman destroying my most prized possessions, like the glass. It was my only real glass.

I glanced at Irma. “Stay put. I have this.” Then I was in front of her. I grabbed the woman’s throat mid-scream. I could barely understand her anyway. All I knew was that she wanted her baby.

“First of all,” I said, pointing in the direction Satana had run, “that is my cat.” She tried to blind me with her nails, so I grabbed her hand with my free one and pulled her closer. “Second of all, I’m not as easy to kill as an infant, but keep trying. We’ll see how many babies you kill after tonight.”