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The fourth story in the new adult series that began with the New York Times bestseller Real, featuring Brooke's best friend, Melanie, and the ROGUE she can't resist.
Greyson King...
My boyfriend. My friend. My protector. He's the reason I wake up every morning with a smile on my face, and the reason I fall asleep limp, worn out, and aching for his warm arms around me. When we make love, he says my name like it means something. Like I mean something.
He
Lied.
His name is Greyson King, but his alias is Zero.
There's zero trace of him, he has zero past, and now I know that with him, I will have zero future.
He may leave no trace of him anywhere, but his imprint is in me, in my very soul--and I hate that a mere look at him commands the beat of my heart. The temperature of my body.
I've looked for love my entire life. I've waited for the butterflies, the rainbows...
Instead I'm in a free fall of emotions and there's no one to catch me but the one man I should be running away from. The one man I thought was my prince charming.
Except this prince charming went rogue.
Greyson will stop at nothing to make me be with him. He'll let no one stand in our way, will allow no one to threaten me, and maybe this is what scares me most of all...
What will my rogue do to keep me?
The doors burst open and a couple walks inside, soaking wet, the woman shaking her damp loose hair, laughing.
“Omigod!” I cry, my stomach plummeting when I realize it’s fucking raining.
I run to the door when a man grabs the handle with a black-gloved hand and gallantly pulls it open for me. I almost stumble outside, and he grips my elbow to steady me. “Easy,” he says in a rolling voice as he steadies me on my feet, and I blink desperately across the street at the light blue Mustang. All I have in my name. All I have to sell because I desperately need the money and who will want it now? It’s a convertible and a little old, but it’s as cute as it is unique, with white interior seats to match the tent top. But now it’s outside in this rain, with its top down, becoming my very own Titanic with wheels.
My entire life is sinking right with it.
“I assume by that sad puppy-dog look on your face that that’s your car,” the rolling voice says.
I helplessly nod and lift my eyes to the stranger. A flash of thunder cuts through the distance, illuminating his features.
And I can’t speak.
Or think.
Or breathe.
His eyes grab me and won’t let go. I stare into their depths while also registering that his face is stunning. Hard jaw, high cheekbones, strong forehead. His nose is classic, sleek and elegant; and the lips beneath are full and curved, firm and . . . god, he’s edible. His dark hair flips playfully in the wind. He’s tall and broad shouldered and dressed in dark slacks and a dark turtleneck that makes him look both elegant and dangerous.
But his eyes.
They’re an indecipherable color, but it’s not the color, it’s the stare, the incredible shine. Framed with thick black lashes, his eyes shine as brilliant as the brightest lights I’ve ever seen. As they quietly assess my features in return, those narrowed eyes feel as powerful as X-rays, and they seem to be sparkling especially because I—me—have somehow done something to amuse this man, this . . . fuck, I have no name for him. Except Eros. Cupid himself. God of love. In the flesh.
I used to think Cupid used an arrow but I don’t feel as if I’ve been pierced by an arrow. I feel like I’ve been hit. By a rocket.
As I keep standing here, floored by the over six feet of total hotness before me, he grabs my keys from me with one gloved hand and puts his other free one on my hip to hold me in place. And I feel it. I feel the touch race down my hips, knotting in my stomach, pulsing in my sex, straight down my thighs, curling my toes. “Stay here,” he says into my ear, then he pulls up the collar of his turtleneck until it becomes a hood in the back, and he runs across the street.
I watch him head to where my car is getting soaked. The wind whips through the streets so hard, I have to use both hands to try to flatten my skirt so it doesn’t fly up to my middle.
“Put the top on!” I force myself to yell through the pounding rain, suddenly as determined as he is to save my car.
“Princess, I got this!” He leaps into the front seat, turns on the car, and the top starts coming up until it . . . doesn’t.
It gets stuck.
After a squeal of protest, the fucker starts coming back down.
“ARGH, SHIT!” I hurry into the street and suddenly the drops of rain bombard me like little cannon balls, soaking me in a second. I swear I want to yell Fuck you! at them. My car, the one thing in my life that hasn’t been shit on, is being ruined and I want to scream.
“Are you kidding me? Get under the roof!” The guy leaps out and then pulls off his sweater in one quick jerk. He spreads the material over my head, using it to shield me from the rain while he herds me back to the small awning over the building entry.
“No! I’ll help you. My precious car!” I cry and push at his chest, trying to get him to back off, but he’s a head taller and built of steel.
“I’ve got your car,” he promises. He hands me his soaked turtleneck and adds, “Hold this,” before he runs back out.
He’s wearing a white crewneck undershirt, and it clings to his sculpted torso as he tries to manually override and pull the top of my car back in place.
Raindrops sluice down his bare arms, the soaked cotton of his shirt plastered down on his chest, revealing every muscle in existence. Fuck. He’s off-the-charts gorgeous; he just broke my Man Hotness Radar. I can’t take my eyes off every inch of his body or the way it moves.
Thunder shakes the city again when he finally latches the top of my car on and signals for me to come over. He opens my car door from the inside, and I hurry into the passenger seat and shut it behind me.
My cold, slick clothes cling against my skin while he sits behind the wheel, looking big and manly, and suddenly we’re ensconced in the small, almost cramped interior of my car. The seats are flooded with water, and when I shift to face him a little, I hear a squish that makes my cheeks burn in embarrassment.
“I can’t believe this,” I whisper. “My best friend tells me I’m the only idiot with a convertible in Seattle.”
His eyes are openly amused. “I dig your car.” He reaches out to the dashboard, and the hand he runs over it is covered in an elegant lambskin glove that makes my skin prick with goose bumps. He shifts his big torso in my direction with an irresistibly devastating grin. “Everything wet gets dry; don’t worry, princess.”
I can hardly take the way he says wet.
Or the way a raindrop clings to his dark eyelashes. Water sluices down his tanned, corded arms. His hair is slicked back, enhancing the beautiful face he has. I have seen works of art and beautiful men, beautiful buildings and beautiful rooms, but at this moment as he looks at me, I can’t remember ever seeing anything besides him.
He’s a ten. I’ve never, ever, been with a ten. And the way that he looks at me . . . I’ve seen that look before. The look that Remington Tate gives Brooke. That look. He’s giving it to me and I’m dying inside. Can I die from one look? And if one look can kill me, then what would one touch do?
“So,” he says softly, his voice textured. He waits a little before speaking again, and it surprises me that he still only looks at my face, not my wet chest, not my bare legs—he’s looking at nothing but my eyes while absently stroking the circle of my steering wheel.
“Want to go somewhere with me?” he asks, then reaches out with his free wet black glove to brush my hair back behind my ear.
What I feel is so far beyond lust, I can hardly answer him.
I tremble. “Yes,” I say, dizzied with want.
“Leave it on,” he murmurs, then he rolls me onto my back and yanks my arms up over my head.
“But I want to touch you,” I breathe, undulating my body against the weight of his.
He pins my arms up in one hand and pulls off his tie with the other, then he wraps it tightly around my wrists. “Tonight, only I touch.”
“Why?”
“Because I say so.”
I can’t suppress my shudder of excitement as he peels off my panties. He ducks his head and flames lick across my body with each open kiss he places on me, and I tilt my hips upward as he dips his tongue inside my belly button. I gasp, my body craving him like sugar, like chocolate, like sex. “Please, oh . . .”
He murmurs shhh and opens my pussy with his fingers, eating me with his mouth. My head falls back and a noise of pleasure purls out of my throat as he starts thrusting his tongue into my channel, rubbing in a way that has me thrashing in absolute pleasure. “God, you make me lose it,” he breathes, tasting me again.
I quiver under him, spine arched, thighs spread open, aching for his touch, his tongue, his closeness. “Greyson,” I say, breathing in deep, soul-drenching drafts. He’s like every boy I made out with under the bleachers, every boy I’ve ever wanted who didn't want me, everything that was forbidden to me. I groan as he licks a circle around my clit. “Oh god! Grey . . . Greyson . . . please . . . You’re—”
My breaths rasp in my throat when he lifts his head and I see the unmistakable possessiveness in his eyes. He kisses my taut nipples, then studies me, bound for him, in his bed. Using my legs, I curl my thighs around his hips, urging him closer. “I’ve never begged before, but I’m begging you to touch me.”
“What is it that you beg for, Melanie? I should be the one begging to touch you.”
His hands start dragging up my sides. Sensations so intense, every touch of his fingers crackles over me like burning fingertips. My muscles tense and knot as my body once again heads to that place where only he takes me, where he’s not only fulfilling a physical ache, but he gets access to a place where he can rip my soul open.
Closing my eyes as I feel some moisture burn inside them, I keep my arms over my head, bound by his tie, as he uses his thumb to play with my clit.
He does it harder, deeper, expertly. Our eyes meet, he crushes my mouth and whispers, “I’m the one who doesn’t fucking beg, but I’ll beg for this pussy,” he rasps as his fingers prepare me, because he’s so big I need to be wet and ready and oh god, I’m so ready.
“Yes . . .” I say, the nearness of my orgasm audible in my voice, then his mouth is on mine again, our tongues making out, slick as he keeps rubbing me, his palm burning hot as he cups me and slides one finger in so deep. I tilt my pelvis, desperate for every inch. When he’s got me lathered up to explosion, he eases back to unzip his slacks.
My vision is blurry from wanting this. He doesn’t even kick his pants off. He shoves them down to his knees, baring his erection, his thick, powerful thighs.
Our mouths roam over each other as he aligns our bodies. “Hard!” I plead as I hook my bound wrists around his neck to keep him close, my lips raining kisses on his jaw. Last night, afraid and dirty and vulnerable, he was all I wanted. All I wanted. “I want you so much. HARD,” I gasp, suddenly vulnerable, shaking, needing.
Hungrily, I nibble on his nipple ring, and he responds with a growling noise and forces me down on my back. “Impatient, hungry little girl.” He grabs his cock and rolls on the rubber, and he looks as desperate as I am as he starts feeding the head to me. “Is this what you want?”
My eyes roll back from the pleasure and I cry, “Yes, all of it.” He groans when he sees my first tear fall, and when he cups his hands on my face as though to catch them and starts fucking me for real, my body melts into his as the world becomes full of him. Just him. Only him.
He impales himself deeper, and I soar higher and higher. I can feel my nipples brushing his shirt, his hot breath on my face, his body in mine—and that’s all I know as my world careens on its axis. His hands won’t let go of my face, holding me for his every hard, fast, expert thrust. “That’s right, that’s exactly right, let go for me, let go for me, Melanie, I got you,” he murmurs, kissing my throat.
My breasts are budded pink at the tips from the scrape of his shirt; I love it. I love his smell, his hands, his voice. “Yes,” I gasp as he thrusts harder, my rhythm completely clumsy now. All I want is more of him, more of him, ALL OF HIM. “Yes, yes.”
He roars, head falling back, veins popping out in pleasure as he starts jetting off and I spread my legs wider apart as he grabs my hips and thrusts in harder, watching me lose it.
I moan and start to thrash, somehow aware that his eyes are devouring me as I shatter into a million pieces.
Sighing in relaxation soon after, I hook my bound hands around his neck and press myself into his chest.
“Nobody pushes me as far as you do,” I explain, my voice cottony.
“That’s because I’m bad,” he says. He slides one hand up my arm, to where my hands are linked at his nape. “I’m bad for you.”
I can’t put a name to what I feel when he’s inside me, so maybe I won’t try to. Does it even have a name? This connection between human beings. Between a woman, and a man; a fucking asshole.
I look at him, and he doesn’t scare me.
He lures me.
He tempts me, exhilarates me. He makes me want to claim him as if I’m claiming back a part of me that was once lost.
Makes me want to tame him. Let him tame me.
He rolls another condom on his thick cock and comes up to his knees, and I feel vulnerable and open but I don’t feel like hiding right now. I openly show him my hunger and lick and kiss his thick throat as he grabs my waist and pushes into me. I shudder uncontrollably when he’s all the way in, biting a tendon that juts out on his throat, close to my mouth.
The rumble of the sound he makes tells me he likes it. You like it when I’m feisty? My eyes flutter open, and he looks down at me with a look of wild, hungry, proprietary lust, but also strangely reverent and gentle. We fuck lazily this time, without the initial rush, our bodies moving in synchronicity until I see stars as another climax builds and builds.
“Go on, bite me all you want, little kitten.” He prods into my mouth, his eyes on mine as I comply, licking him, tasting him. “Do you want that to be my cock in your mouth?” his husky murmur taunts in my ear, breath hot. “Do you want to be sucking on this cock? Biting on it?”
I gasp with renewed hunger. “When I bite it I’m going to bite hard.” With my arms hooked around his neck, I rake my nails into a part of his scalp, my hips tilting faster to keep up with his increasing rhythm.
His laugh, once again dark, sensual, intimate as he brushes his wet thumb along my lips, the bed squeaking beneath us. “If you think I’m afraid of a little bit of teeth, you need to get to know me better, princess.” Just like that, he bites my lower lip and sucks it into his mouth, thrusting harder so I moan.
I bite back, and he groans such sexy sounds it only makes the sex that much more intense. My wet, snug body grips him greedily because I want him in me for as long as I can have him, but the pleasure is too absolute to last as long as I want to, even though we both seem to be trying to last.
The mattress squeaks beneath us, harder and harder with his thrusts. I’m being just as noisy, and Greyson? He’s releasing low, male noises of pleasure too. “Get ready, princess, I’m coming so hard,” he rasps.
“Come,” I beg. He has no idea how much I’m aching to feel him go off inside me, go off with me.
He waits to feel me clench around him. Then, the moment it starts for me, he lets go. He comes full force, his body tightening like a bow, and when I feel him jerk in me, his hands clenching on my hips, my pleasure explodes inside me until I’m convulsing so totally I can’t keep my eyes open.
Oh.
My.
God.
I lay in breathless silence for a moment, realizing Greyson is untying me. He rubs my wrists with the pads of his thumbs, then plops onto his back and stares up at the ceiling, his chest heaving, his nipple ring glinting with the little rays of sunlight peeking through the window.
The sun is rising already. I really didn’t want it to rise yet because I don’t want to leave yet.
In silence, I go to the bathroom and when I come back to bed, he’s staring out at the city looking satisfied and exhausted, his shirt all wrinkled, his hair all mussed, his beautiful mouth swollen from me. I should get going. Probably, I should. Instead I stare at him and that mouth and I wonder how many women kissed those lips.
Many, Melanie.
He’s warned me off, but I don’t feel like being warned off. I feel as though somewhere, deep down, he’s bullshitting me. Why would he give me this necklace otherwise? Why would he give me, over and over, THE LOOK?
Even so, I’ve gotta go, so I walk back to that big bed, my eyes scanning the floor for my dress even though the thought of going home alone to my apartment makes my stomach churn. I could call Pandora, but I’ll have to be prepared for her drilling the shit out of me, I guess.
“Do you see my dress?” I whisper to him.
His voice is gruff with tiredness, his eyes hooded as he pulls open the bedsheet for me.
“Yeah, I set it aside to avoid the clutter. Come here and get some sleep.”
Oh, god, I really didn’t want to leave, but I don’t want him to know how much I want to sleep here tonight either.
So I stand there, naked and unsure for a moment.
“I don’t have to stay,” I say, but there’s this way he has of looking at you—as if he’s commanding you. It’s very odd. I’ve never encountered anyone who could have such control with a single look.
Caving in to it, I find myself quietly heading over. His lips curl as he lifts the sheet higher and I see his naked body under the cover.
I feel strangely awkward as I slide into bed with him, first sitting on the corner of the bed and quickly braiding my hair; I wouldn’t fall asleep otherwise, I simply can’t stand waking up and feeling it on my face.
I sense his curious gaze watching my every move, and when I sigh and lie down on my side, facing a stone fireplace on the far side of the room, he laughs behind me. “You really plan to sleep way over there?”
“I don’t want to intrude!” I laugh nervously. “I don’t stay over usually.”
“You just like to fuck and get away, that’s fine, princess. Except for the fact that I’m not done with you.”
He reaches out and guides me toward him by my braid, and when I don’t protest the maneuver and actually feel like tucking myself closer to his warmth, he exhales softly. “You’re something, aren’t you,” he murmurs, taking my braid in his fist and forcing me to roll over and face him. Then he pins my head against his, forehead to forehead. “Maybe I’ll sleep tonight; you wear a man out.”
“What do you mean?” I peer up at him, notice the hard set of his jaw. “You don’t sleep?”
“Not well, but I’ll go for it if you will,” he softly teases me.
“Then let’s go for it,” I say, grinning.
It feels like, for several minutes, we stay as we are, him with the merest curve of his lips while I’m smiling completely, both of us looking into each other’s eyes. I have no idea what he sees in my eyes that holds him so intently engrossed, but I can’t look away from his gaze either. It’s so closed and mysterious while, at the same time, I can see a fiery rawness in his gaze, as if he desperately wants something from me.
Not something; all of me.
“Come here,” he rasps. He makes the first move, easing one of his arms around me, pulling me against his side. I cuddle into his large body, a little tense at first, but at the same time, achingly aware of every spot where our naked bodies are touching. Where my breasts press into his ribs, my cheek on his chest, one of my legs hooking in between his.
God, this is as intimate as it gets with a man and I cannot relax, I cannot oxygenate, I cannot formulate a thought.
His breathing begins to deepen and . . . oh, wow. He’s asleep.
He fell asleep holding me, with his arm locked around my shoulders, and I don’t understand why I get butterflies over this.
I don’t understand my visceral reactions to him.
This hot man with a secret room. Who in the world has a secret room?
This man does. And I’m so curious about him, I study his features and tell myself I can sleep when I’m alone . . . so I touch his nipple ring and watch him lie in his big lonely apartment, deep asleep with one arm around me, wondering what other secrets he keeps from me.
