Off Limits

‘What is it?’

His smile is tight. ‘I ordered Japanese.’

‘Great. No karaoke, though,’ I tease, referring to my last drunken night with Jack.

He nods. But something is wrong.

‘What is it?’ I insist.

‘I’ve marked your entire body,’ he says after a beat has passed. ‘You’re literally covered in marks from me.’

I frown, running my hands over my breasts, and then I shrug. ‘So?’

His eyes, when they meet mine, are haunted. ‘It doesn’t bother you that I like fucking marking you? That I’m turned on by seeing proof of me on you?’

I tilt my head to one side, pretending bemusement, but my heart is accelerating and again I wonder at the risk of broken ribs in the face of a particularly aggressive heartbeat.

I shake my head slowly.

‘Jesus...’ He drags a hand through his hair unsteadily. ‘All this time I thought you were Miss Moneypenny and you’re actually Air Force Amy.’

‘Who?’

He doesn’t answer, just reaches down and picks up his towel, wrapping it around his waist, then walks into the kitchen to stand behind me. He runs his finger down my spine.

‘There is a line here.’ He drops his finger lower and presses it against my butt. ‘And here, where I sucked you until you bruised.’ Then he cups my arse. ‘And here, where I slapped you hard enough to redden your skin.’

I swallow. This description of his touch is erotic and dangerous.

I suck my lip between my teeth. ‘Don’t you get it?’ I don’t look at him as I speak. ‘When I’m here, I’m yours. I trust you. And I want this. This—what you do to me—is what turns me on. More than anything I’ve ever known.’

He drops his forehead to my shoulder, and then he grabs me and turns me around to face him. ‘It doesn’t bother you that I’m just using you?’

It’s not what I expect him to say. I look at him with an obvious expression of confusion because he shakes his head.

‘Not you, per se. Sex with you.’

I try to play the lighter side. ‘Do I seem like I mind?’

He exhales, frustration and anger communicating themselves in the weighted breath. ‘I don’t want you to be another one of them.’

His eyes are hollow. No matter how I stare at him, I can’t intuit his meaning.

‘Another one of whom?’

‘Them. The women I fuck to forget about her.’

I know instantly that he’s referring to Lucy. Sadness wells inside me. Sadness for Jack, for Lucy and the whole sordid mess.

‘But that’s all

this can be.’

There’s a determination in his statement that fills me with ice.

I nod, but his words are exploding in my mind like tiny little bombs.

‘I know,’ I say. Because I do.