Undone. CAITLIN CREWS

      This is sex, she told herself. This is pure fucking.

      And it was more than that, she knew with each thick, deep, thrilling surge inside her.

      It was an exorcism.

      With every thrust, she was made new.

      It was her baptism, and every sacrament thereafter, as he slowly, deliberately, pounded her into madness.

      But what a sweet madness it was.

      “You going to come again?” It took her a moment to realize that was him, talking to her in that growly, dangerous voice that seemed to scour her body the same way he did. Rough and right. “Are you just going to hang out?”

      And Maya didn’t know who she was. She never did things like this. She’d never kissed a stranger, much less fucked one up against the wall not even five minutes after laying eyes on him for the first time.

      She wasn’t this person.

      But maybe that was why it was easy to become as much a stranger to herself as the stranger inside her and smile at him. Wicked and flirtatious and nothing like her at all.

      “You can either make me come or you can’t,” she told him, astonished at the words that came out of her own mouth. But she ran with them anyway. “How is that on me?”

      “Good point,” he replied, and then everything changed.

      He gripped her ass harder and lifted her away from the wall. She flowed against him, then bit her own bottom lip as he took that hand of his from the wall and brought it between them.

      “Try this,” he said, his mouth against her neck, and then he did something to her clit with those big, rough fingers of his—

      Maya felt like she’d been electrocuted. It was a jolt, a wild burst of light, and then everything exploded.

      She was lost in the white light of it, the wild, impossible commotion, but she held on tight until he finally broke that rhythm of his and went a little wild himself.

      And when he groaned out his release into the crook of her shoulder, he tipped her right back over that edge for the third time.

      He staggered slightly, then caught himself against the wall again, holding her there between his hard body and the stone.

      She held on for longer than she should have, maybe. Until she remembered herself.

      Or if not herself, exactly, then the facts of the situation.

      Total stranger. Random fuck.

      Her exorcism was her own business.

      She unhooked her legs from around his waist and lowered herself to the ground, shuddering a little at the low noise he made when he pulled out of her as she went.

      Her skirt flowed back down over her thighs. He tucked himself away and buttoned himself up again.

      And then they were just...staring at each other the way they had outside.

      “Hi,” he said, with another flash of that grin of his, and a knowing kind of heat in his too-blue eyes. “I’m Charlie.”

      “Maya,” she replied, and then stuck out her hand. The way she always did.

      They both stared.

      Slowly, with a gleam in his blue eyes that she could only call unholy, Charlie reached down and wrapped his big hand around hers. And how could that be so hot after everything they’d just done? But it was.

      Charlie shook her hand. Very deliberately. Up, then down, in a slow movement that reminded her entirely too much of exactly what had happened here.

      She felt too warm. Everywhere.

      “Nice to meet you,” he said, his voice a low rumble and that crooked grin lodged inside her, somehow. “You want the rest of the tour?”

       CHAPTER THREE

      “HOW’S ITALY?” MELINDA ASKED in her concerned voice, which was exactly like her usual bossy voice, only with a nominal attempt at softness. “More to the point, how are you?”

      Maya deeply regretted answering her mobile.

      It was another lazy afternoon on the Amalfi coast. She sat out on her terrace in the uncertain, moody weather, wrapped in a whisper-soft throw to ward off the bite of the sea air from below. There was espresso and a selection of freshly baked biscotti and anginetti before her. She had been engaged in a rousing debate with herself—should she slip into her infinity pool, always kept comfortably warm to encourage its use even in a changeable, chilly December? Or stay where she was, tucked up cozily with a deliciously fat paperback at the ready and nothing at all to do?

      She really shouldn’t have answered the phone.

      “I’m fine,” she said, trying to drag herself out of the sweet daydream she’d been riding for days now, where this was her life and there was nothing for her to do but gaze at the sea, smell the flowers, watch the rain and pay no mind as one hour rolled into the next. “Good, even.”

      “You don’t need to put on an act for me, Maya.”

      “I’m sitting on a balcony gazing out at the Amalfi coast, which is even more beautiful than it looks in pictures. There’s no acting involved.”

      Melinda heaved a sigh, and all the ugly things Maya had been doing such a good job barring from her mind since she’d left Toronto squirmed back out and crouched there in the light, disturbing and uncomfortable.

      She should hang up, she thought. Right now.

      But she didn’t.

      Maya had spent far too many years being responsible. Available. The sort of person who suffered through whatever conversation someone wanted to start with her, regardless of whether or not she wanted to have it. She’d always assumed that was part and parcel of being a responsible adult.

      Today she couldn’t recall why she’d ever thought such a thing.

      “I didn’t want to bother you with this, but I thought you should know.” Her sister’s voice took on a familiar, faintly officious tone, because Melinda always functioned best when she was in charge of something. And clearly she felt she was in charge of Maya. Or what life Maya had left behind in Toronto, anyway. “Ethan is resisting moving out of the condo. He says you and he found it together, it’s as much his as yours, and you’re a single person now anyway, so why do you need all that space? I’m quoting, obviously.”

      Maya didn’t want to think about Ethan. Or the condo she’d called home for the past few years despite the fact she’d seen so little of it, because she was always at work. She didn’t particularly want to think about any of the things she’d left behind in Canada. It seemed too far away. Like a bad dream she couldn’t quite shake off when morning came, but nothing real.

      She’d been in Italy for five whole days now and it felt like a lifetime. As if she’d never truly existed before but had sprung into life the moment her feet hit the endless stairs that made up this village of hers high on its cliff, cascading down to the sea. What concerned her was whether or not it rained. The steepness of her chosen staircase. How many stairs she needed to walk a day to counterbalance all the marvelous food she indulged in with the same appetite and greed she’d applied to Charlie the handyman.

      Every time she thought about him—and she thought about him a lot—she shivered the same way she had when he’d been inside her.

      But she didn’t think her prim, proper sister would appreciate that anecdote, even if she’d felt like sharing it. Maya sat up straighter on her comfortable chaise and frowned until she remembered herself.

      She’d wanted to hold on to the condo because it would irritate Ethan. Because it was the