It had been two years since I had moved to California and I still hated it. It was like another country. There were no seasons, and the people talked funny.

This place’s one saving grace was Zahira West. We had met at an exhibition; she was an artist, but it wasn’t one of hers. We had a mutual acquaintance in Sean Carmichael. He was a photographer and completely unbearable—one of those people who were good at what they did and knew it. He was pompous and pretentious, but he was talented. He and Zahira had gone to art school together, and I knew him because I had seen him at the auction house; he was a collector.

It was his exhibition, and it was a series of portraits of sex workers. He had named it ‘Trade’ and Zahira and I had spent most of the night in deep conversation over whether the obvious exploitation of the people in the photographs was justified in the name of art. Sean had made a point of exclusively photographing women and LGBT sex workers who worked the streets. It made a statement but at whose expense?

Zahira was a painter. She did that by night. By day she taught adult and child art classes and did commissioned pieces. She loved art, in every form. She was even covered in it; her back and one of her arms were tattooed. I did too, love art. One of my two majors in college, because I couldn’t pick between the two, was art history. The other was the classics, hence, what I’d named my cats. If I ever had kids, they’d probably be named after deities of dead religions too. I’d continued with art history for my post graduate degree and had passed on museum jobs in New York to work at Strickland’s.

Jackson Strickland was a known collector. Unlike a lot of auction houses, he had opened Strickland’s for his love of art, not necessarily for its business worth. It turned profits, of course, but I had jumped at the chance to work somewhere I thought was a little better intentioned than other places. We had fantastic pieces coming through every day. We had antiques, furniture, taxidermy, jewelry, everything. It was a lot wider than what I would be able to see at a museum. Zahira had invited me to breakfast before work because I had spent the night a few days before with Brandon. I was telling her about it just then.

“What did he say to you? Tell me so I can translate,” she said.

I smiled and sipped my coffee. Zahira was a riot. She was loud and outspoken. She had hard and fast rules when it came to the guys she dated. She wasn’t seeing anyone currently, but that was because she didn’t want to be, not because she didn’t get a lot of male attention. She looked like the sort of girl you would see in a Beyoncé music video. Skin the color of coffee with some creamer, wild curly hair, almond eyes and a banging body.

“He was like, Audra, I’m so sorry for last time. I’ve changed. Give me another chance,” I said, doing my best impression.

“Okay, okay. He said that, but what he means is, Audra; beautiful, smart woman who is completely out of my league, please, give me another chance to waste your time.”

I laughed.

“That’s savage. The guy just can’t win with you.”

“No, he can’t. And he has no business trying to win with you again. He had you on his arm, and he fucked it up. You are too smart and too pretty to waste it on him.”

“But we’ve been together so long,” I said. I just said it to see how she would react to it as a defense.

“So? Are you going to keep saying that till you’re thirty, have three of his kids and he’s fucking a twenty-year-old on the side?” she challenged. “Get out now because the longer you stay, the harder it will be to get out later.”

“I know. After that last night, it’s over. For real this time.”

“After that last night? That’s what you were doing? That’s who you canceled on me for?”

I drank my coffee so I wouldn’t have to answer her.

“You whore,” she teased. “That’s why you can’t get away.”

“It’s not that,” I said, trying to cover my ass. She knew plenty about my relationship with Brandon. Maybe too much. Our sex life had been, well, the only part of the relationship worth writing home about. He was big, and he knew how to use it.

“You don’t have to be shy,” she said, “good dick has steered many good women astray.”

“I just… I don’t know. I just wanted it to work. He was so great sometimes.”

“They always are. Cut him off, Audra. He’s overstayed his welcome.”

She was right. He had.

“I’ll talk to him tonight.”

“No, text him right now while I watch you,” she urged. I made a face. She was smiling, but she was serious.

“A text message? That’s a little cold,” I said picking my phone up and starting on the message. I thought it was cold, not that I wouldn’t do it.

“Good, don’t leave any room for him to think he can keep lying to you,” she said. I smirked, hitting send. I turned the phone to show her. “Done.”

She congratulated me telling me it was about time. It was. It really was. We were done this time. For real. I noticed the time on my phone screen.

“Oh, I have to leave,” I said clearing my cup of coffee. “I have to go look at a private collection today.”

“Really? Where?”

“Across the bridge,” I sighed. “I have to go after the office. Our owner, Jackson Strickland died recently, and he wanted his personal collection auctioned off.”

“I read about that; I heard there was drama with his kids and ex-wives over who got what in the will.”

I shrugged. Understandable. Strickland, the man himself, was something of a legend. The auction house wasn’t even the thing that people really mentioned while talking about him. They were wealthy, and their money was long. Not like Rockefeller long, but almost. I said bye to Zahira and drove to the office.

The house was in Marin County, across the bridge. The Bay area was notorious for being too wealthy for its own good. Marin was one of those places that gave the Bay its bad name. The BART didn’t go to Marin, which was your first indication of the kind of place you were going to visit. I had a car, but that didn’t mean I wanted to make the drive across the bridge to get there. The traffic was ridiculous.

A middle-aged woman who introduced herself as Vanessa let me in. She’d been expecting me, or just someone from the auction house. She told me to wait in the great room for the man of the house to come see me. I declined the offer for anything to drink. The great room was large and rectangular. There was sparse furniture, a fireplace, Persian carpets covering the floor and art covering the walls. My eye caught what I hoped wasn’t a Joan Miro reproduction. I walked over to it. Maybe it was better if I just sat and waited. A man walked into the room as I was debating between the two. He smiled as he approached. I offered my hand.

“Hi, I’m Audra Francini. I’m with the Strickland auction house,” I said. He shook.

“The auction house? I’m Max. Max Strickland.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry for your loss,” I told him. Strickland. This was one of Jackson’s sons. He had two of them. This must be the one who was made consignor.

“It wasn’t sudden. He’d been ill for a while. I’m taking over ownership of the auction house,” he said.

“If you really want to get rid of all this stuff, then we’re going to have a busy few months. I had no idea the extent of Mr. Strickland’s collection.”

“Nobody did. He sort of became reclusive near the end of his life.”

“I’m sure there’s more, but what I’ve seen is already amazing,” I said, trying to stop myself from going total art geek.

“He was a shrewd collector; that’s why he got the auction house.”

“Is that,” I paused. Fuck it. “Is that a 1938 Joan Miro?” I asked, letting my excitement take over. He smiled at me.

“I want to say yes, but I think you’d be able to tell me that better than I’d be able to tell you.”

It was a 1938 Miro.

“I’ve never seen any of his work in private collections before. It must have cost a fortune,” I said, the last part more to myself than to him.

“Hopefully it goes for one too,” he said. I looked at the painting.

Suddenly I got that feeling you sometimes get when you feel like someone is watching you. I looked around the room, towards the entryways. There was a man standing there. I want to say I noticed his face first, but I didn’t. He was shirtless. I noticed that first. Once I did, I noticed his eyes. First of all, the face those eyes were sitting in was possibly the most perfect male face I had ever seen.

His hair was shorn extremely close to the scalp, but that didn’t matter. He was still completely gorgeous. His eyes were a rich brown, like black forest gateau. Stubble shadowed his hard, masculine jawline. His cheekbones were high and sharp. He was wearing black, loose-fitting pants that hung dangerously low around his hips. He walked into the room, and I felt like I needed to stand up a little straighter.

“Maxwell. What are you doing here?” he said.

“I didn’t know you were here,” Max told him. Max was incrementally taller than the man who had just walked in, but that might have been because he was wearing shoes and the man was not.

“Whether I’m here or not, doesn’t matter. You’re still trespassing. Is there something you want?” he asked icily.

“Could I talk to you in private, Levi?”

Levi. His name was Levi. He looked at me, and I almost felt it physically. His eyes were sharp. Penetrating.

“No. Get out of my house,” he said shortly.

His house? Since Max had been the one that showed up to greet me, I had figured it was his house. He hadn’t said it wasn’t. If they were brothers, he was obviously the older one. The two men stood staring one another down. This looked like something off National Geographic; two alphas cross paths, and they have to determine who is supreme between them. If it came to that, the shirtless one, Levi, looked like he would win. It looked like it might. The air in the room started to feel thick. I spoke up.

“The auction house sent me over today, but I could come back tomorrow. The collection’s a lot more extensive than I expected. It will take a while anyway to appraise,” I said. Levi broke eye contact with his brother first. In the wild, that meant he was submitting, but I felt like that was not the case here. This was probably how they usually were. He looked at me.

“You,” he said. He paused after the word and looked me up and down. “You can stay.” His tone was completely different than it had been when he was talking to his brother. It had lost its hard edge, but was still deep and, well, sexy. I hadn’t been planning on leaving, but the way he’d asked—no, told—me to stay was more than a little inviting. “I’m Levi Strickland.”

“Audra Francini,” I said. I offered my hand for him to shake—an automatic gesture; I did that to everyone new I met. “I’m so sorry about your dad,” I said. He took my hand in both of his. They were big and warm.

“Francini? Italian?” he asked completely ignoring my condolences.

“No, I’m from New York,” I scoffed.

“Levi?”

Max was still there. The look that Levi gave him should have turned him to stone.

“You don’t get off my property, Maxwell, I’ll have you removed,” he said coldly.

I felt incredibly awkward standing there. Anyone could tell looking at them that they were naturally antagonistic. This was not a onetime thing. Max seemed like he was trying to keep appearances up in front of a stranger—me, but Levi was going for the jugular. I opened my mouth to say something but stopped hearing another voice ring through the house.

“Levi? Levi where are you?” a female voice called. The source was soon revealed. First, all I saw was legs. Miles and miles of long bronzed legs. Then they stopped, and a silky black oversized pajama shirt covered the rest of her body. She had huge tits under there, mostly exposed because the top few buttons of the pajama shirt were undone. The way it hung off her shoulders it was obviously too big and cut for a man’s physique.

“There you are,” she said walking over to Levi and draping her arms around his neck, leaning up to kiss him on the mouth, ignoring me and Max.

Now I really had to leave. I noticed since they were standing together now that the pants he wore and the top she was in were a set. They had been… had I interrupted them? I wanted to feel embarrassed for them, but neither seemed to care.

“This is obviously a bad time; how about I come by tomorrow?” I offered. Levi looked at me. The woman’s face was striking, but she was looking at me the way Hecate looked at birds outside the window. A little predatory.

“Why? I told you you could stay. I want you to. We both do. You like them brunette, don’t you Deb?” he said patting the woman’s ass. She giggled and looked at me. No, she leered at me. What he said hit me like a punch to the gut.

“I don’t know, she looks a little uptight,” she said. Her hand was flat on Levi’s abdomen, and I couldn’t help noticing how close it was to delving underneath the waistband of his pants.

“You used to have dark hair,” he said to her. Her hair was glossy and blonde, not a dark natural root in sight.

“Still do,” she purred, “in some places.”

I felt my mouth dry out. I felt a little hot but also insulted. I didn’t know which one I felt more. He wasn’t serious. Neither of them were, no way. You didn’t just ask women you didn’t know to come to bed with you and your… wife? Girlfriend? Or maybe you did. I didn’t know. I tried to stop myself from thinking about the man sexually but was too slow.

He had tattoos up one arm, one really big arm. Both of them were big, thick with muscle, with raised veins crisscrossing under the surface of his skin like a roadmap. His skin was tanned and covered in fine black hair. It was hard not to think of him sexually, especially since he’d basically asked me to come to bed with him and that woman.

“I’ll leave, look at the rest of the house; the rest of the things we could start thinking about moving,” I said trying to measure my voice and remain professional in the face of a proposition.

“If you don’t like girls, Debbie won’t take it personally,” he said flirtatiously. “If you do, I won’t. I love to watch.”

Sweating. I started to sweat. Debbie—he’d called her Debbie—giggled at his side, kissing his cheek and up near his ear. It was like the beginning of a porno that I, to be honest, really wanted to see. No, what was I thinking?

I’ll let myself out I should have said. Instead, I just left. I fucking booked it. I fled. I found my way out the way I’d come in. The sound of a woman’s laughter followed me out.

Sitting in my car, I felt like I finally caught my breath; like my whole body had been under stress and was just now normalizing. I had a pretty good suspicion of what had gotten me so worked up.

It wasn’t 1938 Miro.