The bed groaned under our combined weight as Marcus shoved me back against the pillows. His hands were a fever on my skin, stripping the ruined lilac silk from my shoulders with a frantic, desperate energy. I had expected him to be calculated, to be the cold King_M, I knew from the screen, but his touch was raw. He was breathing like a man who had been starved of air.

I reached for the waistband of his joggers, my fingers grazing the heat of his skin, when the shrill, cheerful melody of a phone rang out. It was a sharp, piercing sound that shattered the heavy, musk-filled silence of the...