I struggled to hide it, deciding to pretend I was fine. Yelling would only make her more pleased with herself. Cool detachment always worked best when Chloe was being a teasing bitch. But when my brow smoothed, she laughed a little, not even a little surprised.

“What are you doing after this?” I asked. For some reason it hadn’t even occurred to me what she would do when she left. Was she flying straight home?

With a shrug, she murmured, “Don’t know. Dinner. Maybe a show.”

“Wait. Are you here with someone?”

She looked at me, pursing her lips and shrugging.

“The fuck, Chloe? Are you at least going to tell me where you’re staying?”

She looked me up and down, letting her eyes linger a little longer on the fly of my pants than the rest of me before she smiled. “At a hotel.” She straightened, arching her brow before purring, “Oh, and happy Valentine’s Day, Mr. Ryan.”

And with that, she stepped out of the room and into the hallway.

Two

Max Stella

Bennett Ryan looked like he was on the verge of losing his lunch and razzing all over the table.

“I’m going to pass. Lap dances aren’t really my thing.”

His brother Henry leaned forward, horrified. “How is an unfamiliar and extremely hot woman dancing on your lap not your thing? Are you warm-blooded?”

Bennett mumbled some excuse, and I couldn’t really blame him because, fuck, I wasn’t about to have some strange bird climb on my cock. But he had no idea what was waiting on him in the back. I had to get him out of that bloody chair and into the private room so we could get this night started off right.

“Bollocks,” I told him, waving to where Johnny stood, waiting near the private hallway. “This is your bachelor party, and a lappy is a requisite.”

Johnny raised his chin in acknowledgment and finished his conversation with security before making his way through the room, taking his sweet bloody time. Every second that ticked by saw my own impatience build. The longer it took Johnny to get here, the longer it would take Ben to man up and head back, and the longer my girl waited for me.

When he finally stood in front of me, Johnny flashed me a knowing smile. “Heya, Max. How can I help you?”

“I think we’re ready to begin the festivities.”

Johnny nodded, slipping a hand into his pocket. “Chloe is in Neptune. Down the Blue Hallway, to the left of the stage.”

I nodded, waiting. Finally, when he hadn’t offered more information, I prompted, “And Sara?”

“She’s in the Green Room, down the Black Hallway. The one to the right of the stage,” Johnny said. He leaned in a little to add, “Positioned how she requested.”

I stopped short, slipping my hand into my pocket to hide the fist that had instinctively formed. “She asked you to position her?” What in the bloody hell did that even mean?

“Just a little ribbon here, a little ribbon there.” Johnny watched me, a small grin giving away how amused he was by my reaction.

I looked around the dark room, at the scattered clients sitting on black leather couches or leaning against the sleek charcoal granite bar. I could feel my pulse in my jaw from clenching my teeth together in what I knew was an uncharacteristic scowl.

I was conflicted: curious at this growth in their trust, but needing to know what he’d seen, and where he’d touched her. It was rare for Sara to be tied up at Red Moon, and each time, it had been my doing. “She let you touch her?”

Johnny looked at me, smiling wider as he rocked on his heels. “Yep.”

He didn’t shrink under my heated attention. He just let me ride over the hot flash of jealousy, knowing that more than anything I was filled with gratitude. Over the past nine months or so, Johnny had done so much for us, and even through my haze of anger, I knew it wasn’t a simple favor he was doing for me tonight, with both Chloe and Sara taking up valuable rooms in his busy club.

I looked over at him, smiled. “Right then. Thanks, mate.”

Johnny patted my shoulder, nodded at someone behind me, and murmured, “Have fun tonight, Max. You have an hour before the next show goes into the Green Room.” With that, he turned and returned to the Black Hallway, the one where I would also find Sara, in position, with ribbon.

I felt the frenetic longing grow in my chest. A tightening; the way I feel at the start of a rugby match . . . but deeper inside me, and everywhere. It spread from my thorax out to the end of every limb, pulsing hotly in each fingertip. I needed to get to her, give her what she’d begged to come to Vegas to do.

When I told Sara that the only weekend we could do Bennett’s bachelor party was Valentine’s weekend, her first reaction was to laugh and remind me that she hated Valentine’s Day. Her ex had always f**ked it up, she’d said, and I was secretly pleased she didn’t want to make a thing of it anyway. We celebrated our relationship almost every f**king night in my bed, and most definitely every Wednesday night in our room at Red Moon. Valentine’s Day was an insignificant blurb on the calendar compared to all that.

But Sara’s second, lingering reaction was to step closer, run her hands up my chest, and ask if she could come, too. “I promise I won’t crash the rest of the party,” she whispered, eyes wide and mysteriously combining uncertainty and lust. “The bachelor weekend can go on as planned; I just want to play at Black Heart one time.”

Before I could even find the single word to answer her, I’d bent to kiss her, and that kiss had transformed into her hands in my hair and my mouth on her tits. And that had moved on to hard and fast sex on my kitchen counter. Afterward, I’d collapsed onto her, panting against the damp skin of her neck: “Fuck yes, you can come to Vegas.”

Rearranging my features into something calmer, I sat back down and felt Bennett’s attention on my face as I picked up my drink.

“What was all that about?” he asked, watching Johnny disappear behind the black rope.

“That,” I answered, “was about the room that is being prepared for you.”

“For me?” Bennett pressed a hand to his chest, already resisting. “Again, Max, I’m going to pass.”

I groaned, giving him a skeptical glance. “The f**k you are.”

“You’re serious.”

We argued a bit longer, until I could see him give in. His face grew determined and he hesitated, contemplating his vodka, and then downed it.

“Fuck it.” He put his glass down, shot up from his chair, and marched determined down the hall.

It was all I could do to not similarly bolt from my seat. Sara’s name echoed in my every heartbeat. I loved her so wildly, it was a wonder this wasn’t also my stag weekend. The number of times I’d almost proposed to her was bordering on absurd. And somehow, I knew she could see it in my face: that moment when I started to beg her to leave for the weekend with me, marry me, move in with me . . . and then thought better of it. Without fail, she asked what I had meant to say, and I told her she looked beautiful instead of releasing the words, “I’m not going to feel sorted until we’re married.”

I often had to remind myself it had been a mere six months—almost nine including our initial arrangement—and Sara was skittish about all things matrimonial. She’d kept her apartment, but honestly I don’t know why she bothered. For the first month or two after we reconciled, we’d split our time at the two places, but my home was larger, better furnished, and my bedroom had better lighting for the photographs I loved to take of her. Soon she was in my bed every night of the week. She would be mine forever, but—fuck—I had to remind myself we didn’t need to rush it.

After what felt like an appropriate amount of time since Bennett left, I put my own tumbler on the table and looked up at Will and Henry.

“Gentlemen,” I began, “I’m headed down the hall to have a fabulous Vegas bird dance on my lap.”

Both barely looked away from the dancers on the stage, and I was fairly confident I could leave and they wouldn’t think to look which hall I was headed down.

The hall to the left of the stage led to private rooms named after the planets. These rooms were for lap dances mainly, much like the one Bennett was currently getting. In my opinion, the only interesting thing in those rooms tonight was the fact that he was getting his dance from Chloe.