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“What, tits too small?” I heard myself goad, reminding him that I’d already seen his type in action.

He wet his lips, and my skin tightened all over. His gaze ran over my face and then dipped down my throat to the V-neck of the vest.

“I haven’t seen enough to say,” he murmured. “But rest assured, it’s not your body, but your personality and lineage that curdle my cum.”

He was so close, his focus fixed on my face. Heat rose through me, a sort of squirmy, hot panic that made me feel uncertain and nervous. I couldn’t stand it.

So, I took control of the situation the only way I’d learned how. Like I’d thought earlier, better to know now if he was going to hurt me than later. It was my choice.

I slid my hand between us and placed it against his towel-covered dick. Surprisingly, he reallywashard again. The manseemed to have a raging libido, or else just really got off on telling me what to do.

He jerked beneath my hand, his eyes narrowing.

“Seems like you’re all talk,” I managed to get out.

“And it seems like you don’t know how to keep your hands to yourself,” he growled.

I didn’t know what the hell to say to that. He was right, after all. My boundaries were all messed up, and I had no idea how to fix them.

He pulled my wrist away and then let it go.

“No one touches me without my say-so, little heathen,” he murmured, his attention dropping to my lips.

“Must be nice,” I muttered, too lost in the tension between us to realize what I’d just said. “Unless you’re looking to do something with that third arm you call a dick, back off. I have stuff to do, like your daddy’s money to spend,” I stated flatly and tried to pull the pieces of myself together.What the fuck had I been just about to say?This guy made my head muddled, and not in a good, six-cocktails-and-a-party-pill way.

He sighed. “You’re a tactless heathen who doesn’t even know not to bite the hands that feeds you.”

He was so close. The clean, masculine smell of the man in front of me was so different from the rank, salty odor of sweat that haunted my nightmares. The room was bright and open, no darkness here. He wasn’t touching me, even though I was goading him to his face. He’d also managed to back me into my room, and it hadn’t sent me spiraling. Interesting.

“You’re not my type.”

Mistake or not, his certainty lowered my guard. I stared at him, and he stared right back. Seconds ticked by. It was an odd thing, being so physically close to someone after fourteen months of abstinence. I’d fucked around, I’d kissed guys, gotten drunk and let them touch me—hell, I’d initiated it most of the time. My therapist in California had explained it as hypersexuality, a coping device for trauma. I’d stopped seeing her soon after. I wasn’t coping. I was just living. The idea that the way I was now was directly linked to what had happened pissed me off. I was in control of my life now, not the past. I made my own choices; I owned my body and my experiences. The therapist’s diagnosis had threatened that feeling of certainty. It had made me feel like a victim again, when I wasn’t.

I was a survivor.

He stayed there for a long moment and then stepped back, too. His hand drifted down toward his towel to adjust. The man was completely unashamed of the monster-sized hard-on straining up his belly.

“Eyes up here, Selena,” he quipped, before I could look away from his damn hand.

Selena.The way my name sounded in his cultured English accent had me feeling hot all over again.

“Whatever. Get out of my room,” I snapped, breathing hard like I’d just run a race.

“Understand that it’s my room, and my house, for a start, and we’ll get along better. Be a good girl and follow my rules, and we might even manage not to kill each other before winter break. Got it?”

I rolled my eyes. I couldn’t help it.

Brody shook his head slightly, a muscle leaping in his jaw.

“I said, got it?”

“Got it. Whatever you want me to say that’ll make you go away and leave me alone… you got it.” I pasted a sugary-sweet smile on my face. “Now, fuck off, please.”

Brody turned away, muttering about me being educated by wolves. I watched his powerful ass move under the towel. It was impossible not to stare at such a gift from God.

“Don’t forget this conversation, Selena. Follow my rules, or I’ll have to teach you what happens when you don’t,” Brody called from the door. “I’m just next door, so be a good girl, or I’ll know.”

Selena