There’s something to be said about watching a man work himself up to the point of no return. The taut neck. The tension of his abs as he thrusts into you. The way his eyes glaze over when he looks down to see where he enters you. His bruising grip on your flesh. His Adam’s apple when he throws his head back and loses himself in you.

And Gunner is all of that and then so much more when he comes.

He’s freaking perfection, and I have no clue how we climbed so high so quickly . . . so effortlessly. So immediately.

CHAPTER NINE

Chase

I WAKE WITH A START.

It takes me a second to remember where I am since I’ve been discombobulated anyway now that I’m staying in a hotel.

But I definitely remember my whereabouts when I shift to find Gunner lying on his stomach in the bed beside me, sheets covering one of his thighs and basically nothing else.

I do what any normal woman would do—I thoroughly study him. But it’s not like I didn’t get intimate knowledge of him last night and the few times we decided to see if we could in fact, come one more time.

The answer was yes. Yes, we could.

I shift, a delicious soreness between my thighs, as I study the intricate tattoo just below his left shoulder blade. It’s some kind of Celtic cross with initials carved in its hilt but it’s too hard to see in its entirety because of the angle he’s lying at. Instead I take another peek at his very fine ass before moving back up to his face.

Thick lashes fan over suntanned cheeks. A lock of hair hangs down and covers one of his eyes to rest on his strong nose.

Not classically handsome as some would define handsome, but the man is drop-dead sexy, an attraction all in itself.

I look around his bedroom. It’s basic. Beige walls with hints of grays and blues. A pair of jeans are hung over a chair in the corner and one boot rests on its side beneath it. There’s art hung on the wall and a few framed photographs on his dresser that look like they’re of a grandfather in uniform, but I couldn’t be sure.

Definitely all signs of normalcy, which is important when you’re a woman who took the plunge and decided to go to the house of the man she doesn’t exactly know all that well.

The problem was I never had any intention of staying here, but he was so cute and the sex was so good, that it would have been a shame to leave.

But I need to leave. I need to head out, get to work, and cross this off my list: great sex with Gunner.