I laugh. “I enjoyed feeling your eyes burning holes in her skull. Meant I was still in the race.”

“You won the race.”

“There shouldn’t have been a competition.”

She stares at me with heavy eyelids, begging to be fecked. I deny her. This is the only leverage I have.

She has my heart. I have my dick.

I turn around, grab her purse from the nightstand, and leave. I come back ten minutes later with her suitcase, which I retrieved from Callum’s room using the card she had, and start unloading it.

She asks me questions, but I’m too deep in my head to answer.

When I’m done, I go into the bathroom, splash my face with water, and stare at my reflection in the mirror.

I point at myself, narrowing my eyes. “You’re going to go out there and feck the shit out of her. So hard she won’t remember what day it is. What year it is. What Shiny ex-Boyfriend’s name is. But this time, you’re going to be cool about it. You need to screw her like you don’t want to screw her. You’re going to—”

“Mal?” she calls out from outside.

I stop dead, my eyes widening.

“The walls are kind of thin, and anyway, I’ve slept with you before. I know you can deliver the goods.”

A rush of laughter courses through my throat as I throw the door open. She stands on the other side with her arms open.

She jumps at me, and her legs wrap around my waist, my hands firm on her arse, and we kiss so long and intense, I’m certain our oxygen supply runs short. I move up the length of the bed with her in my arms—before remembering I want to make it epic, yet casual, and look-I’m-not-trying-too-hard-at-all—and shove her front against the full-length window. We’re on the fifteenth floor or so, and there’s another room, in another hotel, facing ours.

I jerk her jeans down so fast the sound of ripping fills the air, and I tug her panties to the side.

“Mal,” she moans.

“Shut up,” I growl, remembering the writing on the photo.

Tries too hard.

Talks too much.

I sheath my cock with a condom, spitting the wrap into her hair and plunging in.

“Ahhh,” she hisses, holding on to the windowsill. But I just stay there, cock inside of her, not moving.

“Mal?” she asks, still facing the Mediterranean view and the opposite hotel room.

The balcony’s sliding doors are wide open. There are shadows of people moving around inside the room. They could watch the entire thing if they just bothered looking, and it gives me a possessive thrill.

“Yes?” I ask conversationally.

“Are you having a case of stage fright?” she asks, her tone matching mine.