Suri nods. “Cross and Merri jumped out the window, into the pool. Marchant…” she starts; her eyebrows pull together, all concerned, and I know where she’s going. I know what she’s asking. And I don’t intend to tell her one damn thing.

I turn around and start across the busy street. I don’t give a fuck that I’m not wearing shoes or a shirt. I don’t care that there’s no crosswalk either. As I dash through traffic, I feel confident I’ll be alone when I get to the hotel parking lot.

I clear the curb, and a patch of grass pokes my bare feet. I glance at Dalton, who is one step behind me. I fix her with a ‘fuck off’ look and try to set things right. “Could you go? I’d like to be alone.”

The breeze blows a strand of hair across her rosy cheeks, and I watch her mouth as she bites down on her lower lip. “I’m not going to do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because you almost died tonight, for one.”

I sneer. “What’s two?”

She looks me over, head to toe. Her lips pinch. “Because you’re a raging mess. I think you need me.”

“You fucking wish.”

She’s shivering violently now, wrapping her arms over her chest, where I can see hard nipples through her shirt. Her pretty face is hard; pissed off. Score one for me. “No I don’t, you arrogant ass. I wish I was at home, in my warm bed. But I’m here, with you, because I found you at the bottom of a fucking pool! What’s wrong with you?”

The wind carries her voice across the hotel parking lot, where it dies amidst a line of neatly parked cars and SUVs.

I take a step closer to her, hoping to evoke emotion in myself. But when I look into her hazel eyes, I feel nothing.

“Go the fuck away,” I tell her. I inject a heavy dose of disdain into my voice and add a dismissive wave I hope will piss her off enough to make her disappear.

I can feel the darkness start to gather in me, collecting just below my throat like a weight on my breastbone. I need her to go before things with me get bad again.

She shakes her head. “I’m not leaving.”

 “I don’t need a fucking friend.”

But those big eyes are irrationally kind. Did you do it on purpose? That’s what she’s wondering, but she would never put it into words. Funny, because I almost want her to. I dare her with my eyes, and her gaze drops down to our feet. When she looks back up, her face is sad.

I stuff my hands in my jeans pockets, enjoying the way the denim burns my singed skin as I try it one more time. “I said go the fuck away.”

She tosses her damp hair over her shoulders and gives me a tired sigh. “After I get your room,” she says. “If that’s what you really want.”

We walk in silence past the curbside drop-off and through the automatic doors. She goes to the desk while I pace around by the coffee machines. I can hear her talking in hushed tones to the clerk, and I wonder what the fuck she’s saying. Finally, she turns around, armed with a little paper packet of room cards.

She hands them to me, but she doesn’t leave. When I head to the elevators, she follows me. I don’t look at her. Not when she pushes the “2” button, and not when she gets off the elevator before I do. I don’t look at her as I clench and unclench my hands because I’m feeling so damn edgy.

She gets a card into the door before I can, and pushes it open. As she steps away, those pretty hazel eyes peek up at me. “You sure you want me to go?”

I don’t know what I want. I don’t know anything—except I fucking hate myself.

So I do the worst thing I can do. I grab her shoulders and kiss her.

SURI

This is entirely different than the time at the Wynn.

He’s forceful this time—from the moment he grabs my shoulders and spins me around so he can take my mouth. There’s this millisecond when his lips first touch mine where I have a choice. Where I can pull away if I want. But I don’t.

Because I pulled him up from the bottom of a pool but I’m not sure I saved his life. Because he is both cruel and broken, and despite both, my body screams for his.

When his lips touch mine, I can barely keep my knees from giving way.

Marchant sweeps the door open and wraps an arm around me, dragging me toward the king-sized bed. He turns me around and urges me down onto my back, with my legs hanging off the side of the mattress. He parts my knees and stands between them, leaning down over me so he can kiss my throat, my chin, my cheeks, and finally—when I can’t stand it anymore—my mouth.

His lips close over mine with a harsh groan, and I sink my hands into his wild hair and pull him down on me. His body is warm and hard. I run my fingers from his biceps down his taut sides, and they leave trails of goosebumps. He’s hard in seconds, pressing himself urgently against me.

I can feel his abs jerk as he breathes between our kisses: ragged breaths that do nothing to slow the fury of his mouth on mine.

His taste is a drug—hot and sweet and just a little salty.

With all thought stalled by the rhythm of our mouths and hands, I notice everything about the way he moves and feels. How when he breathes, his ribcage presses into mine so hard it hurts. Each and every kiss brings him down on me a little heavier. There’s something predatory about the way he grabs my shoulder, yanks my hair, nips at my neck, crawls up on the bed and tosses me back a few feet. He climbs up on top of me, and I’m reminded of a lion.

Rough becomes forceful, almost painful. My mouth feels bruised, yet when he wrenches his away to grab a breath, my hand around his neck pulls him back down for more. Another hit. A feeding frenzy.

We’re both slick with sweat, and salty. Licking, nipping, stroking, pinching. His hands slide down my hips and underneath my ass. He lifts me up and pushes his hips down. The room spins. I need him inside of me.

And then his hands are gone. His mouth is wrenched off mine. He pants above me, looking into my eyes with his wild brown ones.

“Why are you here?”

I remember the sensation of dragging him up from the bottom of the pool. Trying to kick enough for both of us. How heavy he was; how still. Does it count as saving if he didn’t want it? The question expands inside my mouth, but I don’t know how ask it.

I swallow instead and whisper through my sore lips, “Because…I want to feel something.”

His kisses are gentler when he eases back down on me. He lifts my shirt up, then slides one hand down my hip and peels back my yoga pants. As his hand finds me where I’m wet, his eyes widen.

“You’re beautiful, woman. Fucking beautiful.”

He crawls down and his mouth joins his hand, and I come quickly. It’s like the sky being torn in two. He does it again, and again, until I’m quivering and exhausted. Then he lies beside me and kisses my neck.

I palm him through his slacks and find him hard as stone. I fumble with the button of his pants, finally pull them down, then sit up to urge him down onto his back. I stare for a moment at his naked abs and hips and thighs. There’s something beautiful about his shape.

I long to know what the tattoo means, but I don’t dare ask. I don’t even touch it.

Instead, I stroke his hard length up and down, loving the way his thighs tense and his ass tightens and he lifts himself up off the bed to meet my hand. His hands grip my biceps. His eyes squeeze shut. I’m cradling his balls and stroking him a little faster when I decide I’d like to have him in my mouth.

I’m leaning over to do just that when he makes a strangled sound deep in his throat and spurts into my hands.

“Oh Christ,” he murmurs. He turns over on his side and raises an arm to cover his face.

I watch the smooth slab of his side as his lungs expand and then constrict. I watch as he gets up, never looking at me, and half-stumbles into the bathroom, returning a minute later with grave eyes, wearing nothing but his boxer-briefs and a look that jabs me right below the ribs.