"Harder, Jay. Like you're punching me there."

"Fuck," he moaned against her damp skin. The muscles flexed in his pounding arm. He slid up her body, taking one of her legs with him, bending her in half. His knee landed on the seat beside her, and his dick ground against the back of her raised thigh. He kissed her fiercely, desperately, and his fingers drove in and out with hard hitting velocity.

She wanted to come. She wanted to hurt. What a worthless slut. His beautiful girl was so dirty and pathetic. She whimpered against his mouth and her shield quivered, threatened to collapse. No, she couldn't let it. Couldn't let her repulsive desires tumble out around him. She held it in place, stayed her orgasm, but she couldn't stop the burn ripping through her sinuses or the achy feeling in her eyes.

His mouth was relentless, moving over hers, sucking her strength, and hammering her wall. "Fucking hell, you're sexy." He spread kisses over her lips as he banged her with his hand. "And you smell incredible." He peppered a trail along her jaw. "You're gorgeous." His voice cracked and he dragged his nose along hers. "And brave."

The storm around her heart thundered against his. She tried to blink away the wet blur as he caught her wretched wails in draining kisses.

"You're perfect. You're..." He leaned back and choked on a gasp, his eyes wide. "Crying?"

Chapter Forty-Eight.

A tear curled into Charlee's mouth. Embarrassed, she swiped at the streak on her cheek and squared her shoulders. "I'm not crying."

Jay moved his hands to her knees and looked up, his face a white sheet. "What have I done?" he whispered.

In the next heartbeat, his arms were around her, lifting her. He took her seat, settled her sideways on his thighs, and pressed her face against his neck. "I fucked up. I'm so sorry."

What? She pushed against his chest and grabbed his face with both hands. "You did not fuck up. It's me. I fucked up."

He flinched at her touch, but before she could move her hands, he gripped her arms to hold them in place.

She drew in a ragged breath. It was awful feeling guilty when she didn't mean to upset him. Maybe it wasn't guilt at all, but remorse over her inability to make him happy. She leaned in and brushed her mouth over his in an attempt to bring back the moment they had just shared.

His lips were tight, unresponsive, and a lump swelled in her throat. Twisting her hands out of his hold, she dropped them in her lap and turned her head away, the ache in her chest threatening to well her eyes again. "I'll just...get dressed."

Holding her hips to his lap, he helped her collect her clothes from the floor. As she dressed, he stared at the door behind her, his arm locked around her waist. He wouldn't let her stand even as she dragged on her pants.

"I can't decide if you're mad at me or just appalled." Her voice was so quiet, she felt it scratch more than she heard it.

He jerked his eyes to her and cocked his head, matching her volume. "What?"

She coughed. "We should go back to our seats. We're probably missing dinner." The thought of eating rippled nausea through her stomach.

"Bullshit." He glared at her. "We're going to talk about what just happened. Right here. Right now." He scrubbed a hand over his face and mumbled, "Now that you have clothes on."

Shame scalded her cheeks. Did he think she was dirty? She jumped up and he yanked her back to his lap.

She shoved at his arm. "If you find me so repulsive, let me go."

His eyes bugged. "Repulsive? Good God, Charlee. Are you crazy?" He gripped her waist and scooted her to his knee, glaring at his erection and back at her.

Oh. "You still want me?"

"Of course I still want you. I'm trying to fucking restrain myself."

"What I begged you to do...and I couldn't...come...I thought-"

"That's part of your problem." He tried to work his zipper up and couldn't stretch the fly over his dwindling arousal. "You're thinking instead of feeling." He gave up on his pants and fixed his eyes on hers. "I don't know why you feel bad about what we just did." His tone softened. "From where I'm sitting-" He shoved a hand through his hair, closed his eyes, and breathed, "It was really, really sexy."

Sexy? She shivered with memories of her orgasmic screams piercing the walls of Roy's stockroom. "It's not sexy. It's sick. As in Roy Oxford's favorite flavor."

He lowered his hand to hers with a delicateness that contradicted the emotions marching across his glare. "Yeah, we're going to talk about that, too. Hand me my shirt." He pointed at the floor.

Woodenly, she slid off his lap and tagged the shirt.

He rose with her, never breaking contact, his leg against hers, a hand on her hip, and leaned against her backside as he slid up his zipper. She felt him all around her, as much a part of her as her own skin. Despite the descent in his mood, his nearness comforted her in ways she was growing alarmingly addicted to.

Shifting to face him, she startled when his breath rustled her hair from behind. He brushed a wayward strand off her shoulder and replaced it with his lips. Heat radiated from his body and kicked up her pulse. With a sigh, she let her head fall back to his chest.

He walked his fingers around her waist and tugged the shirt from her hand. "Thank you." His whisper sent tingles dancing over her skin.

She turned as he raised the shirt over his head and shoved his arms through. The muscles in his shoulders and chest expanded and squeezed. A bead of sweat chased the crease between her breasts. Had the air vents stopped working?

His head emerged from the neck hole and his eyes instantly found hers. He was so powerfully attractive, she couldn't look away. In fact, no one could. It wasn't just his fame that drew people. It was him.

Wrinkles grooved his forehead. "What?"

She put her hand on his chest, stopping him from lowering his shirt. "Even if you weren't famous, you'd still be the center of female attention."

The wrinkles deepened and he shook his head.

"You're telling me that before you had a recognizable face, you didn't draw women's eyes everywhere you went?"

He sighed, watching her finger trace the dip between his pecs. Yeah, she was touching him and he wasn't flinching. But her relief was buried under insecurity.

Could she deal with that? Constantly competing with women better looking and lower maintenance than her? "I don't have a chance in hell," she mumbled.

He snapped his head up and glowered at her. "I only want your eyes, your attention."

"Oh, you have that. Trust me. You're the sexiest man I've ever met."

He scowled and shoved his shirt down the perfectly sculpted proof, knocking her hand out of the way.

"Your sex appeal won't hold my attention forever though." She bit her lip, trammeled by the kind of hope she hadn't entertained since she was a child.

His frown fell away to blank confusion.

"This will hold me." She poked him on the chest. "You have the heart one expects to see at the center of a fire, bending and twisting like steel, but never breaking. If something happens to mine, yours would be stubborn enough to beat for both of us."

His lips parted. Then her back hit the door under the weight of his body and their lips collided in a desperate fusion. He clinched his arms around her waist and palmed her ass, crushing their hips together.

The friction of their rubbing bodies, the heat from their lips, and the harmony of their breathy noises set her body ablaze in the clutch of his arms. His fingers slipped beneath her shirt and circled her tailbone. Hers pushed through his hair. The spiral in her womb returned as if it never left, winding her heart rate higher and higher.

A fist knocked on the door, vibrated against her spine. They flung apart and stared at one another, gasping.

Another knock, followed by Nathan's muffled voice. "Charlee?"

Jay grinned, his eyes glimmering. "He's like your dad, ready to beat my ass on our first date."

"He's nothing like my dad." Her voice was sharper than it should've been.

His face fell. "Shit, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have-"

"Stop apologizing." She wiped her tingling lips with the back of her hand. "I'll tell you all about Craig Grosky. Then you'll know. Okay?"

"Craig," he mumbled to himself, rubbing his nape. A smirk slanted his mouth. He must have figured out her nicknames.

As she turned toward the door, he smacked her ass. The echo bounced through the room, the sting lingering for long delicious seconds.

His whisper caressed her ear. "We're going to talk about that, too."

She shivered, inhaled deeply, and opened the door.

Lips pinched in a line, Nathan leaned into his arm, bent on the door jamb, and scanned her face.

She gave him a reassuring smile. "Everything okay?"

He glanced over her head. She missed Jay's expression, but the muscles in Nathan's cheeks relaxed. He looked back at her. "They're holding your dinner. You should eat."

"Thank you. How long till we land?"

He glanced at his watch. "Three hours." Straightening, he clasped the latch on the door, but didn't move to leave.

"What's wrong? You seem...worried."

"Should I be?"

Her lips turned up. "Yes."

He rubbed his eyelids, volleyed another glare at Jay, and closed the door.

She locked the door and turned. Their gazes caught instantly. The physical connection was severed, but the magnetism between them pulsed, beckoning. She swayed closer. Their little vacuum crackled and heated.

Stretching to wrap her arms around his neck, she froze mid-reach. "If I touch you again, will it be like starting over?"

He took her hands in his and lowered onto the bench, guiding her knees to straddle him. "Let's find out." He jutted his chin out, the cords stretching in his neck as he stared at her, waiting.

"You put a lot of faith in me." Her fingers hovered over his throat.

"If you stay close to me, Charlee, my faith will stay close, too."

Everything inside her melted as she molded her body around his and touched a fingertip to the hollow at the base of his neck. His eyes didn't shift from hers, his muscles didn't tense, and a smile lifted one side of his mouth.

Oh, thank God. Kissing his chin, the corners of his mouth, and lingering on his lips, she wedged her hand between their chests, smoothing her palm over his breastbone and absorbing his warmth. "Good?"

"Now I am."

She went back to his mouth for a deeper kiss. He laughed against her lips and pulled back until his head bumped the wall behind him. "We need to talk."

Ugh. "Okay."

With an arm around her back, he laced their free hands together on the seat beside them. Moments passed as he watched his thumb bump over her knuckles, his eyes unfocused. Then he looked at her. "Please don't be offended by anything I say or ask. I'm making no judgments. I just want the full picture so I can try to help, okay?"

She nodded, hoping he was ready to hear the answers.

Chapter Forty-Nine.

Charlee choked on the foreboding atmosphere, waiting for Jay to begin his questioning.

"I'm surprised and relieved that you're willing to be intimate with me after...what you survived."

She tensed against him. Where anyone else might've feared to step, he went rushing in.

He watched her closely, caution gripping his voice. "Your sessions, your openness, whatever it is you're doing, it works. I should take lessons from you."

The sudden image of him dominating her in a dungeon sent bolts of excitement through her body. "You shouldn't be surprised. I don't know what you survived, but I recognized the pain eating at you the night we met. I suspect your abuser wasn't so different from mine. Yet, here you are, willing to be intimate."

Without so much as a nonverbal acknowledgement, he held her through a comfortable silence. Eventually, he stirred, kissing her bottom lip. "I know it's unfair to ask you to answer my questions and not answer yours. For now, let's stay focused on you, on what happened between us, okay?"

She nodded. "For now."

"I'm trying to wrap my head around your sessions. It would make more sense if you were the one with the whip. A submissive position seems like the last thing you'd want."

His gaze turned introspective and she kept quiet to see what he'd come up with.

"I think you need the pain," he murmured.