I sucked a shuddering breath, then shook my head. “I’m sorry.”

  It wasn’t an answer—it explained nothing—but I meant it. I was sorry for wanting things I couldn’t have.

  Beck pulled me in tighter, his fingers skimming over my spine, his mouth pressed to the side of my head.

  The suite was too quiet for how loud I was inside. My throat burned with words bubbling toward the surface. Things that needed to be said for my own sake, if nothing else.

  I couldn’t hold them in anymore.

  “I don’t want to be a whore,” I began. “I don’t want to fuck for money. Or for Mazzy. Or for… anyone else.”

  Beck’s fingers splayed between my shoulder blades, a stable presence that eased the breaths rushing in and out.

  I kept going.

  “Those men today?” I shrank at the thought. “They weren’t like you, but I wanted them to be. I want everyone to be like you because that would make it okay. That would make it better, don’t you think?”

  I gazed at him, seeking approval. Or forgiveness.

  “You’re not a whore,” Beck said solemnly. “You never have been.”

  But I was exactly that to so many people. That identity had been hammered into me, blow by agonizing blow, and I crumbled under the shame of it.

  “Mazzy says…” I paused to compose myself. “He says I should like it, but I don’t like it at all.” My brow furrowed, adding deep lines to the spiteful expression on my face. “It’s empty, and angry, and it hurts me, Beck.”

  “I know,” he replied.

  Then the final piece came tumbling out. “I don’t know what I did to deserve this.”

  Beck hummed a disgruntled sound and rolled me onto my back. He arched overhead, silhouetted by the orange glow of sunset pouring in through the window.

  “No, baby,” he said. “It’s not like that. It doesn’t work like that.”

  How, then?

  I didn’t ask, but I wondered what evil I must have done to end up here. Why was I punished when there were angels as cavalier and cruel as Narcissus? The world felt upside down. Or maybe just unfair.

  Beck’s broad, muscular body contoured against mine, and his arm curved around, holding me the way no one else did.

  “I made you a promise,” he said. “Do you remember?”

  I nodded. “You said you’d fix it.”

  Beck smiled. “And I’m going to make good on that. But first, I need you to know that I’m not giving you up. Not in forty-eight hours. Not to that bastard Maslow.” He caught my chin to hold my gaze level with his. “And as much as all that, I need you to hear me say that I’m sorry too.”

  “What for?”

  “For being afraid. Of you.”

  I tried to laugh, but it came out small. “I’m not scary.”

  “No.” He smiled again, thinner than the last. “I’m just a coward.” His thumb stroked along my jaw in the pause before he said, “I was afraid of something else too. But I’m not anymore.”

  “What is it?” I searched his face.

  He leaned in and, for a heartbeat, I thought he might kiss me. I pushed toward him, as hungry for that as everything else, but the sting of previous rejections made me flinch back.

  “What about the poison?” I asked. “I don’t want to⁠—”

  “Zephyr.” Beck’s golden eyes crinkled at the corners. “I’ve been enthralled by you since the moment I saw you. Incubus venom had nothing to do with it.”

  The city glittered beyond the window, all heat and motion, but this room felt removed from it. Like we were the only two people in the world.

  “Zephyr,” Beck said again, as quiet as a secret. “May I kiss you?”

  It was the first real choice I’d been given in a long, long time.

  I swallowed hard.

  “Yes, Daddy,” I said.

  Color blossomed above the dense stubble on Beck’s cheeks. Then everything went soft.

  The sheets tangled around us as we pressed skin to skin on the plush mattress. Beck’s lips found mine, and it was nothing like the rough mouths and careless hands from the poker table.

  There were no teeth. No bruising pressure. No sense of being claimed or consumed. Just a kiss—slow and reverent. Like he knew exactly what had been taken from me and was trying, in his own way, to give it back.

  Still, my body tensed. The memory of being used and forced clawed its way to the surface, warning me to shrink, retreat, and protect what little of myself was left.

  But then Beck made a soft sound against my mouth and offered me the purest taste of desire I’d ever known.

  I devoured it.

  Parting my lips, I leaned in, and Beck responded with a hum of approval. He slid his fingers into my damp hair and snagged them there like he’d been waiting to do this forever.

  I’d been waiting too.

  I pushed up onto my elbows, pressing my chest against Beck’s while our legs tangled together. Knees dented the mattress as Beck shifted to get on top of me, boxing me in. When my cock grazed the bulge in his underwear, I moaned, and Beck slipped his tongue into my mouth.

  I’d imagined it was him before, earlier. His tongue lashing against mine, his taste invading my senses, his hands holding on to me. Now it was, and the sensation was divine. My back arched, and I rocked my hips forward so my hardness touched his again.

  The scant friction drove out another groan, and I thrust against him, rising needfully off the bed until Beck broke the seal of our lips at last. He hovered overhead, eyes like twin flames, mouth slanted in a smile. “Colette told me I was your first,” he said.

  I gave a wobbly nod.

  “No regrets, I hope?” He looked nervous, eyebrows pinched and worry tugging at his lips.

  I rushed to reassure him. “None.”

  He stayed poised above me, and I wanted him closer. I needed to feel him against me, inside me, filling the void Maslow had left behind.

  “Beck…” I strained toward him again, moving my body nearer until the heat between us was scorching. “I want you to be all my firsts.”

  It was another thing I couldn’t have. Not technically.

  There had been other hands, other mouths, other people taking things I hadn’t given. Intimacy had been twisted into obligation.

  But that didn’t count.

  This counted. What I chose counted. And Beck was, undoubtedly, my first choice.

  His thumb brushed my cheek, reverent. “I’d like that.”

  Bending in, he kissed me again. I gasped through it and felt him smile in response. The gentleness of it, the consideration and care, had my toes curling, heart thumping, and head spinning as I drank him down.

  We were still connected when I pushed up again. Tentative and hopeful. Asking like he’d asked me.

  Can I have you?

  Wrapping my thighs around one of his, I rutted against him, rubbing my erection against his leg and whimpering with need. It was lessened now. The razor edge of my appetite had been blunted, but it could still cut.

  Beck drew back with a playful nip at my lip, and I blushed fiercely. I stayed close, hugging onto him, ready to take my own satisfaction if he wouldn’t give it to me.

  “You know,” he mused, as maddeningly calm as ever. “You said something else before. A question, actually. You asked if I thought your dick was pretty.”

  I grimaced. “Yeah. That was Darby too.”

  “Hmm.” Beck’s chuckle rumbled like a purr. “Well, what I should have told you was I think it looks good enough to eat.”

  The joke and its implication slowly registered as he pulled free of me. I reached after his retreat, sitting up to watch him shimmy under the covers. His body slid over mine, trapping me from the waist down as he stopped directly above…

  A puff of breath ghosted over my cock.

  “Oh…” I whispered.

  He’d been reduced to a lump under the bedspread, a presence between my thighs. I traced the shape of his form with my eyes until unseen fingers curled around my shaft.

  Wet heat eclipsed me, and my body bucked, then went rigid. I grasped at the covers, needing to anchor myself.

  I wasn’t sure if I believed in God now or ever, but that was the name spilling past my lips as Beck drew down on my cock.

  Sensation bombarded me, starting in my groin and spiraling outward. I writhed and clutched at the covers, and when Beck laughed this time, I felt the rumble. The vibration in his throat, on my crown, and fuckfuckfuck…

  I didn’t know anything could feel like this; I’d never been touched this way. It was a genuine first.

  Beck’s head bobbed as he made soft slurping sounds that went straight to my balls. My cock went agonizingly stiff, swelling over the pillow of his tongue.

  I needed to see him. My mind flooded with conjured images of what it must look like. Beck’s arms braced around me, face tilted upward, lips wrapped around…

  Tentatively, I used my grip on the blanket to lift it, then I peered into the darkness beneath. Golden eyes cast a dim glow across endless stretches of bare skin. Beck’s shoulders and biceps were lightly brown against my peachy pale. He held my gaze while he went deeply down on me, cheeks hollow and throat open.

  He looked powerful, even on his hands and knees, practically crawling but somehow commanding. He certainly had control of me. Every pucker of his lips and flutter of his tongue had me groaning.

  When he swallowed, I dropped the blanket and pressed my palms to my lips to stifle a mewling cry. My knees drew up, my cock throbbed, and Beck sucked with the vigor of a man determined to undo me.

  My eyes were shut and my bent legs quivered when Beck drew back. Air wisped over my erection, cooling the spit left behind. He couldn’t leave me like this.

  “Daddy, please,” I whined, fingers prodding my lips while I fought the urge to suckle.

  Hands gripped my thighs and spread me wide, pushing my weak knees up and aside to make room. I let him maneuver me, wondering what sights were hidden beneath the sheets but too timid to look again. The mystery seemed to intensify everything, filling me with crippling anticipation as I lay there with my hands and stomach in knots.

  I didn’t have to wait long.

  That wet heat returned—his tongue—pressing in behind my sac and gliding downward in a slow, deliberate stroke. The slick trail he left behind made my skin twitch, every nerve tuned to the moment he reached my hole.

  I couldn’t breathe. My body stretched so tight it felt like I might snap.

  Beck would never hurt me. But he was very, very good at making me ache.

  His tongue circled my entrance, and I didn’t even recognize the sounds I was making. Breathy and near-bawling, tapering off when I filled my mouth at last, spearing two fingers inside and sucking.

  Whimpering and whining through my nose, I was trapped in Beck’s unyielding grasp. At his mercy, or lack thereof, because he did not relent. He licked around again, wetting the hole and savoring the slick that leaked out.

  When he entered me at last, the nimble tip of his tongue pushing through the ring of muscle, I couldn’t keep from sobbing.

  Tears ran down the sides of my face and into my hair while he stretched me. Pushing deeper, then pulling out to lap at my rim over and over again. My eyes squeezed closed, and everything was black and sparkles and lust on top of lust on top of lust.

  It was a banquet, a feast, and god… yes. Feed me.

  A finger joined his tongue in the onslaught, curling deep, stroking places that made me cry out.

  I drifted—weightless and unmoored—until Beck surged up and took me into his mouth again, snapping the thread that held me together.

  Release crashed through me, violent and sudden. My hole clenched tight around his finger as it continued to invade, pressing that unbearable spot with ruthless precision. His lips sealed around me as he took my orgasm into his throat and swallowed every pulse.

  When the covers finally peeled back, I was trembling, sniveling, and trying to breathe. I curled one arm across my chest, feeling too bare. Too raw.

  Beck sat up and wiped his mouth, leaving nothing behind but a satisfied smile. His golden eyes burned, lit from within.

  My cock was spent and soft, but his remained hard, straining against his underwear.

  He moved toward me, crawling up my body until our faces aligned. Gently, he took my wrist, pulled my hand from my mouth, and pressed it back to the mattress. Then he kissed me again, holding me there like I was his to keep.

  I tasted myself on him. My fluids on his tongue, musky and bittersweet. He kissed and cradled me while I recovered from the elation of my high, nuzzling from my lips down to the hollow of my throat. When I could feel my legs again, I wrapped them around his waist. I remembered his hardness, his appetite put aside while he tended to mine.

  He huffed a laugh. “Insatiable thing.”

  “It’s just…” My head ducked shyly. “I want you to be full too.”

  His lips pursed as he gazed down at me. “Oh, Beauty, I am. More than I have been in years.”

  I believed him, but I felt the press of him between my thighs, hot and aching, and I wanted to give him something. I wanted to show him I could be more than a need to be fed or a problem to be fixed.

  “You can still… fuck me, though,” I offered.

  He shook his head. “I’ve taken enough. From the start, I’ve made this about me. I want tonight to be about you.”

  It was a gift, and not the kind I could refuse. I stared up at him. My chest hurt, but not in a bad way.

  His hand roamed down to my belly, palm pressing gently in. “Are you full, though? Was that enough?”

  I nodded, lost for words because I’d spent my whole life starving.

  But lying there with Beck, I finally understood.

  This was the first time I’d ever had enough.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Beck

  Room service was a must. Not once or twice, but three times.

  Zephyr sampled every vegetarian option on the menu, and every dessert too. Lucky for him, most sweets were naturally meat-free.

  We spent a fair amount of time in bed. Sure, we fucked, but we also talked, cuddled, and simply stayed close. Not for long, though. Zephyr wasn’t great at staying still.

  Restless and curious, he roamed the seven hundred square feet of my suite. He paused to admire the view out the window, commenting on the sights below. Then he moved on to exercise—stretching, the splits, and walking on his hands across the floor.

  Watching his body move never failed to stir me. He could flex and twist in ways I would have thought impossible, and I realized I may have been taking it too easy on him all this time.

  Colette came through with a wardrobe refresh. She must have guessed Zephyr’s sizes, or maybe the clothes were forgiving since everything was elastic. They were similar to what he’d worn on our last day away from the club. Leggings and crop tops that were as mobile as he was, and I couldn’t deny he looked cute. Like a model for a fitness magazine or the latest Lululemon catalog.

  As content as I may have been to keep Zephyr stashed in my suite for the entire forty-eight hours, we had work to do. Maslow would turn up at the end of our allotted time, demanding the return of his property, and I needed to be ready when he did.

  If Zephyr had a list of must-see sights in Las Vegas, I could guarantee my office didn’t make the top ten. But I had files there. Decades worth of records, contracts, and memos, all filed in neat chronological order. More importantly, it was where I did my best thinking.

  The sticking point was the dancers’ contracts. I didn’t know who owned what, who owed what, and how deeply the hooks were set. If I could read them, I might find a loophole. A breach. Even a little wiggle room. But they were out of reach, almost certainly stashed in Maslow’s office and not likely to be unearthed at my request.

  That meant I needed a workaround. Maslow had asked for my assistance securing the property on Fairmont Street, but I didn’t work for free. The wraith made me pay through the nose for a day with Zephyr. This time, it was my turn to set the price. All I had to do was convince him to agree.

  I sat behind my desk, having forgone the computer in favor of more antiquated methods of research. Namely, thumbing through my hanging files while Colette and Zephyr cozied up on the sagging couch.

  He sat cross-legged, always so nimbly bent, with his crimson hair in a half-pony and long bangs framing his face. Well fed and appropriately dressed, he was practically luminescent in the midday light. His pale skin was graced with a healthy flush, and his eyes were sharp and sparkling. He was a thing of beauty, like I’d always known.

  Beside him, Colette wore her usual work attire, suit jacket removed and the sleeves of her button-down rolled up. Her blonde hair was swept into a messy bun, and her expression was nothing less than delighted.

  Their chatter was a pleasant drone in the background. It began with a lesson in conversational French, which they took a break from to jointly botch the daily crossword. Last I’d heard, she was trying to teach him Sudoku, but it was clear they’d moved on from that when Colette spoke up about something other than numbers in boxes.

  “So, tell me, mon petit,” she began. “What is your earliest memory?”

  Zephyr cut an anxious glance my way. I caught it, ready to call off Colette’s snooping even though I was the one who’d put her on the scent of Zephyr’s lost history. But it was meant to be a gift to him, not a cause for distress.

  After a moment’s hesitation, he asked, “Before Maslow?”

  Colette shook her head. “Before Hell.”

  Zephyr stared at the floor, brows knitting. “I think I fell,” he said. “Is that what it’s like when you die? Everything drops out from under you?”

  Colette tilted her head. “I wouldn’t know.”

  “Right,” he mumbled, sheepish.

  Sunlight striped through the blinds, illuminating them where they sat. Colette nibbled the end of her ink pen, staring at the puzzle in her lap but clearly thinking of something else.

  “What about people?” she asked. “Your mother?”