Peach lace.

“Ahhh, fuck,” I groaned. My gaze locked with hers, and her breathing became choppy as she wet her lips.

“Y-you said you wanted to see me in it,” she whispered, her voice so low I had to lean in to hear her.

I sure had. In her office a few days before, I’d pointed to this very piece of lingerie. And now, here she was wearing it.

For me.

My resolve not to sleep with her was hanging by a fucking thread, and that thread was unraveling faster by the second.

“I want to see the rest of it more than you could possibly know.” In fact, my dick was so hard, it could have crushed coal into diamonds. “But if I unfasten one more button, we’re never getting out of this car.”

“Would that be so bad?” she asked.

She gnawed on that bottom lip the way she always did, and I let my thumb caress just a scant inch of the soft fabric before pulling back.

“Yup. Because if you think your real first time is going to be in a car, you’ve lost your mind.”

And if I didn’t get out of said car, I was going to lose mine.

I pressed a hard, rough kiss to her mouth because I couldn’t not do it, and then I flung open my door. “Now, let’s go have some fun.”

Luckily, we did. We strutted into Rap Scallion’s hand in hand like we owned the place. We got a few looks from the jeans-and-T-shirt crowd, but soon enough, everyone went back to their beers, and Evie and I were engaged in a heated battle at the dartboard.

“All I need is a bull’s-eye and I win,” she said, rubbing her hands together with glee as she lined up the tip of her high-heeled shoe with the piece of black tape that marked the floor. She closed one eye and perched the tip of her tongue on her top lip as she focused.

As competitive a person as I was, I felt a rush of pride wash over me as she launched that dart into the heart of the board. The electronic game beeped and blinked wildly in celebration of her victory, and she danced along with the noise in time.

“Oh yeah, oh yeah, I’m a beast!” she chanted, shimmying in place as I looked on, shaking my head in mock disappointment.

In truth, I could have watched her shimmy all night. A swath of that peach lace flashed at her waist whenever she moved, and it was doing things to my insides that I couldn’t even describe.

I strolled toward her and bowed deeply like the waiter at the restaurant. “Congratulations, mademoiselle. May I buy you a victory drink?”

She grinned and nodded. “Yes, please. No Sex on the Beach, though. Shot and a beer for me.”

We made our way back to the bar and I placed our drink order. While we waited, she sent me a grin that lit up the room.

“This was a great idea. I’m having a blast. Remember the night of my birthday, when we first got here we did that trivia contest? And Cullen made our team name Multiple Scorgasms?”

I laughed out loud at the memory. “That was awesome. And to be fair, we did crush it that night.”

“We did. I think that was the last time I got to hang out with Pam. How is she doing?”

Thinking of my sister made me realize I hadn’t shared the news yet. “Actually, she’s pregnant again.”

Evie stared at me before clapping a hand over her mouth. “For real? Holy shit, she’s amazing. I don’t know how she does it all. When I have kids, I think I’m going to need to . . . Never mind.” She stopped short and blushed before taking a swallow of the beer the bartender had set in front of her.

“You’re allowed to talk about the future and the things you want in life, Evie,” I said gently.

Maybe our whole talk about being casual had made her afraid to talk to me about anything serious. That was a mistake. While I wanted to take things slow, it had become glaringly obvious in the past weeks that this was as serious as things had ever gotten for me.

“I didn’t want you to think because I want kids one day that meant I expected them to be yours or whatever,” she said, finally meeting my gaze.

The vulnerability in her eyes made me ache for her, and I leaned in and pressed my forehead against hers.

“I know that. And I’m not sure how this is all going to turn out, but I can tell you this. Thinking of you with someone else’s babies makes me want to break shit. And if that’s not casual, then too fucking bad.”

Her grin was tremulous, and she traced a fingertip over my mouth. “Yeah. Too fucking bad.”

This was deep. Deeper than we’d gone so far, and part of me wanted to pull back.

Opening up about shit like this had always been a bone of contention between my ex and me. Talking about kids and the future had been terrifying. What if I was like my own father and found out that, once I had a kid, I didn’t want to be a parent anymore? What if I was shitty at it, like my mother, and opted out when things got hard?

Time and time again, Karen had pressed. And time and time again, it had felt like an invasion of privacy. Eventually it became a no-fly zone, and we’d drifted apart with nothing real to sustain us.

But with Evie, even as I was about to change the subject and make a joke out of sheer habit, something stopped me. This didn’t feel like an invasion at all. It felt right. Like getting something off my chest that had been sitting there like a weight for a very long time.

I cupped the back of her head and touched my lips gently to hers in the softest of kisses. For a long time, we stayed like that, breathing in sync, just holding each other, and damn if it didn’t feel good.