“I don’t have my cl—”

He presses his lips against mine, and I melt. My whole body falls limp and I let him kiss me. I let him claim my mouth, my lips. I let him taste me with his tongue, give my lower lip a soft bite with his teeth.

Eventually, feeling returns to my arms, and I wind them around his neck. It’s my first kiss ever, and I don’t know what to do, but all I want to do is press my body into him, get closer, feel his heat on me.

I get up and try to straddle him, but he stands, too, and pushes me against the glass window. I know there’s a security guard in there somewhere, and he’s probably watching – or awkwardly trying not to – but I don’t care.

The only way to describe his hands is hungry. They’re running up and down my sides, over my hips, my ass. He gives it a squeeze lifts me up to my toes, and breaks the kiss.

I try to capture his lips again, try to give myself to him again. I want him. Oh, God, I want him.

“Pen,” he says, pulling his head back a little.

I gaze into his eyes, brow furrowed, feeling self-conscious and rejected.

“What?” I ask, now pulling my own head back. He cups my face in his hand, and brings my head forward, and slowly, ever so slowly, he runs the tip of his tongue around my ear.

Then he whispers, “You’re drunk.”

“So?” I say defiantly. But I notice now that I’m standing, I’m feeling off-balance, wobbly. I can’t focus on his eyes properly.

“I can see it,” he tells me. “You eat dinner tonight?”

“No,” I tell him. “So what?”

He backs up, leaves me standing alone pressed up against the window. He picks up the empty champagne bottle and the two glasses. He empties one glass over the edge of the balcony.

“Come on,” he says. “I’ll drive you home.”

“I don’t want to go home,” I tell him. I feel… compromised, now. I feel like he’s seen my cards. I feel at a disadvantage.

I hate it.

“Besides, you can’t drive.”

“I didn’t finish my glass.”

I can’t help but look at his lips. I want them again. I want to taste him again, smell him up close. Beneath his cologne was something manly, musky. He smelled so wonderful. I want to push my nose into his neck and inhale.

“Pierce,” I tell him, but a nervous laugh betrays me. “You brought me all the way down here. I mean, we only just got here.”

“We’ve been here for over two hours.”

I blink. Has it really been that long?

“It’s nearly four.”

I go to my bag and pull out my phone. Jesus, it really is.

But I don’t want to go yet. I go to Pierce, slither my arms around his waist and look up at him. “Come on, let’s drink a little longer.”

“No.”

“Why?”

His face is hard now, all serious. “Because if I stay here with you any longer, you’ll come home with me tonight.”

I chew my lower lip. “So?”

He pulls away without replying.

“What is this, some kind of honor thing?” I ask angrily. “If a girl gets drunk it’s no longer a challenge?”

He shrugs, pours the contents of the second glass over the balcony. “Let’s go.”

I don’t know where it comes from. It just explodes out of me. “You pussy! You’re all talk.”

Something changes in him. He drops the bottle and champagne glasses. I watch as the neck of one of them breaks against the tiled floor.

Pierce steps toward me, grabs my hands and pins them above my head, and lifts me into the glass window, presses his body right up on mine.

His face is in mine, eyes boring into mine, lips hovering millimeters away. “Is this what you want?” he says, and he kisses me hard, forces his tongue into my mouth. It’s rough.

“Is it?” he asks, tearing his lips from mine. He presses his hips into me, and I feel his hardness. “Like this?” he pushes, taking my lips again, biting me until it hurts. I feel his hard cock against my pubic bone.

I don’t know how to respond. My heart is beating furiously. I want to say both ‘yes’ and ‘no’.

“Well?” he asks, and his hand goes to my jaw. He rubs a thumb along my lower lip. He pulls it down, leans in and takes it in between his lips and sucks on it.

This time I kiss him back, but he pulls away again, and I let out a mewl of frustration.

“You want your first time to be like this?”

The world drowns away. I can’t hear anything but a dull whine. It’s like a bomb has just gone off.

“What?” I whisper.

“Do you,” he says, spacing out the words. He bucks his hips again. This time his hardness hits my clit, and even through my jeans, the sudden sensation pulls a small sound from my throat, a jolt from my body. “Want your first time to be like this?”

My voice is scratchy now. “Who says it’s my first time?”

“Christ,” he whispers, letting go of my hands and letting me down onto the ground. He shows his back to me, leans over the balcony.

Again, I find myself feeling undone, unraveled, bared. Why is he doing this to me? An anger starts to bubble. I’m embarrassed.

He turns around, and he takes my hand. “Pen.”

“What?” I say, looking away.

He brings himself close, and again I can smell him. I want to fall into his arms.

“I want to be with you,” he says. “God, I’d fuck you straight through to lunch.” There’s a flicker of his lips, an almost-smile. “But not like this. I’m not into this.”

“Not into what?” I say. “You think it’s no longer a conquest if the girl is drunk, ain’t that right? Your ego needs me to be sober.”

“Drunk girls are a sloppy lay.” He shrugs. “It wouldn’t be worth my time.”

“Fuck you, Pierce.”

“Time to go, Pen.”

“I don’t need you to parent me.”

“Parenting you,” he says, “Is the last thing I’ll ever do. But you’re still going home.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m going home.”

“So? I’ll stay here!”

“We close in thirty minutes.”

“Then I’ll stay the thirty minutes.”

“With who? Do what? Go back down to the club?”

I don’t reply. That’s exactly what I don’t want to do.

He coils an arm around my waist and pulls me forward. “We’re going.”

Chapter Eleven