Eli looked at her again. Her smile was faint, her eyes still closed. He wanted to run his knuckles against her cheekbones. “I’ll take my chances.”

“With some girl who’s luring you to a second location and never even told you her name.”

Robin? No, didn’t suit her. And Eli was starting to wonder if ignorance was best. The less he knew, the vaguer and fuzzier she remained in his imagination, the quicker he’d stop thinking about her. And yet: “Tell me, then.”

“It’s the third time you asked.”

“It’s the third time you didn’t answer. Do you think the two things might be connected?”

She pressed her lips together—really, he might just have conjured them. They were something out of some extremely lurid dreams he’d had when he was very young and very hormonal. “I think it would have been fun,” she said, a little melancholic.

“What?”

“Tonight. You and me.”

Eli’s blood thudded in his veins—once, loud, violent. When he glanced at the GPS, their destination was three minutes away. He slowed down to well below the limit, suddenly a scrupulous driver. “Yeah?”

“You seem like you’d know what you’re doing.”

Oh, you have no fucking idea. We still have time. I can be gentle. Or not. I could be lots of things if you—

Jesus. She’d just been manhandled by her brother. He was disgusting. “Maybe you’re overestimating me.” Even though, no. He’d have made sure she had fun. And had fun himself in the process.

“I think I’m just estimating myself correctly.” A small smile. “I’m the one who messaged you, after all.”

He was starting to wish she hadn’t. It was destabilizing, all of this—at a time when all he needed was his feet firmly on the ground. “Why did you do that, anyway?”

“I appreciated that your photo wasn’t a gym selfie, or you doing the peace sign next to a sedated tiger.”

“I see the bar is underground.” He tried to remember what his picture was. Something from Minami, probably. She was always taking candids of him and Hark. For the website. So much better than the smarmy suits-and-ties shit in our current photos.

“Your profile said you hadn’t been active for a while. I figured you’d either settled down and found someone, or you were overdue. Did you?”

“Did I what?”

“Find someone?” She sounded . . . not pruriently curious, but at least interested, and Eli had to remind himself not to squeeze any hope out of it. Hope for what, anyway? It wasn’t like he was in the market for a girlfriend. He’d failed abysmally at that.

Not everyone has the capacity for love, Eli.

“No. What about you? You wrote ‘no repeats’ on your profile.”

“I did,” she confirmed, and damn her for this habit of hers not to offer any explanations. Damn her for not living farther away. There it was, her apartment complex. He gripped the steering wheel, aware that he couldn’t go any slower without getting pulled over.

“Is it a rule of yours?”

She nodded, unperturbed.

“Seems arbitrary,” he said casually while parking. Seems like what’s standing between me and you having a fucking spectacular time.

“All rules exist for a reason.”

He killed the engine and ordered himself to let it go. It wasn’t good for either of them, talking about something that wasn’t going to happen. “Come on. I’ll walk you inside, just in case your brother’s waiting around.”

But Vincent had given up on her, at least for the night. No car had followed them.

It was late May and it was Texas, which meant instant, oppressive heat, even at night. Eli was pleased to see a doorman in the lobby, one who didn’t look just burly and alert, but also highly suspicious of Eli. That’s the attitude, he thought, nodding at him, making a mental note to let him know the situation on his way back.

“You know I’m not going to invite you inside, right?” she asked when they stopped in front of her apartment.

Eli had had a myriad of highly inappropriate thoughts in the past twenty minutes, but this specific one hadn’t even grazed his brain. “I’ll leave once you’re inside and I hear you lock your door. And you should put your phone in rice,” he added, wondering what the fuck had come over him. Among his friends, he was famous for being the easygoing one. Laid back. Never like this, intrusive, commanding—not even with his sister. Probably because Maya would have guillotined him.

But this woman only seemed faintly amused. She regarded him with that placid, sphinxlike expression that Eli was already getting used to, and took a step closer—one that had his heart pumping louder and faster for no reason, since all she said was “Thank you. I really appreciate what you did for me tonight.”

“It was the bare minimum.” Not a good time to tell her he was considering sleeping outside in his car just to intercept her idiot brother.

Fucking nuts. Was he developing a crush? He hadn’t even known he was capable of it.

“It was not.” Her key chains jingled in her palm. A sparkly ice skate shoe, one of those flashlight and pen combinations, a supermarket loyalty card with H-E-B printed on the back. He had the very same one. “You are kind. And I find you very attractive.”

Eli’s brain blanked for a split second. He wasn’t shy, not by any means, but he couldn’t remember the last time someone had complimented him that matter-of-factly. She had that somber look in her eyes and no guile whatsoever, and he was half-smitten.

He needed to get the hell home.

“That seems beside the point,” he said, not liking the gravel of his voice.

“Does it?”

“Since you never do repeats. Isn’t that your rule?”

She was pensive for a moment. “You’re right. Then, it’s farewell.”

It was. Unavoidably. But before Eli could remind her once more to be safe, she did something as simple as it was unexpected: she took another step in to him, rose on tiptoes, and placed a soft kiss on his cheek.

Of its own volition, Eli’s hand rose to hold her waist, and that near imperceptible touch blossomed into something exponential.

Possibilities.

Current.

Warmth.

Her scent enveloped him. The world shrank to them and nothing else. Eli turned his head, curious to see what he’d find on her face in response to all this electricity. She briefly held his eyes, then closed the distance between their mouths.

It barely constituted a kiss. Her lips pressed against his in the slightest of contacts, but his body was aflame. A surge of heat coursed through him, violent and sudden. Eli tried to remember the last time he’d felt anything approaching this, and came up empty handed. But it didn’t matter, because her fingers found his, and he was dizzy, lightheaded with all the things he was imagining.

He could take her. Abscond with her. Press her back against the door of her home, tucked under his bigger body. He could show her how beautiful she was to him and—

“Although, it occurs to me,” she murmured against his mouth, breaking the spiral of his thoughts, “that rules exist for a reason.”

She took a step back. Eli was entranced. Her servant. Spellbound. He considered begging her to let him touch her. To let him go down on her here in the hallway. He would go grocery shopping and make her dinner off a YouTube recipe of her choice. He’d wash her car, read her a book, sit here outside her door and just make sure she was safe and protected. They could hold hands all night. They could play Scrabble. He was very close to imploring for something, everything, anything, when she added, “And sometimes the reason is that they should be broken.”

Her fingers were still around his, thumb stroking his palm, but Eli could not tear his eyes from hers. That warm, sinking blue. Her hands, cool against his. Her damn skin, he thought. It was soft. He could do a lot to her skin. Her skin could do a lot for him. He wanted to see it flush and redden and bruise for a million different reasons. He wanted to defile it.