They counted up as the rest of the room counted down.

The approving brown eyes watched her, laughter at their edges. A hairy hand went back on her jeans’ leg and she didn’t immediately move it away this time. The anaesthetic was starting to kick in. Six. Seven. That was over a bottle, even with tiny bar measures. Only the hardcore could go this fast. They were conspirators. She needed more to get there. She needed to get to ten. Ten would make her forget the mess she was leaving behind at midnight.

Eight.

‘Ten… nine… eight…’ Voices started counting down around them.

Pax and her French stranger stared at one another, picking up two more glasses. In an instant, her mouth was awash with bubbles. Nine.

‘… seven… six… five… four…’

They grabbed two more, pitching against each other, competitive and clumsy, sensual too, the drunken conspiracy private, their own bubble. Glass ten.

‘… three… two… one! Happy New Year!’ the shout went up.

Had midnight come that quickly? The room spun around Pax, satisfyingly fast.

Everyone was kissing everyone else, tens of strangers cast unexpectedly together to wish one another twelve months of joy. And they were kissing too. Only it was the wrong sort of kiss. Tongues, fingers, dizziness, drunkenness, cool champagne still in their mouths. That flutter inside intensifying, a leaping beat now, her naughty secret. She was kissing a stranger in a bar. This was what Mack thought she was doing, so what the hell? The sensation of a new mouth opening to hers, tasting hers. Oh Christ, what was she doing?

‘Stop!’ She pulled away, almost falling over, cannoning into someone behind her.

‘Don’t be silly.’ Hairy Wrists caught her arm to pull her back, smiling knowingly. His laugh had lost its uh-hu uh-hu, his eyes hard and lusty. ‘Come here, beautiful.’ He sounded different.

‘No! I’m sorry. I can’t do this.’ She shook her head dizzily, fighting to focus.

His body landed back against hers, groin pressed to her thigh, handsome nose level with her mouth. How had she not noticed how short he was?

‘Pleasegoaway!’ Her voice was slurring already, her blood pumping crazy amounts of high-pressure alcohol to trip up her words and pull her off balance, axis upturned as she struggled to shake off his grip.

‘Don’t be a tease, Teesh.’ His voice had thickened, strangely unfamiliar in her drumming ears. His lips slid against hers, stubble grazing her, wiry arms around her, locking her down.

‘Let me go!’

‘Is this man bothering you?’ asked a voice behind her.

‘Fuck off, chum,’ Hairy Wrists snapped, not sounding himself at all. But he dropped his hold and stepped back to look up at someone taller, lurching as he did so, big eyes troubled and half-focused.

Pax almost fell over, barely able to stand up without a support.

‘I’m fine!’ she insisted, as much to herself as the concerned stranger behind her, who she tried to reassure by turning to smile at him, but instead executed a bombed pirouette, fleetingly seeing a pair of worried green eyes amid Chewbacca facial hair. Still spinning, on her second circuit now, she realised they belonged to a bearded Viking in a Puffa jacket. ‘Fine!’ she repeated, rotating on towards Hairy Wrists and managing to stop still, although the room carried on whizzing round.