For 100 Days (100 1)

Retrieving a condom from the box I now keep in the nightstand beside the bed, he takes the packet between his teeth and climbs on top of me, straddling my hips. His erection juts high and proud and immense from the dark thatch at his groin. He is virile and gorgeous, and, right now, he belongs solely to me.

“This time, let me do that,” I tell him when he starts to open the condom.

He hands it over and I reach out to roll the protection over his length. My fingers slide down his thick-veined shaft with the condom, and I can’t resist cupping the heavy sac beneath. My touch draws a moan from his lips and a shudder of pleasure from his body.

I love that I have this effect on him. I love that he makes me believe he is as wild for me as I am for him.

I love . . .

Oh, God. I love so much about this man.

I glance up to his face and find him staring at me—staring through me, as he’s managed to do from the moment we first laid eyes on each other. Can he see what he means to me? Can he possibly know how hopelessly I’m falling for him?

“Lie back,” he commands me, his voice gruff.

When I obey, he draws back from me, positioning himself between my legs and parting me wide. I’m already soaked and ready for him, but he bends to kiss my sex as if it’s a temptation too strong to resist. He strokes me with his tongue, penetrates me, sucks at my clit in a deep, urgent rhythm that has me writhing beneath his mouth.

Just when I think I can’t bear another second of pleasure and torment, he releases me and guides his cock to the slick opening of my body. I cry out as he enters me, my sheath gripping him tightly as he pushes inside, plunging to the root in one delicious thrust.

I gasp his name and then I am lost, overcome by sensation as our bodies crash together in a desperate, almost violent tempo. All the weeks we’ve been apart, the hours of longing, are obliterated by the intensity of our joining now. I’ve missed him, missed this fierce intimacy that connects us.

Nick’s hot gaze holds mine as we rock and claw and strain together, both of us surrendered to the enormity of our hunger for each other. I let go first, unable to stop the massive wave of pleasure as it rolls up on me. Moaning under the force of it, I spiral over the edge in a shattering orgasm.

Nick’s control is stronger than mine, but I c

an see in the savage beauty of his face that he’s losing the battle too. A ragged shout boils out of him and he drives into me again and again, each thrust harder, deeper, until the pressure is too great, even for him. He comes on a wordless roar, a sound that’s raw and unhinged, beyond erotic.

“Fuck, I needed that,” he utters hoarsely against the side of my neck as we lie there together, our bodies still connected. He lifts his head, frowning as our gazes meet and hold. “I needed you, Avery.”

Whether he means it as an accusation or admission, I can’t be sure.

“You have me.” It’s the truth, and I can’t deny it from him. Not even when all of the warnings I’ve been given about getting too close to him clamor in my head like alarms. I reach out and caress the rigid slope of his cheek. “There’s nowhere else I want to be.”

His frown deepens in his answering silence, but his gaze does not break mine. And for the briefest second, I see what he cannot—or will not—put into words.

I matter to him. I’ve gotten inside.

If only for this moment, I’ve slipped through his forbidding walls.

But then he blinks and those emotional shutters of his fall back into place as firmly as an iron gate. He rolls off me, out of my reach.

“Stay here,” he says, removing the spent condom as he gets out of bed.

I watch him walk into the adjoining bathroom, trying not to feel abandoned to my feelings and the swiftly cooling sheets. After disposing of the condom, he walks out of the bedroom, back toward the living area of the apartment.

He returns a moment later holding something behind his back.

I sit up near the edge of the bed, folding my legs beneath me. “What are you doing?”

Naturally, he doesn’t tell me. “Close your eyes,” he says as he approaches.

“Nick—”

“Close them.” I obey on a huffed, impatient sigh. “Now, hold your hands out in front of you. Palms up.”

I comply, waiting to feel him place something in my hands. But he doesn’t. Instead, he wraps a length of something sleek and cold around my wrists. I gasp at the sensation, my mind working to process what I’m feeling. Small, cool spheres press against my skin in a long strand, clicking softly as they are wrapped and twined around my crossed wrists.

“Beads?”