The Dare Collection September 2018. Stefanie London

her what she came looking for tonight, I’ll likely rot away in Nightgardin’s highest-security prison—if the king doesn’t kill me first. It would be reckless as hell to assume anything less.

      But I stopped playing it safe the second I bedded my own brother’s fiancée. I have nothing—nothing—left to lose.

      “Are you refusing my request?” she asks, jutting out her chin.

      I bait her. “What you’re asking for is an act of treason. I may be a man without a country, but yours has tolerated my presence for some time now. It’s the closest thing I have to a—” I bite my tongue before uttering the word home. I am not foolish enough to think I belong anywhere, let alone here. But an act against Nightgardin, even by a banished Edenvale prince, would put the rest of my family at risk. “I will need some sort of...insurance...that you won’t have your way with me and then immediately report me. Or...if that is your endgame...at least something that will work in my defense in a Nightgardin court. Though I doubt I’d even be given a trial.” I’m mostly joking, because I know this night can end in only one way—with me behind bars and my family none the wiser. But she clears her throat.

      “Very well,” she says. “What do you truly know about Nightgardin law?”

      I chuckle. “Enough that I understand a night with you could cost me my life, but I’ve already admitted as much. What are you playing at, Princess?”

      She dips her head. “If they find out I lied—that I came to the city to consort with an Edenvale prince instead of cloistering myself in prayer—you will not be the only one guilty of treason.”

      My throat goes bone dry. “They would hang you in the palace square.”

      “Perhaps,” she says. “Or worse. It would be justified. That would be up to the king and queen to decide.”

      It would be up to her parents to decide whether or not to kill their only child for the crime of fucking me.

      “This is the only time in my life that I get to decide, Damien. Let me choose who gets to take the most precious gift I have to offer. Because I choose you.”

      She reaches beneath the skirt of her barely there dress and tugs her panties down her thighs, over her knees and ankles until they lie in a ball on the Alfa Romeo’s floor.

      My nostrils flare. There it is again, the faint tang of her sweet, intimate scent.

      “No one knows I’m here,” she says. “And by the time they find me, you’ll be long gone.”

      She takes my palm, places it high on her thigh and simply says, “Please.”

      Somehow, with one hand, I maneuver the car into Reverse and onto the road as my other hand skims soft skin, sliding higher, until I’m there.

      I dip one finger between her soft, wet folds, and she cries out, bucking in her seat.

      “Fucking hell,” I growl, then put the pedal to the floor, speeding off to certain death.

      Juliet

      I’m going to die.

      No, really. I’ll be dead before my next breath.

      My back arches and my hips circle to an uninhibited rhythm.

      Damien takes another hairpin turn, one-handed, because he’s delved the other between my thighs. His palm dances over my clit, working me until my sensitive skin throbs in time with my pounding heart. When he plunges his fingers into my tight slit, the Alfa Romeo wheels aren’t the only things squealing.

      My whimper dwindles to a soft pant as I writhe, drenched with an unfamiliar need. Damien can’t maintain expert control of this sports car and me all at the same time. It’s too much. No man is this dexterous. He’s going to drive us off a cliff to our doom.

      But his long, relentless fingers plunge inside my folds, filling me up, taking me to the gates of Heaven. My front teeth clamp hard on my lower lip. I won’t tell him to stop. Death might be close at hand—but by the old gods and new...mine shall be a glorious end.

      “Jesus, doll. You’re a hellcat, aren’t you?” He does that magic swirling trick with his fingers again, confident and in control, playing me like a virtuoso violinist, and my scream is a sound between a breathless yelp and a squeak of delight. My whole body begins to shudder. My derriere clenches as my thighs tremble.

      Good lord, what is happening to me?

      “Fuck, I love a woman who makes some noise while she comes,” he growls.

      Another perfectly aggressive stroke, and my inner walls pulse in a series of mind-blowing contractions that milk his fingers. When I grow still, he cups my sex and teases my silky strands with a soft tickle.

      “You have a fucking amazing pussy,” he growls.

      But I’m too greedy for games, and too starved for touch.

      “More.” I grab his wrist and grind my pelvis against his palm without a shred of decorum. I can hear my wetness sucking against his rough skin and don’t recognize this woman, wild and roused, filled with savage yearning. I’ve touched myself before. A couple awkward fumbles beneath my quilt in the dead of night, but I never knew exactly what I was doing.

      It’s humbling that Damien seems to know my body’s responses better than I do.

      “Shit,” he snarls, slamming the brakes. We skid to a stop in the middle of the road. I turn around, tensing at the anticipated impact of another car, but the hour is late. No other vehicle is in sight.

      “Climb aboard, love. But be a good girl and grab the bottle of lube in the glove box.”

      “Excuse me?” Climb aboard? Lube?

      “Time to get your sweet ass out of that seat and straddle me. You want to fuck? Fine, but we’re going to do it my way, Princess. And behind the wheel is my favorite position.”

      I blink once. Twice. But he says nothing, just regards me with those magnetic steely eyes.

      Oh my god. He’s not joking. I try to swallow. “Let me get this straight. You’re planning to drive while having intercourse with me?” I grew up riding horses, but something tells me that losing my virginity to a man behind the wheel of an Italian sports car is nothing I could have possibly prepared for.

      “Are you up for the challenge or not, Princess?” His eyes are dark as sin. “Because if the answer is no, I can turn this car around and take you back to the club.”

      “No! Wait!” I cry. “Don’t do that.” My hand trembles as I move to unbuckle my seat belt, nerves churning my stomach. But despite my unease, I want this; I want him—badly.

      In for a penny, in for a pound.

      “Hold up. One final thing.” His voice is a warning, silk sliding over gravel. “Have you heard everything the maids said about my...prowess?”

      “Just that you are an expert in the arts of lovemaking.”

      There is no humor in his chuckle. “And what do you think of my nickname?”

      “Nickname?” I frown.

      “The Backdoor Baron?” He sounds exasperated. “Ring any bells?”

      My frown deepens. “I do not understand. You are a baron? Weren’t you stripped of all titles? And what’s all this about a back door?”

      His intense gaze threatens to undo me. “You really are a sheltered innocent, aren’t you? The nickname is a joke, but not without an element of truth. I give women pleasure, but when I’m inside them, I only enter one way. Through the back door.”

      I wait for him to elaborate, but nothing is forthcoming. “You speak in riddles.”

      “Are you joking?” Two lines crease between his brows. “Isn’t this why you sought me out? To have me give you pleasure while keeping your technical virginity