I forgot how drinking makes me feel blurry at the edges, a little unwound. It’s freeing, but in the corner of my mind I can sense the red flashing light: Danger. Danger.

Looking down the hall, I consider going back to the poker table or to the kitchen, but my feet are planted, and even while I think about how fun it would be to play some cards with Ansel and Oliver, I don’t go anywhere.

Harlow opens the bathroom door to find me leaning against the wall opposite and she doesn’t look even a little surprised. Not one little bit. She stands in the doorway studying me and then takes a couple of steps closer.

She just stares up at me, and this is all so fucking new. She feels like a different woman than the wild Vegas party girl, than the hungry vixen who nearly broke down my front door. This Harlow feels patient, and seductive, and fucking fascinating. Beneath the surface of her gaze I see something there I hadn’t seen before, some depth she usually keeps hidden, as if tonight, some shield was stripped away. It can’t just be the alcohol, because I’ve seen her drunk. It can’t just be that she wants to get off, because we’ve done that before, too.

The longer Harlow stares at me, the more it feels like my heart has become an inflatable raft she’s slowly filling with air. My chest just gets tighter and tighter and tighter.

I can tell she put on some more lip gloss in the bathroom, and her mouth shines red when she smiles a little. “Are we gonna rumble?”

This breaks me from my trance and I reach for her arm, pulling her with me and turning us into the bedroom just to my left.

The room is empty but for a pile of bedding, a low dresser, and some cardboard boxes in the corner.

“Who the hell has an empty bedroom in a place like this?” I ask, walking to the floor-to-ceiling loft windows that line one wall. This place has three bedrooms and is twice the size of my house on Vancouver Island. There’s a sweeping view of the harbor and, in the distance, what I think must be Coronado.

“This was Ruby’s room,” Harlow says, leaning against the wall to my right. “London inherited this apartment a few years back. Ruby just moved out a couple of weeks ago, right after Lola moved in. She got some amazing internship in London.”

I look over at her, feeling confused. Drunk, mostly. “Ruby . . . and London?”

“Ruby moved to London, England,” she says more slowly. “And yeah, I know. Her roommate was London; she moved to London. The jokes were endless. It was like Abbott and Costello up in here.” Pushing off the wall, she takes a couple of steps closer to me and looks out the window at the water. “They’re looking for a new roommate so if you know anyone who wants to flee the oppressive regime in Canada . . .”

“You won’t move in?” I ask.

“I like my space. I like living alone.”

I nod. I like living alone, too. My hometown is small enough as it is; sometimes it’s nice to imagine I can close my door and get some distance.

Not that even at a thousand miles away I can really distance my thoughts from all the bullshit going on at home. My phone feels like a lead weight in my pocket, and I slip it out, putting it on the flat top of a cardboard box. Harlow watches me do it, and then does the same, pulling her phone from the pocket of her frayed-hem denim skirt and laying it facedown beside mine.

I step forward and she turns her face up to me, closing her eyes when I slide my hand along her neck and into her hair. “You smell like a fucking dream.”

“Yeah?”

I nod, but she misses it, eyes still closed. “Give me your underwear.”

No pretense, no warm-up, and she doesn’t even startle. My worries are safely placed on top of a cardboard box four feet away, and what I have in front of me is a soft, warm girl to make everything else evaporate. With a little glance up at my face, she reaches under her skirt and shimmies out of her panties, giving me the tiny blue handful of lace. I slide them into my pocket, and then bend, kissing her.

This, too, is new. It’s sweeter, more honest than the wild, biting, savage kisses we knew before. I kiss her once, just a touch, and then again, groaning as her hands slide up my chest and around my neck. Her lips fall into an easy rhythm against mine—there’s no physical negotiation or uncertainty, only Harlow offering me her full bottom lip, little strokes of her tongue, and her eager little gasps. I can taste a hint of cherry lip gloss, the shots we did together in the kitchen. She’s not sloppy drunk, but her cheeks are warm from the alcohol, her body pliable and relaxed. I’m sure I could bend her however I want. I could spread her out on the floor, put her legs over my shoulders, and fuck her so hard that people out in the living room would hear the slap of my skin against hers.

“You think about fucking me sometimes?” I ask, pressing a kiss to her neck, slipping a strap off her shoulder, and trailing my lips and teeth along her skin.

“Yeah.”

“Tell me.”

“It’s my go-to when I get myself off,” she admits without hesitation.

“So you think of me like five times a day?”

Harlow laughs and it catches in a little hiccup when I push her skirt over her hips and lift her onto the dresser, spreading her legs and stepping forward. I’m already hard and the feel of the bare warmth of her pussy against the denim over my cock is enough to have me hissing against her mouth, pushing my hips forward.

She presses into me and I slide my hand between us, reaching to touch the soft, slick skin between her thighs.

Fuck.

She’s gasping these perfect little breaths and shaking against me, and I’m so hard it’s all I can do to not reach for my fly, pull out my dick, and rub all over this, but instead I slide my fingers over her unbelievably soft body. She’s the only woman I’ve felt in so long. It’s hard to not let my mind instinctively tattoo her with mine when I kiss her neck, her lips, her shoulder. And it’s easy to pretend everything beyond this room has evaporated or, at the very least, been put on pause, and that relief—even if imagined—sends a thrill down my spine, coiling tightly at the base. I’m so hard for this girl; she makes me harder than anything I can remember. I swear I can still feel the echo from almost two months ago of her lips kissing down my cock, her hands guiding me into her.

“You have any idea how this feels to me?” I step back enough to watch my fingers slide up and over her clit and back down, lower, inside. I fucking love how they look when they’re wet with her. “God, when did your pussy get so sweet?” I look up to her downcast eyes, the lip trapped savagely between her teeth as she’s watching me touch her. A searing fire iron of a thought stabs at me: “You let that asshole kid lick you here last night?”