Pleasure's Edge by Eve Berlin

she looked peaceful, innocent, in a way she never did while awake.
    He didn’t know what to cal the dul ache in his chest.
    Ignore it. It’ll go away.
    He knew immediately that was a lie. As much a lie as the one he’d been tel ing himself about how Dylan Ivory was just another girl. Another chal enge. He’d been lying to himself since the moment he’d met her.
    Fuck.
    He could not have this, this getting attached. He was not the kind of man who did this. Ever. He was his father’s son. He didn’t need a woman in his life any more than his dad had. He was fine on his own. This strange pul he felt for Dylan would be a temporary thing. She was just so damn beautiful, so incredibly responsive . . .
    She shifted in her sleep, and he glanced at the clock on the nightstand. The glowing red numbers read four-thirty A.M. She moved against him, her leg slipping over his. His cock stirred.
    He held perfectly stil , trying to calm his breathing.
    He could wake her, touch her, make her hot and needy, as he had earlier. And because of earlier, she would be open to it.
    She would let him fuck her.
    But he knew if he did, it would be al over for him. He pul ed in a breath, then another, fil ing himself up with the cool night air.
    Gently, he moved her leg away. Her skin was satin beneath his hand.
    Calm down, buddy.
    He kept breathing, focusing on the draw and push of air in and out of his lungs. Over and over, until his eyes final y began to droop, to sting with the need for sleep.
    Even as he drifted off, he was aware of the warm body beside him, the delicate weight of her in his arms. The scent of her hair: that dark vanil a. But he was too tired to fight it, final y. Closing his eyes, he slept.

    * * *

    The sun was just coming up when Dylan woke. The room was hazy with muted golden light filtering through the open slats of the shutters at the windows. Beside her, Alec’s breath was a soft whisper on her cheek.
    Her skin was hot where it touched his and she rol ed away, feeling the cool, empty space suddenly like a smal shock. It hit her then that she had real y spent the night with him. Not only with him, but tangled in his arms as if they were a pair of lovers.
    Scattered images from their evening at the Pleasure Dome fil ed her mind. Lying across his lap. The dim lighting. The erotic, throbbing pulse-beat of the music. His hand coming down on her tender flesh. The stinging. The exquisite pleasure. His hand between her thighs. Her thundering climax, then another.
    God.
    Her body was thrumming with need once more.
    She turned to look at his sleeping profile. His face was al pure masculine lines and planes. And that impossibly lush mouth surrounded by the dark, evil-looking goatee. The blankets were gathered around his torso, his chest and arms bared. His tattoos stood out in stark contrast to his smooth skin, and she wanted to touch them, to trace the intricate, sinuous lines with her fingertips.
    To put her mouth there and taste him. But she didn’t dare.
    She wanted him. Badly enough that she had submitted to him easy as silk the night before. Wanted to do it again.
    How was that possible? She’d been able to admit she’d had the idea of trying some power play, some sensation play, in the back of her mind for a long time. But she had never expected herself to give into it so easily.
    She didn’t like to question herself. It was something she hadn’t done since not long after she’d lost Quinn. She’d never stopped blaming herself, but she’d spent her entire life since then trying to be a better person, to hold herself and her life together in such a way that nothing like that could ever happen again. And now, it was as if her perception of her own strength had been diminished, and that scared the hel out of her.
    Some of it had to do with Alec, with the sheer power of his size, the way he carried himself, the way he spoke to her. Who he was .
    He was every bit as commanding now as he was when he was awake. And her