She steps toward me. I notice how her pupils are dilated, her lips are parted, and her nipples are hard as pebbles beneath the towel she’s holding loosely over her shoulders. She lowers her gaze again as I take the towel from her and dry her shoulders and arms, watching the top of her head as I do.

She reaches out, fingertips hesitantly tracing the skin of my chest, my abdomen. My muscles bunch beneath her touch, but I remain still as she tests.

“What are you doing?” I finally ask, though I don’t stop her.

She looks up through thick lashes and watches me as she lets her fingertips slip toward the towel.

My dick responds, and I grab her wrist harder than I mean to. “What are you doing, Mercedes?”

“Nothing,” she snaps.

I study her, keep her tiny wrist in my hand then turn her arm over to look at the delicate skin there.

“You don’t want to touch me like that.”

Her cheeks burn. She blinks several times, clearly embarrassed, her hand tightening around the knot of the towel as she tries to tug herself free of me but fails.

“That side of me you do not want to know, understand? It’s not for you.” Just as you’re not for me.

It takes her a moment, but she steels herself and turns her narrowed eyes up to mine. “You can touch me, though? Any way you want.”

“To discipline you. To clean you.”

She tugs. “Let me go.”

“Do you understand?”

She snorts. “Don’t flatter yourself, Judge. I can have any man I want.”

My jaw tenses, and I realize I’m squeezing her wrist too hard when she winces. I let her go, and she takes two steps away.

“Any man. Any time,” she says, then cocks her head and grins that arrogant, self-satisfied Mercedes De La Rosa grin.

I close the space between us, relishing in the fact that she takes two away before her back hits the wall and she’s out of room. I touch her chin and tilt her face up. “I have no doubt they drop to their knees on your command, little monster. But I’m not one of those boys you can wrap around your pretty little finger.”

She jerks her chin out of my grasp. “As if I’d want to.”

I grin. Good. This is good. We were moving into dangerous territory there. I turn to exit the bathroom, but before I’m even out the door, I hear her gasp, and I stop dead. Because fuck. I haven’t showered with a woman in a long time. Too much intimacy. What just happened proved that, didn’t it?

Without looking back, I continue into her bedroom.

She follows. “What is that tattoo?”