Once they got in his car, they looked at each other and laughed.

“You don’t think she noticed anything, do you?” Maddie asked him.

Theo shook his head. Alexa’d had way too much champagne, and had been too excited about everything else going on, to pay attention to the two of them.

“No chance. You know Alexa; she just wants to make sure everyone gets home safely.”

He turned on the car and made a left turn onto Alcatraz Avenue on the way to his place. My God, she looked incredible in that dress. He couldn’t wait to get it off her. Thank goodness his apartment was just a few minutes away.

As they walked up his front steps, he took her arm. He couldn’t wait to touch her, but reaching for her hand felt too intimate for what they were.

“Oh, look at you being gallant,” Maddie said.

Theo shrugged.

“Those heels you’re wearing are very high. I didn’t want you to trip. Just think of what would happen if you fell and broke something outside of my building. That would be a public relations nightmare, and my whole job is to prevent those.”

Maddie laughed and leaned against him.

He unlocked the door and ushered her in, and shut the door behind her.

Once they were inside his apartment, where they’d been twice before, they stopped and looked at each other expectantly. Finally, he broke the silence and leaned forward to kiss her. This time he held back, and kissed her slowly, gently.

He pulled back, and they smiled at each other. She reached for him again, and he shook his head. He stooped down and took off first one of her gold sandals, and then the other. He held on to one of her feet, and used his thumb to knead the arch of her foot.

“Those shoes look like they hurt,” he said.

She shook her head, her eyes closed.

“Mmm, I’m used to them. But that feels nice.”

He set her foot down on the floor and picked up the other foot.

“I thought it might.”

After a few minutes, he stood back up and took her hand.

“Come with me.”

She followed him without a word.

They walked into his bedroom, and he took her purse off her shoulder and set it on the floor.

“Last time, and the time before, we rushed through things,” he said, as he unbuttoned his shirt. “And it was great. Really great. But tonight, I want to take my time with you. We have all night.”

Maddie’s eyes followed his fingers as they went down his body. She started to reach for him and stopped.

“We do,” she said.

He threw his shirt onto the floor and pulled his undershirt off in one quick motion.

“That doesn’t mean you can’t help me,” he said.

Her hands were on his belt within a second. She slid his belt out of the loops, caressing the leather, so close to touching his skin, but just managing to avoid it. She unbuckled the belt, step by gradual step, until he felt like he was going to die if he didn’t get this belt off him and her hands on him immediately. Whose fucking idea was this ‘we have all night’ nonsense anyway?

Finally, she threw his belt on the floor and popped open the button on his jeans. She moved her fingers up and down the zipper, right over his growing bulge. His breath came faster and faster. She unzipped his jeans with one quick motion and pushed them down over his ass.

He kicked off his shoes and pulled his jeans all the way off, until he was standing in just his boxer briefs. She reached for them, but he stopped her.

“Wait. Turn around.”

He’d noticed the zipper up the back of her dress early in the night. That zipper had been tantalizing him for hours.

He gathered her hair in his fist and kissed the nape of her neck. He dropped kisses down her neck, all the way until the top of the zipper. He pulled it down slowly and moved his hands and lips down her body as each inch of skin was exposed, until the zipper was all the way at the bottom.

He stood back up and hooked the straps of the dress over his fingers to pull them off her shoulders, and the dress dropped to the floor. She turned around to face him and smiled.

“My God.” He took a step back to look at her. She had on a strapless black bra and a lacy black thong, and it took everything in him to not rip them off her body and throw her on his bed. But he’d promised her he’d take it slow this time.

“You’re incredible,” he said.

She grinned and pulled him toward her.

“Just for that, good things will come your way tonight.”

They kissed and kissed and kissed, their hands roaming over each other’s bodies, their lips following their hands. He listened to her sighs and moans and breaths to teach him what she liked, what she wanted more of, where she wanted to be touched the most.

He walked with her, still kissing her, until her legs bumped up against the bed.

“Lie down,” he said.

She obeyed him and was soon flat on her back on his bed, looking up at him. Her lips were swollen and her hair surrounded her face. She was the most incredible thing he’d ever seen.

He hooked his thumbs in her lacy underwear and, inch by inch, pulled it off her body. He dropped it on the floor, then knelt between her open legs.

“I seem to remember you liked this,” he said as he pushed her legs open wider and bent his head down.

“Mmm, people change, you know.” She propped a pillow under her head and smiled down at him. “Things might be different now.”

He paused, his fingers on her inner thigh.

“Is that a challenge I hear?”

She shrugged.

“I’m just saying, who knows if I still—”

She gasped at his next movement, and for the next few moments the only sounds she made were unintelligible.

When her spasms subsided, he crawled up her body.

“Wait, I couldn’t hear that,” he said in her ear. “Did you just say, ‘Theo, you’re very good at that’?”

She grinned.

“Theo, you’re very good at that. But then, I think you already know that.”

He kissed her cheek and nodded.

“I do, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like to hear it.”

He turned on his side and grabbed a condom out of his bedside table.

She pulled off her bra and propped herself up on her elbows.

He stopped to stare at her boobs. My God, they were perfect. He quickly finished rolling the condom on, and then reached for a nipple.

“Do you know how much I wanted to do this all night?” he asked her. “You and that dress . . . Every time I saw you from across the room, all I wanted was to touch you here . . . and kiss you here . . . Did you know that? Did you wear that dress just to drive me crazy?”

She nodded.

“Absolutely.”

He was so surprised he sat back.

“Really? You did?”

She nodded again.

“I did. After last time, I thought . . . I mean the way things ended, it felt like you hadn’t really . . .”

He shook his head and put his hand back on her breast.

“Oh God no. You thought last time I said we shouldn’t do this again because I didn’t want to do it again? Good God, it was the opposite.” He moved his hands back down her body. “I said that because I wanted to do it again and again and again, and I knew if I got another chance, I might not be able to stop.”

She closed her eyes and opened her legs wider.

“Mmm, well, we can talk about that later. But you know how you said we were going to go slow tonight?”

He moved on top of her again and bent down to kiss her.

“Yeah, what about it?”

She opened her eyes and looked into his.

“Can we speed it up a little? Because I want you inside me right now.”

Holy shit, well, when she put it that way.

He pulled up her knees and pushed himself inside of her up to the hilt.

Maddie grinned into Theo’s chest when his breathing got closer to normal. How did sex with him just keep getting better? It made no sense.

He dropped a kiss on her shoulder and stood up.

“You want some water?” She nodded and went off to the bathroom while he was in the kitchen.

He came back into the bedroom with glasses of water for both of them. She turned on the bedside lamp, and he turned off the overhead light.

“I like your sheets,” she said as she slid in between them.

He got in next to her and pulled her against them.

“I like you in between my sheets, so that’s perfect.”

She put her finger over his lips.

“Shhhh, the sex was so good, don’t ruin it.”

He laughed and turned off the light.

In the morning she woke up with her head on his chest and his arm around her. How the hell had she gotten herself into this situation yet again? And she was going to have to see him all the time now, for, like, the next year or more, depending on when Alexa and Drew’s wedding was, and try to keep her hands off him. This was going to be torture.

“Are you awake?” she whispered.

“Yes,” he whispered back. His fingers moved slowly over her hair, and she sighed. Damn it.

She sat up.

“We have to talk.”

He shook his head and didn’t move.