Applause swelled and died off when someone opened the conference hall door and let it swing shut, leaving the crowd inside. Pryce had done the same thing twenty minutes ago. He’d gone into the bar and gotten a glass of bourbon, then opted to sit at the far end of the lobby close to the bar. Now the sudden noise pulled his attention from the twin, revolving doors where snow had begun to fall faster and thicker out beyond the glass.

He turned to see a pair of slender shins scissoring their way in his direction. They were smooth and almost shining, a vaguely burnt cinnamon tone. He followed the lines up from her ankles to where the hem of a white, floral print dress fell cautiously shy of her knees. Her head was cast down like she was walking a tightrope, following the fall of each foot across the burnished marble floor.

Dark hair fell around her like a veil, obscuring most of her face. A wave of recognition passed through his body. He knew her. He couldn’t remember from where. Not now. Not quickly. Not with her bare legs stalking toward him like a pair of saplings bending to the kind of hard wind that was taking the snow in on a forty-five-degree angle. But he knew her. Between the dress and her skin, he was reminded of summer. His body filled with half-voluntary breath. There might as well have been a ghost in his chair as she passed, never looking up or so much as slightly to the side where he was sitting.

Then she turned sharply into the relative darkness of the open doorway to the bar and Pryce kept watching. Her calves were slender yet strong and sinuous. Her bowed head and shoulders gave her a deflated look, like someone who’d just heard something they didn’t want to. That's when he knew it was Sheyla.

It had to have been fifteen years, and now he understood that vague remembrance of summer. She’d barely known him then. Just enough to know he was alive, enough to slip into his dreams and pull him into a vortex of yearning, but not enough to come close. Always sweet and friendly the few times she’d spoken to him. There should have been more, but she’d left him chronically tongue-tied the way no one ever had before or since.

He lifted his whiskey glass and pulled down hard on what remained, creating an excuse to follow her into the bar and order another. At the very least, he could tell her how he’d felt all those years ago.

***

She drank her first vodka cranberry too fast and stood a little lost for a moment before finding the voice to order another. Everything seemed surreal, a little dreamlike, almost as though it wasn't really happening.

She took her second drink, the glass cold in her clammy hand, and walked to the end of the bar as far away from the bartender as possible. The room was practically deserted. She wasn't sure if she'd have preferred it to have been more crowded; maybe that way she wouldn't have to listen to her own inescapable thoughts.

Thoughts. Like the jarring realisation that her husband and PA had been sleeping together. It seemed inconceivable that Dean and Rae could have betrayed her so callously, yet the evidence she'd just seen was inescapably stark. Back in the conference hall, she'd happened to glance down as Rae had been scrolling through her phone. The anatomical image from Dean had dropped in without warning, the caption simply stating 'miss you’. It was the kind of picture he should only ever have been sending to his wife but instead, it was in her assistant's phone, and everything blurred into a horrifying mess.

The evening was supposed to be the most important of her career but one moment had transformed it into a nightmare. Dean had even called before the ceremony, going on about how he wished he could have made it but of course he was busy. Always so busy. But not too busy to cheat on her with her own goddamn assistant.

She found herself suddenly trying to piece together times he could have been seeing Rae and unsurprisingly everything was fitting together too easily, their excuses synchronising and coordinating so seamlessly that she felt astoundingly stupid for never having noticed enough to ask questions.

Taking a long, cooling sip from her glass, she tried to stop overthinking. She considered returning to the hall if only to distract herself but the thought of sitting beside Rae seemed impossible. She felt eyes on her and glanced up, hoping desperately that her soon-to-be-ex assistant hadn't come looking for her.

***

Pryce walked over to the far corner of the bar where she was. He felt her eyes on him as he signalled the bartender. When he turned to face her he realized he’d come to find her after all this time in the middle of the kind of moment that turns your heart black. It was right there in her pain-struck eyes. But whatever she’d been through, he wasn’t going to let the same paralysis overtake him like it had when he was younger. The look on her face made him want to tread lightly. If only he knew how.

Dark-haired, glittering Sheyla, the girl who’d rearranged his life back before his life had ever been arranged in the first place. Those eyes. The hair that shimmered and sucked the darkness out of the night all at the same time. After fifteen years, it wasn’t hard to see the same features shining through.

“Sheyla,” he said. “You probably don’t even remember me. I can tell this might not be a convenient time… but when the fuck is time ever on our side?”

A half smile curled her lips and she nodded. “What’s time but the ass-fuck of the century,” she said, raising her glass.

Pryce clanked her glass with his. “Do you remember my name?”

She shook her head. She looked at him curiously and thought a moment. “I’m sorry. I know I probably should, but…”

She seemed to run out of gas. It was understandable considering the state she was in. “Look, Sheyla. There’s no reason you should even remember me. And you never would have known how fucking voraciously I fell in love with you and couldn’t so much as look you in the eye. Did you ever think you’d come to a night like this to find out how much you changed someone’s life and never knew?”

She looked at him with dark liquid eyes. There was a train derailing somewhere in her life, but for Pryce, this was the moment and the only moment he would ever have. Something may have softened in her eyes and the end of the fucking world was coming down with that insidious snow just outside.

He leaned slightly and touched the inside of her leg just above her knee. Not even the wedding ring on her finger could stop him. This was too important. If she wanted to reject him that was her choice. At least she’d finally know.

“Geezus fuck if you aren’t made of silk,” he said. Her eyes were as wide as his soul so he slid his hand higher. Living silk. Pure warmth until his fingers came up against the lacy gusset of her panties.

“You can push me away if you want,” he told her. “But I’m not leaving this gilded shithole without letting you know. If you only knew how many times I’ve dreamed of this.”

“Yes,” she whispered. “Yes.”

“I wanted you like air,” he nearly hissed, whispering close to her ear, inhaling the scent of her neck. “I want you even more now. There’s something different about you. Something...I don’t know. New. Something more.”

His fingers slipped under her panties, finding her slit smooth and almost burning. He scanned the room - bartender, a couple of desultory patrons marking time in Purgatory’s waiting room. She grew slick as he fingered her pussy lips. She felt waxed. Her eyes closed as her head fell backward and the years of his only regretted memory poured from his sputtering mouth, fingers shoving into her. One of her hands landed on his waist, as if she were grabbing onto him for balance. Her fingers dug into him, then suddenly brushed over the front of his body.

Her hand glided over the hardness of his cock jutting into his pants. The tips of her fingers slipped over the shape through the fabric like she was reading Braille. His body filled with a sharp breath and he dug his fingers deeper into her. Curling. Stroking. Grinding. Pulling and pushing within her honeyed sheath until she squeezed them with her shuddering core. He watched her knuckles turn white as she gripped the edge of the bar and fought to hold her composure.

When it was over, she smiled at him and reached down to pull his hand out of her panties by his wrist.

“It’s...amazing to see you again,” she told him, slightly out of breath. “I hate to do this, but I have to get back to the conference.”

Without saying why, she took a deep breath and power-walked out of the bar, leaving Pryce as dazed as if he’d been the one who’d just cum there at the dark end of the bar. It was his turn for a deep breath. It felt like an ancient business had finally gotten off to the start it was always meant for.

As he reached for his drink, he found her conference ID badge still sitting on the bar. The least he could do was return it, and hopefully make an excuse for them to spend more time together before they left town and headed back to their separate worlds. The back of his neck went hot when he saw the name on her badge. It wasn’t Sheyla. It was Autumn Casey, a woman he’d never met in his life until now.

***

Autumn stood at the window of the neutrally decorated hotel room, her mind still racing with the evening’s events. Every part of her felt alive, vital, reckless, in a way she hadn't felt in years, if ever. She couldn't stand still. Her dark eyes flicked to the clock again. She picked up her glass award and examined it listlessly. The coveted trophy felt heavy and cool in her hand and it was hers, all hers, something she'd only dreamed of up until tonight and yet all she could think of was him.

Snow was still falling, heavy and silent. It gave the dark an ethereal glow, something worlds away from the humid Hawaiian nights she'd known all her life. Setting the award down, she paced anxiously across the room. Was he coming? How could he not?

Her phone was ringing in her purse but she ignored it, incapable of dealing with anything more than her own self. Everything had snowballed spectacularly - after weeks of monotony, one night had thrown everything she thought she'd known into a blizzard of uncertainty. Dean. He was probably the one calling. She didn't want to talk to him, didn't know half of what to say and besides, he didn't deserve it, didn’t deserve any of her. She switched her phone off and throbbing silence resumed.

The anticipation was driving her crazy. She wandered into the adjoining bathroom and eyed the shower. But what if the man from the bar came by and she missed him? The thought was unbearable. He must have seen her ID. Or maybe he hadn't. Maybe he'd been too high on the thought of Sheyla, whoever the hell she was, and maybe he'd just left without a clue that he'd fingered a complete stranger to orgasm.

Autumn closed her eyes. His fingers. He'd touched her so forcefully, urgent and demanding and she'd taken it like he had a right, like she'd needed it. Maybe she had. It had filled her with excitement. He'd come on so strong and confident that it felt perfectly natural to fall apart around his fingers. But it wasn't for her. It was for someone else, this Sheyla, some bizarre case of mistaken identity that both thrilled and horrified her.

Would he come? He must have seen her ID card. Must've realised his mistake. And surely he couldn't just walk away. The intensity in his voice had made her knees weak. She clenched at the memory of it. Her panties were still damp - she'd felt perpetually wet and needy since he'd first touched her and the ache hadn't gone anywhere.

She could hardly even remember her acceptance speech in the hall afterwards, let alone her excuses to Rae. All she could think of was the stranger. She didn't even know his name. Just him. His face and his words and his aching proximity and his goddamn fingers. Nothing else seemed to matter anymore. Her eyes went to the clock again and she looked desperately at the door. She didn't think she could bear it if she never saw him again.

***

Pryce couldn’t bring himself to go back in the conference hall. He’d already made his little speech to thank his publisher and editor in receiving the least important award of the night. He hated these events, but his contract forced him to be there.

He sat a while longer at the bar wondering when some furious husband was going to come storming in ready to fight. But there was only the couple talking in muted voices in one of the booths, the bartender wiping glasses and the sound of the twenty-four-hour news channel playing on the television over the bar. As he brought his hand to his face to scrub at the stubble on his jaw, Pryce suddenly inhaled the unexpected scent of her pussy still redolent on his fingers. It pulled him back to the moment he’d had his hand under a total stranger’s pretty dress. He remembered looking at her the way he’d always wanted to look at Sheyla, holding her eyes and memorizing every line and curve in her face.

His cock started to swell again, the way it had when he’d slipped his fingers up inside a woman named Autumn. He wasn’t even sure who he wanted anymore: a girl from the past his memory had probably turned into something more than she’d ever been in the first place, or a married stranger who hadn’t said anything to correct his mistake as she let him finger her to a near public orgasm? She’d even played along. And then beat the hastiest retreat she could.

He inhaled her scent again and remembered the way that wounded look in her dark eyes had changed the moment he touched her. Something had happened to her. But something had happened to the two of them as well. Whatever it was was formless. Indefinable. And maybe a mistake. She wasn’t Sheyla. She was Autumn and she was here and now. There had to be a reason she hadn’t stopped him or told him she wasn’t who he’d thought.

Maybe she’d just been caught up in one of those unexplainable perfect storm moments that come along every once in a very great while. Maybe she’d simply been too stunned to say a word. But why would she have touched him? The brush of her hand across his aroused cock through his pants, light as a zephyr, almost as if she hadn’t even touched him at all was as palpable now as if her hand were still there. He wouldn’t have throbbed any harder at her touch if she’d unzipped him then and there and pulled that aching stalk out of his pants.

As he sat reliving the sensation of her gliding fingers, again inhaling the scent clinging to his fingers, he started to forget why she’d reminded him of Sheyla in the first place. Details flooded through his mind. Sheyla had gripped him like no one else without ever knowing it. Remembering her had become the only relationship that never failed him - the only one that had never actually happened.

There had to be something else. Something in the way the loose strands of her hair clung to the silk of her slender neck. Something in the way her eyes burst into obsidian fire when he touched her like he knew her. No, not like he knew her. Like he owned her. Like he deserved her. Like he wanted her more than his next breath.

He closed his eyes and took his next breath. Something like that just didn’t happen by accident. Maybe not by design, but not at all by sheer accident. Something inside him aligned with something inside her. It was formless and completely on fire.

The tip of his thumb flicked back and forth over the plastic edge of the lanyard in his hand. Autumn was not Sheyla, and he was not who he’d been back in those days. If personal history were bound to repeat itself, at least Autumn would become a whole different kind of failure.

Pryce drained his drink and left the bar, heading for the reception desk. There was an Asian woman somewhere in her twenties on duty, and when he asked what room Autumn was in she pursed her lips and knit her brow in disapproval. He invented the excuse that they worked for the same publisher and had set up a meeting that he was already running late for. With an impatient sigh, the clerk called Autumn’s room.

“Ms Casey? There’s a Mr…”

“Harrison,” Pryce told her. “Pryce Harrison.”

The clerk repeated his name. He was relieved a few seconds later when she hung up and smiled at him. She told him the room he wanted was 2806. He thanked her and spun on his heels to head for the elevator. Inside, he hit the button for the twenty-eighth floor. As the doors slid shut, he leaned against the wall and deflated slightly. His cock was still partly swollen and his heart was beginning to hammer softly. He shoved his hand in his pocket and hoped no one else would get on as he squeezed his cock from inside his pocket.

The elevator rose without stopping.

“What the fuck are you doing, Pryce?” he asked himself out loud.

***

Autumn set the room phone down carefully, hardly daring to believe what she'd just done. He was coming. Pryce. She whispered it like the world was trying to eavesdrop. Pryce. She wondered if it was his real name. Did it matter? He was coming to her hotel room. The realisation made everything inside her clench hard. Would he be angry? Excited? Turned on?

Her heart was pounding and all of a sudden she felt consumed by apprehension. He was a stranger, nothing more than a stranger, albeit one who'd reached under her skirt and touched her like he knew everything she was made of. She smoothed down the velvet of her dress and paced towards the door. He was coming. God, this man was coming to her hotel room and it had happened, it had really happened and she hadn't been with anyone but Dean for years and yet after the way this man had touched her, she wanted more, so much more. She took a breath and tucked her hair behind her ears, appraising her outfit in the mirror. Maybe she ought to change. But there was no time. She closed her eyes, trying to be rational.

She could hear her heartbeat. How long had it been since the desk clerk had called? Two minutes? Five? Ten? She had no idea, everything was moving too fast and - was he even coming? Surely he should have arrived already, maybe he'd changed his mind or something had come up or - or - and then - there was a knock at the door.

Autumn stood stunned for a second, and the knock came again, steady and patient. All the possible things to say had exited her mind but her legs moved without permission, and she was walking across the room and opening the door and even then she hardly believed it was happening until she saw him right there in front of her.

“I’m Pryce Harrison,” he said, then stopping short of whatever would’ve been next. He held up her ID badge. “You left this behind.”

“Yeah.” She could hardly look at him. “Autumn. Sorry to disappoint.”

“Excuse me? Um. I just thought you’d want it back.” He was breathing as if he’d walked up the entire twenty-eight flights.

Autumn took the badge. “That was very - considerate of you.” She was still holding the edge of the door tight. “Thank you.”

His eyes were darting back and forth between her face and collarbones, like he couldn’t decide on the appropriate place to settle. He had one hand jammed in his pocket. “It’s no trouble, really. It’s the least I could do after… I mean, I wouldn’t want you to get shut out of the conference.”

“Yeah,” Autumn risked a look at his face. Their eyes met and held long enough for her to feel the heat flush in her cheeks. She looked away. “So,” She fought for something to say, anything to stop it from being over but there was nothing sensible, everything seemed too delicate to risk saying aloud until eventually she blurted out, “Who's Sheyla?”

The man’s face went crimson. “God, I’m so sorry. She was someone I was very much in love with years ago. Or thought I was. Either way, I haven’t seen her in a very long time, and obviously I thought...well, I never would have touched you like that if I’d been thinking.”

“I'm sorry you got the wrong woman,” Autumn said. “And I should have said something, I know I should have. I just - I guess I didn't want to.”

Something dark yet comforting passed through his eyes. “That’s just the thing,” he said, pausing for a breath. “I don’t think I got the wrong woman.”

Autumn frowned. “So… you're not disappointed?”

“Disappointed?” He almost spat the word like something that tasted bad. “You’re...something more. Something real. She…she was...” He stumbled, clearly struggling to mention the other woman’s name. “She was nothing but a conversation I was having with myself for years. But you...I know you probably think I’m insane, but I’d never forgive myself if I didn’t tell you how badly I want more. If you want, I’ll leave now and just chalk it up to me imagining there was something - I don’t know - electric between us. But I really hope that’s not what you want.”

“I would hate that,” Autumn said. He was looking at her like he couldn't get enough and everything about him, the way he talked, the way he stood, all of it felt necessary, like she couldn't be without it. “I haven't stopped thinking about you since the second I saw you.”

The hand jammed in his pocket pulled out. Somehow his breath seemed deeper without going faster. It looked like his chest was dancing with his shirt.

“Autumn.” It was the first time she heard him say her real name. “If you say things like that, I’m going to ignore that ring on your finger and step into your room.”

“Oh,” She looked down at her wedding ring and frowned. “This?” She shook her head. “You know, if we'd been having this conversation a few hours ago, maybe I'd have wanted you to leave. But honestly, Pryce, as of tonight my husband's screwed up one too many times.” She looked up at him. “So I guess what I'm trying to say is, please don't let a meaningless piece of metal stop you doing what you want.”

He studied her face in silence a moment while she wondered if he was thinking about turning away. Instead, he stepped into the room and pulled the edge of the door out of her hand, letting it close behind him. “If all I’m going to be for you is a night of revenge, I can deal with that. At least that way I’ll have been more than nothing to you.”

Somehow, the door closing behind him had heightened every emotion coursing through her. Alone. They were alone together.

“I don't know what you're going to be,” she said. “I didn't expect any of this and yet it's happening and we're here and you're already way more than nothing. So much more than you know.”

He stepped closer. Close enough to make her deliciously uncomfortable. The way he was looking at her made her feel like she was made of something better than she really was. He reached upward and touched her neck, slipping the pads of his fingers to the point where her skin met her hair.

“You have to forgive me. I’ve never been in a position to wonder whether or not I should kiss a woman after I’ve already had my finger inside her. But at the moment, I’m feeling optimistic. Really fucking optimistic.”

His touch made her want to feel his entire body against hers. She could feel her breathing dip and wondered if he noticed. When she looked up at his face, his eyes were on hers. She looked at his mouth. The urge to know it was everything.

“Better late than never,” she said, and then, “Don't you think?”

His mouth broke into a grin. “I do. I don’t know what to think about anything else. About you, me or us. But that much I’m sure of.” Then he angled his head down and pulled her toward him, bringing their lips together in that kind of first kiss dance that starts awkward and quickly transforms into a tango of searching lips and arching tongues.

***

Autumn tasted of vodka and mint. The scent of roses filled his senses as Pryce drove his tongue into her mouth with a hunger that ran twenty-eight floors deep. The half faded erection in his pants surged with a hot pulse as her tongue swept through his mouth and her hands slipped around him. She held onto him harder than he expected. He could’ve sworn she wouldn’t let go voluntarily and his cock swelled and ground against her body.

She was stronger than she looked. And hungrier. Her slender body rippled against his in a wave. Their kiss turned into a wet, roiling dance where beauty and obscenity converged. He kissed her harder, deeper, pushing her head backward while his hands slipped down the sides of her body to grasp blindly for the hem of her dress. A whimper rose from her delicate throat and floated into his mouth as he lifted the skirt of her dress and slipped his hands underneath.

Now they were no longer cowering for privacy in the shadiest corner of a dark hotel bar. No one was there to see whatever they were about to become but themselves. He gripped the exposed cheeks of her ass and kneaded them desperately, pulling her body tighter, wanting her to feel the urgency of his throbbing cock against her.

Hot rushes of breath gushed into his mouth out of hers while he groped and massaged her ass. Her hands were suddenly flitting like flushed out game birds along their sides, urging their way in between their bodies. Pryce eased back to allow her hands to shove inward, both of them grasping at the front of his pants, one yanking down hard on his zipper while the other found the shape of his cockhead through the fabric.

HIs hands kept working at the pliant muscles of her ass while there was urgent yanking and pulling at the front of his pants. He wanted to look down and see but he didn’t want to give up her exquisite mouth. In that moment, he had never kissed any other woman and never would again. It would have been completely superfluous. But then she was yanking his pants open and shoving the waistband of his briefs down over his straining cock.

When his shaft snapped free, she caught him in both hands and stroked him. Her fingers slid over his swollen flesh, gripping him and stroking him into a froth-dripping trance. When she began slicking his precum over his cock, he gripped her ass harder and leaned back his head as he gasped for the air he needed to keep him upright.

He pulled back slightly, letting her grip his cock with both hands while he arched his hips, thrusting into her hands. His own hands moved toward her hips, gripping the waist of her thong and yanking upward hard, forcing the gusset to stretch and grind into her pussy. Her eyes leveled on his, burning and dark all at once. Her grip tightened on his cock. It felt like a challenge, and he was about to yank up harder on her panties but then suddenly ripped them downward to the middle of her thighs.

His right hand came back up in between them until he was touching her pussy. She already felt as wet as she’d gotten down in the bar while his finger delved and dipped in the space between the warm silk of her upper thighs, stroking over the slick lips of her core. Every stroke of his finger along her humid slit found him dipping upward, stroking into the mouth of her delicate hole and dragging back out to rake across her clit.

Her body was heaving with breath while her hips began to rock in gentle circles. It felt like her eyes were swimming into the ether of his scarred soul. Then he pulled his hand up from between her legs and held it in front of her face, taunting her. He thought about telling her how he’d been sitting downstairs in the bar inhaling the scent of her pussy on his fingers, but instead he just shoved the wet one into her mouth. Her eyes opened wide as she sucked at her own dew. His breath turned into a moan of approval and then back into breath. He’d tell her some other time. By now, he knew there had to be some other time for them after this. The alternative was becoming more unimaginable by the moment.

He yanked his clean finger from her wet mouth and guided her backward, leading her toward the bed while she kept her grip on his achingly hard cock. She stepped carefully backward, trusting his lead, and when she came up against the edge of the bed he gave her a gentle push, sending her onto the mattress. The hem of her dress fluttered up around her hips in the fall. He knee-walked onto the bed and grabbed her panties, anxiously yanking them down her legs and off.

As she lay back on the bed, she planted her feet wide apart, knees raised and her pussy boldly spread.

“Don’t you dare fucking move,” he groaned, backing off the bed and pushing his pants down, then taking the time to pull off his shirt.

She sat up and reached back to fumble with the zipper on her dress. He was vaguely aware of her stripping naked but his eyes couldn’t seem to land anywhere but her eyes and her pussy. Then she was suddenly back in the same position, leaning onto her elbows, legs raised and spread while she looked at him expectantly.

Pryce gripped his cock and stroked his swollen shaft, his eyes moving over her taut contours. He caught her staring at his hand as it slid up and down his thick shaft, squeezing dribbles of precum out of the tip.

“Spread it for me,” he said, his voice husky with a need beyond need.

“No,” she whispered, but she leaned all the way back and brought her hands to her upper thighs, her fingers playing along her slit, grinding circles around her clit before framing her mound and pulling her lips open.

“Fuck,” Pryce moaned. “Fuck.”

Autumn sighed. Then moaned. Then said, “Fuck.”

Pryce went back onto the bed and lowered his face between her thighs. The scent of roses mixed with pussy. He leaned in and slashed his tongue upward along her slit, lapping over the hard pearl of her clit in the gesture. She mewled and arched her hips. He lapped at her again, and then again until he was grasping her by the hips and pulling her against his ravenous mouth, his tongue slashing and swirling into her hole and around her bud.

Somewhere in all of this, he realized Autumn was gasping deeply. Her hips ground violently against his mouth as she came.

“Come here,” she said. “Come. Here.”

Pryce settled his body in the V-shaped cradle of her thighs. The underbelly of his throbbing cock came to rest against the simmering heat of her slick pussy. He leaned over her body, bringing his chest down against her, feeling her rigid nipples burn against his skin.

“I’m here,” he told her, nudging the slippery dome of his raw cock into the slender crease between her pussy lips. “I’m here, baby, geezus fuck, I’m here.”

He pushed his painfully hardened cock deeper into her body, skin touching skin, face to face, her eyes holding his through every grinding inch of strain. Finally his long, thick shaft sank fully into the hot, wet grasp of her pussy, his balls bunching up against her rim.

“Do it again,” she said. Her voice sounded like something between a growl and a whisper. “Come here again. Come back to me.”

Pryce pulled back and thrust his aching prick back inside her. Then again. With each thrust, it was like he was fucking the air out of her damp, graceful body. He began sawing himself in and out of her steadily. Desperately. Feeling her body arc into his thrusts like she was trying to milk his soul out through his cock. He could only groan and thrust harder. She already had his soul. He wanted to be around her long enough to see her realize it.

He buried his face against her neck and their bodies settled into an awkwardly rhythmic lunge and fuck. Lunge and fuck. Wet skin scraping hungrily against wet skin. Pryce fed his hunger on her lips and neck, kissing, suckling and nipping while his cock thrust and pounded into her grasping core until he felt the rippling clasp of her climax.

He arched his back and closed his eyes while hot jolts of desire pulsed through his cock deeply into her honey lathered sheath. Even after the explosion subsided, Autumn’s hips were still arching to meet his cock, until he finally pulled away, his spent cock slipping out of her body’s grasp.

She closed her eyes a moment, fully aware of him settling in beside her. She was avoiding opening them again and having to face whatever expression might be on his face. Their moment would surely be forced to a painful end. But when she finally opened her eyes and turned her head toward him he was using his arm for a pillow and smiling at her.

“Yes, baby,” he said. “I’m still here. We’re still here.”

“I guess we are,” Autumn said. The way he was looking at her made her heart beat faster even though she supposed it ought to be slowing down. “That was….”

“Yeah. It was.” He inched closer, until his wet cock was pressing into her hip, a stark reminder of where it had just been. Then he slid his leg over hers. “I’m glad you’re not someone else.”

The weight of his leg felt wonderfully warm and possessive. She didn't think she ever wanted to move. His eyes were on her, going all over her like he couldn't get enough.

“This is really the last thing I could have expected,” she said, finally. “I mean, it's kind of like it was meant to happen, you know?”

The way the smile deepened on his face, creating deeper and darker creases and crinkles, came as a relief. Then his hand slid over her body, coming to a stop at her breast where his fingers toyed softly with her nipple.

“I don’t normally believe in those things,” he said. “But I know nothing was ever meant for me and the woman I thought you were at first. But now, the woman I know you are? Everything I thought I knew seems wrong.”

She looked at his face, at the shape of his jaw, then down at his hand on her body. She wondered if he could feel the relentlessly rapid beat of her heart. She pushed up into his hand a little, craving his touch.

“Is this just going to be over?” she asked eventually. “I mean, we're two strangers, and we meet and we feel this and then what? We have to go back to reality? We probably live hundreds of miles apart. It seems so impossibly unfair.”

He pulled closer. “I’ll tell you what’s unfair. Giving up before we even have a chance.” She could feel his breath rushing across the other nipple. “If we’re the kind of people who could let any of this happen and then just let it all go without seeing where it leads, then we didn’t deserve it in the first place.”

Autumn swallowed hard and his eyes moved briefly to her throat before meeting hers again. His gaze was dark and intense. His hand was still on her breast but it felt a little less gentle now, proprietary almost.

“I haven't felt like this in so long,” she confessed. “If ever. I'd regret it forever if I didn't try.”

“Autumn.” His voice dropped to a husky whisper. “I know there’s a shitstorm in your very near future. I want you to know I’ve got an umbrella big enough for both of us.”

She bit her lip, hardly daring to believe he was real. But he was. He was right there, alive and warm and available. She moved closer to him, so close that she couldn't tell where her body heat ended and his began.

“It feels like a relief,” she said, “Like everything that's gone wrong is just fine because otherwise we wouldn't be here. This feels like the start of the very best part.”

“The very best part,” he said, “is everything that comes after the start.”

On that, the grip of his fingers on her distended nipple tightened. His mouth slowly moved toward the hard tip of her other breast. She felt the brief rush of his breath before his lips enclosed the bud and lightly sucked. Her eyes closed, and she was no longer worried about the look she would see on his face when she opened them again.