Chapter 1

Don't stop Daddy, I'm enjoying you."

The words were a ragged whisper against Desmond's neck, her nails digging into the crisp sheets of her father's bed.

Anna was nineteen, but in this room, with this man, she felt ancient and newborn all at once.

"I know, I can't stop," he growled, his voice low thrum that vibrated through her entire body. His weight was a delicious pressure, a welcome anchor in the storm of her own making.

"I don't care what my friend will think," he continued, his breathing hot against her ear. "But you are a sweet girl."

His words were a lit match to gasoline. The "friend" was her father. The "sweet girl" was a lie he was telling himself to make this palatable and to make the forbidden taste like honey. 

And oh, how she tasted it. She tasted it on his tongue, on the skin of his chest where she had bitten down to muffle her cries.

She tasted the stars he promised her, the galaxies he would show her and she knew it was all a beautiful, damnable lie.

His cock was a revelation, it wasn't just big; but it was an entity. It's a force that was reshaping her from the inside out.

She had imagined this moment a thousand times, in the quiet solitude of her bedroom, with her own fingers as a poor substitute for the reality of him. 

But her imagination was a pale, watercolor sketch compared to the oil painting of reality. He stretched her, filled her until she was sure she would break.

 And then he would pull back, leaving her aching and empty. Before pushing into her again with a guttural groan that was more animal than man.

This wasn't the tentative fumbling of boys her age, but this was the confidence of a man who knew a woman's body like he knew his own, who could read her shudders and sighs like a sacred text.

His hands were everywhere, mapping her curves and learning the secret geography of her desire. 

One hand gripped her hip holding her in place for his relentless rhythm, while the other snaked up her spine, tangling in her hair and pulling her head back to expose the vulnerable column of her throat.

He kissed her there, a hot and open-mouthed kiss that was both a brand and a benediction. She could feel the scrape of his evening beard against her sensitive skin, a raw and primal friction that sent another bolt of lightning straight to her core. 

Her pussy clenched around him, a greedy, desperate spasm, and he rewarded her with a deep thrust that stole the air from her lungs.

"Look at me," he commanded, his voice rough with exertion. She forced her eyes open, and her vision blurry with unshed tears of pure, unadulterated pleasure.

He was above her, his face was a mask of intense concentration, a beautiful and cruel god. The silver at his temples glinted in the moonlight filtering through the window. 

His blue eyes, usually so cool and composed, were burning now, burning with a fire that was all for her. "Is this what you wanted, Anna?"

The question was a twist of the knife. It was an accusation and a temptation all at once. He wanted to hear her say it, he wanted to give her the rope to hang them both with.

"Yes," she sobbed, the word torn from her throat. "God, yes."

"Good," he grunted, his pace quickening, becoming brutal, punishing. "Because I've wanted this for years."

That was the twist. Not the kiss in the dark, not the stolen touches by the lake. It was the confession, delivered in the heat of the act, that this obsession wasn't one-sided.

His words shattered something in her. For years. He hadn't just noticed her last summer, or last Christmas when she'd worn that red dress. 

He had been watching her, wanting her, while she was still in braces, while she was crying over her first broken heart, while she was a child. 

The knowledge should have been horrifying. It should have sent her scrambling from the bed, from this room and from this house. 

But it didn't, it was the most intoxicating thing she had ever heard. It validated every secret glance, every stolen fantasy and every late-night touch of her own skin as she imagined his hands on her instead.

Her body responded before her mind could catch up. The orgasm hit her like a tidal wave, a violent and beautiful explosion that ripped through her with the force of a hurricane. 

Her back arched off the bed, a silent scream trapped in her throat as waves of pleasure, sharp and blinding, crashed over her again and again. 

She was no longer Anna, the nineteen-year-old daughter of Richard Ashford. But she was pure sensation, a creature of light and heat and finally claiming her own constellation.

Desmond rode out her storm, his own control fraying at the edges. He watched her come apart beneath him, his expression was a mixture of awe and possession. 

As the last tremor wracked her body, he let out a raw, guttural cry and followed her into the abyss. She felt him pulse inside her, a hot and deep flood that was a final, undeniable claim. 

He collapsed onto her, his body slick with sweat, his heart hammering against her chest in a frantic rhythm that matched her own.

For a moment, the only sounds were their ragged breaths and the distant call of a loon across the water. The world slowly came back into focus, and the moonlight painted the room in shade of shadow. 

The sheets were a tangled mess around their limbs. And the air was thick with the scent of sex and sandalwood and him.

Reality, cold began to seep in. This was her father's bed, her father's best friend. And the sweet, innocent girl she was supposed to be was gone.

And in her place was this…this creature who had just willingly, and ecstatically committed an act of supreme betrayal.