“You doing all right in there?” Remy’s voice came through the bathroom door. “The pizza’s here and I found a bottle of Pinot Noir amidst the boxes over at my place. Unless you prefer a white. I could try to find a convenience store.”

Just the sound of that wicked accent made her head rush and reminded her why he was here. Because she couldn’t seem to help herself around the man. It was why she’d stayed away from him. She couldn’t resist him even when she knew it was for her own good. Even when she knew it would end in heartache. “Red is fine, but you don’t have to stay. I thank you for the ride, but I’m okay now. I know it’s late and you have to work in the morning. I only need one piece of pizza and then I’ll probably fall into bed.”

Alone. Like she had for almost two years now. She’d thought once she’d hit the floor at Sanctum that she’d plow her way through hot Doms, enjoying the sex and making no apologies for it. After she and that weasel Gary had broken up, she’d decided to not make a single apology for what she wanted sexually or otherwise. There had been exactly one Dom she’d plowed through and then she’d hit a wall. A wall of muscle and tan skin and a smile that fritzed out her brain.

And then the only Dom she wanted was freaking Remy Guidry, and he hadn’t wanted her.

“I would rather stay with you,” he said quietly. “If you don’t want company, I understand, but I hate eating alone and that’s all I seem to do these days.”

She wasn’t going to let him know how much those soft, sincerely spoken words meant or how much his puppy eyes did to tear down those carefully constructed walls she’d put up. Well, she’d thought they were carefully constructed. Now it appeared they’d been made of pretty tissue paper he easily tore through at his will. She wasn’t even looking at him and she could see those eyes.

She opened the door, her robe tucked firmly around her now crustacean-free body. She wished she could say the same for the glitter, but damn it was hard to get off. “You don’t take your dates out for a meal before getting down to dessert, huh?”

She knew she sounded like a brat of the first order, but she couldn’t help it. If her walls were coming down, sarcasm was her last line of defense.

He stood there in the hallway, his massive body taking up all the space. He looked a little like a lion who felt regret for his prey. “Like I said, there was nothing at all intimate about those relationships. No relationship at all. I found a woman and hooked up for sex and sent her on her way in the morning. Sometimes she would come back for seconds, but only if I truly believed she didn’t want anything from me but sex. It has been pointed out to me recently that the way I behave makes me some kind of a douchebag.”