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  We kiss deep and hard, without any pretense, without any build. We’re already there. We didn’t start at zero, but we went straight to sixty, and now we’re speeding along this highway of kissing—mouths ravenous, tongues exploring, hands everywhere.

  Her fingers slide along my arms, along my neck, into my hair, tugging and pulling. I’m lit up everywhere, crackling and sizzling with desire for her. I break the kiss and point in the general direction of the hallway. “Room. Now.”

  Before I know it, we’re inside her room, and I push her up against the door and strip off the T-shirt then tug down her jeans and underwear. Her hands move quickly, unbuttoning my shirt and pushing down my jeans too. I kiss her neck, inhaling her delicious, luscious scent.

  I thread a hand through her hair, look her in the eyes, and say, “You need to know I’ve wanted you since the first night I met you.”

  She nods savagely, panting. “God, I’m so incredibly attracted to you, it’s ridiculous.”

  I slam my pelvis against her, letting her feel what she does to me. “It’s insane.”

  She pushes down my briefs, grabs my ass, and pulls me closer. “Do you have a condom? Because if you do, it would be great if you could get it on and then get inside me right now.”

  That’s really all she needs to say.

  The hotel provides condoms, but I have one too. Not because I expected to have sex with her. But because a man should always be prepared. In a few seconds, I rip it open, roll it on, and then I position myself between her legs, rubbing the head against her slippery sweetness, savoring our heat. “Oh, you really do want to be fucked tonight.”

  She nods. “I really want you to fuck me.”

  I push inside her, heat shooting all over my body as I fill her. Rocking, stroking, and thrusting—all I think about is her and the sheer intensity of this moment. We’re like a wire stretched to its limit, and all the tension of the last few years snaps as we come together at last. She pants, and I groan. Our bodies collide, moving together in a powerful, intoxicating rhythm.

  She grabs at my hair, telling me, “Harder, faster, there, right there, now.”

  I do as instructed, giving the woman what she wants until she’s shouting my name and coming hard.

  We don’t stop there. I bring her to the couch and bend her over it. She offers up her body so deliciously, her ass in the air, lovely and succulent, and I want to bite it and smack it and kiss it. I bend down and nibble on her rear, then get right back inside her.

  She claws at the cushions and rocks back against me.

  “Use your fingers too,” she tells me.

  I groan in pleasure. “There’s nothing I love more than when a woman knows exactly what she wants.”

  “I know exactly what I want. I want you to make me come again.”

  This is too much. This is so fucking good. This is the way it should be. Open, honest, fierce. Passionate.

  I bring a hand between her legs and touch her where she wants me most until she goes flying again and I follow her there.

  We pant and moan, and it takes ages to come down.

  But we do, and I turn on the fireplace, bring her over to the couch, and pull her close.

  This time we’re a little slower, a little more deliberate, but it’s still just as delicious. And the next best part? We don’t dissect it. We don’t freak out. She doesn’t say anything like Oh, holy shit, we shouldn’t have done that. Instead she says, “I think that was a long time in the making.”

  “Years, I’d say.”

  Later, we move to the shower and we kiss more there, exploring each other. She moans and purrs like a cat. “Tonight exists in another world, doesn’t it?” she asks softly.

  “Yeah, it does. Let’s keep enjoying it, okay?”

  Once we’re out of the shower, I bring her to the bed. She is spectacular in all of her naked glory and I need to have her again. I kiss her all over. Her neck, her throat, her breasts, her belly. And then I spread her legs open, and I taste her delicious sweetness, drinking her pleasure on my tongue.

  She’s hot and wet and needy. She arches up against me, saying my name, asking for more, moaning and groaning and telling me not to stop.

  As if I would.

  I send her over the edge again, and then she sits up, straddles me, and grabs another condom. Just like that, she rides me hard, and it’s a gorgeous sight.

  This is one of those nights when you don’t want to sleep.

  When you spend the entire night fucking, and it’s exactly what an entire night of fucking should be.

  It is the best night ever.

  The only problem is the morning comes.

  8

  Truly

  I squint.

  The sun blinds me.

  It streams through the window.

  Shining a light on last night.

  On tangled sheets. Condom wrappers. Clothes strewn on the floor.

  Awareness slams into me.

  “Malone would kill us,” I say, worry gripping my chest.

  “Yeah, he would,” Jason seconds.

  Only, that’s not entirely true. I don’t think my brother would hate us. I don’t even know how upset he would be.

  But I’m upset. Because I’ve done something I swore I’d never do. I’ve broken a promise to myself and a promise I made to others. I can’t let something like that happen again, no matter how much I want Jason. “Can we agree that last night was amazing?”

  “It was incredible.”

  “But it can’t happen again,” I say.

  He sits, nodding reluctantly. “I agree. It can’t happen again.”

  I breathe a sigh of relief. “Good.”

  “Did you think I would feel otherwise?”

  “No, I’m glad you feel the same. We have to go back to being just friends, Jason.”

  “Yeah. This was just a lapse . . . We were away for the day. We weren’t in New York. It was the snow—blame it on the snow.”

  I laugh. “We can definitely blame it on the snow. And those fireplaces.”

  We drive back to Manhattan, and it’s as if the night rewinds like a roll of film.

  We reenact the drive up, singing along to the Rolling Stones and the Beatles and remaking the fabric of our friendship.

  By the time we arrive in New York City, last night is just a memory.

  “I think we did it. We’re the textbook case for friends getting caught up in the moment and then returning to the friend zone,” I say.

  He offers a hand to high-five. “We are definitely back in the friend zone.” And that’s where we stay for the next six months, until the night he walks into my bar with a proposition…

  * * *

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