As I nuzzle Everly’s neck, my senses are full of her orange-blossom scent and the sweet, heady lure of her skin. I really meant what I just said—that I want to give her the best fucking night of her life—because there’s something here. Got to be chemistry. But even though she turns me on like no woman I’ve ever met, I tell myself it’s just because I’m drunk off my ass.

I only want some ass, and hers will do for tonight.

I kiss her soft neck again as she breathes quietly and deeply. It’s obvious that she’s thinking about my promise, letting it sink in. I can feel the wild pulse of her vein against my lips, and for a terrible moment, I think she might remember she’s an angel and tell me to go straight to hell. With as sassy as she is, it wouldn’t surprise me.

But she surprises me even more with her next move.

She grips the vodka bottle with one hand and then hooks her other arm around my neck, pulling me into a crushing kiss. All my thoughts crash into each other, a blast of heat, a bang of light that obliterates everything but the feel of her mouth under mine.

Soft. Demanding. Pure.

Hell, yes.

Hot blood flares through me, scorching me as I tug her closer. My cock is already hard and ready to blast off, but something tells me to slow things down, even as agony takes me over. I don’t want this angel to fly away again. So I tangle my fingers in her silky hair and slow the kiss down, sucking off of her bottom lip. She’s half in my lap, and she only seems to realize as much as we pause, panting against each other’s mouths. I’m sure she’s also realizing that she’s here with me, a stranger in a semi-private booth in a beating, blushing nightclub. I’m hoping the angel’s got a little devil in her, and my cock strains against my zipper.

“Oh,” she finally whispers against me.

The innocent sound charges me up even more, but I resist the primal urge to grab her and take her somewhere even more private where I can go balls-deep into her, fucking away all my demons.

“Oh, what?” I stroke her hair back from her face. I look into her sweet blue eyes, then sketch my finger down her cheek.

Soft.

So pretty.

Mine.

She smiles a silly-drunk smile, and somehow that reaches into a deep part of me that wants to be a gentleman, even though I’m not.

It’ll pass.

“Oh,” she says, leaning back her head and looking at me just as intently as I’m looking at her. “That was some kiss.”

“I told you I can make this a night you’ll never forget.”

“Vegas,” she whispers.

“Yeah.” I grin. “Vegas.”

I tease my lips over hers, playful, promising, and then bring her into a real fucking kiss. She pulls at my shirt, and it seems as if she’s holding her breath as I draw at her like the finest champagne, tasting and savoring her. It’s got to be the vodka making my mind spin like this. It’s got to be frustration making me want someone, anyone this badly.

She moans softly under my mouth, and an answering growl comes from deep within my chest as I run my tongue between her lips, opening her up to me. She arches a little as she takes me inside her, melting against me as I ravish her, stroking her tongue with mine, making her whimper and tug at my shirt until it slips out of my trousers. I become a mass of throbbing sensation, utterly lost in her as we keep making out, occasionally coming up for air but going right back at each other because we can’t help ourselves. We’re drunk, we’re chemically insane, we’re…

I slide my hand from her waist upward, and she smacks it away. All right, we’re not getting past kissing just yet, but fuck, I’m not going to worry about it, because she’s going at me with a hunger that’s keeping me hard and hopeful.

I hear a rattling sound next to us, then resurface from all this heat to see the cocktail waitress exit through the curtain. It’s enough to make me realize that I’m not alone with Everly in our own little world. Lilac has brought us another bucket of vodka, and the music is still beating its way through the nightclub outside.

Then there’s a ding from somewhere on the seat, and Everly blinks up at me. I’m caught by those angel eyes of hers just before she fumbles for her phone on the cushions, where it fell earlier.

She squints at it. “Oh.”

“Sounds like your vocabulary has been reduced to that one word.”

She blushes, and if I were to guess, I’d say she’s never been kissed until she creams. God, she’s adorable. Good enough to eat.

I smile as I notice how her leg is halfway across my lap, making her skirt ride up so it exposes a length of curvy, pale thigh. I rest my fingertips on her calf and trace circles on her skin as she bites her lip and then reads her phone.

“My friends,” she says. “They’re wondering where I am.”

“Tell them you’re in paradise.”

She gives me that narrow-eyed look that says she thinks I’m kind of a jerk. Which I am.

Another text dings. She reads from the reads to me.

“‘We’re with the tech guys’.” She giggles and continues reading the text. “‘Come with us to another club.’” She looks at me and shrugs. “They’re with some guys who were buying us drinks earlier.”

Fuck, she is cute. “How many drinks?”

“Enough.” She lifts her hand and holds two fingers barely apart from each other. “I have this much experience in drinking. But after tonight, I’ll be such a pro.”

I frown, because I don’t want her to be a pro. I like the amateur Everly, because her apparent innocence is a cock throbber. Who knew?

As she starts texting her friends back, I grab the newest vodka bottle and tip that fucker back and drink until a different kind of heat consumes me. Everly still has a hold of her own bottle, and she takes a long drink, too, then resumes texting.

When she’s done, she slaps the phone onto the table. “I told them I’m having way too much fun here but and they should party with the tech guys until our flight leaves tomorrow afernoon.” She laughs again. “Afternoon. Boy, I think I’m real drunk.”

“Join the club.”

“But I have good reason to be drunk.”

Really? Tonight she also came to the realization that she’s going to die alone, just like me? What a coincidence. “What reason is that, Heavenly?”

She beams at the nickname, and her pure charm only encourages the hound dog inside me that’s barking to get back out.

But then the beaming stops and she shakes her head. “I don’t want to think about it. I mean, I shouldn’t be so bothered about what’s going on back home, right? I’ve been wanting to get out of my small little town forever, and maybe this is the first sign that I should leave.”

I have no idea what she’s talking about, but I nod and slip my fingers from her calf to her knee, which is also adorable. I explore its adorableness with my thumb, making circles.

She leans her elbow on the back of the seat and rests her cheek in her hand. My dick approves as blood pummels me even harder and I concentrate on her knee again.

She sighs. “I’ve always dreamt of leaving home behind and goin’ somewhere like Chicago, L.A., or even New York…”

Just a small town girl, living in a lonely world. I get that last part, and I look up from her knee as she keeps talking so earnestly.

“I’ve just never had the guts to leave everyone and everything I’ve known behind. I love my friends and family, and I’ve always been too attached to my lil’ hometown to leave it all for good. It’s just that, deep down, I’ve always felt that I’m destined for something more. You know what I mean?”

“That’s because you were destined for me.” I grin at her.

She melts into a smile, but then shakes herself out of it in what seems like a moment of total sobriety. I slide my fingers to the back of her knee, enjoying the moist warmth there. She wiggles a little in her seat as if it tickles, and, shit, every move she makes still kills me.

“I’m only gonna say this ‘cos I’m drunk.” She lifts her finger. “But I think you might be right about me running into you tonight. I never knew kissing could be such fun. Fun is my Vegas destiny!”

I cock an eyebrow. “Just how many times have you been kissed before?”

She shrugs. “A few.”

Now I know why she was blushing at the mere mention of blowjobs.

She rolls her eyes and rests her cheek in her hand again. “Truthfully, I’ve had one serious boyfriend. His name was Jake.”

“Only one serious boyfriend? Does that mean…”

“I’ve slept with only one guy? Boom! Yup. And his name was Jake. Did I tell you that?”

I nod.

She gestures with her vodka bottle. “You’d think with a name like Jake, the sex would be awesome.”

“It wasn’t?”

“Meh.”

Meh?

“Pretty dull,” she says. “Perfunctory. I actually don’t get the deal about sex, but now I sure get the deal about kissin’.”

I put down my vodka bottle. “Are you telling me you think sex is boring?”

She nods.

Fuck, I’d love to show her how wrong she is.

I stroke my fingers into the cove of her knee again, and she squirms. She’s not made for boring sex. Hell, I can practically scent her arousal, can imagine how wet she is for me.

She sighs again, but this time it trembles. I look at her and she looks at me with those big blue eyes.

“Anyway, I’m gettin’ shloshed tonight because I’m worried about everyone in town, worried about my three older brothers, my younger sister, and my parents and what’ll happen to them from here on out.”

She sounds so inconsolable that something bends in my chest. “You sure you don’t want to talk about it?” I ask, wondering if I’ll regret it. It’s completely out of character for me to ask someone to share their feelings, and I tell myself it’s the vodka and not Everly that’s making me sentimental.

“No.” She straightens up, and I know it’s on purpose because she’s realized she said too much already. “My family will end up fine. My dad’s a total boss—totally domineering—and he’ll find a way for everyone to survive. There’re lots of people in town who’ll figure a way out of the mess we’re in.”

I try not to let what she’s saying dig into me, because I’ve left a lot of small towns in shit situations every time I buy out one of the businesses their economy depends on.

That how I survive. “You know, your dad and mine might get along pretty well.”

“Why’sh that?”

“My old man is a domineering guy, too. He was in the military for most of his adult life.” And he raised me to be just as mean, tough, and without compassion.

As we fall to silence, I don’t tell her how I can never please that asshole, not even when I was young, busting my balls as a star football and baseball player, then earning my way into a prestigious college without his help. He only criticized me more. Then I hammered my way into the business world, becoming a multimillionaire seemingly overnight, then a billionaire last year. So fucking what, though, right? I can’t even get a pat on the back from the guy when I score the most beautiful women in the world. Most dads would at least give their sons a wink and a nudge for that.

Everly is watching me, and I brush off my issues and put on another grin, because I have no shits left to give tonight.

I pick my vodka bottle back up and toast her with it. She sits up and does the same to me.

“Here’s to drinking away all the bullshit tonight,” I say.

“Amen!”

Then we both drown our sorrows.

And we keep drowning them as the night goes on.