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“It is now.”

She stares at me for a long second. Then her eyes slide closed again, and she’s gone.

I take the comforter off her. I take off her skirt and her shirt, and her bra, until she’s naked on my sheets, soft and brown and covered in my marks. Fingerprints on her hips. My bite on her tit. The scrape on her neck from my glove. Her thighs still sticky with me.

I get undressed and get in next to her and pull her back against my chest. Her ass fits against my hips. Her head fits under my chin. My hand fits on her belly.

My bed’s not too small. My feet don’t hang off the end. There’s no spring in my kidney and no boots upstairs and no 405. There’s just the ocean, and the dark, and the guards at the gate, and her.

In about four hours, she’s gonna wake up and lose her fucking mind.

I can’t wait.

Six

Dylan

The first thing I see is the ocean. Not a picture of the ocean. Not a screensaver. The actual Pacific Ocean, blue and glittering and huge, filling up a wall of glass from the floor to a ceiling so high I can’t tell where it ends.

I’m dreaming. I gotta be dreaming.

I blink. It’s still there. A sailboat. A seagull. The sun bouncing off the water so bright it hurts.

I’m lying in the middle of a bed so big I could roll over four times and not fall off. White sheets. White pillows. Soft as clouds. And I’m naked. Butt-naked, sore everywhere, sticky between my thighs, and there’s a big tattooed arm wrapped around my waist, and a big hand spread on my belly, and something hard pressed against my ass.

I sit straight up.

“Where am I?”

The arm tightens and drags me right back down.

“Morning,” he says into my neck.

I twist around in his arms, and there he is.

I’ve never seen this man in the daylight. In the club, he was a big shadow in a suit. At the hotel, it was dark. Last night, he had on a whole mask. Now the sun’s coming through all that glass right on top of him, and I can see everything.

Lord have mercy.

He’s laid out on his back on white sheets with one arm behind his head like he’s posing for something. And he’s big. Bigger lying down, somehow. That arm behind his head is thick as my thigh. His chest is covered in tattoos, stars on his shoulders, a church across his ribs, some letters going down his stomach, all of it faded and blurry like he got it in jail. Which, knowing him? Probably. Dark hair on his chest going gray in the middle. And abs. This forty-two-year-old man got abs. There’s a long nasty scar across his side, and another one on his shoulder, round and puckered.

That’s a bullet hole. Somebody shot this man.

And I get wet.

Just like that. Sore as I am. I feel it, warm and slick, right there on his sheets.

Girl. Girl. What is wrong with you?

His face is rough in the morning. Beard grown in dark and scratchy. The same beard that had my thighs burning two nights ago, and the second I think about that, I swear I feel it again. That gray at his temples is shining in the sun. Little lines by his eyes. And his blue eyes are on me, lazy and calm, like he’s already had his breakfast and I was it.

He’s butt-naked. The sheet’s pushed down past his hips. And his dick is just out. Hard. Laying on his stomach like it pays rent here. And he don’t care one bit that I’m looking at it.

I’m looking at it.

I’m looking at it, and my mouth is watering, and my nipples are hard enough to cut glass, and I can feel myself getting wet all over again on top of what he already left in me. I’m sore. I’m so sore I can barely close my legs. And my body’s looking at this man like, okay, but what if we did it one more time.

This man kidnapped me.