“Holy shit, Maddie,” he said. Her sentiments exactly. He traced the hard outline of her nipples through her dress with his thumb, and she shivered. “Oh, you like that? I thought you would.”

They kept kissing and touching, and as they moved against each other, the already short skirt of her dress shimmied up and up her thighs until it was like she wasn’t wearing a skirt at all. His big, warm hand on her thigh made her tremble. He got closer and closer to her thong, but he didn’t make any move to touch it, or pull it off. She felt like she was crying out for his touch there, like she’d never wanted anything so much.

Just when she thought she couldn’t take it anymore, and would move his hands there herself, he sat up and reached for her hands again. She let him pull her off the couch and lead her down the hallway to his bedroom.

He stopped at the doorway and dropped her hands.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” he asked her.

She rolled her eyes.

“No, of course it’s not. What a stupid question,” she said. “I thought you were supposed to be one of the smart ones.”

Then she pulled off her dress and threw it on the floor.

“Any more stupid questions?”

He shook his head.

“Not a one.”

Theo woke the next morning and turned over to see Maddie curled up next to him.

Maddie Forest.

Curled up next to him.

In his bed.

Naked.

It hadn’t been a dream. Or even just a very vivid fantasy. He and Maddie had spent half the night having fucking incredible sex.

How in God’s name had that happened? He knew he was a good dancer, and he also knew that women really liked that, but if he’d known that his dancing would have gotten Maddie in his bed, he would have . . . Well, hell, he had no idea what he would have done differently for the past few years, but it would have been something.

If anyone had tried to tell him the day before that he’d do something like kiss Maddie, he would have laughed until he cried. But they’d been dancing, and the music had been playing, and they’d been laughing, and she was in his arms, and he’d seen that look on her face, that look that women sometimes gave you when they wanted you to kiss them. Where they’d look at your lips and lick their own and then look back up at you with a smile in their eyes. So he’d kissed her like his life depended on it, and joy of joys, she’d kissed him back.

She stirred as he looked at her, and then opened her eyes with an expression of horror on her face.

“Good morning,” he said.

She shook her head and sat up. He put on his glasses to get a better look. He’d seen Maddie a lot in the past few years, and no matter what she wore, she was hot with clothes on, but that didn’t compare at all to how she looked without clothes on.

She turned to look at him and pulled the covers up to her shoulders. He tried to wipe the smile off his face, but he didn’t think he quite accomplished it.

“I’m pretty sure we already did the first-time-seeing-each-other-naked part of this story,” he said.

She put her face in her hands.

“That doesn’t matter. Last night I was . . . Well, I don’t know what was wrong with me last night. I wasn’t even drunk, or even close to it. I just completely lost my mind.” She glared at him. “As did you, I might add.”

He sat up and nodded.

“You’ve got that right.”

He got out of bed to pull some sweatpants on. When he turned around, Maddie quickly turned her head away, and he hid a smile. Who was checking who out now, hmm?

“I’m going to make some coffee.”

He walked out of the room, stepping carefully over Maddie’s dress in the doorway, and into the kitchen.

As much as he wanted to do this again . . . and again . . . and again, having a fling with Maddie seemed like a disaster waiting to happen. Plus, he would bet money that no part of Maddie wanted any kind of fling with him, given that look on her face when she’d woken up this morning.

A few minutes later, he heard Maddie walking into the kitchen.

“How do you take your coffee?” he asked her without turning around. Then he made the mistake of turning around.

Her dress was wrinkled, and her hair was messy, and she had makeup smeared around her eyes, and she possibly looked even hotter than she had the night before.

Damn it.

Maybe the disaster would be worth it.

“No sugar, but plenty of milk,” she said. He stared at her for a second before he remembered what she was responding to.

“One second and I’ll get you the milk.”

He slowly poured boiling water into the cone and filter he’d set up over a mug and handed it to her, and he did the same with a second mug, before he reached into the fridge for the milk.

She poured a bunch of milk into her coffee and stirred it for a long time before she finally looked up at him.

“You have to promise me something.”

Well, shit, this could be anything.

“What is it?” he asked her, before he took a sip of his own coffee. Damn, he’d forgotten to put milk in his.

“First, we’re agreed that we both lost our minds last night and this can never happen again, right?”

He hadn’t quite gotten there, but okay.

He looked away from her and poured too much milk in his coffee.

“Obviously. Wait, was that the thing I had to promise? That doesn’t seem like so much of a promise, as an—”

“No, I wasn’t finished. You have to promise not to tell Alexa. She’d be thrilled; it would be a nightmare. This never happened.”

He couldn’t let that go.

“Which part of it never happened? The part where I almost pulled your clothes off on my couch and you wanted me to? Or the part where you threw your clothes off as soon as you saw my bed? Or the part where I pushed you back on my bed and knelt down, and . . .”

She banged her empty coffee mug down on the counter, and he laughed.

“See, this is why I don’t like you,” she said. “Oh God, this was such a mistake. What the hell was I thinking?”

He picked up his coffee mug. He tried to stop smiling but couldn’t help it.

“Thanks for the birthday sex, Maddie. Relax. This will never happen again, and Alexa will never find out.”

She glared at him.

“You would be the type of guy to tell me to relax. Not at all surprising, but disappointing all the same.”

Before he could respond, she turned and walked down the hallway. Seconds later, he heard his front door slam.

He looked down at his too-milky coffee and sighed. He’d handled that one well.

Chapter Three

Six weeks later

THEO SCANNED THE CROWD AT THE CITY COUNCIL MEETING, ONE HE and Alexa had been working toward for months. And of course, the first person he saw was Maddie, front and center. He stifled a groan. He’d spent the past six weeks carefully making sure he wasn’t in the same vicinity as Maddie, and now he’d have to sit there and stare at her all night.

Why the fuck did Alexa have to have such supportive friends?

He tried hard not to look at her throughout the city council meeting, but it wasn’t easy. It wasn’t like he’d fallen in love with her that night, or any bullshit like that—Maddie was the last kind of girl he wanted to date. All she cared about were clothes and celebrities, from what he could tell; the things he cared about—politics, books, music—didn’t seem to matter to her. Hell, they didn’t even like each other.

But the sex. Oh God. He’d thought about that night, on average, twenty times a day for the past six weeks. A lot more than that for the first two weeks, actually. He couldn’t help it at first—he had bruises all over his arms from where she’d held on to him. And each one of those bruises made him think about the way her face looked when she’d touched him, the filthy things she’d whispered in his ear, the way she’d reached for him over and over again, how he’d never wanted the night to end.

It wasn’t like it could ever happen again; even if the morning after hadn’t gone so badly, he knew that was off the table. But oh God, if only it could.

He picked up his pen and took frantic notes, just so he would look somewhere other than at Maddie.

Finally, it was time for the key part of the meeting: the program for at-risk teenagers Alexa had been working on for months. When Alexa’s sister, Olivia, got up to speak, he was terrified for a moment. Had he been right to get Olivia to fly across the country to do this? He looked around the room to see how people were responding to her speech. Everyone was rapt, including the city councilmen. Thank God.

But as he looked over the audience, he and Maddie locked eyes, until she finally looked away.

The program passed easily, and he distracted himself from Maddie by silently celebrating with Alexa. As soon as the meeting was officially over, he pulled Alexa in for a big hug.

“You did it!” he said.

She squeezed him tightly.

“We all did it. Thank you for everything, but especially for whatever you did to conspire with my sister to get her here.”