“I’m wearing a red dress.”

“What else?”

“Stiletto heels. A mask. No underwear.” The texts came through on the #dateme app conversation that we’d kept open for the past six months. I stared at the words on the screen, the Halloween party surging around me.

Hot bodies, men and women, squeezed into San Antonio’s Fire ‘n Ice Lounge for the Halloween Event of the century. Drinks spilling, women in costumes that were excuses to expose flesh, men ogling them, buying more drinks to spill.

This was how we’d meet. Fuck, why not? I’d been aching for my mystery “date” for the entire six months. Since she’d sassed me for the first time, sent me her photo, followed by a winking emoji. Since she’d told me her darkest secrets.

That she didn’t want a boyfriend or a husband.

But that she couldn’t quit thinking about me. My hands on her body. My mouth on her lips.

Tonight was the night.

The one and fucking only night, and I planned to make it a night she would never forget.

The phone buzzed in my hand, and I opened the app again. My app, the one designed by my tech company.

“I’m at the bar,” the text read. “I can’t see you from here.”

Another buzz.

“Are you still coming?”

I chuckled under my breath. It was the first time she’d shown insecurity with me, and it was endearing, rather than the opposite.

“I will be,” I texted back.

Blushing emoji in return, and the chuckle disappeared. Blushing, huh? Blushing pink as I stroked her skin, ran my fingers between her pussy lips.

Easy tiger. You haven’t even seen her yet. Not in person. Easy.

This was it for both of us. One night, and then I’d return to my company, to being a single dad, and she’d go back to… fuck, whatever the hell she wanted to do.

I strode through the crowd, parting it. Women turned and stared as I passed, men held their partners’ hands or clenched fists. It was the usual reaction I got in public—I dressed like a beast, and I was a head taller than every man in the place.

My phone buzzed again. “I’d hate to go back to my hotel room alone.”

Fuck me. “I wouldn’t do that to you,” I texted back.

Finally, I reached the bar and searched its length. Women and men crowded it, and there were a few ladies in red dresses, but they weren’t her. Fuck it, I could just tell they weren’t the woman I’d been chatting too, fantasizing about.

I scanned further and spotted her. Lost my breath.

She sat on a bar stool, wearing a glittery red mask, her phone in her hand. She gripped the stem of her empty wineglass between dainty, pale fingers. Long, dark hair swam down her back, a straight, glossy curtain, begging to be touched.

She was a perfect hourglass, her ass seated in that tight red dress, straining against the fabric. Her shoulders lifted, and she parted her perfect, lush lips, and sighed. She turned away, hiding that side profile from me, and it was as if someone had yanked the earth out from underneath my feet.

You’re in deep fucking trouble here. Deep trouble, if you think you can keep this to just one night. Christ, look at her.

Couple that with everything we knew about each other, and it was a recipe for goddamn disaster.

A house song thumped through the speakers overhead. People cheered and made their way to the dancefloor, a mass exodus that left many of the barstools empty. Halloween fever was in full swing.

I walked the distance between us and halted behind her, dipped lower so my lips were next to her right ear. “Trick or treat?” I whispered, like the devil in a black suit.

She jumped slightly, and the flesh on her arms prickled. “Treat,” she replied.

I took her arm and helped her off the stool, turned her toward me. She removed her mask and set it on the bar.

Holy shit.

Her pictures hadn’t done her justice.

Riley was gorgeous. Hazel eyes and a cute button nose, those pouty lips parting as she studied me at exactly the same rate I did her. The sounds around us faded. The bar was nothing, nowhere. She was the center point of the room.

“Riley,” I said, quietly, and lifted her hand, brushed my lips across the back of it. “I’m glad you came.”

“Me too,” she said, squaring her shoulders. “I’ll admit I had second thoughts about tonight. About what it could mean.” She was so sure of herself, so strong. And so utterly delectable in that red dress. It clung to her breasts but covered them, not too much flesh, and the bottom hem sat snug against her thighs.

No underwear. That was what she’d said.

“I had second thoughts too,” I said, after a beat. It was a struggle to keep all the damn blood in my brain at this point. This moment had been so fucking long in the making, it was like a river of need drowning me. Drowning us.

She licked her lips. “You did?”

“Yes,” I replied. “Who wouldn’t? We’ve built it up in our heads, Riley. We’ve been waiting for this for six fucking months.” Not that I had to tell her that.

She placed one hand on the side of my neck, and I swallowed, my Adam’s apple bobbing. Had to be careful of this heat, this attraction. If I let it overwhelm me now, we wouldn’t make it out of the damn club before I started undressing her, burying myself in her.

“Let’s have a drink first,” I said and put a finger up for the bartender. “Relax the nerves.”

“At this point, it would take gallons of friggin’ pirate ale to relax my nerves,” she replied.

“Pirate ale?” I asked. “I’m not sure they have any of that. And don’t you mean galleons?”

“No, that’s the actual ship. Gallon as in the unit of measurement,” she replied, lifting her chin, those hazel eyes sparkling by the overhead lights at the bar. Christ, she was adorable.

“Big fan of pirates, are you?” I asked.

“What? I never told you? I’m practically obsessed. Slap an eye-patch on me, send me out to sea, and I’d be in my element,” she replied, and wielding an imaginary cutlass at me. She poked me in the stomach.

I laughed, this time, from the belly, and the tension between us eased a little. “Maybe we’d better get you a Sex on the Beach,” I said, “just for the citrus. Combat scurvy, you know?”

“This is honestly the weirdest conversation I’ve had with anyone. And I have a really, really weird friend.”

“Like, how weird?” I asked. “Like… she likes pirates weird? Eye-patches and peg legs?”

She swatted me on the arm, and electricity pulsed through me. The tension returned in a wave of heat, and, thankfully, the lazy-ass bartender chose that moment to arrive.

“What’ll it be?” he asked, yelling over the music and raising both eyebrows.

I gestured to Riley, and she leaned over and shouted her order out of earshot. I followed up with mine—a regular old beer, no pirate ale here, then brought out my wallet. Riley already had a twenty out to pay for her drink.

“I got this,” I said, into her ear.

“Oh please,” she replied, “you’re not really going to pull that ‘man must pay’ crap on me, are you?”

“Maybe. But only because for one night, this night, I want to feel like you’re really mine, like we’re on a date, like I get to look after you.” It came out softly, into her ear, and she leaned into me again, the side of her body pressing against my chest, my crotch. “That OK with you, Riley?”

She gave a tiny, tight moan, and every nerve-ending in my body fucking tingled. I was a live wire. I was on the brink of shocking this entire fucking room, and it would be when I bent her over one of these stools and fucked her until she came.

Until her hot cum dripped down my cock.

“No,” she whispered, “it’s not OK.”

“No?”

“No. I don’t want the drink anymore. I want to leave. I want to go back to the hotel room, right now. I—Bryan, I’ve waited for this too long, and I’m on the cusp of chickening the hell out.” She pulled back slightly, searching my eyes with hers. “And goddamn it, I’m not a chicken. So, please, let’s get out of here.”

“Whatever you want, Riley.” I pressed my hand into the small of her back, thanking god that my suit jacket covered the raging hard-on pressing against the front of my pants.

She picked up her clutch bag and moved out in front of me. I paused, threw a fifty on the bar for the bartender’s trouble, then guided her toward the exit. We passed people who were clearly making the most out of their Halloween, laughing hysterically, making out, dancing, talking, but none of it had an impact on me.

Riley was here.

Fuck, and somehow, it wasn’t awkward at all.

It was as if my hand belonged in the small of her back. Her body belonged on mine, next to mine.

Riley picked up her coat, and I helped her into it, then we stepped out into the cool, October air, walked down the steps and onto the sidewalk. San Antonio was alive with music and with lights. Cars brushed by in the street, people passed us as we walked. Noises, sounds. The river beside us reflected the lights and shimmered softly in the evening. None of it mattered.

“Which hotel?” I asked.

“Here,” she pointed to the Wyndham, just down the road.

“Are you all right, Riley?”

She swallowed and licked her lips, looked up at me. “I can’t think,” she replied. “So, I guess not.”

“What can I do to make you feel better?” I asked, brushing my fingers up her spine and down it again.

She moaned softly, and I slipped my arm around her, this time, pressing her to my side, tightly. It was too much for either of us to handle.

We entered the Wyndham, made it through the lobby without devouring each other whole, then entered the elevator together. The doors shut behind us, and Riley pressed a finger to the number of her floor. I didn’t register which it was.

She exhaled, slowly, her décolletage nearly as red as her dress, now, and leaned back against the elevator’s back wall. Her breasts pressed outward, her nipples hard against the fabric of her dress, and my control slipped hard.

“Riley,” I growled and cupped her cheek in one hand. I pressed the other to her breast, held it, massaged it through the fabric. “Fuck, I’ve wanted this for so long.”

“Kiss me,” she whispered, parting her lips, breathing it rather than saying it. “Please.”

She didn’t have to ask twice.

I pressed my lips to hers and forced her up against that wall, pinned her between it and my hard body, my aching cock. Pre-cum wet my tip. If I didn’t get out of these pants and into her soon, I’d lose every last shred of who I was as a person.

My tongue massaged hers, tasted her, ate her a-fucking-live, and she groaned through every second of it. Kissing me back hard, wanting more, and more.

The strong Riley melted beneath my fingertips. She showed her vulnerable side. I was lost in all of her, every facet of her body, mind, and fucking soul. Slow down! I couldn’t, now. The elevator doors opened, and we fumbled down the hall.

She searched for the door to her room, tapped the keycard, turned the handle. I kissed her again, the gap between us unacceptable, now, and we crashed through her hotel room door. I kicked it shut behind us.

My fingers ripped the straps from her shoulders, the dress from her body.

Hers ripped at my jacket, clawed off my shirt, tugged on my belt.

Finally, it was our time.