As soon as I was sure Cassie was one hundred percent passed out and in no danger of more drunken shenanigans, I slipped onto the patio. The night air had dropped, making me feel like I was home again. It was cool enough that I wrapped my arms around myself as the breeze blew shivers into my skin. The moon shimmered on the glassy surface of the ocean, just bright enough to reveal Roman lounging against the wall. He took a hesitant step toward me as I came outside. We both stopped short of each other, maintaining a safe, classroom-appropriate distance.

“Is she okay?” he asked.

“She will be,” I promised him. “Boy troubles.”

“We are trouble,” Roman said. He grinned at me, his teeth whiter against his tan face in the dark. For a moment I imagined flicking my tongue across those teeth. The thought sent heat to my cheeks, but thankfully it was too dark for him to see me blush. Thinking like that was going to get me into trouble.

“The first step is admitting you have a problem,” I told him.

“If only I could get all three billion of us on the same page.” He shrugged a perfect what-can-you-do-about-it shrug. The man could give classes in charming a woman out of her panties.

“I’ll be happy to find a couple of men who share that attitude,” I said. “It would save my friends and I a lot of heartache.”

“Sounds like Cassie isn’t the only one dealing with boy trouble.”

That was the problem with having a conversation with Roman. He was trained in the art of communication. It was his job to teach people how to communicate, which meant he picked up on the littlest signals or the most innocent word choice. Not that I had boy trouble per se. I was pretty sure flaking out on a nice, dependable guy who wanted to marry me didn’t qualify as a problem by most people’s standards.

Part of me wanted to open my mouth and spill the truth about me and Brett to someone. I could tell Roman. He was a fantastic listener, and he’d been so patient when I went to him for help with Jillian a few weeks ago. She’d been flunking out of his class because she was too afraid to face Liam after he found out about her Parkinson’s. Most professors would have written it off as an excuse, but he genuinely cared. He’d gone out of his way to help her pass and to help her come to terms with her illness. We’d spent a little time together then, but this felt different, and that was the problem. The feelings that prevented me from opening up to Roman about Brett were far from academic or professional.

“Solidarity,” I said instead. It was both the truth and a lie at the same time. I felt my best friends’ heartbreaks as acutely as I had ever felt my own during any of my break-ups, and right now I was too consumed with Cassie's sadness to really think about Brett. It was that or I was a heartless monster who had been stringing my ex around for nearly two years.

“You’re a good friend.” Roman paused and his eyes flicked to the path that had brought us back to our villa. “I should go. I wanted to be sure everything was under control.”

“I’ve got this. Don’t worry.” But even as I spoke I didn’t want him to go. A variety of ways to keep him here flashed through my mind. I could set an accidental fire or rip off my clothes or offer him that drink. Inviting him to stay for a drink seemed like the least dramatic or dangerous way to keep him from leaving.

“Can I get you that drink?” I asked. “Since I ruined your night.”

“I was home reading,” Roman assured me. “The only thing you ruined was my loneliness.”

I took a deep breath, trying to ignore the way my stomach flipped over when he mentioned he was lonely, and went inside to grab a bottle of wine. My hands shook while I rummaged through the drawers for a corkscrew. I finally found it and dropped it on the floor. Thankfully Cassie was passed out or I probably would have woken her. Nothing short of a nuclear strike would get through to her right now. I’d played nurse to her drunk-ass enough times to know that. It took two tries and a ruined cork but I finally got it open.

“So was it a bad book?” I asked, hoping that I looked casual as I brought him out a glass of wine.

“Why would you think that?”

“I usually don’t feel lonely when I’m reading a good book.” In fact, when I cheated on my textbooks and let myself read a romance novel or the latest bestseller, I was barely aware of my own existence.

“It was work stuff. Apparently, I don’t know how to take time off from school.”

I raised my glass in a toast. “I hear that. I plan to spend most of my time here hiding my textbooks from Cassie so she doesn’t take them away.”

Roman laughed at this and shook his head. “But you're on vacation. I come here all the time. It isn't vacation when it's home.”

“It’s still your semester break. There’s no reason you need to be reading either!” My words rushed out in a jumble. I’d begun to tremble and it had nothing to do with the cool breeze wafting up from the ocean and everything to do with the insanely sexy man standing next to me.

“I’m not judging.” He held a hand up in surrender. “I just hope you have a good time. I know you’ve been really stressed out the last few weeks. I know you were worried about Jillian.”

Of course, he wasn’t being judgmental. That wasn’t Roman’s style.

“Sorry. I get a lot of shit for being so focused on med school and graduation.” It was hard enough to explain why I wanted to spend another five years in school let alone that I needed to be prepping for those years right now. Class for Cassie and Jillian existed on a period by period and semester by semester schedule. Neither of them planned to go further than getting their B.A. I couldn’t blame them for that, but I also couldn’t explain to them why I had to be looking so far ahead all the time.

But Roman only snorted at this. “With this job market, most of your friends will wind up in graduate school.”

“Speaking from experience?” I asked.

“I wouldn’t call Interpersonal Communication my calling.” He shrugged and took a sip of his wine, his lips lingering on the rim, long enough to make me jealous of the glass.

“What is?”

He clenched his eyes shut and shook his head.

“Come on,” I pleaded.

“Poetry,” he said finally.

“Really?” I couldn’t quite imagine buttoned-up Roman Markson as a poet. I felt a twinge between my legs that suggested that other parts of my body could.

“You don’t have to sound so surprised.”

“Watch your I-statements,” I reminded him, tapping his solid chest with my index finger. My body responded to the slight touch, aching for me to step closer to him, but I ignored the urge. “What kind of poetry?”

“The sappy kind,” he said. “Hence why I’m in grad school.”

“Write a line.”

His eyebrow cocked up. “Right now?”

I nodded eagerly, and he set his wine down next to mine on the table. His gaze drifted out toward the ocean and back to me.

“Ojos de estrellas y hilos de oro,” he said in an accent that was as deep as it was intoxicating.

“What does that mean?”

He paused before he spoke as though he was considering what to tell me. “Eyes of stars and strands of gold.”

There was something electric in the air, charged by his words and it took all my willpower to look unaffected by him. The problem was that he had always affected me, and here I didn’t feel the same self-restraint I did on campus. Here with the ocean lapping against the shore and the moon shining over us, I believed in romance and magic. It was as if with a few words, he cast a spell over us.

“So Professor Markson is secretly a rockstar?” I asked, doing my best to ignore the thick ache in my throat.

“Rockstar? No,” he said with a chuckle. “I don’t have my PhD, so I’m barely even a professor.”

“And what should students call you?” I asked, my voice dropping suggestively.

“Mr. Markson. Professor Markson. I don’t really care.” Even as he tried to stay on topic, his eyes flickered to my mouth. I felt them linger there and I licked my lips, imagining his finding mine.

“So what should I call you?” I said.

“I’ve told you that before. You can call me Roman.”

“Is that appropriate?” I drew out the words until they sounded anything but appropriate.

“Jess.” My name was a warning on his lips. His perfect, kissable lips.

Maybe it was that I’d spent most of my life doing what I was supposed to do and staying out of trouble, or maybe the Jess that usually heeded such warnings was on vacation, but nothing short of an act of god was going to keep me away from those lips. When I wrapped my hand around the back of Roman’s neck, he didn’t resist.

There was a moment of hesitation. One split second where the whole world faded into the background and there was nothing but the heat of his breath and the tingle of anticipation shivering through my body—and then our mouths crushed together. Roman’s hand cupped my chin as he deepened the kiss, slipping his tongue past my lips. It massaged mine with deep, languid strokes, releasing a spasm of desire in my core. My body reacted instinctively moving closer to him, my left leg wrapping slightly around his to ease some of the ache I felt.

Roman drew back, breaking the kiss but keeping our bodies entwined. We were both breathless, and his eyes blazed greedily even as he tried to be rational. “We can’t do this.”

Suddenly, I found myself channeling Cassie. “We’re in Mexico.”

“That doesn’t change the fact that I’m an instructor at your university.” But his fingers trailed along my jaw and down my neck, stopping to rest on my collarbone.

“You’re only four years older than me,” I reminded him before repeating, “and we’re in Mexico.”

“I grew up in Mexico,” he said with a soft laugh. “I’m afraid it’s less exotic to me.”

“Mexico is the new Vegas.” My mouth curved into a smile, but I didn’t relax my grip on his neck.

“And that means?” His eyes were searching mine, clearly hoping I could rationalize us into what was a big mistake by both our standards. He wasn’t going to find a way out there. It wasn’t in me. I wanted this too much.

“What happens in Mexico, stays in Mexico,” I promised him.

His chest heaved as though something dangerous was trapped inside of him and it was fighting to get out. “How long are you in Mexico?”

“One week,” I whispered.

“I..” He hesitated and I knew he was thinking of all the reasons we shouldn’t do this.

“One week—no rules,” I said, “and then we’ll go back to Washington and no one will ever know.”

“Except us,” he said, his words thick with meaning.

We would know, but we were adults. Adults had flings. Adults moved on. “Except us.”

“One week.” His words were an agreement, sealed by his lips as they closed over mine.