I didn’t really remember getting into the room. Not that I was that drunk. Sam’s kiss had somewhat of a sobering effect. Like a survival instinct, like my body was making sure I was able to fully and lucidly comprehend the magnitude of this moment.

I was sober, but not exactly vigilant when my mouth was attached to his.

Our kiss in the car seemed to have no end. He’d stopped it at some point, with stormy eyes and an aura that stifled the air in the car. There was silence as he’d opened my door, the salty ocean air doing little to dampen Sam’s scent or bring about whatever sensibility I was known for.

Maybe that was because he kissed me for what seemed like the entire journey to his room.

Which was where we were now.

In his room.

Against the door in his room, more accurately.

He’d slammed me against it and circled both of my wrists with one of his hands, restraining them in his viselike grip before placing them above my head.

His other hand skimmed the silk of my stress, ghosting over my curves. His mouth worked against mine, relentless, brutal, beautiful. Whatever gentleness had existed in the car belonged to a different man entirely.

This wasn’t the Sam who stroked my cheek and made jokes about Twilight. No, this was the Sam whose eyes were almost black with desire, who slammed me against a wall so hard my head cracked off it, not painfully but forcefully.

The Sam who was quickly making me forget my own name. Who was making sure I’d never forget his.

The light touch of his hand was gone when he found my breasts, kneading them roughly, exquisitely, tweaking my nipple so hard I cried out into his mouth.

He broke our kiss and grinned, but not with humor. It was like the Devil would before he collected your soul.

And I was going to give it willingly.

“I’m going to taste you. Every inch of you. And you’re not going to move your fuckin’ hands,” he commanded.

I couldn’t even if I wanted to. I was paralyzed the moment his mouth fastened over the thin fabric of my dress to suck on my nipple, graze it and send shockwaves through my entire body.

His hand snaked down my waist, slipping under my dress as it had in the car but this time with a destination, a purpose in mind. I welcomed it. I craved it. I feared I’d die without it.

Then, when his magic fingers almost reached the edge of my panties, I froze.

Completely and utterly.

He noticed it.

Immediately.

Like he was somehow in tune with my body, like that moment in the car.

Black eyes cleared and he locked his gaze with mine.

“You good, Thumbelina?” His voice was thick, muffled, but lucid. Concerned. “Did I hurt you?”

He straightened fully, gently grabbing my hands and pulling them down so he could make circles on my wrists with his thumb.

“No!” I said immediately and much louder than was necessary. “No, that was… lovely,” I said on a softer tone.

His eyes gentled and he grinned lazily as his eyebrow rose. “Lovely?” he repeated, moving forward to trace his fingertip along my collarbone.

I nodded rapidly. “Yes, I just have to… um….” I pointedly looked for a bathroom door. “Freshen up,” I finished lamely.

Who even freshened up? That was shit from the movies; no one actually did it in real life, unless they had forgotten to shower or shave or something that day.

I hadn’t.

Oh God, now he’d think I’d forgotten to shower or shave.

He was going to think I was hairy and smelly.

Good one, Gina. Way to ruin the moment.

Sam grinned lazily again, his face dawning with understanding. It wasn’t a grin that made it seem like he was contemplating the fact that I had a feminine bikini line situation. He didn’t step back—no, he stepped forward, so his entire body imprinted onto mine and he pressed his very obvious arousal against me.

I almost melted. Right there at his feet.

His mouth brushed against mine, not kissing me, just touching slightly as he spoke. “Okay, babe. But for the record, you’re pretty fucking fresh already.” He took an audible inhale that was so personal and erotic my knees quivered. “Smelling you alone makes me hard as a fuckin’ rock,” he declared.

Then, thankfully before I could do anything frightfully embarrassing like collapse at his feet, he stepped back, eyeing me like a wolf. He grabbed my hand and wordlessly led me into the giant suite.

I distractedly took in the king-size bed and the armchair, the simple white décor, the longue area opening onto a balcony where the waves crashed against the sand.

It was beautiful.

But I had other things on my mind right that second.

Sam stopped us in front of the bathroom and yanked me into his body in a motion that juxtaposed the slow and gentleness of before, which disrupted my sense of gravity entirely.

I definitely would’ve fallen to my feet if it weren’t for Sam’s arms around me. His lips crashed against mine for a quick but life-shattering kiss.

“Don’t be long,” he ordered. “I’ll miss you too much.”

The last words were teasing, light, jarring me with their contrast to the intensity of the kiss.

Then he stepped back.

And I didn’t move.

Just stared at him.

At the tattoos snaking down his arms, covering every inch of his sinewy flesh, even his hands, knuckles, the insides of his fingers.

“Gina.” He said my name softly and it hit me right in the stomach.

My head snapped up.

Sam was grinning. “Though I’m not hating you checking me out—like at all—I thought you had things to do. And if you keep looking at me like that much longer, I won’t be able to control my motor functions. You’ll be on that bed, naked, within the next ten seconds, whether you like it or not,” he continued with darkness dancing in his eyes. “And I promise, you’ll like it.”

The words sobered me once more.

“Right,” I whispered. “Yes.”

He smiled at me once more, but not a Sam smile I was used to. One the world was used to. This was new. Different. It wasn’t for the world. It was just for me. And not up for dissection right at that minute. So I gathered it up and carefully stored it away with everything else.

I darted into the bathroom, slamming the door and flattening myself against it.

I wasn’t in there because I was having some kind of crisis about what I was doing, about the magnitude of all this—though that was coming at me like an impending tsunami. But I was only at the yellow warning zone right then. We wouldn’t have a code red until after the fact. I was going to make sure of that.

Nor was I freaking out about the brightness of the lights in the hotel room and the fact that in order to have sex, I’d have to be naked.

In front of Sam. The muscled rock god who’d been shirtless in GQ not one month back.

No, it wasn’t that exactly, though now that I focused on it, it made me slightly dizzy.

It was the process of getting undressed. He’d have to take my dress off, obviously. And what he’d find was a rather boring white bra with a sprinkling of lace on the sides, which wasn’t ideal, though neither was it cause for concern. No, it was what almost met the bra.

My giant fricking panties, which had been compressing my internal organs all night.

The pain had been rather uncomfortable at first. Then there was tequila. Then there was Sam. He was like a physical version of Advil.

And Sam could not see these panties that could be mounted on a small sailboat.

No.

The prospect of him seeing the untoned and slightly jiggly belly underneath was scary but not mortifying. No, it was a woman’s stomach. A woman who actually ate. Who adhered to the Marilyn Monroe shape as opposed to the women strutting down a runway so emaciated you could count their ribs.

I wasn’t proud of it, but I wasn’t ashamed either.

What I was ashamed of was that I’d gone to great lengths to hide that. And when Sam peeled it off and my stomach jumped at him, he would notice the whole false advertising thing. Sam did not need to see them.

So I was in somewhat of a dire situation.

First thing was to get the offending panties off.

I hooked my thumbs into the top of them and with a considerable effort peeled them down my body and stepped out of them. It took about five straight minutes.

They were tight.

I let out a full and unobstructed breath for the first time since I’d put the torture device on. I’d totally taken the full use of my lungs for granted.

I stared downward. And then panicked.

The panties weren’t small or delicate, and I couldn’t hide them anywhere.

Purse! I thought, having a lightbulb moment.

I looked around the bathroom. My purse wasn’t there. What kind of self-respecting girl was I? Everyone brought their purse into the bathroom with them. It was girl law. It was half the reason why we lugged them around everywhere.

Not me.

Mine was on the floor at the door.

Where I’d dropped it the moment Sam had slammed me into it.

“Fuck,” I muttered under my breath. I didn’t exactly curse often, a habit I’d gotten into considering my job. I couldn’t be swearing around little humans who had minds like sponges.

But this was definitely an “oh fuck” moment.

I bent down at the waist to snatch the panties off the floor, then whirled around to inspect the opulent bathroom.

There were two sinks in front of me, polished marble with a countertop full of hair products and all sorts of toiletries.

I shook my head, smiling.

Classic Sam.

Wayward pieces of silver were scattered on the marble, thrown haphazardly as if they weren’t likely worth thousands of dollars.

I had one pair of diamond earrings my father, in a rare moment of parental generosity, had given me when I graduated college. They stayed safely in my jewelry box. I didn’t even wear them. Not that I had any occasions for diamonds anyway.

Which was not my concern at that juncture. My concern was destroying or hiding the giant panties I had thought were a good idea at the time. Even in my fantasies I didn’t think I’d find myself in any sort of situation where I’d be taking my dress off.

I continued my scan of the bathroom. There were no cupboards. There was a toilet and a huge walk-in shower, but nowhere to hide underwear the size of Texas.

I looked at the toilet. Then to the panties in my hand.

No, I couldn’t flush them. They’d likely back up the entire plumbing to the town of Amber.

Just as I was about to give up hope, a gentle breeze kissed the clammy skin at the back of my neck.

I whirled around once more.

A window!

Salvation.

It was open enough to let the wind through. A small crack.

I rushed over to it and pushed it as far as it would go so I could look down. Luckily there weren’t any balconies underneath, just piping and an inlet where the sand came right up to the building.

I would somehow make a plan to retrieve them in the morning; I didn’t condone littering, and I didn’t want them to find their way to the ocean and kill a small school of fish.

Before I could think too hard about it, I dropped them. They fluttered like a plastic bag in the wind before settling on the sand below.

Then without even so much as a glance in the mirror, I stepped over to the door and opened it.

I’d expected him to be lying on the bed in some sort of seductive position. Maybe naked. With some stupid grin on his face and a one-liner ready. I wouldn’t have put it past him to have a rose clutched between his pearly whites.

What I didn’t expect was to see his naked tattooed back—not expected but incredibly welcomed—his front facing the ocean that was blanketed in shadow. The white curtains flowed silently in the breeze, salty air lightly fragrancing the room.

If he heard the door open, he didn’t let on.

It was unnerving, seeing him so deep in thought, seemingly lost in his own head. When you’ve only seen someone in the company of others, in the company of thousands, and on television screens and magazine covers, the weirdest thing you could witness is them being normal. Being unremarkable. Doing what we all do, contemplating life and everything and nothing at the same time. Having moments to themselves when you only considered their moments with everyone.

My earlier bravado disappeared with that observation. The fever storm of the kiss and the desire and darkness in his eyes had disappeared. Now came the realization that we were alone.

With each other.

I was alone with Sam Kennedy.

And I wasn’t thinking that like the countless girls who had been in my situation would’ve thought that. Not the Sam Kennedy who was the drummer for Unquiet Mind, who’d been to the White House, who’d won Grammys, who consistently behaved badly in front of the cameras to make him rock’s resident mischief maker. I didn’t think about those labels or his bank accounts, his connections or his fame.

No, this was Sam Kennedy, who’d once lent me a pen in English lit and who’d told a stupid joke to cheer me up when he came across me crying after some idiot girls made comments about my weight.

I still remember that moment in the deserted halls like it was yesterday.

It was the memory of that unapologetic honesty that gave me my courage. Before I could talk myself out of it, I crossed the room circled his body with my hands.

The taut ridges of his abs pulsed under my shaking hands as his crisp and intoxicating scent cut through the sea air.

He didn’t move, just slightly sank back into my embrace.

It was the weirdest and most natural thing to be doing at that precise moment.

There is that cliché about moments and how you should acknowledge them because sometimes a moment can be your life. And that one, where neither of us spoke, where we somehow lingered in-between the people we were and who we wanted to be, in honest contentment, was life. Or a slice, a morsel of what I imagined the whole thing was all about.

What all those great authors and poets were all about.

And then it was gone.

Because something else rushed in.

Sam.

He moved, quickly so I was no longer embracing him, and then he was owning me. I didn’t even realize we were on the bed until I felt the cool comforter against my skin.

My naked skin.

At some point during the journey between the balcony and the bed, Sam had divested me of my dress, or I had divested myself of it.

Whichever one it was, the feeling of his bare skin on mine while he kissed the sense out of me was beyond perfection.

Then he was gone—his body, his heat, everything. He pushed up, regarding my body with hungry eyes. And I didn’t shrink away from the gaze like I expected I would. No, not when I could taste it. His appreciation, his desire. His simple gaze was anything but that. It made me feel beautiful. Perfect. Like all my imperfections added up to something.

And I’d forgot them all. My insecurities. My misgivings and my worry about how exciting I’d be in bed when I was competing with all the other girls that came before me. Because it was physically impossible to feel insecure when a man looked at you like that.

His eyes flared to midnight when they went lower.

All the way lower.

“No panties?” he rasped. “You saucy little minx. Holy fuck, if I’d known that earlier, I wouldn’t have even gotten out of the car. Or the fucking parking lot,” he growled.

I bit my lip, deciding to let him think I was adventurous enough and that my hips were smooth enough to wander around a wedding wearing no panties.

This was not exactly the time or place to discuss the truth.

“I’m tasting you. Now,” Sam declared, voice thick.

And then I descended into something I called the Sam Haze. Or other people might like to call earth-shattering, mind-blowing, life-changing sex.

And it was life-changing.

For the better.

And then later for the worse.