They paused in the lobby to take pictures of each other. As promised, she sent his information to her best friend. He took several snaps of her as Nefertiti.

“I wish I had my real camera.” He lowered his phone and reached for her hand again. “I’m not sure this is good enough to do you justice tonight.”

“Are you a photographer?” Samira greedily latched on to this information, eager to learn anything she could about him while she had the chance. It occurred to her that she’d never learn most things about him, and the thought made her unexpectedly sad.

“I try. Mostly I use the excuse to buy cool lenses and flashes.”

“Y’all look hot,” said a passing Princess Leia, whose hair rolls were bigger than her head. “Want me to take your picture together?”

Wow. Awkward. Samira opened her mouth to politely decline—it was probably against the rules in the One-Night Stand manual to act like you were a real couple who’d see each other again—but Baptiste was already handing over his phone.

“Yes, thank you,” he said, putting his mask back on and sliding his arm around Samira’s waist. “I want a memento of tonight.”

They posed in all their elegant hotness, attracting the attention of several costumed passersby while Princess Leia clicked away. “Let me get one more. Y’all do something different this time.”

To Samira’s surprise, Baptiste leaned in and kissed her on the cheek, tickling her with his five o’clock shadow and making her laugh.

Princess Leia whooped and returned Baptiste’s phone. “That’s a good one.”

Baptiste grinned with open delight as he looked at the picture. “It is. Thank you very much.”

“You’re welcome.” Princess Leia waved and headed toward the ballroom.

“Thanks,” Samira called after her, then reached for his phone. “Let me see.”

The full-length pictures were good. The final one was a close-up of Samira’s laughing face as Baptiste kissed her, his visible eye closed behind the mask and his prickly jawline shown to devastating effect.

It was gorgeous. Good enough for a perfume ad in some high-end fashion magazine.

“Wow,” Samira said, a little shaken by the sight of them together. She found, to her surprise as a black woman who’d only ever dated black men, that there was something indescribably sexy about the juxtaposition of his tan skin against her mahogany. It aroused her almost as much as their dance had, and that was saying the nearly impossible. “That’s a great picture.”

He took her hand again, staring down at her as they walked to the elevator and he pushed the button. “Now we have physical proof that I was right.”

“About what?”

He pushed the mask to the top of his head, the better to meet her gaze. “We fit together very well.”

Meeting his eyes…seeing the apparent sincerity…hearing it in his voice…

That may have been the moment it hit her: it was going to be hard—as in, really, really hard—to say good-bye to Baptiste when their time together ended in a few hours.

He was, quite possibly, the most intriguing man she’d ever met.

Had she had other one-night stands? Yes, but only by accident. The first had been a drunken mistake after a frat party in college. The second had turned into a one-time thing the morning after, when the guy she’d been dating revealed that he was a much bigger dick personality-wise that he could have ever wished to have penis-wise.

Serial monogamy? Much more her thing.

But a single night with Baptiste?

When she looked into his eyes, she had the bone-deep feeling that there was so much more to him than his looks and charm. A night wouldn’t be enough to excavate it all, but a night was the only thing on the table between them, so she’d better start getting her mind around that.

You don’t need him anyway, girl, she reminded herself, but the words didn’t feel as powerful as they normally did. You don’t need anyone.

The elevator dinged. They got on, still looking at each other. Her pulse sped up as he shifted closer. She wondered if this was the moment he would kiss her, but then a bunch of people piled on after them.

He shot the newcomers a veiled scowl, mimicking her thoughts exactly.

She laughed.

He shrugged. What can you do?

The two of them went to the back, where he leaned against the mirrored wall, keeping a possessive arm around her waist as she stood in front of him.

The doors slid closed.

“That was a great party, man,” a hobbit said to his buddy, a hard-hatted construction worker.

“Music sucked, though,” the construction worker said. “What was that shit, anyway? Nineties music?”

The hobbit sniggered. “At least play some Nirvana or Green Day.”

“True,” said the construction worker.

Baptiste casually put a hand low on Samira’s belly, fingers splayed wide.

She went absolutely still, her breath choking off in her throat. The steady pressure, so close to her tightening sex, threatened to make her leap out of her skin.

The bell dinged on the next floor. An elegant older couple got out, as did a Glinda the Good Witch, who was holding hands with a Hooker Dorothy. The remaining people shifted around and stared up at the floor indicator lights.

The doors slid closed.

“Do you have the key?” The woman in front of them rummaged in her purse with increasing desperation. “I don’t think I—do you have the key?”

The man with her caught a diaper bag strap before it slid off his shoulder and adjusted the baby on his hip. “I told you to get it.”

“Well, no, you didn’t, because if you had, I would have it now.”

“I did tell you to get it.”

The baby started to fuss.

There may have been more, but Samira didn’t hear it because Baptiste, taking all the time in the world, stroked his hand down over her sex, then back up to her waist again, where it waited like a polite hand should do.

A streak of sensation bolted through her, making her jump and gasp. Baptiste, no doubt anticipating this very reaction, tightened his hold on her waist to keep her steady. Unfortunately, this brought her up against him and his erection, which did nothing to slow her racing pulse.

Luckily, the baby crescendoed into a full-blown screaming fit, so no one noticed what they were doing in the back.

The bell dinged. Next floor. Keyless couple with crying baby got off. So did hobbit and hard hat, leaving only a handful of college-aged girls staring down at someone’s phone.

“Let’s get a selfie real quick,” one of them said, setting off a wave of pouty-lipped posing.

The doors slid closed.

Now that most of the crowd was gone, Samira could see everyone’s reflection in the mirrored doors. Baptiste caught her eye, gave her a lingering once-over and watched her with poorly concealed amusement, one brow raised in open challenge.

Samira, who was by now so aroused that she could see the outlines of her jutting nipples through her dress, decided that two could play at this game.

So she dropped her clutch on the floor. “Oops.”

While the college girls chattered and made like vogueing reality TV stars, Samira shifted one bare leg until it emerged through the slit in her dress, bent at the waist, picked up the clutch and ground her butt against Baptiste’s rigid crotch as she came back up, making sure to keep eye contact in the mirror the whole time.

Baptiste stiffened behind his cape.

Actually, the rest of him stiffened.

The bell dinged, and the doors slid open again. Baptiste clamped a hand on her wrist, swept past her, cape flapping, and all but dragged her down the hallway after him. Laughing and quite pleased with herself, she trotted in her heels to keep up with his longer stride and watched as he dug his key card out of his wallet. It took him three times to swipe it with his shaky hands, giving her a sidelong look of purest fire, and that also made her laugh.

She laughed all the way up until he threw the door open, yanked her in after him, slammed it shut and pulled her close. The night table lamp gave her a quick glimpse of a luxurious suite with a king-sized bed turned down for the night, but in that overheated moment she wouldn’t have cared if his room was the supply closet where the housekeepers kept the vacuum cleaners.

Baptiste palmed her face, the better to stroke first her cheek, then her lips, with his thumb.

“You won’t be so amused if I come in my pants before you get your pleasure,” he said, his voice and accent thicker than they’d sounded before, “so you might try being a little less sexy.”

“Oh. So you can dish it out, but you can’t take it.”

“With you?” He shuddered, his bright-eyed gaze skimming her face. The hand on her back slid down to cup her ass. He ground against her, his unyielding length finding its place against her sweet spot. “I’m not sure I can take it. You make my heart pound.”

Samira had never been one for laying all her emotional cards on the table, especially these days, but the words came before she could stop them.

“You make my heart pound.”

Her breathless confession seemed to catch him by surprise, or maybe it was the way she ran her fingers through his hair, raking her short nails across his scalp before she slid his mask off and tossed it aside. His eyes widened, taking up her entire field of vision before he pressed a lingering kiss to her forehead.

“You’ll have to forgive me,” he said, his thumb now gliding its way down her neck and around to her nape. “I’m not a very good host.”

“Am I complaining?” Desperate to get him close enough, she hooked one of her legs around his thigh and then higher, around his waist. Why not unleash her inner wildcat now that she was here? In for a penny, in for a pound, right? It wasn’t like this thrilling opportunity would ever knock on her door again. “Do I look unhappy to you?”

His lips curved into a grin against her forehead.

Down below, his hand left her ass, skimmed across her bare thigh, then back to her ass again.

Under her dress this time.

She kept still, half-crazed with anticipation.

“I saw it all happening in my mind,” he said, his breath hot against her skin. “I was going to bring you up here and order champagne and caviar from room service. I was going to be a very good host.” He paused. “Now I’m distracted. All I can think about is getting inside you.”

“Oh.” She shivered as his skilled fingers made their slow way to the edge of her panties, where they ran between her legs. “So you have a short attention span? That doesn’t bode very well for me tonight, does it?”

More of his throaty laughter as he ran his lips down her temple, to the corner of her mouth, and his long-lashed eyes came into view again. “We’ll have to see, won’t we?”

And that was enough talking, at least as far as she was concerned. He seemed to agree. Both his hands returned to her face just as she turned into him, holding her in place while he kissed her senseless.

He tasted tart, like the champagne. His mouth was every bit as skilled as it was beautiful. Firm. Insistent. Endlessly persuasive and thorough, gliding its way through every possible combination of their lips and tongues. She eagerly opened for him, her overheated desire making her a little frantic, as did his roving hands.

He crooned with approval when she unhooked her leg from his waist and stepped back, staring him in the face as she shimmied her hips to help him get her panties down her legs and off. Straightening again, he took a quick glance at the scrap of black lace, pressed it to his nose and breathed deep before shoving it into the front pocket of his jacket.

“You’re not getting those back. Don’t bother asking.”

She shrugged with complete indifference, trying to catch her breath.

“Do you think I want them when you’re in the room?”

One corner of his perfect, perfect mouth, swollen now from her kisses, curled in a sultry half-smile as he unhooked his cape and laid it on the nearest chair. His cuff links followed in short order. He watched her with unblinking eyes, his color high, while she unpinned and took off her crown (she was surprised it had stayed put this long) and set it on the nearest table.

But then a sudden wave of self-consciousness hit her.

She ran a hand over her short and natural curls, now flattened like roadkill, and shot him an embarrassed smile.

“My hair’s a mess.”

Without missing a beat, he ran his hands through his own hair until it stood on end as though he’d processed it in a blender.

“Mine too. Let’s call the whole thing off. How could you ever want me now?”

The idea that anything about his hair could dim her lust for him at this point was so patently ridiculous that she burst into startled laughter.

“Point made, monsieur.”

“I should hope so, madame,” he said, extending a hand to her. “Come here.”

She couldn’t hurry fast enough. Another round of urgent kissing—nipping, sucking, biting—followed, at the end of which she discovered that her gown was gaping open in the back. His quick hands also made easy work of her strapless bra, unhooking it with a flick and the kind of finesse that pickpockets trained their entire lives to achieve.

“Take them off,” he said, scorching her with the intensity of his gaze as he tugged both bodice and bra down. “Take them off.”

She did, straightening so he could look his fill at her, a queen clad only in her jeweled collar and golden gladiator stilettos. On any other night, she’d have taken a private second or two to lament her various imperfections, like the way one of her breasts was slightly bigger than the other, or the fact that it had been a little too long since her last waxing session.

Tonight?

Before Baptiste’s heated attention and his utter, breathless, stillness?

Forget being a queen. She felt like a freaking goddess.

He shook his head as he looked her in the face again, his face alight with his perceived good fortune. Made a disbelieving sound.

“You’re beautiful.” Baptiste sounded hoarse. “I don’t have the words. In French or English.”

A sudden burst of unwanted emotion clogged her throat, because she was positive Terrance had never seen or wanted her this way.

“Yeah?” she whispered.

“Yeah.”

She walked back into his arms, working on his shirt buttons with shaky hands while he kissed her again. Longer. Harder. Deeper. He ran his hands down her back. Over her ass, squeezing the two cheeks together. Across the tops of her thighs. Over her hips and up to her waist. Along the sides of her breasts, making her skin leap and generating sparks of sensation that threatened to shower to the floor and set the carpet on fire.

She broke away when her poor overworked lungs failed to provide any air, still on the first stupid button that shielded his flesh from her increasingly desperate hands.

“Please tell me you have some condoms.”

“I threw a handful into my bag when I packed,” he said, taking mercy on her and ripping the two halves of his shirt apart so that buttons skittered across the floor. When he’d slid it off and thrown it aside, he reached behind his head, yanked his white undershirt off and tossed it as well. “I’m not sure we’ll have enough.”

“A handful?” Hot as she was for him, she knew her limits and those of the average man. “I’m not sure what kind of night you’ve got planned, but unless you’re a superhero, a handful should do it.”

He shrugged, his expression wicked. “You saw my cape—”

She laughed.

“—and I think we both know one night between us is not enough.”