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  “If you don’t leave now,” he said, against her neck, “I won’t be able to let you go.”

  “It’s okay,” she said, not quite knowing what she was agreeing to, just that she didn’t want to release him just yet. He’d been so distant all night, but everything in her body was telling her he needed this, needed her to hold him, like there was something broken inside of him only she could fix.

  They stood like that for what felt like hours, his breathing becoming more ragged by the second.

  Then his hand wrapped around the back of her neck and he was pulling her face towards his, kissing her with more passion than she would have ever believed the reserved man who’d watched her eat dinner could possess. His lips moved on top of hers even as he pressed into her so tightly, she could feel his erection through his linen pants.

  And then she felt herself lifted off the ground for a few seconds only to crash land in a sitting position on an end table with her back against the wall. Somehow he managed to keep on kissing her while unbuttoning her shorts, pulling them and her panties down just enough to push three fingers inside of her.

  He stopped kissing her then, but continued to hold her by the nape of her neck as he worked his fingers into her wetness. In and out, so good that Lacey tugged at her shorts, finally kicking them off so she could open wider for him.

  In response, he pushed his fingers in even further, using his thumb to manipulate her clit.

  Currents of pleasure charged through her, setting off sparks every time his thumb circled around her sensitive button. She wrapped her hands around his heavily veined forearm. She didn’t know why, maybe it was to try to dampen the intensity of what he was doing to her, or maybe she was trying to pull him in deeper. Either way, his forearm became her anchor when the climax he’d built up inside of her crested and flashed hot, making her entire body go tight as she came with her eyes and her mouth squeezed shut.

  Only then did he let her go, abruptly pulling his fingers out of her and sucking her essence off of them while using his right hand to take his wallet out of his suit pocket.

  “You taste better than the wine,” he informed her in his deep voice as he extracted a condom from the wallet before tossing it aside.

  Lacey wanted to reply but became mesmerized by the sight of him pulling his pants down past his muscled thighs. His dick was long and rigid with need, and she felt her pussy clench with thirsty anticipation.

  He didn’t give her long to ponder the sight, though. Almost as soon as she saw it, he’d quickly sheathed it in latex. She had never seen anyone get a condom on so fast.

  And then one hand was back around her nape while the other parted her folds so he could ease his cock into her. He let his forehead rest against hers as he moved inside her.

  It felt—Lacey didn’t have words for how it felt to have him inside the cradle of her legs, filling her up, so she could feel him all the way up to her womb.

  His strokes were gentle at first, then faster and rougher, as if the chains were coming off whatever kept the beast inside of him tamed and still. To her surprise, her quiet lover began to speak, whispering what she thought were Japanese words in her ear with such intensity she didn’t have to comprehend them to know he felt it, too—the hot conclusion building up inside both of them, so big it scared Lacey, because surely once it came, it would tear her apart.

  But then he kissed her, all but devouring her lips underneath his, and soon she was exploding, bright and hot like a star at the end of its life. It was all she could do to hold on to her sanity, much less her body, which was now glowing with previously unknown sensations.

  And then there was her unexpected lover, still kissing her, until suddenly he broke off with a deep yell. He pressed his forehead into hers and shuddered into her, his cock throbbing hard.

  Then he drew back slightly and they stared at each other in wonderment, now sweating and breathing hard.

  “Stay,” he said.

  “Okay,” she answered.

  SURO WOKE UP to the brightness of the morning sun shining down on him. This was strange in and of itself, since he usually woke naturally at the dimly lit hour of five to do his morning exercises. But then he remembered the night before with an inward smile.

  The woman from the bar. It hadn’t been enough to take her by the door. They’d come together a second time in his bed. That should have been it, but Suro clearly remembered waking again in the middle of the night and going down on her until she woke, too, ready for more.

  Sex with her hadn’t been like sex with any other woman he’d let into his bed in recent years. He found her warmth and softness intoxicating, craved it like a hot bowl of udon on a rainy day.

  The only reason he didn’t turn over right that minute and have her again was because he had run out of condoms and the clock read 9:15, which meant he needed to leave soon for the one event he’d come to Montana to attend.

  Still, he knew he wasn’t done with this woman, not yet, not by a long shot.

  Sitting up in the large, king-sized bed, he quickly devised a plan. He’d let her sleep but would leave a note telling her to enjoy the place while he was gone and to call him when she woke, so they could make plans to see each other again. But he was cut short when he reached out to grab a hotel memo pad and found a note already written on it.

  “Thank you for last night.”

  And that was it. No name, no phone number, no promises to be back in touch, nothing except for five words scrawled hastily across white paper. He turned around to see what had so obviously escaped his notice just a few minutes ago: a rumpled but empty spot where the woman had slept. There was only the slightest dent to mark the fact that someone else had shared his bed. Suro stared at the abandoned sheets, unsettled.

  He’d approached her last night with the intention of picking her up and getting rid of her as soon as he was done with her. He was merely curious, he had told himself as he walked over to where she was seated, and she was a welcome distraction after a very busy spring, filled with the kind of work that required a deliberate hardening of the soul. But now it was morning, and she was gone.

  So why then did he feel like the one who had been used and tossed aside?

  CHAPTER 3

  “HI, my name is Hector.”

  The boy who fell into step beside her as she walked out of her Financial Econometrics class was clean-cut, tall, handsome, and almost as dark as she was. If she hadn’t already known of him, she might have mistaken him for one of the few other black students taking the course with her. But as it was…

  “I know who you are,” she said, throwing him a teasing smile. “Everyone does.”

  He glanced sideways at her. “And who do you think I am?”

  She had to fight hard not to laugh. “Hector Mendez, Jr.” She didn’t add the obvious, that he was the only son of Hector Mendez, Sr., the head of New Jersey’s Dominican mafia. “I don’t live under a rock.”

  But if he minded her laughing at him, he didn’t show it. Instead he smiled back at her. “You say it like that’s all I am, my father’s son.”

  “No insult meant or anything,” she said. “Back in West Trenton, just about everybody knows me as Antoine Cofi’s daughter. You see, he owns this Cajun food restaurant, kind of a hole in the wall, but it’s pretty popular. So that’s mostly what people see when they look at me. I think they were surprised when I got into Rutgers, like I’d been born to work behind Cofi’s counter all my life.”

  Hector nodded. “People expect me to follow in my father’s footsteps, too. That’s part of the reason I came to Rutgers. My father didn’t even graduate high school. I’m hoping to do better for myself.”

  “Mine didn’t either,” she said. “But he’s still the smartest person I know, even if he didn’t get a degree.”

  “I see you’re a daddy’s girl.”

  “I am,” she admitted. “My mom died when I was little, so it’s always been the two of us. He worked hard to raise me right and make sure I d
idn’t have to work at the restaurant if I didn’t want to. It’s hard not to admire him for that.”

  “He sounds like a great man. I’d like to meet him some day.” Hector flashed her a smile and held out his hand. “You know my name. But you still haven’t told me yours.”

  She smiled back at him. “Tasha Cofi. It’s nice to meet you.”

  And being the friendly girl she was, she took his proffered hand, having no idea she was shaking hands with the devil.

  The sound of a horn blaring behind her jerked Lacey out of the memory. She looked up and saw that the light had turned green. She made a left onto the road leading to the Starry Sky campgrounds, and chastised herself. “Get it together, girl.”

  She’d barely had time to make it back to the hotel to shower and change clothes before it was time to get on the road. And even then she was only just going to make it to the outdoor picnic brunch that would kick off Parent’s Day. She didn’t have time to let her mind wander, especially back to a life she could never have again.

  She shook off the memory as she parked her car in the grassy lot and dashed toward Starry Sky’s main field.

  But even in such a distracted rush, she found it hard not to flash back to what had happened the night before. The mysterious Asian man had been a complete stranger, but the way he had run his hands all over her body that last time in bed, touching her in all the right places, like he already had her memorized…

  “Mom! I’m over here!”

  The sight of her beautiful twelve-year-old daughter, Sparkle, broke her out of her second reverie of the morning. Sparkle wasn’t her real name, of course, and not one she would have chosen for her daughter, if it had been up to her. Yet another casualty of her previous life, which made her push both Hector Jr. and last night’s encounter out of her head as she jogged over to her.

  When she reached her, Lacey was taken aback by how much her daughter had grown since the last time she’d seen her during Christmas break. Also, she was a few shades darker, which meant her program leaders must have forced her to take time off from playing the piano to get out in the sun. Sparkle wore a wrinkle-free camp t-shirt tucked into khaki shorts, both of which she was certain Sparkle had freshly pressed herself that morning. And her shoulder-length dreadlocks looked much neater than Lacey’s own. While Sparkle tended to hers every morning, re-twisting the roots with the big tub of shea butter Lacey had sent in her last care package, Lacey was once again wearing hers in a messy bun.

  “Girl, you are a sight for sore eyes,” she told her daughter with a big smile. “I’m going to give you a hug, a huge one, okay?”

  “If you must,” Sparkle answered.

  “Yes, I must,” Lacey responded, pulling her daughter into her arms and kissing her on top of the head several times for good measure.

  “I don’t know how my father will feel about the hugging,” said another voice nearby.

  Lacey looked over Sparkle’s head to see an Asian boy with glasses and a severe buzz cut standing nearby. He spoke in the same succinct and practiced way as Sparkle and didn’t make eye contact, which was enough of a clue that, like her daughter, he had Asperger’s. Of course, this wasn’t a big surprise considering the kids were at a camp for high-functioning autistic children.

  “Hi,” she said to him. “And you are…”

  “I’m Sparkle’s best friend, Kenji,” he informed her.

  “Her best friend,” Lacey repeated.

  Even on an Aspie level, Sparkle wasn’t exactly a maker of friends. She’d been obsessed with the piano since she was old enough to walk, and tending to her passion didn’t leave much time for friendships. Sparkle had never asked to bring anyone home for breaks or even dinner, much less had a best friend.

  “Okay,” Lacey said carefully. “It’s really great to meet you.”

  “She’s surprised because I don’t have any other friends,” Sparkle informed Kenji. “She thinks maybe you’re delusional or making it up.”

  Lacey would have tried to deny it, but she knew her daughter would only argue she was denying it because she didn’t want to hurt her feelings. Though social interactions were challenging for Sparkle, she had just enough knowledge of social conventions to be truly embarrassing if Lacey chose to argue with her.

  So instead Lacey smiled and said, “Like I said, it’s very nice to meet you, Kenji. Can I shake your hand?”

  In response, Kenji drew his arms up close to his chest. “No, that’s not necessary. I’m not here to introduce myself but to assess that you really are pretty and it wasn’t a case of makeup and lighting in the picture Sparkle showed me.”

  Having raised an Aspie for twelve years before sending her to Rise Academy, a boarding school for children with high-functioning autism and Asperger’s, Lacey wasn’t remotely phased by his refusal to shake her hand or his blunt statement.

  “Okay,” she said again with a smile.

  Kenji looked her over with the critical eye of a horse breeder. “She was right. You are very pretty. My father might like you.”

  Lacey looked from side to side, wondering why it mattered if his father liked her or not. “Well, I hope he’s not the kind of person who judges other people on looks alone and he’ll be just as happy to meet the mom of your best friend as I am to meet him.”

  “You think I would come over here for a simple introduction? No, that’s not it,” Kenji said. “Sparkle and I are working on an opera, a grand opus, which will likely take two years or more to compose. Consequently, we’ve decided we shouldn’t be apart during the summers anymore. Three months of down time is unacceptable.”

  Understanding began to dawn on Lacey’s part. “Oh, I get it. So you’re both interested in composing on the piano and you want to arrange a summer visit?” she asked, although she already knew that would be out of the question.

  She didn’t begrudge Sparkle a friend or what sounded like a really ambitious music project. In fact, Lacey was happy Sparkle had found someone who liked the piano as much as she did. How many other twelve-year-olds wanted to spend all of their free time composing an opera? But Lacey had barely had time to trek to Montana from Chicago to pick her daughter up, much less drive her to whatever part of the country Kenji lived in, so that they could work together during the summer.

  “No, a visit still wouldn’t give us enough time to finish the opus in two years,” Sparkle answered.

  “We want you to marry my father,” Kenji said.

  Lacey sputtered, “Say what?!?!”

  “It’s the most logical solution,” Kenji responded.

  “I think you need to look that word up, because getting married so your kids have more time to work on an opera definitely doesn’t qualify as logical,” she said, using air quotes on the word “logical.”

  Kenji, who had yet to make eye contact with her had the nerve to throw Sparkle an exasperated look. “She is pretty, but difficult.”

  “That doesn’t mean your father won’t like her,” Sparkle pointed out, as if the object of their discussion weren’t standing right in front of them. “They could still get married.”

  Lacey held up her hands. “You two do realize marriage is a big decision and a lot more goes into making that decision than whether or not your father thinks I’m cute, right?”

  “Yes, of course we realize that,” Kenji answered. “We’ve already run the data. My father and you have a lot in common. You’re both very secretive, you’re both very patient, neither of you have had a long-term relationship since the loss of your respective partners, so the logical conclusion is you must be very lonely. Also, you both have autistic children. We’ve decided you’ll make a very compatible match as long as my father thinks you’re good looking.”

  She shook her head at him. “How about if I don’t think your father is good looking?”

  “Women don’t value looks as much as men do,” Sparkle answered. “Also, I’ve already vetted his picture and his face is very symmetrical.”

  “Oh, Lord, please tell
me you didn’t also tell this man you wanted us to get married!”

  “No, not yet,” Kenji answered. “We didn’t come up with the plan until a few weeks ago. Also, I wanted to run it by Uncle Dexter first.”

  “Uncle Dexter?”

  “His partner. He’s the one who convinced my father to let me go away to Rise Academy. They spend a lot of time together, and he’s black, too, so my father might be more receptive to the idea if it came from him.”

  Lacey rubbed a hand over her face. “Please do not involve anyone else in this mess. And what exactly do you mean by ‘his partner?’”

  Kenji threw Sparkle a confused look.

  “She wants to know if your father is gay,” Sparkle said. “She works with a few of lesbians.”

  “No, Dexter is his business partner,” Kenji answered. “And that’s another thing we can add to the list of things you have in common, because Dexter is gay, too.”

  “Oh, my sweet—“ Lacey cut herself off before she took the Lord’s name in vain for a second time that day. “Are you sure they’re just business partners? For all you know, I’m really not your dad’s type.”

  Kenji frowned. “I hadn’t considered that.”

  Then he abruptly walked away.

  “He’ll be back,” Sparkle said in response to Lacey’s questioning look.

  Lacey shook her head at her daughter. “Wow,” she said. “When you decided to finally get a best friend, you just went all out, didn’t you?”

  “I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or giving me a sincere compliment.”

  Lacey smiled and resisted the urge to give her daughter another hug. Sparkle could be a nut, but she was her nut and she had missed her terribly this past year while she’d been away at boarding school. “I’m just happy to see you, sweetie,” she said, deciding to drop the subject altogether.