“I was wrong,” he said. Each word possessed a hard edge.

“Wrong about what?” Was he talking about the dress? Or about wanting to be her teacher? God, she prayed he wasn’t backing out.

“I was wrong about tonight’s lesson. It’s not spanking.”

“What is it?”

“It’s role-playing.” His voice was hot and rough. His dark eyes prowled over her body.

“What kind of role playing?” She didn’t even bother to hide her nerves, but the nerves also excited her. Or maybe he was simply the one who excited her. It seemed whatever he did turned her on. The fact that he was standing here, a solid mass of muscle and strength, of extreme and utter sexiness, sent shivers across her skin. She drank him in: the wavy mess of his golden brown hair, the stubble lining his jaw, the exposed patch of skin on his chest where the top two buttons of his white shirt were undone. All of it, all of him, made her tremble with want.

He took one step closer, and reflexively she backed up so her spine hit the wall behind her. She was caged in, and against her better judgment, she liked it. She liked the fact that it was starkly quiet inside the suite, and that it was intensely noisy outside, a white noise that masked all that she was feeling.

“I’m going to be playing the role of the jealous lover,” he said, his voice still laced with the same frustration she’d picked up on earlier. Was he annoyed with her?

“What do you mean?”

“I’m the jealous lover who can’t stand the thought of his woman wearing a gorgeous, stunning, absolutely fucking breathtaking dress on a date with another man.”

A wild thrill rushed through her veins from his words and what they meant. “But I thought you didn’t like the dress?” she asked, coyly, playing along.

He lifted his hand and brushed the tips of his fingers against her wrist. She shuddered from that one subtle touch. Her body begged for more, and she was almost ashamed at how much desire flowed through her bloodstream right now. She hadn’t been completely aware of how very much she had wanted to see him tonight, of how truly disappointed she had been for the first eight innings that he wasn’t here by her side. Now that he was here, she wasn’t sure how she’d survived the game without him.

He brushed his fingers along her arm, across the crook of her elbow, and up to her shoulder. Goosebumps rose in his wake.

“I don’t like the dress if you wear it for another man,” he said, keeping his eyes locked on hers the whole time. “And sometimes that means I’m going to act like a dick and tell you I don’t like the dress at all.” He brought his hands to her hair and she wanted to cry out because it felt so fucking good to be touched by him like this, with hands that were both tender and completely possessive. He speared his fingers into her hair. “But what I really don’t like is the idea that another man might look at you in it, and want to touch you the way I touch you.”