Excerpts From the Final Book of the Inside Out Series Will Leave You Wanting More

The passionate, all-consuming Inside Out series by The New York Times bestselling author Lisa Renee Jones comes to an end with I Belong to You (out Nov. 18). Mark and Crystal's relationship will be put to the test when a terrible loss forces Mark to reexamine everything he stands for. Read the two sexy excerpts below.

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Stepping confidently into Crystal's open doorway, I find her behind her glass desk, gaze fixed on the file she is studying, her long, shapely legs crossed. Seconds tick by before, in the midst of turning a page, she freezes. Her gaze lifts, landing on me, and she pops to her feet. My eyes sweep the way her formfitting pale pink suit hugs her curves and complements her sleekly styled long blond hair. My cock thickens and heat that I don't deny or dismiss blazes in my veins, allowing myself the right to be unapologetically a man and a Master.

When my gaze returns to hers, I don't hide the predatory gleam in mine. It's part of the message I'm here to deliver. Sex is my release, my way of dealing with life.

"Hi," she says, her stare remarkably unwavering as the sexual tension between us crackles like a live current. "And before you ask what kind of greeting that is," she adds, reminding me of something I'd said to her a week before when we'd burned up the sheets in a California hotel room, "the answer is the same as before. It's my kind."

Her kind. The kind that simply doesn't work for me as a Master. But it does, apparently, work for the man beneath the armor I fully intend to restore. I have restored.

I shut the door and then motion to the small, round conference table in the corner. "Let's sit." I'm irritated that I'm aware she's wearing the same outfit she'd worn the first night I met her, several weeks ago.

She nods and moves with the same pace, the same confident steps, confirming that she is not my type. As she once said, we're too alike, two bulls fighting for the same red flag. We come together at the edge of the seats, neither of us voluntarily claiming one first, standing toe to toe, our gazes locking.

A band seems to tug our bodies closer; I feel our shared connection in my chest and see it in the dilation of her soft blue eyes. The howl of memories is like a heavy wind that refuses to be ignored. I'd buried my pain over the news of a search for Rebecca's body in Crystal's body. I'd been weak, drunk, hurting. I'd tried to recover with a business-from-this-point-forward talk.

But when I'd walked Crystal, not Ms. Smith, to a private jet the next day, I'd needed to touch her, to taste her one last time—the "one last time" I'd never had with Rebecca. My weakened armor had dropped, and I'd pulled her to me and kissed the hell out of her.

And damn it to hell, I want to do that again.

I inhale and let it out, reaching to my sash and untying it, and the cool air sweeps beneath the silk to caress my hot skin. Mark's eyes are burning embers, sparking in the room. He steps forward and my heart begins to race.

As he holds my stare, his index finger parts the silk farther, finding my skin before dragging a line up and down between my breasts. Goose bumps rise, tightening my nipples into aching balls of need. And just that easily I am weak in the knees, wet with desire. I want his hands on my breasts, his lips on my nipples, but I get neither.

His palms slip beneath the robe, caressing it away from my body. It slinks downward, teasing my skin as it drops into a sultry puddle at my bare feet, leaving me naked while he's fully dressed. Leaving me exposed for his viewing and for his taking, vulnerable in ways I wouldn't allow myself to be with another man. And I am both terrified and aroused, waiting for him when I swore I'd never wait for any man.

But I wait, and this pleases him. I see it in the possessive burn in the depths of his eyes, but there's more there, too—there is relief, as if he'd been hanging off a ledge and I just lowered him a rope. And maybe I have, or I am, but somehow he's reached inside me and found that piece of me that I deny but can never escape, a part waiting to implode. He, too, is saving me.

Finally he reaches for me, dragging me against him, his hands cupping my backside as he lifts me. Instinctively, my arms wrap around his neck, my legs around his waist, and his palms flatten on my back, holding me as if he's afraid I'll escape. We stay like that for long moments, and the sea of turbulence between us fades into calm, then sizzles into a fire. In this space, in time, no matter how delicate the seams, I am woven into his life and he into mine.

He starts walking toward my bedroom and I bury my face in his neck, inhaling that spicy, sexy scent of him. Then he sets me on the edge of the mattress, my fluffy white down comforter hugging my naked body as he kneels in front of me. He slides my legs apart, his hands gliding up and down my naked thighs, my sex tightening, the wet heat slicking my flesh.

"I don't want this to be wild and out of control tonight. I want you to wake up knowing that we made this choice together—not circumstances. Tonight is about trust, something I tore down when I used the contract to push you away." He pulls the red tie from his neck and holds it between us.

I straighten, my spine stiff with a jolt that tells me my past is here, in vivid living color. This is too fast, too much. "I don't want to be tied up."

His fingers caress my cheek. "Relax," he says gently. "I'm not going to tie you up. I want to blindfold you. That's all."

I wet my suddenly parched lips. "Blindfold," I repeat.

"Yes. That way, you can stop anything I do with more than words. You have the control. I have the pleasure of ensuring your pleasure.

"This is where you say yes or no," he says, and then firms his voice, a command in the depths as he adds, "Say yes."

"What are you going to do to me?"

His sexy, sometimes brutally wicked lips, curve. "If I told you, I'd ruin the surprise. Say yes, Crystal." The command is firmer this time.

That intense arousal and fear have returned, drenched in adrenaline. This is how it feels facing fears that I haven't allowed myself to acknowledge. And I want to face them. I shut my eyes. "Yes."

Buy I Belong to You.