“I didn’t know until today. Hey, you like it, too…”

“Mm, you noticed.” He smiled and pulled me to my feet, rolling my leggings back up and smoothing my sweater back down. When he saw my wet spot on the floor, his smile turned to a satisfied smirk. “You really enjoyed it…”

“Is that horrible?”

“Not horrible. It wasn’t real. It’s not real.” Matt tucked my head under his chin and stroked my hair. “It’s a fantasy, and you trust me, don’t you?”

I nodded. With the euphoria of orgasm still moving through me, it was easy to forget my troubles: Nate, Seth, and the fact that Matt had risked everything by taking a cab here.

“What we do in our bed is no one’s business,” he said.

“On our floor,” I mumbled.

He laughed, the sound purring in his chest. “Yes, on our floor, too. Behind closed doors.”

I grinned impishly. “Behind broken doors.”

At that, we dissolved into laughter. We inspected the office door. One of the barrel hinges was loose, torn out of the frame. The mechanism inside the knob was busted.

“Oops.” Matt jiggled the knob. His eyes were bright, his expression amused and apologetic. Sheepish Matt … so f**king adorable.

“Baby, did … did you use your shoulder?”

He glanced at me. “Mm. I was feeling manly. Should have used my foot…”

“Oh, sweetheart.” I ruffled his hair.

“I’ll fix it. Tomorrow or something.” He took my hand and we went through the condo closing blinds. When we were sure no one could see in, I turned on a lamp in the living room. Laurence dashed back and forth in his hutch.

“He’s excited to see you.” I smiled.

“He’s fat and he wants a treat.” Matt fed raisins through the wire mesh.

More Matt adorableness: pretending he didn’t love that rabbit to death.

I sat on the couch and watched Matt prowl around the condo. He glared at everything. He studied the plants and books, opened the kitchen cupboards, looked through the fridge.

“Feels good to be here,” he announced.

“You look good here, Matt.” I worried a pill on my sweater. “Like you belong here.”

“Don’t I look good everywhere?” At last, he returned to me. He wore a small self-deprecating smile. He knelt at my feet and pushed apart my knees. He rubbed my thighs and stared up at me. Beautiful, I thought. Larger than life. Matt filled the rooms of our condo with his anger and his electricity. Did everyone see that, or did I see it because I loved him?

I covered his hands with mine.

“Matt, did you seriously take a cab all the way out here?”

“Mm. Don’t worry, Hannah.” He produced a hat and sunglasses from his coat pocket. A scarf dangled around his neck. “I wore my disguise.”

I sighed and laughed.

“I feel like a spy.” He grinned.

Matt continued massaging my thighs, pushing my dress higher and higher. He looked good on his knees, and I was exhausted, so I let it go. If Matt wanted to take a cab from the cabin to Denver, I couldn’t stop him. He couldn’t be stopped.

The tempo of his hands changed. His expression sobered. Subtle changes I recognized.

I slid off the couch and onto the floor with him. I touched the front of his jeans. Beneath my fingers, his c**k twitched and expanded. He exhaled softly.

“Hannah…”

I grasped a handful of his hair so that I could hold his head steady. I didn’t want him hiding his face against my neck. I wanted to watch his eyes, his mouth.

His lips parted as I touched the shape of him. His arousal grew.

“Lift your shirt,” I whispered.

Matt complied. In rare moments, he let me call the shots. He gathered his coat and T-shirt up his chest, and I leaned in to flick my tongue over his ni**les.

His c**k strained into my hand. Now I could grip it through his jeans and boxers, a taut prison of fabric. I handled him gently as I sucked on his nipple. He began to tremble, but he wouldn’t ask me to stop. So proud. I knew how sensitive his ni**les were. Almost too sensitive, he told me once. I bit down and pulled on his other nipple. He hissed. His c**k tightened.

“H-Hannah. Take it out…”

“Look at it with me,” I whispered. I tongued saliva over his ni**les and lifted my head. His expression was tense—jaw clenched, brows knit, nostrils flared. He nodded and my fingernails scraped against his scalp. I wouldn’t let him go. I wouldn’t let him hide.

While Matt held his jacket, exposing his toned abs and chest, I undid his jeans and tugged at his boxers until his c**k sprang free. He sighed again and closed his eyes. If he were given to blushing, I think he would have blushed then.

“Matt, I love it,” I said. I palmed his smooth sac and he groaned. “Please, don’t close your eyes. Look at it with me. I miss you. I miss this.”

His eyelids lifted partway. He watched my hand and his erection, which stood out like a ramrod between us. The golden hair around the base was neatly trimmed. Here, even here, Matt was beautiful. The skin of his shaft was velvet, subtly veined, and thick and long. It ended in the sleek bell of his head, which leaked cum at the slightest attention.

I watched the fluid gather on his tip.

“Look,” I said. I trailed my hand up his shaft to his head and rolled my thumb over it, smearing the cum. He trembled. I brought my thumb to my mouth and spread Matt’s desire like gloss on my lips. I licked them clean while he watched.

Again, I gathered his cum on the pad of my finger. I rubbed it on his nipple and he moaned. “Hannah, enough.”

I wanted to jack him off and watch him while I did it, but Matt wanted to be inside me again. My hold over him broke. He dropped his shirt and took my hand. He rose unsteadily.

Without a word, he led me to our bedroom.

Chapter 28

MATT

On Saturday evening, Hannah dressed in a black-and-white skirt suit for the release party. I tied a silk scarf around her neck to hide my love bites. We’d been in bed almost nonstop since my impromptu arrival, emerging only to bathe and eat.

And the sex was different—tinged with violence. Hannah struggled every time, and I f**ked her hard while she begged me to stop. It gave me a terrible thrill.

“Why do you have to go so early?” I pulled her into my arms. “It’s my book you’re celebrating. I should have some say in this.”

I kissed her neck and cupped her ass. She wriggled against my hands. Such a tease.

“Because,” she said with a sigh, “I promised Pam I’d help set up, like I said. Several times.”

“Let me look at your ass.” I turned Hannah around and bit the back of her neck. I tucked her bottom against my groin. “You wouldn’t leave me alone with a hard-on, would you?”

“I might.” She grinned over her shoulder. “Lube’s in the bedside table.”

“You’re a bad bird.”

We fooled around halfheartedly, and then Hannah left. I was instantly miserable.

I wandered the condo, trying to comprehend Hannah’s life apart from me. Nothing looked different. There was her yoga mat, her exercise ball, a few manuscripts from work. The rooms were tidy. I found leftovers from various meals in the fridge.

I checked the wall safe. Everything was in order: the cash, her TracFone, the unit cards.

Hannah’s life went on without me.

I peeked through the blinds at Denver by night. The shops were lit. I saw friends barhopping and heard car horns honking. People rushing to their Saturday evening plans.

And me with nothing to do, dead to everyone but Hannah. And Melanie … my “cab.”

I called her.

“’Sup, Cabin Fever? Hey, can I call you that?”

I sneered. The new nickname was too apropos.

“Checking in,” I said.

“Uh-huh…”

“Mm, can you blame me? You’re alone in a new city, twenty-two, prone to doing very illegal things on the Internet.”

“And you’re bored and lonely,” Mel said.

“What? No.” Yes.

“I know Hannah’s at the release party. You told me, Matt.”

“I’m not bored. I’m home on a Saturday night. I thought you might be bored.”

“Sure.” Mel chuckled. She was silent for a while, and then she clicked her tongue. “I’ll pick you up in a few minutes, okay? I am pretty bored, come to think.”

“I want to be back by eight.” I think Mel knew she was doing me a favor, and I didn’t care. “And don’t meet me out front. I’ll go out back.”

“Fine.”

“Fine.” I hung up.

I killed time cleaning Laurence’s hutch, then bundled up in my coat, hat, scarf, and sunglasses, and slipped out of the complex by the back exit. Mel’s Corolla idled at the corner.

I climbed in. “The color of this car, it’s like a neon sign. Ridiculous.” I was trying not to smile. The condo wasn’t home anymore, not without Hannah, and it felt good to escape.

“Whoa, what happened to you?”

“Hm?” I adjusted my sunglasses. After wrestling with Hannah over the last two days, I looked a little worse for wear. She’d inadvertently elbowed my eye, purpling the orbit. A bruise darkened my jaw. Scratches lined my neck and I had hickies and other bruises all over my body. Hannah had a few marks, too, but no black eye, thank God. “Fight club,” I mumbled.

“Tough love.” Mel sighed. “Lucky girl.”

“Drive.”

“Okay, yeesh.” She pulled away from the condo. “Wanna … watch TV? I’ve got HBO at the hotel. I have a deck of cards, too.”

I glanced at Mel as she navigated Denver. She was a good driver, confident on unfamiliar roads. She didn’t make one wrong turn during the two-hour drive from the cabin.

Tonight, she’d straightened her red hair. It was thick and glossy like shampoo commercial hair. She wore a tight puffy vest and a hooded sweater beneath, the hood fur-trimmed. Fur again. She owned a jacket with fur and furry boots.

“You like fur,” I said.

“Profound observations from the late great author. So, the hotel?”

“No. I don’t think we should … be in your hotel room.”

“Oookay. Even though we’re staying at the cabin together?”

“The cabin is different.”

“Am I too tempting, Mr. Sky?” She flipped her hair. I snorted. “I’m kidding, kidding. I’ve seen Hannah. I know I’ve got no chance.”

“I didn’t realize you wanted a chance.”

“Oh, please.” Mel turned the wheel on a whim, taking us closer to the heart of Denver. “You’re attractive, you’re unmarried, you have an actual brain, and you’ve got that whole”—she gestured—“brooding artist thing going on. Do I need to spell it out for you? Nine in ten women would want a chance.”

“That’s not true.” I shifted on my seat. “And I don’t have a thing going on. You make it sound pretentious.”

“You know what I mean.”

“You’re cute, Mel. You shouldn’t have any trouble finding someone. And even if circumstances were different—” I shook my head. The lights of the city scrolled past, muted by my sunglasses. “You’re too young for me.”

Melanie grew quiet.

A crowd crossed the street in front of us, friends laughing and shouting.

I glanced at Mel. The excitement was gone from her face.

I meant it when I said Mel was cute—she was on par with Hannah, at least—but the world is full of beautiful women, and love, which starts as a feeling, always ends as a choice.

A familiar sign caught my eye, winking blue in the night. LOT 49, BAR AND LOUNGE.

I tapped the dash. “But you’re not too young to drink,” I said.

* * *

Ten minutes later, Mel and I sat in a private booth at the back of the Lot. I still wore my winter regalia, which kept Mel giggling. I even had on my sunglasses.

“You look ridiculous. Like, even more suspicious.” Melanie sipped her pint. She’d tried to order a rum and Coke, the drink of drinkers who have no idea what they’re doing, and I intervened to order her a vanilla stout with a shot of blackberry whiskey.

I looked around and removed my shades.

“Everyone in Denver knows the story of M. Pierce,” I whispered. “Plus, I mentioned this place in Night Owl. Can’t be too f**king careful.”

“Hey, you wanted to come in here.” She had foam on her upper lip. I gestured. “What, you like my mouth? Oh, my, Mr. Sky.”

“Don’t say my name!” I prodded her mouth with a napkin. “Did you even read Night Owl, or did you just publish it like a crazy person?”

“I read it.” Melanie waggled her eyebrows. “This is where you saw the luscious Hannah for the first time.”

“Ha. Luscious is right.”

I relaxed as the minutes passed and slipped off my hat and shrugged out of my coat. The bar was warm and no one gave a damn about Mel and me. When I ordered another pint for her, the tender didn’t look at me twice.

We chatted about Mel’s blog, her unfinished four-year degree, and crappy temp jobs she’d taken in recent months. She’d worked in a concrete call center where she had to punch in and out for bathroom breaks. She’d taken surveys and picked up trash in parks.

“This is by far my best gig,” she said.

I felt pretty f**king sorry for her then, and I wished she could keep on cashing in with Night Owl. Too bad.