Her body was so familiar to me, its dips and curves, the flavor of her sex as she went from sleeping to wild. And although I’d started this wanting to tease her, I couldn’t; her release was a precursor to mine. She came quickly, legs falling away, back bowed until her cries quieted and thighs stopped trembling. She propped herself up on her elbows, watching me.

I kissed up her navel, pushing my shirt up her body as I went, and exposing the soft fullness of her breasts.

“Hello, my lovelies.”

“Did you have fun tonight?” she asked, voice still groggy with sleep and pleasure.

“It was definitely interesting.” My teeth found the bottom swell of her breast, and then my tongue slid up the curve, found her nipple.

“Bennett?”

I paused my gentle attack on her chest to look up and catch the uncertainty on her face. “Hmm?”

“Is it really okay that we did this? That I crashed your bachelor party? I mean, it basically hijacked your first night here.”

“Do you think I’m at all surprised you decided to take charge at the club?”

She closed her eyes, smiling a little. But only a little. “Not being surprised isn’t the same thing as being glad that I did it.”

I pushed my shirt the rest of the way up her arms, trapping her wrists above her head and using it to tie her hands together. “We have all weekend to celebrate the bachelor thing. It’s really okay that you did this.” I leaned down, sucked her neck. “In fact, if you ever stop doing crazy things like that, stop being wild and foolish because you want me so much, it might just ruin me a little.”

“A little?” I could hear the smile in her voice.

Looking down at her face, at her hair fanned across the pillow, eyes heavy with desire and satisfaction in equal measure, I had the sense of being pulled backward through a cable in time. How the fuck had we gotten here? This woman beneath me was the same one I’d despised so viciously for months, the one I’d fucked with such combustible need and hate. And now, she was in my room, on the weekend of my bachelor party, wearing my grandmother’s ring, hands tied over her head with my favorite T-shirt, the one she’d claimed as her own months ago.

Chloe tilted her head, catching my eye. “Where did you go?”

I closed my eyes, swallowing. “Just remembering.”

She waited, eyes studying me.

“I was just remembering everything and . . .”

“And?”

“Thinking about how we started . . . and what it was like before. I was trying to remember the last woman I was with before you. . . . I don’t think I ever told you about that night.”