Indie: Blake has not been seeing anyone or fooling around. He works and argues with Alex, then works some more. He hasn’t even looked at a woman since we boarded the plane to Australia.

Hudson: Jenna. Talk to us. Are you and Blake finally going to bump uglies?

Jenna: Hudson, leave the chat.

Hudson: Like hell I will.

Jenna: You tell Alex everything. Go away.

Hudson: No!

<Jenna Holden removed Hudson Diaz from the chat>

Indie: …

Indie: Are you dating Blake?

Jenna: No.

Jenna: But we slept together.

Jenna: And I’m pregnant.

Jenna: I sound like one of the idiots I used to laugh at when I’d read teenage magazines when I was fifteen.

Indie: 1) cruel, and 2) you need to tell him.

Jenna: I don’t know. I don’t even know if I’ll keep the baby. Don’t tell him.

Indie: I won’t. But you should.

It took Blake, Alfie, and Lucas to throw Alex into the van. He put up a good fight, but what struck me even harder than the fact it had taken three grown men to shove him into the vehicle, was that no one cared he’d fired Lucas. They’d all acted like everything was normal, dismissing Alex’s authority.

I’d needed to talk to someone when I’d found out my brother had been arrested and was spending the night in jail for assault. And I’d wanted to talk to Lucas specifically because he was more logical and emotionally balanced than Alex.

When we got to the hotel, I unlocked my door quickly to avoid the Alex-storm that had been brewing in the hallway behind me. The minute his arm reached behind my shoulder to stop me from entering, I turned around to face him. He looked serious, determined, and…what was the third thing? Exhausted. It couldn’t be easy to live life the way he had, but I was worn-out, too.

Flashes of his breath skating down the nape of my back when he retrieved the lyrics he wrote on me made my skin blossom into goosebumps. God, I was in trouble.

“I don’t want to write tonight.” My eyes followed the trail from his square chin to the collar of his gray Henley. His neck was slender and masculine at the same time. I wanted to lick it.

“Me neither. I just want to talk.” He lowered his forehead and pressed it against mine, his breathing labored. “And maybe give you oral sex. But that’s it.”

I laughed through the ball of tears that had formed in my throat. What were we doing? Weren’t we fighting five minutes ago?

The door clicked behind me and we both fell in. The room was eerily quiet under the weight of the night and both our shitty days. I careened to the virgin minibar, eager to do something with my hands, and plucked two bottles of water.

“Sorry about your brother.” He braced himself over the TV stand, his face lined with worry.

I felt the burden of his whiskey eyes on my shoulders as I passed him a bottle and watched him set it aside. I didn’t know why it was so easy to talk to Lucas and so difficult to talk to Alex. Maybe because Lucas always felt platonic. Maybe because Lucas didn’t have any ulterior motives. And maybe it was because it felt like the air in my lungs was on fire and all my nerves concentrated in one spot between my naval and groin, the minute Alex was in the same room with me. I cleared my throat.

“Yeah, uhm, Craig got arrested tonight. It’s his first offense. The guy was coming out of the strip club under our apartment block. He was very drunk and tried getting into his car with the intention of driving home. Craig was equally drunk and tried to pull him by the shirt through his window. Natasha said everything is fine, but I know she doesn’t want me to worry.”

Alex paced in my direction, his predator stride sleek and calm. He stopped, pressing his palms into the wall behind me and his lips to the crown of my head, inhaling—not kissing—my hair.

“I’ll send someone to bail him out tomorrow and lawyer him up good.”

“You don’t need to do that,” I said quietly, my face warming up. I felt more ashamed than I’d ever been before, because I knew it was one favor I was going to accept.

His eyes darkened, and his jaw tensed. The change was subtle, but it was there. From afar, Alex Winslow looked like nothing could penetrate his armor. But he was an artist—and an artist’s armor is full of bullets and cracks. That’s how the lyrics and notes seep through. My breath hitched at his stare, at the nakedness of it, so much so that I felt a damp spot forming in my underwear. He didn’t say a thing, but by not saying much, I knew—I read through the lines of his forehead and mouth and eyes—he hadn’t done that because he liked me. He did that because that’s what he did. He took care of the people around him, because he didn’t know he had the option not to.

Alex dropped his face to my neck and kissed the hollow part where the shoulder and the sensitive vein met. I closed my eyes, my hand flying to the desk behind me for support. I clutched The Paris Dress in my fist.

“Do you ever feel so lonely you’re not sure people are real anymore?” he asked.

“All the time.” I swallowed, adding, “The Little Prince was lonely, too.”

“He was. And he died. All broken princes die at the end.”

I shut him up with a kiss. Alex thought about dying, and I thought about how I’d do anything to keep him alive, even if it killed me. The notion only intensified the magnitude of the kiss when our mouths closed on one another. He dragged his lower lip along mine and brushed his nose on my cheek, slipping his tongue into my mouth and claiming it as his own. His tongue thrust between my lips again and again. I lifted my hands to cup his cheeks, deepening our kiss even more, and somewhere along the way I lost my balance, because before I knew it, my back was plastered across the desk with my legs wide-open and him between them. We were all over The Paris Dress and dozens of needles and threads.

“Bed,” he barked into our kiss. “Right now.”

He yanked me up and threw me onto the bed like a ragdoll. I laughed like a drunk, and he jumped right after me, making a huge splash in the covers like he was cannonballing into a pool. I scooted up until my back hit the headboard and we were face-to-face. He grinned, advancing toward me on his hands and knees like an animal. We were still fully clothed—hell, my shoes were still on—and I pressed my heeled boot to his chest in one last bid to stop him. I didn’t even know why I bothered at this point. It was obvious I was going to give him whatever he wanted, consequences be damned. He grabbed my ankle and brought my leg to his mouth, sliding my glittery blue pump off and pressing his lips to the base of my foot.