I glance across to Ava. I shouldn’t have. She’s rigid, her fingers clawing at the seat by her thighs, her chest expanding on every inhale. Not in all my time frequenting the rooms of The Manor have I seen a woman so hungry for me. And that’s a feat on her part. I’m not being a conceited twat. I’m being real. She’s so into me, desperate for me, set to beg for me, this beautiful, normal, pure, real, young woman, and that turns me on like nothing else.

I reach up and wipe my upper lip, puffing out my cheeks, part in disbelief, part in awe. She’s the impossible. The unthinkable. The cure. And tonight, I’m going to speak to her in a way she’ll understand because, fuck knows, she could never comprehend the actual words.

The gates to Lusso come into view, and I tap my steering wheel constantly as I wait for them to open. She looks across the car at me. “You’re going to have a seizure if you don’t calm down.”

My hands stop tapping, and I meet her hungry gaze. “Ava, I’ve had a fucking seizure every day since I’ve met you.” Whether caused by pleasure or stress.

The gates finally grant me access, and I put my foot down.

“You’re swearing a lot,” she muses.

“And you’re going to be screaming a lot. Out.” I eject myself from my car fast, joining her on the other side. She’s not even got one leg out of my Aston by the time I make it to her. When the hell did she turn into a fucking tortoise? Can’t she see my urgency? And where the fuck has hers gone? “What are you doing?”

She pouts, taking a lazy gaze around the docks. “Do you fancy a walk?”

A walk? What does she think this is, a 1920s romance novel? I couldn’t have heard her right. “Do I fancy a walk?”

“Yes,” she says, cool, casual, but I can see the slight lift of her mouth. She’s playing. “It’s a lovely evening.”

It is. But it will be even lovelier when I get her naked. “No, Ava.” I move in. “I fancy fucking you until you beg me to stop.” Dipping, I seize her and haul her over my shoulder, loving her exhale of surprise. One day, she’ll be so used to me picking her up, she’ll stop being surprised. Do I fancy a walk? I scoff and do the unthinkable. I kick my car door closed. My two-hundred-grand car. That’s how desperate I am. That’s what she does to me.

“Jesse,” she yelps as I pace into Lusso. “I’ll walk!”

“Not fast enough. Good evening, Clive.”