We dozed for a while, catching our breath on the bed in the dark. Then I heard the polite scratching that meant Scout needed attention. It figured, after a scene like that, my fucking dog needed to go out.

Reluctantly, I got up. Evie had pulled the sheet over her and didn’t move; maybe she was asleep. I quietly put on underwear, a pair of jeans, a zip-up sweatshirt, and nothing else. I grabbed Scout’s leash and took her down the elevator and outside.

It was late—one o’clock, maybe. There was no one around except for a couple of drunk guys walking past and a few taxis on the road. I stood while Scout did her thing and stared at nothing. I felt numb and oversensitized at the same time, my skin tingling. My brain kept looping backward, seeing Evie in that mirror, then shorting completely the fuck out.

It was like a hangover—a sex hangover. I’d never felt like this before. Sex was just something I did, like eating a hamburger or taking a cool shower after a hot workout. You felt the need to do it, you did it, and you pleased yourself. Like with any guy, my dick needed semi-regular attention, and as long as it got it, I didn’t think about it.

I was thinking about it now.

I was thinking about Evie. I could still feel her, on my palms, on my cock. I wanted to go back upstairs and fuck her again, make her make all those sounds again. I also wanted to run, get on a plane and get the hell out of here. She was too close. She had stripped pieces off me, and she didn’t even know it. She could see the things I didn’t want her to see. She could push salt in my open wounds and make it hurt. If only she knew.

She’s a woman, that’s all. Man up, Mason, and go back in.

I had no idea what had happened. Who I’d been while I had her in that shower, against that vanity. I had no idea what came next. And I always knew what came next—ever since Andrew’s accident, I’d rearranged my life to work that way.

Scout finished her business and sat on my shoe, ready to protect me from any dangers that came from the street. I scooped her up and carried her back inside while she tried to lick my face. I was still wrestling with her when I came in the door of my penthouse and saw that Evie was up.

She was wearing my t-shirt, which she must have picked up from the floor where we dropped it when she tore it off me. She had tied her hair back in a messy ponytail. And she had found the cereal in my cupboards, along with a bowl and some milk from the fridge.

Her brown eyes widened as I came through the door. “I’m starving,” she said, like it was an embarrassing admission. “Is this okay?”

“Sure,” I said. “Pour me one, too.” I put Scout down and unclipped the leash from her collar.

Evie watched me as she took out another bowl. “I would never peg you as a Chihuahua owner.”

“She’s not my dog,” I replied automatically. “She was Gina’s, but Gina didn’t want her anymore.”

Evie banged the second bowl down on the counter a little harder than necessary. “That sounds about right,” she said. Her voice was tight, and I remembered too late that it probably wasn’t the best time to bring up the woman who’d fucked her last boyfriend. The woman who had also been saying something I couldn’t hear—but was obviously very freaking bitchy—to Evie in the bar last night.

That had pissed me off, seeing that. It pissed me off again to see how tense Evie’s face was right now. So far Bank Boy had been my prime target for revenge in this whole mess, but Gina had just bought her way onto the list. “You want to tell me what she said to you?” I asked Evie.

She didn’t ask what I was talking about. “Insults, of course,” she said, dumping some cereal into my bowl for me. “The girl kind.”

“Girl insults,” I said, sliding the bowl away from her and picking up the milk. “What does that mean, exactly?”

Her voice was harsh. “Why does it matter?”

“It fucking matters.”

She looked at me for a second, and then looked away, blinking. “I’m dull and boring,” she said. “That was the gist of it. The fat part was implied. Also, I’m lying about sleeping with you.”

Oh, yes. There were going to be consequences to this. “You’re not those things,” I said, “and you are sleeping with me.”

Evie must have caught something in my voice, because she stared at me for a minute, distracted. Thinking about that scene in the bathroom, like I was.

Fuck, what we’d done in the bathroom. That was the hottest, dirtiest sex I’d ever had. And if it was the last thing I did, I was going to convince Evie Bates to do it again. To do me again.

“Yeah, well,” she said after a second, clearing her throat, “I was lying at the time, so I had to make some things up on the spot to sound convincing.”

“Oh yeah?” I asked, digging in to my cereal. “Did you come up with something good?”

She reddened. “I told her—um, I told her you like blow jobs.”

I put down my spoon and stared at her.

She looked flustered. “Never mind. It was just—”

“I do,” I said.

She got distracted again. I knew the feeling, because I was staring at her mouth, thinking about blow jobs. Thinking about how good that would be. I wasn’t thinking of running away now; those thoughts had gone. I was thinking about her licking me and cupping my balls and—

“I told her you like it when I swallow,” Evie said.

There was dead silence in the room. We just stared at each other across my kitchen counter, and I wondered which of us would leap over it first. Probably me.

“Evie, I swear to fucking God,” I said, giving her a warning.

She licked her lips nervously as I came around the counter, stalking her. The move didn’t make her any less sexy. “We should probably change the subject,” she said.

“Yeah?” I came closer, put my hands on her waist, moved them down to cup her ass. “You want to talk about how I just fucked you raw, and I plan to do it again?”

Her jaw went slack at that, she was so turned on. She unzipped my sweatshirt and ran her hand down my bare chest. “We should talk first,” she said vaguely as she touched my pecs, my stomach.

I leaned in and kissed her neck. She smelled clean, overlaid with woman-sweat and sex. I slid my mouth over her skin, taking it in. “What do you want to talk about?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Anything.” Her hands skimmed up to my shoulders, pushing the sweatshirt off and belying her words. I dropped the shirt to the floor. “We should get to know each other.”

“Sure,” I said. I moved one hand to her front, pressing it between her legs and cupping her. She was bare, no panties, and I could feel her heat. “I already know a lot about you, though, Evie. A fuck of a lot.”

“That—that isn’t the same thing,” she said, breathing shallow. “We should talk about other things, not just sex, and—oh, fuck.” My finger pressed between the lips of her pussy, rubbing where she was wet for me. Her eyes half closed as she fought for control. “Nick, that isn’t fair. My underwear was ruined in the shower.”

“It wouldn’t have made a difference.” I circled her entrance, sliding my fingertip in, feeling her tighten around me. “I’d still do what I’m doing right now.”

“Oh.” She tilted her head back, and I watched her neck, the fall of her hair, in complete fascination. Jesus, this fucking woman. “Wait,” she said weakly after a minute, putting a hand on my wrist.

I stopped moving. “Yeah?” I said. I was thinking about whether to make her come here or in the bedroom, with my cock inside her. I was leaning toward option two. My cock was hard as a hammer in my jeans, ready to start the dirty work.

Evie seemed to forcibly get herself together. “We should talk,” she said. “I mean it.” She pushed on my wrist, and I took my hand away. She closed her legs, looking regretful. “We should eat our cereal and get to know each other.”

Somewhere deep in my lust-addled brain, a warning bell went off. I didn’t talk to the women I had sex with. I didn’t get to know them. That wasn’t me. But I looked at Evie’s face, flushed and nervous, and it didn’t cross my mind to tell her no. If I told her no, she’d get dressed and leave, and there was no way I was letting that fucking happen.

So I picked up my bowl of cereal and walked over to the sofa.

“You’re agreeing?” she called after me, like she couldn’t quite believe it.

“Sure,” I said. I put my bowl down on a side table and kicked my shoes off, unzipping my jeans.

“What are you doing?” She’d come closer now, carrying her own bowl. She sounded alarmed.

“Getting comfortable,” I replied. “It’s two o’clock in the morning.” I looked at her as I hooked my thumbs in the waist of the jeans and pushed them down. “You just saw it all, redhead. There’s nothing new. Relax.”

I kicked my pants off, and her gaze slid down over me, her cheeks getting redder. “You, uh,” she said. She nodded toward my crotch, speechless. “Um.”

I looked down. I still had a boner in my boxer briefs, hard as a rock. Pretty impressive, though of course I’m biased. “Yeah, well, you were just talking about sucking me off and swallowing,” I said reasonably. “Don’t worry, it stays where it is. What did you want to talk about?”

“Nick,” she said, exasperated and obviously turned on, “we can’t talk properly with that.”

“It’ll go down in a minute.” Painfully, but that was how it went sometimes. I sat on the sofa and put a throw pillow over it. I picked up my bowl again. “Better?”

She looked like she wanted to protest, like there was a catch, but finally she gave in, moving to the other end of the sofa with her own bowl. She grabbed the blanket from the sofa’s back and put it over her lap so I wouldn’t see her bare pussy beneath the hem of my shirt. That was us, two classy people with our crotches covered. They should send us an invite to Buckingham Palace.

We ate for a minute—I had worked up a nice post-sex appetite—and finally she said, “I have questions.”

The alarm bell went off in my head again, but I ignored it. “Go ahead.”

She looked around my penthouse. “You own this place?”

“Yes. Trust fund. I didn’t earn it.”

She looked surprised at my words, but for some reason it was important that she know. I didn’t want her getting the wrong impression of me. “What do your parents do?” she asked.

“Invest other people’s money, and skim pieces of it,” I replied. “And, apparently, pay off their kids instead of raising them.”

I sounded harsh again, but it was the truth.

“So you don’t get along with them,” Evie said.

“They hate me,” I clarified. “They think I’m a disappointment and a waste of space.” They weren’t wrong, but it didn’t mean they had a claim on any of my mental real estate. Not after they way they’d abandoned Andrew for the crime of getting into an accident and not being whole anymore. I really didn’t care what they thought of me, but fuck with Andrew and as far as I’m concerned, you’re done.

“Who’s Andrew?” Evie asked.

I stared at her in surprise. It was like she’d read my mind. Or had I spoken aloud? I was pretty sure I hadn’t. “How do you know about Andrew?” It came out hostile, but I couldn’t help it.

She looked taken aback. “The jacket you lent me,” she said. “It had a business card in the pocket. Andrew Mason, programmer.”

Now the alarm bells were going off like crazy. I wanted to get on a plane and take off again. But I calmed myself. It was okay if she knew his name, after all. It was just a name. “Andrew is my brother,” I admitted—more than I’d admitted to any other woman I’d been with, no matter what dirty things we did in bed, or how many times. I’d never even said Andrew’s name to a single one of them.

Evie put down her cereal bowl, which she’d cleaned out. “And?” she prompted.

No. I had nothing else. Just saying his name had been like wrenching a rib out of my chest, listening to it snap. “And nothing,” I said.

“Do you get along with him?” she prodded.

The back of my neck was sweating. “We get along fine,” I said. “Do I get to ask the questions now?”

She didn’t look finished, but she said, “Okay.”

“Did you just fuck me to get back at Bank Boy?”

She stared at me, her lips parted in shock.

I wasn’t sure why I had asked that. Partly because of the Andrew questions—I needed to shut her down, regain control.

But part of me actually wanted to know the answer. Whether I was the nearest convenient dick for her. Whether she was slumming it for revenge.

Because if she was slumming it, I needed to know now. I didn’t ask myself why.

“I don’t see how that’s possible,” she said, her voice getting tight with anger. “He’s not here to watch us. And he already thought we were—”

“Not literally,” I said. “In your head. You know what I mean. Did you fuck me to get back at him in your head?”

She let out an exhale of breath, like I’d shoved her in the stomach. Her cheekbones were red again, anger and sex mixed together, and I felt my cock wake up again beneath the throw pillow. He’d gone to sleep when we talked about my family. “You have some nerve, asking me that,” she said. “You told me to fuck someone the first night we met. You said it would make me feel better.”

“And did it?”

That hurt her for a second—I hadn’t meant it to, but it did. Her jaw went tight and her lip quivered. Then she said, “Nick, if you don’t shut up I’m about to throw my cereal bowl at you.”

Great. Now I was an asshole. Usually I didn’t care, but this was Evie. “It’s just a question,” I said. “I want to know.”

“You want to know?” she said, her voice getting higher, more wound up. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything. I don’t fuck people, all right? I don’t just do it. Some people do, but not me, not anymore. And I’ve had the worst week of my life, and you drive me completely crazy. What we did tonight—I’ve never done that. Not ever. Maybe it’s routine to you, but it wasn’t to me. It was something, but I don’t know what, and I’ll probably obsess about it for weeks while you forget about it tomorrow. That’s it, all right? That’s all I know.”

She didn’t think that was an answer, but it was. My mind stopped at those two words, not anymore. So she wasn’t as square as she tried to be, redhead Evie. Just like I’d suspected. But whatever she’d done in the past, I didn’t care. Not even a little.

I had my work cut out for me. I put down my bowl and tossed away the throw pillow. “You think that was routine?” I said, as her gaze dropped. “That’s what you think?”

“I don’t know what to think!” Her anger was mixed with lust now, and maybe a little fear. Not of me, but of herself. “I mean, you have a drawer full of condoms—and maybe you were trying to get back at—”

“Do not,” I said, my voice a low warning. “Do not say that name. I do not want to fucking hear it ever again. Now, take that blanket off and open your legs.”

She stared at me for a second. Shocked, flustered, affronted, turned on.

Then she did it.

I won.