“It’s so alive.” Not in the way of bright lights and neon. In the way of life being lived full throttle. And she thought: this is the life I want. Not this city or this place. But this sense of living life without the boundaries she put on things. The way she’d tried to put a boundary on her relationship with Danny.

Fake relationship.

Friends with benefits.

Long-distance lovers.

None of it fit anymore, had never really fit. And yet she still wanted to label it, to somehow contain it. Because open-ended things with people who held the power to hurt you were scary.

Turning, she pressed a kiss to his jaw. It was stubbled after the long day, and it felt intimate to touch him this way in the warm dark while dancers swayed and dipped nearby. “Let’s go home, hotshot,” she murmured. “I have to pay up for breakfast.”

His eyes sparked fire, and suddenly he wasn’t so into lazy walking. “Hurry up, princess!”

Laughing because he made her feel young and alive and wild, she held on to his hand as he led them back home, his sense of direction unerring. She never felt lost with Danny, whether they were exploring the back alleys of a strange city or sitting at home on the sofa. Or being pinned up against the closed door of the house that was to be their home for the time being.

She gasped at the heat of his kiss, her hands pressed to his chest. He was already pushing his own hand up under her top, the rough warmth of his skin a delicious shock to the system. Then he placed his hand on her breast and squeezed, and her thighs clenched on a gush of dampness.

Wrapping her arms around his powerful shoulders, she kissed him back with all the pent-up need inside her. They’d kissed and cuddled last night before she collapsed into her sleep coma, but she was starting to realize it would never be enough with Danny. She could kiss him forever.

Pulling at his T-shirt, she managed to get it off over his head. Her own top ended up thrown over a piece of furniture not long afterward. The sight of his hand, big and strong against the pale pink lace of her bra, made her stomach clench, tiny lights exploding behind her eyes.

Breath coming hard and fast, she ran her hand over the ridges of his abdomen and lower to palm him through his jeans. He groaned, pushed into her with unhidden need, the ridge of his erection so taut that he felt enormous.

She stroked, squeezed.

“Fuck, Catie.” A groan against her mouth, his hands slamming onto the door on either side of her head as she moved her fingers, undid the top button of his jeans, lowered the zipper… and slipped her hand inside his briefs to close her fingers over the warm steel of his cock.