14: Harriet.

"You're a lot different than the first time I met you," I whisper, exhaling tremulously when his mouth drags across the bare slope of my shoulder. "You were shy then. A little clumsy." From behind, his teeth rake my neck and I gasp. "This is far from clumsy."

His mouth pauses against my skin. "When I saw that man speaking to you in the coffee shop, something changed in me. I realized...you have options." He grips my knee hard. "Eliminating those options is taking up all of my concentration. I don't have room for shy. I can't be self-conscious when all of my focus is going toward not eating you alive. Yet."

"Yet?"

The way he hums in my ear makes my core clench. "I told you, I'm not getting physical with you again until we separate real life and..."

"Play time?" I offer in a thready breath, my eyes barely able to stay open, I'm so overcome simply by having this intimate conversation with him. Being held by my Locke.

The waiter arrives and pours us both a glass of red wine. He doesn't se