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“Dalton.”

“I know.”

I hold her hips and help her move, feeling the slick slide of her, the way she takes my cock deeper when she leans into me. She’s insatiable tonight, exactly that, chasing another orgasm like she’s trying to prove her body belongs to her and not to nausea, not to Alester, not to the contract, not to anyone waiting with a file.

I let her take what she needs.

When her thighs start to shake, I reach between us again, find her clit, and rub her the way I learned in the kitchen. Her head falls back, throat exposed, and she breaks open around me one more time, crying out as she comes with my cock still inside her.

That’s what finishes me.

I pull her down hard against me, hips driving up once, twice, then I come deep inside her with my face pressed to her chest and her name rough in my mouth.

For a while neither of us moves. The only sound in the room is our breathing. Maggie is folded over me, forehead against my shoulder, her body still trembling in small aftershocks. I keep one arm around her back and the other low at her hip, holding her there because I’m not ready to let her go and because she’s not trying to leave.

Eventually she lifts her head. Her face is flushed, hair a mess, eyes half-lidded and too soft for either of our safety.

“That,” she says, voice hoarse, “was not responsible.”

“No.”

“We should probably be more responsible.”

“Yes.”

Neither of us moves.

Then she lowers her mouth to mine again, slower this time, and I feel her smile against me. “Later,” she whispers.

I close my eyes for one second. That’s one weak defense, but I don’t have one much better. And I don’t care. Tonight, with Maggie warm in my arms and the rest of the world kept outside the bedroom door, it is what I have.

So, I take it.

Chapter Sixteen

MAGGIE

I wake up expecting him to be gone.

That’s not insecurity. It’s pattern recognition. Twenty-three-year-olds who look like me don’t have a chance with someone like Dalton.

Men who look like Dalton Price and live the kind of life Dalton Price lives do not usually wake up in small apartments with questionable plumbing and stay long enough to deal with morning breath, tangled sheets, and the emotional aftermath of kitchen-counter decisions.

So when I wake up alone, I don’t panic. I only lie there for a second, staring at the ceiling, letting my body report back from the previous night with the quiet dignity of a woman who has made several athletic choices without consulting her joints.

My thighs hurt. My hips hurt. My breasts are sore in a way that makes me blush even though I’m alone.

I close my eyes and exhale through my nose. “Okay,” I whisper to no one. “So that happened.”

The apartment is quiet. No Dalton breathing beside me.

Of course. I knew he would leave. I absolutely knew that, which is why the small, stupid disappointment in my chest is annoying and should be ignored.

I’m a modern woman. I have survived exams, debt, hormone injections, Alester Chandler’s office, and one very intense kitchen counter incident. I can survive a man leaving early.

Then something clatters in the kitchen.

I go completely still.