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I didn’t want to cut men off.

They were mean. Coercive. I never felt like me in a relationship.

But they aren’t asking for a relationship, are they?

They’re asking for right here, right now. This moment. And this moment only.

A triple one-night stand. On the biggest night of my life. Where I should be up in that room, mingling, making connections. Where I’m supposed to meet Judy and her husband.

“You’re overthinking,” Leif says again, and brushes a whisper of a kiss over my lips. His closeness makes me want to press my thighs together to starve the ache he creates just by existing.

“Say yes.” It’s Enzo, behind me. His teeth graze my neck before the slightest pinch. Pleasure ricochets through me, from that seemingly innocent spot on my neck straight to my clit, where I nearly come undone all over again. “Just for tonight.”

“Enzo,” Leif warns.

There’s something there I’m missing. Something outside my operational awareness.

Just for tonight.

Tonight.

One time, I played Never Have I Ever at a bridal shower.

The most daring thing I’ve done in thirty-two years was sneak out of high school a half hour early to get ice cream.

I want to live.

Thirty-two years and that’s the headline. Ice cream. I’ve existed. I’ve never once lived.

“Yes.”

Chapter Eight

The slow dragof a zipper echoes in the dim locker room.

My fingertips buzz before my brain catches up. My brain is the slowest part of me tonight.

Leif moves faster than I’ve ever seen him move. One second there’s air between us and the next his hand is at the base of my throat, not gripping, just resting his thumb against my pulse like he’s taking a reading. His lips hover. And his eyes.

“Your…”

He doesn’t lunge for the kiss. He arrives at it by closing that last inch slowly. He waits for me to meet him and when I do, when he knows I’m in it just as much as him, then he kills that last inch.

His lips are softer than I expected. Pillowy. Distracting, and somehow not enough. He tastes like dessert, like the cooked icing my mother used to whip from scratch before she stopped making birthdays, and my whole mouth floods.

I knew he smelled like icing, but knowing he tastes like icing… I simply can’t get enough.

My hands fist in his suit. However I got here, whatever this is, I want him. I’ve fantasized about kissing Leif Dagon more times than I’ll ever admit.

What it would feel like to kiss Leif Dagon.

To make him moan.

To hear him and know I own his pleasure.

One night. One long, world-ending night, and then I shelve it somewhere I can take it out later. If that’s all I get, why the hell wouldn’t I take it.

I already know tonight changes everything. So for the first time in my life I stop bracing against the change and lean into it.