My nose woke up my stomach before the rest of my body even had a chance. By the time I got my eyes open I was officially starving.

The air was full of the smell of coffee and something spicy and rich.

The wide white plane of Jack’s bed was empty, the blankets tossed back on his side. I’d slept so hard I barely moved. I tossed aside the covers and looked over the edge of the bed to see his dress shirt still in a heap on the floor. Smiling to myself, I slipped it on and then followed the smells to find Jack.

The condo was a surprise in the bright light of day. Hardwood floors, simple but nice furniture, little to no decorations except for the books. So many books. In shelves, in stacks against the wall, propped open on his big brown leather couch.

The books made me feel safe; they reminded me of my sister.

I stepped into the kitchen and found him standing at the stove, wearing a pair of flannel pajama pants and his tattoos and nothing else.

And he was perfect. Mouthwateringly so. That he stood here, half-naked in this beautiful bizarre apartment, made me feel like he was showing me a secret, telling me something he did not tell anyone else, and the enormity of it was disarming.

“Hey,” I said, standing in the doorway, feeling shy.

Feeling utterly unlike myself in any way.

Like the scene was familiar but I didn’t know my part or my lines. So I had to wing it.

I had to be myself, and I didn’t know who that was right now.

“Hey,” he said, glancing over his shoulder at me, and then hilariously doing a double take. “Wow… that look, no wonder it’s in all the movies.”

“The shirt?” I ran my fingers along the buttons. This was a good look on most women, but killer on me.

“Mostly you. But a little bit the shirt. Coffee?”

“I’d love some.”

His kitchen was lovely. White tile and black appliances. He had copper pots hanging from a peg board along one wall. He poured me a cup of coffee and set it on the island in the middle of the room.

“Sugar is there,” he said, pointing to a little pot on the island. “Milk?”

“I just take sugar.” I doctored my coffee and leaned against the island to watch him. It was awkward, a little. More than what I usually felt the morning after, but not enough to make me get dressed and leave.

“What’s your last name?” I asked.

He blinked at me. “Herrara. You?”

“Blakely.”

“You feel like we should have done that before we had sex?” he asked.

I tried to pretend to be easy. Comfortable, but he wasn’t buying it. “Maybe.”

“You feel like this was a mistake?”

I shook my head but then I said, “Maybe.”

He put his hand through his hair, making the curls stand on end, and then he turned toward me with so much somber focus I sat up straight, startled.

“Today is Sunday,” he said and I nodded as if confirming, yes indeed. Today is Sunday.

“I have the next few days off. I go back Wednesday.” I nodded again, as if committing the timeline to memory.

“I can take you home, anytime. Anytime at all. Call you a cab. Drive you myself, whatever you want. You can leave and not tell me. You can—”

I smiled, feeling so tender toward his earnest appeal. “I’m free to go anytime. You’ve made that clear.”

“But… you could stay until Wednesday morning. If you wanted. You could stay here with me.”

“What would we do?” I asked, because really, there was no question that I would stay.

“Well, I imagine I’ll feed you and then I’ll fuck you. And we’ll just keep repeating that.”

“Sounds charming.”

“It’s not. It won’t be.”

The smile fell from my face. The fire in my body he seemed to control with just a look reignited.

“What happens Wednesday morning?” I asked, though I knew.

“It’s over. It’s over like it never happened. You walk out the door and we can’t see each other again. Ever. You can’t call or text. Or stop by the club. Nothing. Do you understand that?”

“Over like it never happened,” I repeated, tasting the bitter edge of those words. “On Wednesday.”

He nodded, his arms braced on the kitchen island, all those muscles in relief against the tattoos.

“Three days,” I said.

“Three days.”

Some sensible part of my brain was trying to remind me that who he was and what he did wasn’t a fucking joke.

It wasn’t.

And I couldn’t pretend like what he did wasn’t real, because it was as real as that gun of his. And the blood that had been on his face.

But it just felt so far away right now.

And three days felt like that diner last night. A bright island of light in a sea of darkness.

And if it was going to be over in three days...

“Are we supposed to shake on it?” I asked, smiling at him, because he needed to be smiled at, and frankly, I needed him to smile again. “My sister and I always pinky promised.” I held out my pinky for him to link his to. But he surprised me by grabbing my hand and pressing his lips to my knuckles.

“Three days,” he breathed. Like I’d done far more than just agree to let him feed me and fuck me for hours in a row. “You won’t regret it.”

Well, I wasn’t sure about that. Something told me I’d be thinking about the next three days when I was old and gray.

“What are you making me for breakfast?” I asked.

“Chiliquiles. Mom used to make them for my brother and me on special mornings.”

“Old family recipe?” I joked.

“Something like that. Give me a second.” He broke two eggs over a hot frying pan, and while they fried he filled a plate with tortillas, spooned green sauce over them from a pot on his stove. Broke up fresh white cheese over that, and then finally slipped the eggs over all of it.

My stomach roared again.

“I can’t believe I didn’t feed you last night,” he said, bringing the plate over to the island.

“If that tastes as good as that looks you are forgiven.”

He smiled at me, shy again as he turned the plate so it looked like I got the best side. I dug in with the fork he handed me and at the first taste I closed my eyes and moaned.

“You are completely forgiven.”

He ducked his head and dug into the plate between us.

“Do you cook a lot?” I asked, looking over at his wall of pots.

“No. Not much. Those were my mom’s. When she died I couldn’t bear to throw them away.”

I stared at him, mouth agape.

“What?” he asked. “Is that so weird?”

Rare, I thought. Extraordinary. Special. I could say all those things, but we were in this light space between us, smiling over food he made.

And none of it mattered after Wednesday morning.

“Yes,” I said, deadpan. “Very weird.”

Everything about this man was not what I thought. Was nothing like what I expected.

I sighed and tilted my head, gazing at his arms, the tattoos in all their violent glory. I reached out and traced with my finger the thick vein that traveled from his wrist up the side of his forearm, past a vicious angel with a bloody sword in one hand, and a bleeding red heart in the other.

“Vengeance?”

“Justice.”

A chill ran down my body, but this was the cost of being with him. It was pleasure laced with fear. It was desire dark with the unknown.

And in my safe, small little life I found him… addictive and I wanted more. So much more.

My finger cupped his arm, the thick swell of his bicep, covered in Spanish words.

“What’s it say?”

“The sins of the father.” His breath caught and shuddered as I stepped closer, my fingers now on his collarbone, the hard ridge of it. My heartbeat pounded between my legs.

“What are these?” I asked, touching numbers on his ribcage.

“The day my mother died. And the day my father died.”

“And this one?”

It was 500,000.

“Nothing,” he said, shifting his body so that tattoo was blocked.

I glanced up at him, surprised he would lie. Because he was so clearly lying.

“I can’t… I can’t tell you everything,” he said. “There are things I just—” He swallowed and I understood. There were things he couldn’t say out loud, for my sake or his.

“Take off your pants,” I whispered and he blinked at me, as if surprised. But then he did it, shucking them in no time. I nearly smiled.

“Take off my shirt,” he said and I went to work on the five buttons I’d done up, but apparently that was taking too long because he grabbed the two sides of the shirt and tore it open.

I screamed and then laughed, shrugging out of the ripped shirt, and so we stood there in front of each other in the bright light of a new day falling through the windows across our skin.

I looked my fill, knowing he was doing the same. Seeing imperfections I couldn’t hide with makeup or lighting, and I didn’t care.

He was so beautiful like this. Naked and vulnerable and I could tell in his stillness he found me beautiful like this too.

So I pulled myself up onto the island, the tiles cold against my butt and thighs, and my movement had the predictable effect of making him look at me.

I spread my legs a little for him. Shook my hair off my shoulders.

“I want to come,” I said. A privileged demand.

“Fuck,” he breathed, coming up against my body, his hips between my thighs. His hands on my back, running along my spine, making me curl into him.

“How?” he asked. “How would my princess like to come?”

He kissed my nipple, sucking it into his mouth, his tongue sweeping over it and then he let it go, blowing against the damp skin until I moaned.

“You want to come against my hand?” he asked and pulled my other nipple into his mouth. Licking it until it was hard and I was wet. “My cock?”

“Your mouth.”

Oh, his eyes. The blaze of heat there, the smirk on his lips. It was crazy how they made me feel. Like a stranger to myself in some ways. Like he’d opened up some secret room of desire inside of me.

“Whatever my princess desires,” he whispered and he pulled my hips closer to the edge of the counter and then fell to his knees in front of me.

I didn’t feel the cold tiles, the sunlight, the draft from some open window. I felt nothing but the bright hot sweep of his tongue against my body.

I flinched as his tongue hit my clit, moaned as he went back again and again.

He mapped me with his mouth, a slow and sweet exploration of every secret place. Every fold. He found the spots that made me twitch, that made me clench my hands in his silky hair. He found those spots and he made them his. He worked me and stroked me. He licked me and tongued me.

I was wet and he was wet and he had my ass in his hands, and every time I twitched away, he pulled me closer. Not letting me off any hook. Not letting me shrink away from any moment of this.

It was wild and messy and the most unrestrained thing I’d ever been a part of. Men had gone down on me before—but not like this. Not like I was a treasure. A feast to be devoured.

In the end I put one hand around his head, holding him to me as he sucked on my clit. My other hand falling back against the counter as I tried to keep myself upright.

“Yes,” I breathed. “Yes. Oh God. Oh fuck.”

He slipped a finger inside of me. Curled it up until he found the place that made me scream, and it was too much. I pulled away again, trying to shove his head away, but he was stronger and he was unrelenting and I came so hard I fell backward, throwing the plate off the counter. I jerked against him, the orgasm going on and on until I thought I was having another one, and then I was.

I’d never come so much or so hard, and I felt outside of myself. Like I’d blacked out and when I opened my eyes he was standing up between my legs, which I could barely feel.

“You okay?” he asked.

“I knocked… I knocked something over.”

It was a ridiculous thing to say. I felt like I’d come so hard I’d lost a leg or something. I couldn’t feel parts of my body.

“You’ve done some damage,” he said, but he wasn’t talking about his plate. Or the mess on the other side of the island.

“Good,” I said and leaned forward and kissed him, pulling his lip into my mouth, biting it.

He pulled me up and I wrapped my arms around his neck and my legs around his waist and he took me back into the bedroom where we made love like it was all going to end the second we stopped touching.

So we didn’t stop.

* * *

“What’s the deal with economics?” I asked. I didn’t know what day it was. Only that it was dark again and we’d gobbled up Chinese food hours ago. We were on his couch, I was lying in his arms, my hands tracing the dark outline of the crown of thorns on the inside of his elbow. Three of the thorns had blood on them.

“Like why did I pick it?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“I’m not sure I remember,” he said.

I pinched him and he squeezed me tighter in his arms. “Think back so long ago. Five whole years…”

“I was planning on being an accountant,” he said and kissed my hair. “Money and my family was always a disaster. Like every day my parents’ worry about having it and making it and keeping it and trying to make more—it was this black cloud. And being an accountant seemed like the best job I could think of to not just make money, but I could also deal with this black cloud of worry in my house.”

“Your dad—”

He shook his head.

“What?”

“I don’t… No talking about my dad. I don’t… I don’t want him here. With you.”

I felt the bite of tears behind my eyes and I had to look away.

I kissed the inside of his elbow, the crown of thorns.

“That’s why you scolded me about credit card debt and the Uber?” I finally managed to say. That I found that adorable was slightly disturbing.

“Old habits I guess,” he said.

“How’d you go from accounting to economics?”

“I took Intro to Economics, and we studied this guy Alfred Marshall and he said this thing about money and man, and it just…it blew my mind.”

“What did he say?”

“’Economics is a study of man in the ordinary business of life. Thus, it is on the one side, the study of wealth and on the other and more important side, a part of the study of man.’”

I rolled over so I was facing him, my legs parting over his hips. The soft warm center of my body settling against him in a way he clearly liked.

“Say it again,” I said, wrapping my arms around his neck. Kissing his ear.

He laughed. “You like that? A little dirty economics talk?”

“Yeah.” I took his ear lobe in between my teeth. “Give me more of that filthy economics, baby.”

“How about this,” he whispered, his wide hands sweeping up my back to my hair and back down again. “’Economics is the science which traces the laws of society as arise from the combined operations of mankind for the production of wealth, in so far as those phenomena are not modified by the pursuit of any other object.’”

I wiggled against him, pressing my breast to his chest so I could feel him breathing and the soft happy gust of his laughter. “Say phenomena again,” I whispered.

His hands boosted under my ass and he put his feet on the ground and stood up, holding me like it was nothing. Like it was easy.

And it was easy. It was easy in these three days to be these people. I couldn’t say who we were, who I was.

But it was remarkably easy.

“You are a phenomenon,” he said, taking me to the bedroom and laying me out across his bed. And I came under his hands, his fingers and his body. Never in my life had I come so easily, like my body was simply waiting for him to arrive and show me what I could do.