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finger.”
    “Just the one?”
    She blinked. The color was high on her cheeks—apricot instead of pink. The sweetest face. Angelic, even. Dainty and perfectly symmetrical. “No, you’re right. Both barrels.”
    “But…?”
    “But you manned up.” A shift at the foot of the bed touched her toes against his shin. Intentional? He wanted to think so. A few more moments of contact, when they were still sane. “So let’s do this.”
    He lifted his brows. “ This again? Cuz, Sunny, you have to say it too.”
    “I want you to force me.”
    Dash closed his eyes on a breathy, “Jesus.”
    The touch of her cool, smooth fingers on his chest made him flinch too. Damn. This was so wrong. Where were Liam and Sunita Christiansen? Who were these perverted beasts who could talk about cruel fantasies but who jerked away from softness?
    That thought strayed too close to the live wire dancing in the rain. Get back.
    “Then we need boundaries,” he said roughly. His throat was so tense that he sounded animalistic. “A way to know and to stay safe. If you want me to lose my career and wind up in prison, this is the perfect scenario.”
    She withdrew her tentative hand. “I don’t want either of those things. I just want a divorce.”
    Every muscle in Dash’s body seized. “And a forced fuck.”
    “ Several forced fucks. I have a month before I go back.”
    There it was. A month. Christ.
    He sat up and twisted at the waist to glare at her. She was still bare to below her navel. He wanted to slap her face. Slap her tits. Jam his forearm across her throat and listen to her gasp while he plowed deep.
    “Then maybe I shouldn’t give a shit about boundaries and safety. You’re in the same time zone, so I might as well take everything I want.”
    “You want it. I want it.” Another hitch in her voice, and for the first time since they’d started talking, she ducked her eyes—a quick retreat. If he didn’t know better, he’d have guessed…embarrassment? “So,” she said harshly, “what’s the big deal how we end this?”
    “End it?”
    She was easy to overpower. Yes, she’d been trained in more martial arts than most people could name, but she was barely over five foot and weighed less than his flight rigging. Delicate. Tough. Smart. Someone who needed to be taken down a notch or three. With her red-ringed wrists caught in one hand, he stretched her arms up toward the headboard. He used his other hand to shove down his boxers and the sheet. She was naked.
    Filling her was so good.
    Wet.
    Hot.
    Paired gasps. Then paired curses.
    “Safe word. Boundaries. Permission.” He growled each word with every grind of his hips. “Now.”
    She found his earlobe and bit down. Her noises were fierce and inarticulate, but they went straight to the darkest pit in his brain. Dash’s prick surged, fuller and harder. He let her know how much that violence affected him by ramming deep—the entire force of his body.
    She choked out a gasping cry. “Fuck safe words. No boundaries. Full permission. Anywhere. Anytime. You have a filthier mind than I imagined.”
    “And you want to see that shit?”
    “I want to feel it when you take me. For real.”
    “Motherfucker.” He was about to lose it. But he needed this last bit of assurance. Christ…that he could do whatever he wanted? “ Safe word, Sunny .”
    With a shiver, she inhaled and stopped fighting him. Looked him dead in the eyes, piercing him with the intense, soul-deep stare he hadn’t seen in years.
    Her tiny smile was back. Taunting. Game on. “We won’t need one. You still love me. You’ll do filthy, dirty, even cruel things to me physically, but you won’t really hurt me. Not any more than you already have.”
    He grabbed her chin so brutally that she instantly tried to wrench free. “Then your safe word, you little brat, is ‘eight years’. Eight years is a commitment to throw away.”
    “Fine. Whatever. Now get the fuck off me. I have to go to