It was cool out here, but there was no escape from the party. People were clowning around in and around the pool. People sat on lounge chairs. One couple sat on the edge of the Jacuzzi, making out.

“Get a room,” someone griped.

Although Allie looked away, the lip-locked couple stayed in the corner of her eye, and her gaze kept being drawn to them.

She felt hands slip around her waist. Milos’s fleshie. She turned to him, and once more the space between them compressed until they were in that close-dance position again. Milos brushed his hand down her arm, raising gooseflesh all over her borrowed body, until his hand reached hers, and he clasped it.

“Look at me, Allie,” he said gently, and so she did. “We break no rules,” he said. “These two are already dating. They arrived at the party holding hands.”

He touched her face and although she knew it would be wise to back away, she didn’t.

“Some feelings are lost to us in Everlost,” Milos said. “Some feelings can only be felt in living bodies. Do you understand?”

She did understand, and she was unprepared for it. In life she had never experienced how overwhelming, how strong those feelings could be. How they could confound the most rational of minds.

“And,” said Milos, his voice barely a whisper in her ear, “there are things we cannot do in Everlost … but we can do them here, in these bodies.”

Then he leaned in and kissed her. It was profoundly different from an Everlost kiss. An Everlost kiss was about connection, not passion. An Everlost kiss lacked this rudeness, this rawness of flesh, and the insane breathlessness of two hearts pounding faster and faster.

In that instant, Allie forgot who she was, and who she was in. She forgot this was not her body at all. She let the mind of the girl surface, and it began to swim and blend with her own thoughts, until she didn’t know whether she was the girl or the intruder.

And for a moment, just for a moment, it felt right. It felt perfect. How could it not be? Their lips separated, and both of them stole a quick breath.

“We could be for each other … whatever we need,” Milos said.

This time it was Allie moving forward, pressing her lips against his, not wanting this feverish, dizzying sensation to ever end. This body she was in—it shivered with the thrill of it.

“Get a room,” shouted the same heckler, but the voice sounded part of another universe.

If Milos had, in that moment, lifted her in those strong, borrowed arms, and carried her off to a quiet place, she would have allowed him to do it, letting herself be swallowed by passion.

But the moment passed, her senses returned, and she pushed him away.

“Milos, no!”

He looked at her, out of breath, eyes barely in control. “Why no?”