Chapter 1 - One Reckless Night

Avery

“Go meet that guy sitting there and ask him for one night,”

I stared at Mia, wondering if the tequila had finally gotten into her head. Around us, the masked bar pulsed with loud music, flashing lights, and the blurred voices of people who had come here to forget themselves for the night. Mia, however, looked completely serious as she pointed toward the man sitting alone at the other end of the bar, his face hidden behind a black mask.

“You can’t back down now," she said, tugging me roughly from the chair.

Normally, I would have laughed at a dare like that. Tonight, though, I wasn't exactly myself.

I'd spent the evening drinking because I didn't know what else to do after seeing Chase leave with another girl. Again. After seven years of being his best friend, I had finally worked up the courage to tell him how I felt about him, only to watch him walk away with one of the girls he was currently seeing.

That was Chase. He never stayed with one girl for long.

And apparently, after seven years, he had never once looked at me and seen a woman.

To him, I was still the innocent, naive Avery who hid behind oversized clothes and glasses, the girl everyone assumed knew absolutely nothing about men. Maybe they were right. Maybe I'd spent so long being the good, sensible girl that I'd forgotten what it felt like to do something simply because I wanted to.

Tonight, I didn't want to be that girl.

I wanted to drink, forget Chase, forget the embarrassment of almost confessing my feelings, and do something reckless for once.

The tequila had left my head pleasantly foggy, my balance slightly unsteady and my judgment almost nonexistent.

I stumbled toward the man sitting alone. I couldn’t see much, just the faint outline of his sharp jawline and his broad shoulders.

The club’s thumping bass reverberated through my chest, mixing with the pounding of my heart.

"What is it?" His voice was low, a smooth rumble that made my throat tighten.

"Just one night," I managed, the words slipping out before I could second-guess myself.

"Alright, let’s go," he said, barely a hesitation. It was baffling how quickly he agreed.

I gave Mia a shaky wave as I followed the stranger out of the club.

At the hotel, he swiped a card to open the door, then looked at me.

“You can still change your mind.”

I shook my head and stepped inside.

"You asked for one night, so don’t beg me to stop later," he warned, his hands already on me. He pressed me against the wall, fingers tracing a fiery path inside me. A gasp escaped my lips, raw and involuntary.

His movements were relentless, in and out, urgent and skillful. He guided me to the bed, sliding my panties down. His mouth followed, worshipping me with a hunger that made my knees tremble. I came so quickly, trembling with the shame of it.

"You’ve got one chance to run," he murmured, but I didn’t even flinch as he shrugged off his pants.

I caught my breath, eyes widening at the sight of his thick, veined cock. Then he pressed the head against my entrance, resting where I was wet and open, and he didn't push, just teasing the entrance with his pink cap. My hands fisted in the sheets. Sweat gathered at my hairline. My legs started to shake before he was even inside me.

"Please," I said.

That got a chuckle out of him. He pushed in. Slow, steady, no mercy in it, and I stretched around the whole length of him and I opened my mouth and nothing came out. He held there at the base, buried, letting me feel all of it.

"Say my name," he said against my ear and my eyes caught the dark tattoo sprawled across the left side of his chest — a black serpent wrapped around a dagger, with a tiny crown at the base of the blade.

"I don't know your name."

A low chuckle moved through his chest into mine. He pulled back and drove in again, and the bed frame knocked the wall. "Fuck, you're so tight."

"Maybe you're just so big," I whispered, dizzy.

He answered that by going faster. He unhooked my bra and got his mouth on my nipples, one then the other, sucking hard enough that the pull ran straight down between my legs, and every thrust landed deeper because of it. My tits bounced against his mouth with each one and he made a rough, satisfied noise each time and kept going.

He turned me over. Took me from behind with my cheek in the pillow and from there he rolled me onto my side with one leg hooked high over his hip and fucked into me at an angle. Then both my legs up on his shoulders, and he fucked and hit every inch of me, over and over, until my hands couldn't hold the sheets anymore.

This was my first time. Nobody had told me that it could be so good. My legs trembled against his chest, my toes curled, and the second orgasm rolled up out of nowhere and broke, and I came again with a sob and felt it run hot down the inside of my thigh and onto the sheet under me.

Two strokes later his hips stuttered, and he groaned low and long and emptied into me, and then he pulled out and dropped onto the mattress beside me, chest heaving.

By morning, everything felt like pieces of a dream. I remembered his hands, his scent, the tattoo on his chest and how he fucked me—how I came twice on my first night. But whenever I tried to remember something else, my mind came up frustratingly blank.

Only a crumpled note remained, scrawled with a careless hand:

“DONT LOOK FOR ME I DONT DO TWICE.”

Who says I want to do it twice?