The rumbling growl of primal demand in Max's deep tone sent a molten shiver ricocheting through me. Before I could process that sizzling promise, he was on me – powerful arms banding around my waist as he pinned me against the unyielding wall, his body pressing insistently into mine.

Our mouths collided in a searing, open-mouthed crash that quickly shed any last veneer of propriety. Max's kiss was nothing short of ravenous consumption, our desperate breaths mingling as he slanted those firm lips to better plunder the velvet depths of my mouth.

A tremulous whimper escaped me at the overwhelming onslaught of masculine possession. But rather than gentling his approach, Max only seemed to further unravel at the sound - one large hand burying itself in my hair to anchor me under his scorching command.

His tongue swept over mine in a blistering dance of wicked dominance, utterly uncompromising in its demand. The rough velvet texture seared away every last cinder of coherency until I was nothing but a boneless, yearning supplicant pinned in his implacable embrace.

My own hands scrabbled at the crisp fabric of his shirt, seeking the solid planes of his shoulders just to cling to something, anything, as the full enormity of Max's contained power detonated between us. The shocking force of it left me lightheaded and dizzy, like a leaf caught in the inexorable pull of a hurricane's wrath.

When we finally wrenched apart, gasping harshly, Max's darkly handsome features were completely wrecked - full lips swollen, chiseled cheekbones flushed with the heat of our frantic need. Those blazing emerald eyes had gone as wild and turbulent as a storm-tossed sea, reflecting the ferocious want singeing away his last threads of control.

"Charlotte..." he rasped, voice grating like splintered gravel in a way that made me shudder. That large hand still buried in my hair tightened reflexively, sending sparks of delicious pain ricocheting across my scalp.

Suddenly Max was leaning in again, body curved in a clear provocation as he nuzzled the fragile hollow beneath my ear. The blistering wake of his mouth left scorched ruin everywhere those full lips brushed against my overheated skin.

"I'm going to take you apart piece by exquisite piece until you understand exactly what you've awakened," he breathed in that same husky rasp, the pulsing heat of those words caressing me more intimately than any touch. "And then I'm going to crawl so deeply inside you, you'll never need question who you belong to ever again."

I did moan then, an unabashed sound of feminine surrender that only seemed to incite Max's smoldering intensity to wilder, more ravenous heights. Something inside me fractured at the sweltering, unambiguous intent of those smoldering promises.

My head fell back in a shaky surrender to the onslaught, eyes slitting closed as every last nerve ending in my body thrilled to merciless life. Max was uncaged now - every ounce of his potent virility uninhibited and answering my endless provocation with rapacious finality.

I'd thought I wanted this unraveling of his ironclad control. Had endlessly pursued it with single-minded obsession. But now that I'd summoned Max's primal, unrestrained self to the forefront, I understood the truth with bone-deep certainty:

I had unleashed something far more primal and hazardous than I'd bargained for. A force that could engulf my own control and identity just as ruthlessly if left to fully detonate...and I was powerless to do anything about it, but submit.

Max stilled against me, a war visibly raging across his chiseled features as the shrill sound of uproarious laughter spilled into the hallway, unexpectedly piercing the otherwise quiet atmosphere and causing a disruption. I could see the brutal battle play out in the tense cording of his jaw, the minute tremors rippling through those powerful hands still branding my hips.

The feral, unbridled need he had finally unleashed was fighting viciously against the formidable restraints he always kept himself shackled by. Two primal forces locked in a seismic struggle for dominance that seemed to stretch endlessly in the ringing silence.

I didn't dare move a muscle, rendered utterly breathless as I waited for the outcome that would inevitably cleave our fates. My chest heaved with each shallow pant, the dusky peaks of my breasts straining against the flimsy lace in tantalizing provocation. As if my own body sought to further tempt Max away from the bindings of his cherished control in this fraught suspension between civilized concession and rapacious demand.

For a dizzying moment, the naked hunger I witnessed burning through those emerald depths threatened to wholly consume the last remnants of his restraint. Max's formidable frame went rigid, every tendon and sinew drawn taut as if bracing to finally let the reins slip completely.

A shudder wracked through me in startled, yearning anticipation. This was the precipice I'd been so endlessly needling him toward through daring seduction and ceaseless provocation. To finally crumble beneath the full, merciless weight of Max's contained virility until not even ashes of propriety remained between us.

But then, as abruptly as it had crested toward that explosive crescendo, the snarling tide of abandon seemed to ebb from Max's striking features. His spine went chillingly rigid, those piercing eyes slitting into shards of knifelike emerald as he visibly reconstructed the tattered shreds of his sangfroid through sheer force of will.

A harsh exhale punched from between his gritted teeth, the sinewy contours of his throat tensing as he fought to regain mastery over the formidable beast I'd so perilously roused. The muscle cording throughout his powerful frame slowly loosening one agonizing degree at a time until every last remnant of razed abandon had been ruthlessly subsumed.

"That's enough for tonight, Charlotte."

The words emerged in a rasp of finality, his tone deceptively even despite the subtle tremble still flickering in those turbulent green depths. Max's hands released their searing brands from my hips in one abrupt severance, his entire frame radiating a cloaked dismissal as he forcibly reconstructed the icy veneers of his legendary restraint and control.

I could only stare up at him with dazed, yearning disbelief, every nerve still scorched and thrumming with the aftershocks of our explosive undoing. Watching in mute bewilderment as Max visibly stitched the impeccable diplomat's mask back into place with each steadying inhalation, smothering the rekindled embers of rapacious need until not a lick of smoke remained.

Unease slithered through me at the almost obscene dexterity he displayed with this reclamation of decorous civility. As if the seismic eruption of our tangled, ferocious joining had never shaken its feverish shadow across the pristine surface of his handsome features.

One minute Max was utterly shattered apart - every last veneer of steely control dissolved into base, untamed savagery as he'd branded me with his searing possession. And the next, he was as smoothly implacable and unconcerned as a gentleman casually dismissing a mousy parlor maid from service.

"We're both...overheated at the moment," he murmured in that same clipped, unruffled tone that somehow sounded more jarring in the scorching wake of the cataclysm between us. Those piercing emerald eyes swept over my rattled state with an unmoved observation that had me instinctively shrinking inward.

I could only gape at the transformation, utterly disoriented by the wheeling dichotomy. While part of me smoldered with lingering electric lust at having provoked this unraveling...another part felt shaken to my core. Unmoored by how easily that feral alpha could revert back to implacable decorum in the span of a few ragged breaths.

The disquieting uncertainty made me shudder, prompting me to hastily resettle my own composure before facing him again. Though I couldn't resist pressing shaky thighs together, replaying the memories that set off renewed tremors of molten yearning - his low rumbling groans...the harsh glide of his tongue claiming me utterly...the blistering friction of his hardness grinding into my aching heat with blatant promise.

As terrifying as the full force of Max's want could be, it also made me insatiably ravenous to re-experience it without restraint. No matter how much the consequences could potentially devastate us both in its smoldering wake.

The thought sent a shiver of illicit trepidation and feminine power lancing through me as I headed for the exit. One way or another, it seemed the tenuous threads binding our self-restraint to this point had been irrevocably severed tonight.

Now it was only a matter of which of us succumbed to temptation's smoldering demands first as the wreckage of this cataclysmic union inevitably unspooled around us.

Max's POV

The second Charlotte's footsteps faded, the full force of my anguished hunger detonated. A guttural growl ripped from deep in my throat as I slammed one palm against the wall, desperate for an anchor.

I could still taste the lingering remnants of her on my tongue - all smoldering feminine sin and searing temptation. Worse, I could feel the imprint of her lush curves seared against my painfully aroused body, as if we were always meant to combust into rapturous devastation.

Gritting my teeth until the muscles corded, I viciously caged the feral predator Charlotte had provoked back into its shackles. I ruthlessly reconstructed every strand of my legendary sangfroid, chasing away the fractures of disarray her brazen seduction had inflicted.

Only once I had fully remolded that implacable, unruffled veneer could I survey the wreckage left in my wake - debris and overturned furniture bearing mute witness to my blasphemous breach of control. That this audacious temptress could bring me to such ruin...it was unforgivable.

And yet, smoldering beneath my volcanic fury was the insidious acknowledgement that I still tasted the charred, exquisite ashes of forbidden want on my tongue. The lingering embers of an unholy craving to plunge back into the storm of Charlotte's making and finally slake the maelstrom she'd stoked past all solidity of reason.

Just recalling those fleeting seconds of rapturous possession had my jaw clenching against renewed ferocity. I ached to unleash my full bestial intensity upon her again - to bear her down into scorching submission until we were both scoured of all civilized restraint. Reduced to our basest primal selves drowning in reckless, untempered rapture.

The savagery of that hunger shuddered through me in visceral waves. To surrender decades of forged discipline and control...to indulge in ruining her lush warmth with my full virile force...it should have been unthinkable. The greatest sacrilege to everything I am.

And yet that blazing edict turned to ash against the all-consuming craving to watch Charlotte detonate in ecstatic surrender. To revel as her exquisite tempest was finally unleashed from its chains by my merciless mastery.

The memory of being allowed to roam the slender expanse of her naked spine. To revel in the secrets of those tantalizing curves having finally been laid bare to my searing regard. I could still smell her darkly feminine fragrance as if she were here pressed against me once more, all liquid heat and sweet invitation.

That alone spawned a scorching pulse of fresh hunger low in my core, one that no amount of Epictetus-minded discipline could ever hope to outright extinguish. It was a wildfire stoking fully to raging, irrepressible life with each passing second consumed by the memories of our tangled liaison. Until it blazed with undeniable totality, searing away the possibility of further denial or repression.

I knew with a bone-carved acceptance that I could fight this compulsively seductive siren all I wished. I could exercise every finely honed weapon in my armory of restraint and self-denial until they splintered from the sheer force of effort. But it would not matter in the end.

Charlotte Bennett had conquered me with the seismic potency of her provocation, this much was now irrefutable truth. And like an errant sailor hopelessly smitten by the haunting refrain of some mythical siren's sweet poison, I knew precisely when my white flag was destined to unravel.

Inevitability had been woven into the scorching fabric of our fatal pas de deux.