He wasn’t a man I would typically go for. He was a little too tall, a little too muscular, and maybe a little too handsome. He was someone to gawk at on the cover of magazines, someone to press you so deep into your mattress he would leave an outline of your body. It’s awful to think, especially from someone who considers herself to be a feminist, but he was someone to objectify. Maybe that was why I found it hard to look away. This man was like one of those white tigers or albino lions; they’re so rare and majestic that you can’t help but be enthralled by their beauty.

Glancing around at the people nearest him, I noticed he didn’t seem to pay any attention to the various women and men who were ogling him in obvious fascination.

“Jesus, isn’t he something,” Piper said as her tongue missed the straw of her water. I couldn’t help but laugh when I thought about it. We were just another group of onlookers swept up in some magic spell this man seemed to be casting on anyone with a pair of functioning eyes.

Returning to my water, I resisted the urge to turn my full body to face him as my friends had done. Kerri bumped my shoulder, putting more strength in the movement than I think she intended, but enough to get my attention either way. When I turned my head, she simply nodded in his direction and said, “Honey, if you weren’t looking, I’d honestly think you were gay. Although I must say, that right there is probably more man than you could handle. You have to ease yourself in before you take on that mountain. Climb a few slopes first.”

I guess it was safe to say that my trying too hard not to look affected by him was blatant, and my friend wasn’t going to let me off that easily.

“I need the bathroom,” I said, looking around for a hidden hallway that typically concealed the bathrooms in places like those. I spotted a darkened area with a sign for the restrooms posted on a half-wall littered with other ads for various clubs and deejays.

The trip to the restroom was slightly sobering, but that was nothing compared to what awaited me when I stepped outside of the bathroom.

The man from the bar.

He was just a few steps from the partition, facing the entrance to the hallway as if he was waiting on someone. When I was a mere few feet from him, his face broke out into a remembering smile, leaving me stunned in its wake.

I glanced around, checking over my shoulder. I always hated that feeling that someone was looking or smiling at you, only to turn around and find that they weren’t looking at you at all. Except, when I turned around, there was no one directly facing him, which led me to believe that that smile was without a doubt intended for me. This mountain god is looking at me. Like he knows me.

“I saw you earlier, you know.” He tossed his words out as though they were something to say in passing, not to open a line of communication, but what did I know? I was drunk, and he was gorgeous. Under ordinary circumstances, I’d be scurrying back to the bar, urging my friends that I’d had my fun and it was time to go, but my mind was working slower, incapable of processing what was happening. All I could do was cycle through the deep rasp of his words and acknowledge how even the hairs on my arms were affected by him.

“You were dancing, with your friends…” He moved closer, his large hands gripping the sides of my waist. His fingers, long and thick, stretched across the dip in my back until they almost met in the middle above my ass. My breath hitched, as his face dropped down next to my jaw so he could speak directly in my ear. “Are you here celebrating something?”

“No.”

“So if I steal you away, I won’t be ruining someone’s birthday or anniversary, will I?”

“No.”

His face feathered against my jaw, his smooth skin gliding across mine like warm honey dripping from a butter knife. His breath tunneled into my ear, sending shivers to my core. He captured my earlobe between his lips, and the intense eroticism of the moment did more for my racing thoughts than the soft lips and suede tongue that grounded me within that very moment. I’d never had a man so blatantly demonstrate his desire for me.

The fact that I didn’t know his name was barely a passing thought as his lips suckled my ear. He followed up with a lick to my throat, and it was like we were two mammals drawn in by some animal magnetism that was bigger than us—the desire to mate that was suppressed in humans still existed between us.

A gust of wind pulled up between us, and I noticed that he’d stepped back. He broke away from me yet intertwined his fingers with mine as he led me to the front of the bar. It wasn’t until I was nearly upon my friends’ location at the bar that I tugged against his stronghold, which was leading me to the exit.

“Wait. My friends,” I said releasing my hand from his. He took a step to the side and waited patiently as I took in the shocked expressions on both Kerri’s and Piper’s faces.

“Holy shit,” Piper whispered.

“You’ve got balls, honey, I’ll tell you that.”

I looked from Piper to Kerri, and it suddenly hit me: I was about to exit with a man I didn’t know. But he was just the kind of man this kind of thing would happen with. He looked too remarkable, too suave, like this wasn’t his first time doing something so reckless. It was definitely mine.

He must have noticed something on my face when he looked back at me because he nodded subtly, and before I knew it, he was pulling something from his wallet and handing it over to Kerri. Kerri took a quick look at the thin piece of paper that easily fit in her palm and gave me a slight push toward the man who stood with his palm held out for me to take. Something about their exchange made me feel like I was an escort and Kerri was my madam.

I didn’t need any other push, and soon I was sitting in the passenger seat of his sports car. The make and model of the car slipped my mind as all I seemed to take in was how I could feel the timbre of his voice vibrate through my seat—thrumming between my legs—as he asked where I lived. I must have told him my address because soon we were both buckled in and fast on our way to my place, twenty minutes west of the strip.

The rest seemed to be a jumbled mess, events made hazy by lust and alcohol. He parked in my driveway and I remember fumbling for the door handle, and being pleasantly surprised when he strode around the car to open the door for me. He even opened the house door when my keys slipped through my palms and dropped to the pavement at my feet. Everything after that sort of blurred together.

“I’ve never been mountain climbing,” I confessed between panting breaths as I straddled his naked body. I remember falling into a fit of giggles, lost in the confusion of my statement. It didn’t matter though because soon our lips, our bodies were moving in a blur that had my body on fire. A heavy throb pulsed between my legs, ratcheting up my desire for the man who made my heart race with just a look.

The sheets surrounding us only expounded the heat simmering between our tightly pressed bodies. Hands gripped the globes of my ass and pulled them apart, drawing awareness to the wetness pooling at my core.

“Say you want me to fuck you,” I remembered him saying. He pinched my nipples and the torturous bliss shot down my body, making my clit throb harder for relief. His length pressed hard against my slit, nudging at my entrance.

Time slowed down in the moments that I sat there astride his lap with hands that tortured as he touched me everywhere. I’d never felt so needy, so desperate, so consumed.

“Open your eyes,” he grumbled. Those green eyes were sobering, staring at me as if he knew I needed this, and he didn’t want me to miss a moment of what was happening between us. His eyes seemed to hypnotize every nerve in my body—the chorus of excitement vibrated through my core, whispering my need into every closed-off part of my heart.