"You're a lot different than the first time I met you," I whisper, exhaling tremulously when his mouth drags across the bare slope of my shoulder. "You were shy then. A little clumsy." From behind, his teeth rake my neck and I gasp. "This is far from clumsy."

His mouth pauses against my skin. "When I saw that man speaking to you in the coffee shop, something changed in me. I realized...you have options." He grips my knee hard. "Eliminating those options is taking up all of my concentration. I ...