I’d been nervous, no doubt. The club felt darkly indulgent and was supported by patrons who’d been thinking about this kind of sexual fantasy maybe longer than I’d been alive. I wasn’t sure if there were unspoken rules I was meant to follow. Don’t speak too loudly. Don’t cross your legs. Don’t look anyone in the eye. Don’t drink your cocktail too fast.

My parents were so wholly innocent next to this world. Their idea of a wild night out was seeing The Vagina Monologues and dinner at some trendy Asian-fusion restaurant. To this day, my father considered sushi just a little too adventurous for him.

And here I was, walking into a secret sex club, and on my first night there, letting Max go down on me where anyone present could watch.

I had no idea, in the end, if anyone had in fact been watching. We left through the back door to the room, where Max’s friend Johnny met us and let us leave through a service entrance. Max watched me carefully the rest of the night, like he was wondering if I was ready to bolt or break down. But in reality, I was shaking so hard because everything about it had felt right. Max had been on his knees, between my legs, and had refused to let me reciprocate. Instead he kissed me for long minutes, helped me dress, and gave me a look so pregnant with meaning that goose bumps spread across my skin.

It was one thing to play in a library, but compared to the club last night, that felt tame. And on the way home after, with Max’s hand on my knee and his lips on my neck, my ears, my mouth, and—finally—his body over and inside me, completely wild on the backseat, I realized how crazy my life had become.

Crazy good.

Crazy amazing.

It’d been so long since I’d been infatuated like this that . . . I had forgotten how fun it was.

“You’re swooning,” George said Thursday morning as I approached his desk. He stuck the end of his pen back between his teeth, murmuring around it. “You’re thinking about your Max.”

How the hell did he know that? Was I grinning like an idiot? “What?”

“You like him.”

I gave up. “I do,” I admitted.

“I saw how he looked at you when he came in here Monday. He’d let you carry his balls around in your pocket.”

Grimacing, I opened my office door. “I’d rather they stay where they are, but thanks for the idea.”

“He was here this morning,” George offered, casually.

I froze, halfway into my office, waiting.

“Seemed sad to have missed you, but I told him you’re kind of a bear in the morning before you’ve finished your seventeen cups of coffee and rarely get in before eight.”

“Thanks,” I grumbled.

“No problem.” He sat up and pulled an envelope off his desk. “He left this.”

I took the envelope into my office to read. Max’s handwriting was tiny, scribbly.