After dinner, Bella invites us all back to her apartment, but I decline.

My dad stops me in the lobby of the restaurant, placing his hands on either side of my shoulders. Dad is tall—over six feet—and I have to tilt my head far back to look in his brown eyes. “Is everything okay, Jamila?”

“Yeah, I just—”

“Her boyfriend,” Bella says, rounding the corner, her fingers linked with Leo’s. He’s got Isaac on one hip, and my lips part slightly as I watch them approach us. “Jamie’s got plans with her new boyfriend tonight, and I’m sure she’s anxious to get to his house of wonders.”

Does she have to say it so suggestively?

I want to tell her to go screw herself with the complimentary dinner mint she shoves into her mouth, but she's so happy I refuse to rain on her parade today. There's always tomorrow, though. She looks back and forth between my parents and wiggles her eyebrows. “Isn’t that right, Twin B?”

My father tilts his head to one side and squints down at me. “Your mom and I've been in town all day, and this is the first time we've heard about a boyfriend. What’s he do?”

Of course, that would be the first question my father asks. “Dad,” I grumble as my sister chimes in, “Everything.”

“A jack of all trades,” he says, nodding his balding head in understanding. I nearly choke on my own saliva as I fish my keys from my bag and cast a smile between him and my mother.

“Something like that. I was just going to meet with him and—”

“Say no more,” Mom speaks up, swatting Dad’s forearm. He jerks his wrist to his chest and makes a noise like she’s truly wounded him before he pulls her close to his side. “You be safe, Jamie.”

“Seriously,” Bella mutters. “Be safe.”

I kiss my family goodbye, making sure to pinch Bella’s hip for her snide remarks when it’s her turn. On my way to Mateo’s house in Winchester, I have time to replay dinner in my head, and as I come to terms with the fact my commitment-phobe sister is tying the knot, I realize something about myself.

Something that tilts my world on its side.

Maybe I don’t mind waiting for more.

I haven’t changed what I want—I still have that fantasy of the picket fence and the husband and the pudgy-cheeked baby—but those desires have been overshadowed by my current needs. I can wait. I will wait. Because all the things I want aren’t possible with the man I’m driving to.

And I want to enjoy him and have fun while I can.

* * *

“Happy birthday, Jamila,” Mateo says the moment he opens his front door, and I step into his foyer with a smile and a coy “thank you.” While he locks the door, I hum along with The Beatles’ “Come Together,” which is streaming from the ceiling speakers and wander toward the back of his couch to admire the newest floral arrangement on the gray console table. I bend closer to the peonies and lavender roses, closing my eyes as I inhale deeply.

“You have excellent taste,” I say, stiffening slightly when he comes up behind me.

“Sonora arranges them to be delivered,” he admits, and I look over my shoulder at him as his hands race over my hips.

“Then I have Sonora to thank for the gorgeous flowers you’ve sent to me?”

“No, beautiful, that’s all me,” he whispers, and my stomach and chest furl together. He smiles softly, then motions for me to stand upright. When I do, he skims his fingertips down my arms and pulls at my fingers. “Come on, I have a surprise for you,” he says as he guides me toward the kitchen.

When my gaze cuts to the entrance downstairs, he throws his head back and laughs. “Is that what you want as a gift?” he questions, his deep voice wrapping around the words sensually, and when I make a face and pull at the hem of my white and black sundress, he smirks. “That’s what I thought.”

He stops me just before we turn the corner into his kitchen, his hand coming around to grip my ass through my slinky summer dress. He presses his lips to my ear, and fire blasts through my atmosphere when he murmurs, “That’s the first of twenty-nine for you. The last will be for me—to grow on.”

Oh, my heart, Mateo Bailon and his mouth and dirty mind will tear down my kingdom.

Of this, I’m sure.

I search my brain for a witty retort, something to tip the scales back in my favor, but the words drown on my lips when I finally see the center island. He's pulled out all the stops—daisies, a gift wrapped in pretty, pale blue paper, champagne, and a giant chocolate cake—and my heart plummets to my stomach. I can’t recall the last time I celebrated my birthday with a boyfriend or lover—I suppose it was with Art, the man I was briefly engaged to before we parted ways—and I pause to catch my breath before I look up at Mateo.

He pours us both a glass of champagne, handing me mine. “Say something,” he says and tosses his back in a couple of gulps.

“I…” But I can’t find the words. The song playing on the surround sound changes to “I Go to Sleep,” and his fingers curve around my hips. He brings our bodies close, rocking with me for a moment, stealing the air from my body.

“Sometimes it's just good for you not to talk,” he points out, and I release a hoarse chuckle. “Tell me what you want for your birthday, Jamila. Anything. It’s yours.”

I splay my hands over his broad chest and pull in a deep breath. “Anything?” I ask, and he moves his head up and down against my forehead. “Tell me something about you, Mateo. One truth. Anything.” Because I’ve been doing this song and dance with him for nearly two months—hell, I’ve been sleeping with him for the last few weeks—and I know nothing about him other than his profession, his extracurricular activity, and his sister’s name.

He holds my face between his hands as our bodies move together to the music. His jaw clenches, and he wilts, breathing heavily against my mouth. For a moment, I’m sure he’s not going to answer—that he’s going to evade—but then he murmurs, “I listen to this music because it reminds me of my grandmother.” He glances up, as if he can see the notes of the song dancing through the air. “She was born in Chihuahua, but she wanted to be Americanized, you know, especially after she married my grandfather and moved to El Paso. She’d buy any record she could get her hands on—the Stones, The Beatles, The Kinks.”

“They were all British,” I say softly, and Mateo chuckles.

“Yeah, they were.” He squeezes his eyes closed, taking a moment before he continues. “Abuela raised us. After my mother took off to who the fuck knows where, she raised all three of us. I still remember finding all her old records, and I’d listen to them for hours. We were poor, but I had that.”

His mother left them.

She left him, and now he swears love is a curse because of it.

Swallowing the bubble of emotion in my throat, I lift my hand up to his cheek. My chest heaves up and down when he arches into my touch. “You must have loved your grandmother very much.”

“Still do. She’s … she’s in a nursing home in El Paso.” I feel a sharp pang deep within my chest when he opens his eyes and worries his bottom lip between his teeth. His gaze is far away for a long pause, but then he shakes his head and draws me in closer to him. “All right, beautiful. One truth. And now … we celebrate the right way.”

“But—” I start, but his mouth descends on mine, and I know I’ve lost the instant his tongue slips past my lips. He kisses me hungrily, like this is the first time he’s ever tasted me, and we haven’t spent the last several days tearing each other apart. I'm so distracted by the motion of his tongue warring with mine that it takes me a few seconds to realize he's attempting to put something on my head.

I jerk away from him quickly, my hands gripping the granite behind me as I glare down at the cardboard birthday hat he's holding between his bronze hands.

“What the hell is that thing?”

“You’ve never seen a birthday hat?” He feigns a shocked expression. “Stop looking at me like I’ve just asked you to give me head in public.”

Still, I scowl as he adjusts the cone-shaped hat over my head. “What? Like I think wearing a birthday hat is the craziest shit I—”

He cuts me off with his mouth and hand—his tongue spreading my lips, his fingers spreading over the hollow of my throat. “Stop arguing,” he growls between kisses. He trails his lips down, over the corner of my mouth. The bottom of my chin. My collarbone. “We’re celebrating the right way.”

“By making me wear a birthday hat?” I murmur against his mouth, my voice a mere whisper. “And here I was thinking you were a serious man, Bailon.”

“I am.” Drawing away from me, he leans back, reaching behind him. “But it’s your birthday.” When he moves his hand close to my face again, I realize there’s icing on his fingertip. Before I can protest, he smears it over my lips.

Then licks it off.

When he draws away slowly, I suck my lip between my teeth. I taste chocolate. The champagne from Mateo’s tongue. Desire.

“No more arguing,” he says sternly, his gaze cutting into mine. He lifts his shoulders, and a thrill races through me as the muscles tighten beneath his shirt. “The hat will just get crushed when I give you your gift anyway. We've got a lot of frosting, beautiful.”

He boosts me up to the counter and my nerve endings tingle as he feeds me cake, occasionally using the icing to entice me further. He writes his initials on the swell of my breast, eventually wiping it away with the tip of his tongue. His hands and mouth tattoo me, making me forget my left from my right. When he finally stops—and I have a feeling it’s thanks to the erection straining against the fabric of his pants—he helps me from the counter.

We don’t say a word as he grabs the champagne and we ascend the staircase to his bedroom. I’ve been here before, and like always, I’m struck by how normal the décor is. Grays and blues, just like downstairs. A king-size bed with a linen headboard and crisp, stark white bedding. A gray settee at the end of it. The curved chair just in front of said settee that—

I do a double take, my pulse exploding, as I walk closer to the chair.

This wasn’t here when I spent the night earlier this week, and I look back at Bailon standing in the doorway. “This is … strange.”

“Exley made it for me.”

“For … us?” When he doesn’t say a word, simply glances past me to the wood and leather furnishing I’m dragging my fingers across, heat rushes to my cheeks and I snatch my hand away, stumbling backward. “Oh. Oh.”

He pushes himself from the door, yanking at his belt as he comes to meet me. “I can promise you no other woman’s ever seen this, Jamila. Just you.”

“Okay,” I whisper, shivering as he presses the tip of the bottle of champagne to my lips. I drink because I don’t know what to say again, and I’m breathing heavily as he pulls me down with him to the curved chair.

That Jace made.

For Mateo and … whoever.

I try not to let the curiosity—the jealousy—consume me as our tongues intertwine and stars burst behind my eyelids. Try not to wonder when this chair will move downstairs and he’ll go back to his other life as he lifts my sundress over my head, discarding it on his floor. Instead, I race my fingers beneath his shirt, jerking hard and feeling a wave of pleasure as the buttons pop one-by-one and fall to the hardwood beneath our feet. I unbutton his pants, scraping my nails over his thighs as I draw them away from his body, leaving them in a heap on the floor.

“You’re rough tonight,” he groans, breaking away from me to position me on the chair—my front presses up against the backrest and my ass is to him. “Fuck, I love it when you’re rough.”

He slides onto the chair behind me, settling himself into the curve of the seat. Gripping my hips, he lifts me up slightly, and when he draws me back down, his erection fills my core. I cry out, my voice piercing through the silence. Tonight, there’s no foreplay. No games. And I shudder and hold on to the cushion in front of me as he rocks against me.

He nips at my shoulder blades. Cups my breasts in both of his hands, rubbing my nipples between his fingers until I’m arching my back, screaming his name. He slips a finger into my mouth, and I bite hard—so hard he curses. So hard he retaliates, his thrusts picking up speed. He crashes into me. Drags me down with him. Shatters me, and I love every second of it.

He whispers for me to come—in Spanish, in English, in grunts and moans—and when I shake my head, he reaches around, grinding the tips of his fingers over my clit.

“No,” I rasp. “Not yet. Not yet.”

But he continues, his touch tormenting my senses. I feel his other hand in my hair, pulling softly. I hear the birthday hat crush beneath his fingertips and the elastic band snap—just like he said it would. And then, I feel nothing but the climax building in my core. I hear nothing but the blood roaring in my ears. He moves against me, his mouth pressed at the nape of my neck as the tremors work through my body, starting at my toes and racing up to my fingers.

I call his name.

He roars mine.

I lose myself as I come and he lets go just a moment later.

He’s still saying my name, still holding on to me as we come crashing down, and I’m barely aware that someone else is saying his name—even when he goes stiff behind me. But then, the front door downstairs slams shut. Footsteps click on the steps. I hear his name again, and I’m not the one saying it.

Swallowing hard, I look over my shoulder at him, searching his gaze.

There’s a look of utter confusion on his features, and his bronze skin goes pale when a female voice yells out, “B, I’m here.”