I'm enjoying watching his muscles as he shifts and moves above me.

The clench of his jaw when he's moving inside me.

The chameleonic shifts in his eyes as we start making love . . . and finish making love.

I'm addicted and drunk with all the ways his lips know how to move and pleasure, torture and reward. He's fucked me, he's made love to me, he's . . . well, he's gone down on me.

"How many, tell me?" I coax now as I wonder what he's going to do to me next. I told him that I was a virgin, and I now want to know how many girls he's been with besides me.

"No." He's not looking at my face; he's too busy with my body. "They don't count. Nobody counts until now."

I'm sweaty, glorying in the hurricane intensity that he's brought to bed with him. The sight of his cock, full and stiff for me, has me panting. You cannot believe someone so powerful could hold all of that energy under control, but Maverick does it so well, it's exhilarating to be under the attention of such force and be receiving one controlled, delicious, calculated dose at a time.

He gives me only what he measures I can take.

"Mav, I want to kiss you here," I say, trailing my hand over his erection.

"When I'm done with you first, maybe." His thumb circles my belly button, then he teases his tongue inside a little bit. "Only one of us can be properly undone in this bed, you do it so much better. You like that?" His lashes lift as he speaks huskily and watches me, dipping his tongue into my belly button again.

He moves his mouth lower, toward my sex, and I'm tensing in preparation of what's to come. I try to sit up when he nudges my thighs apart, but he presses me back down, caressing my breasts.Then he urges my thighs open, my sex drenched before his eyes. He looks at me, rubs a finger over the folds, checking that I'm wet and ready.

"Maverick," I protest weakly, utterly embarrassed.

I can never stop feeling vulnerable when we have sex, and I feel so raw and needy.

"You're as beautiful here as you are everywhere else." He leans up and his mouth slides across mine, then he's kissing me between my legs again, gently, and wetly thrusting his tongue with gentle rhythm, driving inward, pulling out, making me complain when I'm empty. I'm overloaded with Maverick, his scent, the feel of his kiss where I'm hottest and wettest and in a place where I can't even see.

I'm panting hard while he works his lips up my sex, up my flat abdomen, between my breasts. When he kisses my mouth again, I'm ready, I was made to receive him, and his body was made to take mine, and we fit just right and I'm empty without him. I'm a huge, trembling nerve, quivering in need.

When I'm begging, he rises to his knees, braces up on one arm to keep from squishing me.

He looks extraordinary. This absolutely mystical creature, he's so beautiful, his body in its prime, his face harsh with lust and his eyes shimmering in all those metallic-silver hues that make me want to stare at them for hours at a time.

I stare now. And they stare back at me. Memorizing me and visually fucking me before he physically does the same.

I love the way my body tenses in anticipation. And how my abdomen feels firm and so do my thighs as I curl my legs around his hips.

Curving his hand on my hip, he holds me as his thick, throbbing flesh fills me to the hilt. The sensation of him entering arches my body, so delicious my thighs skew open wider so he knows he's more than welcome here. He's needed.

I mew softly in pleasure, and he groans and stays there, inside me, like he did the time I gave him my V card. Letting me adjust to him.

"Reese . . . give yourself to me, Reese," he coaxes. He crushes his mouth to mine, slides one arm upward, and holds my wrist in one hand as he pulls out and thrusts in. The headboard slams.

I groan. His body ripples against mine. Muscles flexing powerfully with each move. I'm locked beneath him, drowning in the power of him. All this time with him is just making me care.

I don't want to care this much. . . .

I'm scared to care this much. . . .

When the summer is over, I need to leave. Back to school. And the saying "fight or die" applies to this guy to a T. Maverick would die if he's not fighting.

And I feel like the light in my lamp is going to flicker off when I go back to where I used to live. And maybe, who I used to be. . . .

No, I am not her anymore. Not after this trip, this summer. Not after this man.

He moves his arms, and with our hands linked above my head, he keeps driving inside me, his skill delicious and smooth, but strong. Eyes on mine, he teases me with his lips, and he eases back to keep watching me as he takes me to the heights of pleasure, before teasing his lips across mine again.

"God, to have you like this every night . . . soft and wet and undone for me, Reese . . ."

His pace quickens, slamming harder, our hands clenched tight; I moan, arching and writhing, feeling him inside me, every stroke, every plunge maddening me. My nerve endings crackling. Hungrier than ever. Needing him more than ever. Closer and closer to my climax, his harsh groan running over my skin. Then we tense, together. My head tosses aside, the pleasure going on forever. He lets out a growl, then he slams his lips to mine as we're both coming.

I'M IN HIS arms, needing to go. I'm buzzing. My body and I content with each other.

"So why didn't you cash your penny in before?" He smirks at me and lifts his brows as he smooths his thumbs down the bridge of my nose, one after the other. "You could've asked for anything. Didn't I say you could?"

"I don't know. I couldn't let it go. I had you with me." I see it in his palm and try to snatch it back up, and he squeezes his palm shut.

"Uh-uh." He shakes his head. "Earn it."

"Come on. Be gentlemanly."

"Earn it."

I laugh and playfully slap his shoulder, and his eyes dance; I can tell he loves my teasing slaps and that it doesn't hurt him one bit.

He falls sober the next moment.

"Sorry about Racer. You love the little guy," he says then, setting the penny aside.

"Very much. He was mad at me after a while and didn't want to be with me. I felt like shit. So rejected."

He kisses me. "You lose some, you win some."

I grab his head and kiss him. "I need to go."

He glances at the clock. "Yeah, I need to train." He flops to his back and exhales happily.

I do the same. "People in love mimic each other, did you know? I read that somewhere. One grabs their hair and the other unconsciously does that."

"When you grab your hair, makes me want to grab your hair too, not grab mine."

I laugh and cuddle a little. "You're funny."

"No." He sounds grumpy now.

"You have a sense of humor."

"I'm just happy right now."

"Really?" I ask, raising my brows.

He raises his pointedly. "Really."

"See! You just lifted your brows like me."

He groans and shakes his head. "Don't even, Reese. I'm not a couple-y kind of guy. I don't do costumes and I definitely don't do matching costumes and I don't do anything other people do."

"That's fine. Just do me."

He smacks my butt as I get out of bed and squeezes it and pulls me down and kisses me. "You're out of control, girl. Someone needs to keep an eye on you twenty-four/seven. I volunteer."

I kiss him again, then I slap his chest playfully. "I'm going now," I warn.

He sits up too and strokes my hair, then lowers me to his knee and looks down at my nipples and plays with them. "I'm going for a run with Tate today. I'm going to tell him about us. I want this out in the open."

Butterflies wake up vigorously in my stomach. "Okay."

He looks up at me meaningfully. "I want to take you to dinner tomorrow, after the semifinals."

"Ummm." Shit. I twist my mouth to the side as I think about how to phrase it. "Maverick, I wanted to talk to you about that. You see . . . tomorrow Miles is in town, and my other friends. I'm supposed to meet up with them once Brooke gets back from the fight."

His eyebrows shoot up, then he narrows his eyes. "You want me to hang back while you go frolicking with Miles?"

I slap his thigh playfully. "Yes, because he's just a friend. He's always been just a friend. I thought . . ." I shake my head. "Maverick, I didn't know the real thing."

He narrows his eyes even more.

But, I admit, the possessive look I see there thrills me a little.

No, a lot.

Maverick not only looks possessive, but he sounds possessive too. "You'll go out with them after the fight, but you won't come to watch my fight? Reese?" he says, frowning and cupping my breast again, as if to remind me who makes me moan.

I drop on the bed, tug the sheet up, and playfully hide my breasts from him. "You said you didn't want me there because I'd fuck with your head."

He tugs the sheet back down to look at me, then he rubs my breast tips with the pads of his thumbs. "I said that before. Before I wanted you so badly on my side."

My eyes close.

"What? No slap?" he teases.

I slap his shoulder, then set my hand there, possessively too. I squeeze his hard arm, with meaning, though it hardly budges at all.

"I'll meet my friends tomorrow. And I'll find a way to make it to the championship match. To see you." I get up then and wait for his answer.

He nods at that, slowly, his gaze a little threatening. "Just remember." He cups my butt as he stands and gently bites the top of my ear. "This ass is mine."

THIRTY-SEVEN.

SEMIFINALS.

Maverick I'm ready.

I'm tapping my foot restlessly on the concrete floor of the Boston warehouse. It's the second night of semifinals in Boston. Tate fought yesterday and won. Still undefeated, still ranked at first. I'm currently third.

I've been training like a beast and eating like a caveman, and I feel primitive now. Ready to take my place in the Underground tonight.

Oz says the place is packed. He's told me a dozen times that I need to take out every single fighter out there. Some bigger, some faster, all of them more experienced, but not a single fucking one of them is as determined as I.

Most of the fighters out there do it for the money. Yeah. Boatloads of green are fine, but green is the least of my driving forces.

I watch Oz finish strapping on my gloves and think of the run I had with Tate yesterday. We didn't say a word for seven miles. The conversation with him began and ended when we finished and guzzled down our electrolyte drinks. The conversation went like this: Me: Reese and I are dating. And it's serious.

Tate: Good. I'm serious about what I said too.

Me: Good.

Tate: You love her?

Me: Adore her.

Tate: Then there's nothing more to say except don't cheat, don't hurt her, and don't make her regret choosing you.

And I won't. I fucking won't. Even if tonight, I'm simmering in frustration over the fact that my girl will be all around town with Miles.

I want her here. With me. Or anywhere safe. Anywhere but with Miles.

"That fucker won't have a thing for you."

"Hmm?"

"Toro," Oz assures me.

I know I'm glaring, but I'm too mad to do anything else. "I thought you meant Miles."