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glared out from under her brows. “What about them?”
    “Mine.” Slowly, with that numb beauty of control and anticipation gathering in every cell, he stalked toward the bed. “That pretty little mouth. Those sexy legs. That hungry pussy. They’re mine.”
    She sat away from the headboard, propped by her arms in a way that thrust out her breasts. Another taunt. Another deliberate tease. “You’re insane. You left me tied on a bed.”
    “You got free.”
    “Not the point, asshole.”
    “Pretty little mouth. But bratty as hell.”
    He pounced. She tried to scramble away, but her legs tangled in the bedding. He caught her by her hair and by her sharp hipbone. A twist, a turn, a flip—and he had her pinned beneath him, with her wrists crossed at the base of her spine. Now when he ground his hard-on into softness, he found less frustration. More quick-fire anticipation. Her ass was perfect, and their position made it an easy thing to snug his cock between her cheeks.
    After three seconds of stillness—as if she, too, wanted to enjoy the moment—she found purchase with her toes in among the sheets and tried to scramble free. Dash only braced his legs wider and pressed his chest flat along her backbone.
    “Sunny,” he said roughly. “Stop.”
    “Isn’t that what I’m supposed to say to you? Get the hell off me.”
    “Sunita.”
    He smoothed the hair away from her face. A rippling shudder skated between her shoulders. She stilled and exhaled deeply, then tucked her chin toward her chest, burying her forehead against the mattress. “What?”
    Barely a whisper.
    She had to know what they needed to talk about. Not the divorce. That was a loose electrical wire, snapping and whipping around a rain puddle. Don’t get too close.
    But she was going to make him say it. Fine. It needed to be said.
    So much between them needed to be said. That it started with this…this… thing between them wasn’t logical. Yet it was genuine and vital. He craved that right now. Nothing had been real between them in a long time.
    He kissed the hollow behind her ear. She flinched, which hurt more than when she’d elbowed his jaw. His Sunny could take the violence he’d unleashed, but the tenderness of a kiss made her flinch? That anger was back, fueled by hurt. Possessiveness was as strong as poison.
    “I want this again,” he said.
    “ This is a vague term.”
    “Fine, counselor.” He pressed his hot shaft between her cheeks. He ground against her, long and slow, until he wrung a soft moan from her elegant throat. “I want you again. I want to tie you up. I want to… Fuck, I want to force you.”
    “That’s rape, Liam.”
    Cold, blunt, terrifying words. But she was breathless. Her lips parted, and her chest moved up and down in a quick cadence beneath his.
    “It isn’t if you give me permission first. Now. Here. Not in the moment, but when we can look each other in the eyes and know it’s something we both want.”
    To prove the point, he levered off her lithe body and flopped down on the pillows, head propped in his palm. And he waited.
    Sunny turned—first her face, then her torso, then her pelvis. They lay on the bed face-to-face. Not touching. He hadn’t looked into her eyes with so much intensity and need in longer than he could recall.
    He missed her.
    That he could think such a thought in the middle of their disturbed-as-hell conversation made his stomach clench—even while his prick wanted to get on with the show.
    “You don’t have any idea what I want,” she said with a hitch in her voice. A small, unguarded tell.
    “Then tell me.”
    “Too long a conversation.”
    He trailed a finger across the red welt circling one fine-boned wrist. “Tell me what you want sexually.”
    She shook her head on a laugh. Not what he’d expected at all. “You know, if you’d obfuscated at all. Skated around it. Said some bullshit about making love… No way. I’d have walked to the shower with a wave of my middle