It was turning out to be a beautiful sunset, the sky turning into a fucking artist’s palette.

But we didn’t have time to enjoy it.

Because we were Daytin-hunting.

Dropping into the passenger’s seat of the car, I rested my head against the padded headrest and asked, “Where are we going now?”

“The shelters,” she said shortly. “We start with the closest and work our way into the city. I can’t think of anything else.”

I knew she’d stay out all night if nobody stopped her, but I rode along in silence. At the first two, nobody had heard or seen Daytin, at least not that they’d tell us. When we pulled up in front of the next one, I started to get out, but Camry spoke up first.

“Don’t bother. I get the feeling she isn’t here. Too well watched. And not private enough.”

“What?”

As she pulled back into the street, she explained, “A junkie can’t score a hit at someplace where they’re looking for that sort of thing. They’d make her in an instant.”

We didn’t have any luck at the next three shelters either, and on the way out of the last one, I snagged the keys from her. She didn’t even argue. Based on how exhausted she looked, I was surprised she could even walk.

“Thank you,” she murmured as I opened the door for her.

Guilt choked me. I wasn’t doing anything. In fact, I was feeling downright useless...and helpless. Two things that I hated feeling more than anything else. Two things that had haunted me since my mother’s death.

“For what?” I asked as I slid into the driver’s seat.

“For helping. For caring.” She twisted her fingers together. “Daytin’s found some total, random stranger to help her out. It has to be that, otherwise, we would have found something.”

Even as tired as she looked, she still sounded so determined. “It’s a big city, Camry,” I said as I reached over and brushed back some hair from her face. “We may not find her tonight.”

“Pfft.” She dismissed that with a wave of her hand. “We still have a few hours before sunset. Maybe we’ll come back around the shelters a bit later and find her then.”

Except we didn’t.

It was mid-June, so it was still light out even as it grew late, which helped us as we searched, but it was still no good. She’d all but disappeared. Still, it took me until almost nine to get Camry to stop to eat again. Nachos just wasn’t enough to keep me going, and Cam needed more too, though getting her to admit it was like pulling teeth.

“I shouldn’t be sitting here eating spaghetti and meatballs when I have no idea where Daytin is. For all I know, she’s on a street corner with a sign saying: will do you for food.”

Her morose sigh managed to kill my smile at the image, then, as the image returned, I realized it wasn’t anything smile about because Daytin might very well be that desperate.

“You getting sick won’t help her either,” I pointed out, cutting into one of the pillowy puffs of ravioli. The Italian restaurant on the top floor of my hotel had been calling my name ever since I’d checked in, and instead of trying to talk her into going home to rest and eat, I’d brought her here with at least one goal in mind.

I’d make her eat.

Camry made a face at me but bit into a meatball. Her lashes fluttered and she moaned a little.

“Oh, man…that’s so good.” She covered her mouth with her hand as she talked.

I shifted in my seat as that moan had brought back memories I’d spent a week trying to forget. And sent blood rushing straight south.

“How did you meet Daytin?” I blurted out when she moaned again as she took a bite of pasta.

She opened her eyes then, quick emotions flicking across the clear blue depths before disappearing behind a guarded expression.

She’d almost looked relaxed and I could have kicked myself for asking something so inane. I’d heard enough yesterday to hazard a guess that the answer to my question wasn’t something I really wanted to hear. But before I could tell her to forget it, she shrugged.

“We…well, we worked together.” She scraped her teeth on her lower lip as she looked around, cheeks tinged pink. The closest table was almost eight feet away, but the restaurant was so quiet, we could hear the muted voices coming from other tables. “We had the same…boss. Worked at the same locations. Chased the same demons.”

It wasn’t a shock to hear it, but it didn’t make it any easier to picture Camry and Daytin walking the streets in Las Vegas like so many girls I’d seen during my time there. I’d been so indifferent, and even though I told myself that if I’d seen someone as young as Daytin, I would have tried to help her, I knew that was a lie. Unless directly confronted with it, I would’ve just kept walking.

“Is that why you feel like it’s your job to protect her? Because you know what she’s going through?” I asked.

“Part of it,” she admitted. “But more than that, I feel...responsible for her. I didn’t recruit her, but I also didn’t try to get her out. I looked out for her on the street, but I didn’t go to the cops and tell them there was an underage girl selling herself for drugs.”

“You did what you could under the circumstances.”

She shook her head, anxiously twisting an empty sugar packet between her fingers. “No, I should have done more. She didn’t have anyone to protect her, and no matter how many lies I tell myself that I did everything I could, I know that I could have done more if I hadn’t been so selfish.”

“Don’t beat yourself up over the past, Cam.” I reached out and covered her hand with mine. Trust me, it doesn’t do any good.”

Movement at the corner of my vision caught my attention. At a table a few feet away, a woman shifted in her seat, then reached down, picked up her purse and set it on the table, moving it back and forth as if searching for the perfect spot. A moment later, the man leaned toward his dinner companion, picked up the napkin roll he hadn’t used, and set it at a different angle.

Normally, I might not have thought anything of it, but something about their behavior struck me as odd. It wasn’t until I saw Camry pick up her napkin and wiped her mouth that I realized what it was. Our napkins were a sedate black.

So why did this guy have a white, rolled-up making on his table?

Neither of them were looking at us, but that didn’t mean anything.

“Son of a bitch,” I said, not bothering to lower my voice. Several people looked our way. But not them. Which meant they were deaf, or they were trying very hard not to draw our attention.

I pushed back from the table.

“Jacen, sit down,” Camry hissed.

“Wait here,” I said, as I started across the floor.

Before I’d gotten a couple steps, I caught the eye of our server who had been heading in my direction at a quick clip, clearly having heard me. I paused to let him catch up with me, and when he did, I dipped my head to speak to him quietly, explaining my suspicions.

His lips compressed into a thin line, and he nodded, signaling subtly to somebody I didn’t see.

“You may return to your seat, Mr…?”

“Barbour. Jacen Barbour.”

“Of course, of course. Please return to your seat, Mr. Barbour. We’ll take care of everything.”

I didn’t want to return to my seat. All of the frustration and tension that had been building in me for the past few days needed an outlet, and a confrontation with a pair of paparazzi would be a great outlet. The server didn’t push the issue, but the expression on his face told me that if I chose to make a scene, I’d be as unwelcome as those two.

Getting kicked out of my hotel wasn’t worth it, as long as the situation was handled. I gave him a curt nod and watched as he stiffly approached the pair. Judging by the smug smiles on their faces as they started to gather their things, they’d already gotten enough pictures to run with whatever gossip they wanted to print.

“I’m impressed.” Camry had cleared more than the half the spaghetti off her plate by the time I sat down even though only a few minutes had passed.

Apparently, she’d accepted the fact that she needed fuel if she wanted to keep looking for Daytin.

Still pissed off, I slumped in the seat and stared at her. “What?”

She didn’t even blink at my tone. “I never even realized anything was weird, but you pegged them as reporters, had it handled, and never even broke a sweat.” She shrugged. “As I said, I’m impressed.”

“If I was any good, I would have pegged them the moment they sat down.”

I was still cursing myself for letting them slip by in the first place. Then again, I was out of practice. How long were they going to run with bullshit about me and Adelina?

“We’re not even dating,” I muttered.

“Excuse me?”

Camry’s question, soft and quiet, had me jerking my attention back to her.

“Nothing,” I said. With a determined shake of my head, I bent over my food. “Just talking to myself.”

We continued our meal in silence, both of us wrapped up in our own thoughts. It wasn’t until we’d finished that I asked the question I’d had bouncing around in my head almost all day.

“How do you keep hoping?”

She blinked, startled. “I…what do you mean?”

“You know how dangerous the life is that she’s living. How tough it is to get out of it, even if you want to. How do you keep believing that things are going to work out?”

Camry ran her finger around the rim of her glass, forehead furrowed. “I have to, otherwise...if I let myself stop believing that Daytin can get clean, it’d be like I’m giving up on her, and I won’t do that.”

Before I could even start coming up with a response for that, the server approached with our check. As he put down the leather billfold, he glanced from her to me. “Is there anything else I could get for you or the lady?”

“No.” I managed a polite smile and tried not to be annoyed with the interruption. Glancing at the total, I pulled a few bills from my wallet and tossed them down before rising and holding out a hand to Camry.

She smiled at me, her mouth strained around the corners, and slid her hand into mine. When I laced my fingers between hers, I half-expected her to make some excuse to pull away, but she tightened her fingers and fell into step beside me.

I told myself it was just natural for us as friends to walk like this. It didn’t have to mean anything romantic.

“Thanks for dinner,” she said as we left the restaurant.

As I stepped into the elevator, I hit the button to take us to the roof. I wasn’t about to pass her on to the valet so she could disappear again.

“Let’s get some air,” I said as I led her out onto the patio. “Tell me more about Daytin.”

I reluctantly released her hand and leaned against the railing. She leaned next to me, reaching up to yank her hair out of the ponytail. She had a pained look on her face as she rubbed her head.

“What are you going to do about your friend?”

Camry angled her head so she could meet my eyes. “I’ll find her, of course.”

The wind threw her hair into her face, and she angrily threw it back. That didn’t help for more than a minute, so I reached up and caught a handful of it, wrapping it around my fist. The feel of it, the scent, made me catch my breath. I’d never had such a visceral reaction to any woman like I did to her, and I still didn’t know what to do about it.

So I stuck with what I did know. That we needed to figure out what our next step was going to be, part of which needed to be deciding just how long we were going to look before we finally stopped.

“And when she’s found? She might not want help. What are you going to do then?”

“She does!”

Her eyes blazed, and I suddenly remembered an incident from when she’d been thirteen, a couple weeks after school had started. There’d been this new, skinny twelve-year-old boy in Camry’s class who a couple of the other kids had been picking on, and one day, we’d all been in the parking lot when a couple of the kids had taken the boy’s backpack and were digging through it, throwing things on the ground. Before Kaleb or I had been able to do anything, Camry had jumped on the biggest guy there and just started whaling on him.

She’d ended up with bloody knuckles and a black eye, but those kids had never bothered the boy again.

I softened my voice. “Not all addicts want to take help when it’s offered.” I gave her a self-deprecating smile. “Trust me. I know.”

She opened her mouth, then closed it, a mutinous expression on her face. “I…I don’t believe that.”

“You accepted the first hand up you were offered?” Cocking an eyebrow, I waited for her to answer.

Instead, she looked away. “She’s tried before, you know. Getting clean. Getting sober. Why wouldn’t she be ready to do it for real this time?”

“She left the clinic,” I reminded her. “If she was ready to get clean, why would she do that?”

She pulled her hair out of my hand and twisted it up again. “Sometimes we just need someone who’ll keep on us until we give in.”

“And that would’ve worked for you?” I shook my head. “It has to be her. You know that. We know that.”

Her shoulders slumped, the light in her eyes dimming, and I hated myself for doing that to her. Despite the voice of rational thought and reason that insisted it was stupid to touch her, I put my hand on her shoulder. “It’ll be okay. She’s young, smart, and more importantly, she’s got you in her corner. When she’s ready, she’ll make it.”

A slow, unsteady breath left her and she looked away. “It’s awful, but part of me feels like I have to make this work, not just for Daytin, but for me. I feel like I have to prove to myself—to Kaleb—that I can do something right.”

“Camry…”

She slid me a look from under her lashes. “I know. It’s pathetic, right?”

I cupped her chin and raised her face so we were looking at each other. “No. It’s not.” I ran my thumb along her bottom lip. “But you don’t have to prove yourself to anybody, and fuck anyone who thinks otherwise.”

A quick smile danced across her lips, and she looked away. “It’s me who thinks it, Jacen.”

“Then fuck you.”

A quick laugh broke free.

And that did it.

The last thing I should do was kiss her.

But that’s what I did, because the only thing that could have stopped me was her telling me no.

Her lips were soft and sweet under mine, her body as strong as I remembered. Curling an arm around her waist, I pulled her close against me as the rest of the world ceased to exist.

Yes, this. This was all the mattered.

And yet I knew I shouldn’t be doing it. And I definitely shouldn’t slide my hand down to cup her ass. But I did, and she moaned low in her throat, the sound vibrating through me.

She curled her arms around my neck, digging her fingernails into my flesh. My cock jerked, angrily calling for attention. Without thinking, I lifted her off her feet so I could grind myself against her. She tore her mouth from mine, panting.

A low, ribald wolf whistle reached my ears.

Furious, I turned my head—

And remembered where we were.

Shit.

Pulling back, I caught Camry’s hand in mine and tugged. “Let’s go.”

She didn’t argue, not even when I tugged her past the elevator that led straight to the lobby, or when I tugged her onto the one that led straight to the suites on the penthouse level.

Once the doors slid closed, I looked at her, wrestling with what I wanted versus what I knew was the better thing to do. I’d been able to resist the temptation of alcohol from the moment I’d decided to go sober, but she was an addiction I’d never seen coming.

So I would let it be her choice.

“We talked,” I said. “We decided friendship was better. Should I send us back down to the lobby?”

She stared at me for a moment, then jumped up, wrapping her arms and legs around me as she slammed her mouth down on mine. It was instinct to catch her, and instinct to kiss her back. I bit her bottom lip, then growled when she did the same to me. I wanted to devour her, consume her, claim her...I missed the elevator doors opening and had to slam my hand against them at the sound of the bell chiming when they signaled they were going to close.

I didn’t stop kissing her though.

Hauling her tighter against me, I carried her out into the hall, not stopping until I reached the suite at the far end of the hall. There, I leaned her against the door, using my weight to support hers as I dug my keycard out of my pocket.

She was the one who finally broke the kiss, but she did it only to bite and lick her way across my jaw and down my neck. By the time she reached the hollow of my throat, she had the top half of my shirt unbuttoned, and I’d barely even noticed she was doing it.

Pushing her hands beneath the fabric, she brought her mouth back to mine, kissing me, hard. At the same time, she dragged her nails down my skin. The sensation was painfully erotic, and if I hadn’t already been hard, that would’ve done it for me.

“Enough,” I growled, breaking the kiss as I swiped the keycard through the scanner. It beeped, and I shoved the door open with enough force, that it bounced off the wall.

We stumbled inside, and as I tossed my key onto the conference slash dining table, I kicked one of the chairs out of the way so I could set her down on the edge. She pushed my shirt off my shoulders as I moved between her legs, shoving her skirt up her thighs before digging my wallet out of my pocket. I had one condom in there – just the one – so I hoped like hell there were more in the room; otherwise, I’d be making a late-night run down to the gift shop.

She reached for the waist of my pants, but I caught her wrist with my free hand. “Touch yourself.”

Her eyes heated as she moved her hand under her skirt. A little sigh escaped her lips as she followed my command. I reminded myself to have her finger herself at some point later tonight too because I wanted to watch, but right now, the only way I’d have any patience was if Camry asked for it.

I finished rolling the condom on and grasped her hip. Her gaze met mine and she nodded. She cried out as I drove into her with one stroke, her head falling back, eyes going wide.

I froze, worried I’d hurt her. “Camry?”

“Don’t stop,” she moaned. She grabbed my arm with one hand, and I felt the fingers of her other hand brush against me as she rubbed her clit. “Please, Jacen, don’t stop.”

So I didn’t. I slammed into her again and again, her wet heat scorching me as she wrapped her legs around me, used them to pull our bodies together faster and harder until she shuddered. She gasped out my name as she came, her walls squeezing me tight enough that it took everything in me to keep from coming too.

I wasn’t even close to being done with her.

She let out a little cry as I pulled out of her, but clung to me as I swept her up into my arms and carried her into the closest bedroom. I set her on her feet, quickly stripping her before I turned her around and bent her over the bed.

“Again?” I made it a question.

“Yes.”

Gripping her ass, I held her steady and drove in, finding her slick and ready. I wrapped her ponytail around my hand, pulling her head back as I began to thrust into her with long, deep strokes. This time, I didn’t stop until we both came, our bodies collapsing onto the bedspread in a tangled, sweaty heap.

But it still wasn’t enough.

* * *

There were no condoms in the hotel room. I’d looked everywhere and was now debating calling down to room service to see if someone could deliver a pack to me, but then Camry, with her cheeks blushing a soft pink, produced three from her purse.

“Three?” I pulled off my clothes and tossed them onto the floor with hers. “You think that will be enough?”

She opened, then closed her mouth, hesitating a moment before she answered, “Yes…?”

“Clearly you’re not paying attention.” I kissed her roughly, my tongue thoroughly exploring her mouth even as I plucked the condoms from her hand, tearing one off to use for now.

We’d use the rest in the morning. Maybe. If I could hold out that long.

But this one…I had a particular fantasy I needed her to fulfill.

I rolled us over, pulling her on top of me. “I want to see you ride me.”

She gave me a wide smile as she took the condom from me. “Ride you…just how do you want me to ride you, cowboy? I can think of a number of ways. And all of them sound fun.”

The way she said it, I had no doubt she could deliver on her promise, but I saw her humor for what it was. She was trying to put a wall between us, and I didn’t want that, not with her.

“Come on, Camry.” I sat up, cupping her face as I nuzzled her neck. “Like this…no games, no playing around.” I cupped her breasts, circling her nipples with my thumbs. “I’m having dreams about it, you know. Watching you sink down on my prick, watching your gorgeous tits bounce while you move.”

She took a shaky breath, then pressed her mouth to mine for a quick kiss before pushing me back on the bed. She put the condom on me, and then rose up on her knees so she could position herself above me.

“I’m going to ride you until you beg for mercy,” she said, her voice low and raw. “And then, we’re going to see how many times you can make me come.”

Fuck. Yes.