Temp

“No, it won’t be a problem.”

It must be my imagination, but I swear the light in his eyes dims momentarily. “Will you let me take you somewhere on the way to the office?”

“Where?”

“Come on,” he says, winking at me.

He opens the rear door and boosts me into the backseat. After climbing in beside me and buckling us both into the car, he nods at the man in the driver’s seat—a hulking bodyguard type with an earpiece—and we drive out of the seaport. We don’t go far, though. After about ten minutes of battling rush hour traffic, we pull across the street from a park nestled right on the East River. It’s small, but lush with trees and a rock formation. Shade. It’s beautiful.

“Have you ever been here before?”

“No. I…” Haven’t lived here long enough to explore much—despite the lies on my resume. I bite back the sting of guilt. “I usually just work on my dollhouses in my spare time.”

“That’s why I brought you here.”

I give him a confused smile, but he simply smirks back and helps me out of the SUV, his arm around my shoulder as we cross the street into the park. His bodyguard gets out of the SUV, too, but remains stationary by the driver’s side door, hands folded, waiting for us.

We enter the deserted park and I inhale long and deep, surprised by the sudden lack of sound. No honking. No shouting. It all seems to be muffled by the high trees. Matthew takes my hand and guides me over to the rock formation. I’m tempted to look around for whatever he wants to show me, but I can’t seem to take my eyes off him. He’s devastatingly sexy on a normal basis, but right now, when he’s being charming, he’s off the charts. And my heart starts to beat faster, along with that newly-discovered pulse much further south.

“Here.” He pulls me against him, my back to his chest, facing me toward the rock formation. That’s when I see the tiny little door carved into the bottom rock. There is another one next to it. And another. Seven in total. Tiny doors positioned along the base of the formation, each of them a stunning design, glorious combinations of color. “They’re fairy doors. I came across them by accident a few years ago while running past the park and last night, when I saw the dollhouses, I thought of you. I thought…you’d like them.”

“I love them,” I breathe, meaning it with my whole heart. “They’re like little portals into other, happier dimensions. Just like my dollhouses.”

He grins into my neck. “Yeah.”

“Although…” I look back at him over my shoulder. “This dimension is really happy lately. I wouldn’t necessarily want to walk through one of those doors and leave it right now.”

His chest rises and falls quicker against my back. “I wouldn’t let you.”

I turn around and when our fronts meet, we simply merge. Roughly.

If someone doused us in kerosene right now and threw a match, I don’t think I would be able to move from this spot. In front of him. Wrapped up in this charge, this turbulent and terrible and exhilarating energy. I can experience the hot melding of our bodies, the gravitational pull that neither one of us seems to be in charge of.

It’s gravity. It’s fate.

At the exact same moment, we let loose a shuddering exhale against one another’s mouths. Matthew’s hands climb up beneath the back of my skirt to clutch the cheeks of my backside, knead them in desperate hands. “I didn’t bring you here to fuck, but I don’t know how I’m going to get through the day without a hit.” His eyes blaze down into mine, a muscle rippling in his cheek. “You turned me inside out, baby.”

As a twenty year old girl with functioning hormones, I thought I knew what sexual frustration felt like, but I had no idea until I met this man. Had no idea that arousal could be so potent and urgent. I’m instantly wet. Or maybe I already have been since the moment I walked outside and saw him up against the SUV in his tailored navy-blue suit. There is a galaxy south of my belly button and the stars are pulling together, closer and closer. Tightening. Pulsing. “I’ll die if you don’t,” I say, winded. “I-if I don’t feel you inside of me.”

I’ll never forget the pain subsiding yesterday and the inundation of belonging and surrender and need that followed—and I need it again now. Now.

He backs me up into the shade of the trees, out of view of the street, huffing breath after harsh breath against my mouth. “Pull down your panties. Give my cock that sweet little hole. Need it. I’ve needed it all night and all fucking morning.”

While he unzips his pants and starts to stroke himself openly in the shifting shade of the swaying branches, teeth gritted, I reach beneath my skirt and drag my white cotton thong to the grass. It’s obvious how wet the panties are in the crotch area, but I’m not embarrassed. Not with this man who I’ve bonded with in such a short space of time. He’s the one who does this to my body. He wouldn’t want me hiding it.