About the Authors

ANNE MARSH writes sexy contemporary and paranormal romances because the world can always enjoy one more alpha male. She started writing romance after getting laid off from her job as a technical writer—and quickly decided happily-ever-afters trumped software manuals. She lives in North Carolina with her two kids and five cats.

CARA LOCKWOOD is the USA TODAY bestselling author of more than twenty-six books, including I Do (But I Don’t), which was made into a Lifetime Original movie. She’s written the Bard Academy series for young adults and has had her work translated into several languages around the world. Born and raised in Dallas, Cara now lives near Chicago with her husband and their five children. Find out more about her at caralockwood.com, friend her on Facebook, Facebook.com/authorcaralockwood, or follow her on Twitter, @caralockwood, or Instagram, Instagram.com/cara_lockwood.

Hookup

Anne Marsh

The Sex Cure

Cara Lockwood

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-09941-7

HOOKUP & THE SEX CURE

Hookup © 2020 Anne Marsh The Sex Cure © 2020 Cara Lockwood

Published in Great Britain 2020

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

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Table of Contents

Cover

About the Authors

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Hookup

Back Cover Text

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The Sex Cure

Back Cover Text

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

EPILOGUE

About the Publisher

Hookup

Anne Marsh

Enemies make the best lovers when an angry ballerina and a brash billionaire face off in New York Times bestselling author Anne Marsh’s latest hot-as-hades DARE novel!

If billionaire Max O’Reilly doesn’t take my video off his hookup app, I’ll destroy more than his high-end laptop. But this computer genius is no geek. He’s all tanned skin and hard muscle and knowing looks. And my man picker must be broken beyond repair, because I can’t help responding to his cocky grin.

Max has figured out my secret: I love to be watched. But I never imagined my hateful ex would upload a video of me pirouetting in nothing but my ballet slippers. Now my job as a social media influencer is on the line. Because who’s going to hire an unwitting porn star to promote their products?

The Silicon Valley CEO wants to make it up to me, and I do need a respectable-looking fake boyfriend to save my reputation. But when a game of beachside truth or dare turns X-rated, the heat between us could fry any electronic device. And when the king of kink wants more than a hookup, I know I should exit stage right before I’m the one who gets burned.

Harlequin DARE publishes sexy romances featuring powerful alpha heroes and bold, fearless heroines exploring their deepest fantasies.

Four new Harlequin DARE titles are available each month, wherever ebooks are sold!

CHAPTER ONE

Maple#goddessofwar #eraser #accidentalpornstar

I MAKE MY grand entrance, bursting through the doors of Kinkster in San Francisco’s gritty, dirty, fabulously alive Mission District. Kinkster is a hookup app for people who preferred nonvanilla sex, but you wouldn’t guess it from the office space. It’s all bland start-up chic, a wide-open, minimalist stage of tables and laptops ringed by a jeans-and-T-shirt-wearing chorus staring at me with varying degrees of shock. Yes, look at me.

Righteous anger surges up in me again, temporarily swallowing the too-familiar sense of shame. I wish I weren’t here, that Madd Dixon was every bit as perfect as he had seesmed. Hot and poetically sweet, he wrote me an honest-to-God card after our first night together, swearing I’d reformed his bad-boy self. Charming, rugged, downright dirty in bed? Yes, yes, and oh you betcha please. We’d been an instant couple from our first date, sharing sleepovers and late-night laptop sessions as we built our respective online businesses. While I built my influencer kingdom, he’d sourced a paper goods supply business, delivering monthly subscription boxes of pretty notebooks, pens, and sticky pads to thousands of home offices across the country. We’d planned to adopt a rescue puppy and last weekend I’d cheered from the sidelines as he played rugby with a brutal, ferocious masculinity that melted my panties right off and made me think, He could be the one. Right now, however, I’d settle for taking his head off—the big one or the small one.

God, he’s a liar.

Madd Dixon also turned out to be a cheater and a bastard, his decision to post our personal video on Kinkster being the cherry on the shit sundae he’d served me. For your eyes only, I’d texted when I’d sent the video I’d made of myself with my phone. Ours, he’d agreed with a winky face and a kiss—and I’d stupidly believed him. Now a gazillion Kinkster subscribers have watched me pirouetting in nothing but my birthday suit and ballet slippers. My inadvertent show-and-tell has already garnered me five hundred hookup requests.

A blue jeans–wearing engineer pads toward me, eyes widening as he takes me in. Sure, he might recognize me from my successful five-year career with the San Francisco Ballet—but I’ll bet he remembers me naked and dancing in that stupid video. Him and everyone else in San Francisco.

He’s willing to play nice, though, asking, “Can I help you?”

No, no you can’t, I want to scream. My picker is irredeemably broken given my recent man choices. My pre-Madd pick was equally a disaster, and the guy before that...let’s not go there. My feet settle automatically into first position, no longer poised to leap.

“Yes,” I lie. What I really need is a brain transplant or a lobotomy. Some kind of drastic intervention. “Someone’s posted a video of me on Kinkster without my permission. I want it taken down.”

“There’s a take-down form on our website for reporting copyright violations.” He volunteers this information cautiously and I bet he wishes he hadn’t stood up because, hello? Helpful, nice people get handed a shit sandwich from the snack cart of life.

“I don’t want to fill out a form.” I inhale deeply, centering myself because otherwise I’ll do something even more stupid than dating Madd. “I want this fixed. Gone. Deleted.”

Lola, my best friend and wing woman, tried to warn me about Madd. Over the years, I’ve razzed her about her broken man picker, but it turns out that I’m the one who needs “Remember: Guys Are Assholes” tattooed on my forehead because over and over I pick the assholiest asshole of the bunch. And my stupidity matters more now than ever because one of my post-ballet career moves is my Instagram brand. Being an Instagram influencer has much in common with a circus seal juggling a bright red ball on its nose. If I serve up the cute, perky and well-balanced version of me and create super popular online content, I’ll not only be able to promote my own athleisure line, but I’ll score paying gigs promoting other products. The downside? I’m always on; the curtain never falls on my performance because I share my personal life with a gazillion insta-friends.

“Take me to your leader.” I stab a finger toward Hot Nerd, who nods nervously, spins on his (bare) heel and marches toward a glass-walled office on the far side of the building.

“Max?” He tosses the name over his shoulder for confirmation, although clearly he’s already decided that Max Whoever-He-Is gets the pleasure of dealing with me.

“Is he responsible for Kinkster?”

Welcoming-Committee-Nerd nods vigorously and the mental soundtrack in my head picks up steam. Today’s theme song is “Ride of the Valkyries.” What kind of guy codes an app specifically for kinky hookups? And what does it say about me that I’ve spent hours scrolling through it? When Hot Nerd pauses in front of an office door, I barrel through it before nerves can get the best of me. No script? No worries. I’ll improvise.

Sunlight floods the office, silhouetting a big, rangy guy sprawled behind yet another laptop. They must pass those things out like candy. The iron-and-wood shelves bolted to the exposed brick walls house an impressive collection of Star Wars figurines outnumbered only by stacks of books. I register dark hair just long enough to run my fingers through and suntanned skin. Head Nerd clearly gets out of the office. A lot. Long lashes sweep up as I storm toward him. God, he has the most gorgeous eyes I’ve ever seen. I might accidentally fall into them for just a second before I recover and continue my self-righteous advance.

He certainly doesn’t look like a geeky code genius. He wears faded blue jeans, work boots and a battered UC Santa Cruz T-shirt, with nary a pocket protector or a button-up shirt in sight. When he crosses powerful forearms over his chest, I catch a glimpse of ink. Worse, his eyes crinkle up as he shoots me a cautious smile. Stupid, hot bastard.

I look at his handsome, arrogant, knowing face and I throw my phone at him as hard as I can. It’s a dramatic gesture—and a futile one. I should have thrown the coffee I held in my other hand. My phone bounces off his shoulder, hits the trendy concrete floor of this stupid, stupid loft space and makes an audible cracking sound. It’s not his fault that Madd is a first-class asshole, but the “Ride of the Valkyries” soundtrack blasting in my head thankfully drowns out logic, because I need to blame someone for my own stupidity. He’ll do.

He shoves effortlessly to his feet, making himself an even larger target. “Max O’Reilly.”

“Asshole,” I counter.

He lifts one broad shoulder. “Guilty as charged. Or were you introducing yourself?”

A hint of a smile still plays about his gorgeous mouth. Stubble roughens his jaw. He hasn’t shaved and I suspect he simply can’t be bothered. His gaze drifts down my body and I wait for the moment of recognition. Sure, I’m fully clothed now but naked ballet makes an impression, as the number of hookup requests I’ve received attest.

“We haven’t met.” He sounds certain, although now he frowns. “But you look familiar.”

He shifts those killer hazel eyes to my phone as he bends to pick it up. Thanks to the unlocked screen, he gets an eyeful of me dancing, a graceful Swan Lake-esque solo that’s all pirouettes and graceful leg extensions. If only I’d bothered with a tutu. A leotard. Something. Since I’m wearing only my favorite pink ballet slippers in the video, however, there are many less-than-PG moments. When Asshole Ex and I broke up because I wanted an exclusive relationship whereas he desired a harem, he’d had the last laugh. He’d created a whole fake fucking profile on Kinkster for me (you really couldn’t call it dating). He’d then shared our video and my favorite dirty fantasy with the entire world. I love being watched and I thought I enjoyed the risk of being caught, but this is next-level risk. This is the difference between getting busted by the mall cop making out with your boyfriend and waking up naked in bed with an entire SWAT team surrounding you, guns drawn.

Max studies the cracked screen for a moment before turning it off and setting my phone on his desk. Hazel eyes sweep over me. “You dance really well.”

So not the point. “Take it down.”

Give him credit. He keeps his eyes on my face. “Why?”

And just like that he plunges into negative territory for those of us keeping score—and yes, he’s earned a penalty.

“Are you insane?” I extend my arm, lean over his desk and pour my coffee on his keyboard. The queen of impulsivity—that’s me. “Why would I choose to share my private video with the world?”

That devastating hint of a smile returns. “Why would you take it down when you look gorgeous?”

Sadly, I’m still reeling enough from Madd’s betrayal that Needy Me laps up the compliment. Bitter Me gets right on his ass, however. “That was a private video.”

“And that was an expensive laptop.” He sounds calm. He doesn’t leap to clean up the coffee carnage. “Your video has 2,348,992 views and it’s trending.”

Maybe I should club him with his hardware? “Take. It. Down.”

“So you’re Maple.” He gets this little puzzled crinkle between his eyes as if I’m a math problem and he’ll have me worked out in a minute.

“Like the tree.” I wave my hand impatiently. I’ve heard all the jokes before.

“That’s not it.” He thinks some more, taking his goddamned time when my entire life is slowly imploding before my (and a million other) eyes, then he smiles. A full-on, sun-wattage-worthy grin. I want to kill him. “You’re Lola’s friend. I know Lola.”

Okay. So if he knows Lola, he’s likely one of those dot-com wealthy boys that hang around her new billionaire boyfriend. They’re like frogs or mosquitos spawning and where you find one, there’s bound to be a whole bunch. It also certainly explains why he’s not outraged at my violation of his hardware—not only does he have loads of money, but he’s probably also in possession of some new, shiny insta-backup system and hasn’t lost so much as a second of work. I think I could hate him. After I kill him.

“Look,” I say. “I’ve had a shitty, shitty day. It kicked off with discovering that I was dancing a naked solo on your Kinkster app because Asshole Ex decided to branch out into the revenge porn business. Then it escalated because it’s not just me being embarrassed that you and a million billion other guys have seen more of me than my gynecologist. This threatens my job, okay? Companies won’t hire an influencer to pimp their products if she’s cavorting naked on the internet, because they figure she’s too busy pimping her personal assets to be bothered with theirs. And since I happen to like electricity and eating and all those other useful things that a girl has to pay for, I need to keep those contracts rolling in—which means you need to take the video down.”

Max studies me some more. Thinking maybe, but it’s hard to tell. “Work here. For me.”

WTF? I have a job. Plus, he’s seen me naked.

“Pass.”

Apparently, he misinterprets pass as a different four-letter word, one that rhymes with duck, because he counteroffers. “A new job to replace the old one, thirteen hundred stock options, and a date. With me,” he adds, lest I think he’s being overambitious and asking me to take on the entire engineering team.

“Who let you out of the cave?” I step into him.

My new Neanderthal acquaintance stands firm, but I’ve already figured out that Max O’Reilly lacks the boundaries most people possess. And because he won’t back up and I won’t back down, we end up thigh to thigh, our bodies brushing as if we were dancing. I’m far too aware of the heat of his body, the controlled strength concealed beneath his clothes. He isn’t a professional dancer—I’d know him if he was—but he does far more than code all day.

“Why did you make the video?” God. That voice, low and smooth, perfect for phone sex, and parts of me demand that all of me pay attention, especially since when he lowers his head, his mouth ends up so very close to mine. His lips demand kissing. Nibbling.

Maybe even outright biting.

Except he’s seen me naked.

He’s watched my video.

This is totally, absolutely crazy, even for me. There’s no way on God’s green earth that I’d work for him or go out with him. Plus, I have the whole broken man picker thing to work on. It’s the shame talking, I decide. I’m embarrassed that I fell for Madd’s lines, and now I want to prove to myself that other guys like me just fine.

“It was a surprise for my boyfriend.” Max O’Reilly works in an office that has windows rather than walls, and I’m certain we have an avid audience. I can feel my cheeks flush, my body heating up because I have a dirty little secret of my own. Hi, my name is Maple and I love being watched. “He wasn’t supposed to share it.”

“How did you know he wouldn’t?” Max looks genuinely curious.

“Because we were in a relationship? Because I trusted him?”

Max shifts, and for a moment I think he’s giving up. But then he leans into me. “I don’t have relationships.”

Of course he doesn’t.

“I have hookups,” he continues. “For sex.”

I give his announcement a moment of silence because wow. This man either has no filter or he’s entirely too honest—which he proves with his next words.

“It’s more satisfying, yeah?”

It certainly explains why he’s used his coding skills to develop a hookup app rather than, say, curing cancer through genome sequencing. I intend to explain the joys of a committed relationship (again, liar), but something entirely different comes out of my mouth. “Did you jerk off to my dancing?”

“Yes.” His lips quirk, as if he’s maybe trying to rein himself in but can’t quite manage it.

“Fix it.” I stab my finger into his big beautiful chest. Obviously, I’m not on the dating market at the moment, but he is muscled. You, sir, are definitely more than just an engineer.

He looks down at me, that slow smile curling his mouth. “How?”

“How should I know?” I throw my hands up in the air. Yes, I’m being dramatic. No, I don’t care. “Take it down. Make sure there are no copies anywhere and then forget you ever saw me.”

I turn and storm out of his office, ready to bring down the curtain on this particular performance. No one stops me as I march past the tables of software engineers and through the front door. No one knows that I’m silently replaying what happened in that office, the way our bodies brushed, the way Max O’Reilly knew. He knew what I liked. He recognized the heat that curled through my body at the thought of him watching me dance. Maybe he even knew about the freedom in exposure, in dancing wide open and free. Or maybe he’s just a dirty pervert—a pervert who still has my phone in his possession.

CHAPTER TWO

Max

DON’T SUE ME but my eyes are glued to Maple Washington’s dramatically exiting and truly spectacular ass. I keep it discreet, but I’m a huge, huge fan of the yoga pants. She came, she spoke, she gave me a boner despite my legitimate, good faith efforts to listen to her. In under three minutes, I’m six thousand dollars poorer (the laptop) and my balls are Smurf-blue (the boner). What the fuck just happened? And how do I fix it? I pull out my phone and start a new list of Things I Learned Today:

Item: Ms. Washington’s parents shouldn’t have been allowed to name a child because adding anything to a birth certificate from the Acer genus is wrong.

Item: Bad breakup + revenge porn = most popular video ever

I can’t remember a more successful share on my app and I have an excellent memory for numbers. Leaving the video live is tempting. Naked, dancing Maple is amazing and she’s making me cash—but since the word yes has yet to come out of her mouth, it’s a no-go. I believe a hundred percent that consent is nonnegotiable—plus, she’d just come right back here. And while my dick definitely votes for a repeat visit, my brain suggests that angry hate sex will never, ever top Maple’s to-do list. She’s more likely to kick me in my Smurf-colored balls.

Still, she hasn’t lawyered up to hit me with a lawsuit—she’s just demanded I fix her problem, and even if her timeline and expectations are unreasonable (the internet is forever, ladies and gentlemen, until or unless a gigantic EMP wipes out the world’s electronics), she hasn’t bullshit me, either. Unhappiness is inevitably and directly proportional to monetary demands, so I would have expected Maple’s demands to include a mountain of cash. Instead, she’s all righteous indignation. I half expect her to take a flying leap over desks or an engineer as she barges out of Kinkster. Energy crackles almost visibly off her, along with something else, some charisma or star power, a secret charm I’ve never mastered and that has me—and everyone else at Kinkster—staring after her as our front door bangs shut.

She barely skimmed my shoulder, putting her at five feet four inches tall in shoes. The blond hair piled on top of her head added three more inches. The yoga pants, a cropped shirt and a long-sleeved drapey thing (San Francisco is notoriously damp and chilly) completely covered up what was on display in the video—and before you insist that people don’t walk around naked and gyrating, remember that this is San Francisco. We host annual parades devoted to sex and naked people. I allow myself a minute to imagine Maple leading a parade down Market Street. Fantasizing is inadvisable, but since she won’t work for me and she’s flounced out of my life, imagination it is.

I have her phone, so it isn’t even as if I can call her. Which would have been inadvisable idea number two. She’s gone, making her dislike clear—ergo, I don’t get to fuck her. Ever. I add that to a new list, the list of Things that Suck—Get Over It. Having had her within touching distance, I know the real Maple has brown eyes. And even though she wore flats rather than pink ballet slippers, she moved through my office as if she were dancing. Just thinking about her feet makes me swallow. She has small tits and the lean build of a dancer, a sexy, flexible package that drives every remaining thought from my head.

I need to let it go.

Let her go.

Instead, I watch her dance one last time on my phone, staring at the screen where she spins effortlessly in beautiful loops and spirals, her right leg extending and flashing me as she whips through a series of beautiful, obscene kicks. I’m both turned on and resentful that I can’t stop watching her.

When my lead engineer sticks his head in my door, I trigger the script to remove her video from our servers, shove my phone back into my pocket and silently hand him my coffee-soaked laptop. I keep spares on the shelf in my office. Stockpiling avoids downtime. Returning to the code I was working on when Maple busted in seems anticlimactic, however, so instead I amuse myself by looking up my guest. I stay respectful, though, and stick to Google and stuff found online. I do no digging into her personal life, but I still add the following to my Things I Know about Maple list:

1. Maple danced five years for the San Francisco Ballet. They have awesome photos of her dressed as a swan princess (white feathers everywhere) and a hot corsair’s date.

2. A year ago, Maple left the ballet and became an influencer in the athleisure space. This means she works out in fancy clothes eighty hours a week and lives on either ramen noodles or air unless she has a new supply of free energy bars from a partner. In which case, she lives on those. In all cases, she takes pictures. An insane number of pictures.

3. Her Instagram is vibrant, colorful and loud—and full of pictures of Maple in the aforementioned athleisure wear, with food, and in places like the beach, the gym and the airport.

4. She loves puppies.

5. And kittens.

6. People pay her to do photoshoots and spend time in yoga pants. She smiles often, she’s a bit of a goofball, and I’d bet she sells a lot of clothing. I’d buy whatever she’s selling.

7. She’s always on the move—running, dancing, twirling, twitching. It’s entirely possible we could run together and she’d keep up with me. Or beat my ass. She’d certainly look better doing it.

8. There’s a photo of her in a big, poufy fuchsia skirt with a white T-shirt supporting Alzheimer’s research. She’s doing more twirling, along with smiling and standing up for what she believes in, and it’s hard not to smile back because she’s just that passionate.

9. Number seven promptly makes me imagine what Maple would be like in bed.

10. I need to stop this.

It’s child’s play to trace the account that originally uploaded the video. I hack into the owner’s laptop and discover that Madd Dixon didn’t bother to cover his trail or delete the original video. Given his demonstrated lack of ethics, I don’t limit myself to publicly available data, instead going for a deep dive into his cyber life. Just call me Miss Marple. Or maybe Poirot. Mustaches and suits are a better look for me than cardigans and pearls.

When a paper cup and straw materialize in front of my face, I reach for them automatically. The cup retreats. My first thought is that Maple has come back. It’s illogical because she hates me. Still, when I look up and realize it’s just Jack, I’m disappointed if not surprised. We have a standing Thursday taco truck date and I’ve worked through my alert.

“You stood me up.” Jack waggles the cup just out of reach. “And yet here I am, putting out.”

“You’re easy.” I take the cup and hit Save. “And I was busy.”

“Eat.” A paper bag thumps down next to my laptop and I smell cilantro and cumin.

“Thanks, Mom.”

Jack says something else, but I’m no longer listening. I’m planning the next step in my Madd campaign.

“What’re we doing?” He leans against my desk, tearing into his first taco. Jack’s a big guy and he requires a constant fuel supply. He’s also much more observant than most people give him credit for.

“Getting even.”

His brows lift in amusement. “Turned white knight?”

“You don’t have a Kinkster account.” Which means he’s likely the only adult male in San Francisco who hasn’t seen Maple’s video. And while I’m unexpectedly glad he’s a Maple virgin, it also makes asking his advice harder.

“I’m married, remember?” Jack wads up the tinfoil from his taco and lobs it into my trash can in a perfect two-point shot.

I attended his wedding, so I definitely remember. There are, however, married people using my app—and not all of them are hooking up with each other. I note, not for the first time, that Jack doesn’t sound one hundred percent happy. Maybe 70 percent. Sixty even. It could be a bad day, week or year in the venture capital world he rules, but I suspect money’s not the problem.

I look up and engage in some wishful thinking. My people skills are minimal, whereas Jack is a great guy. Everybody loves him, and not just because he’s a big muscled guy and outstanding eye candy. I’ve heard him labeled teddy bear, lumberjack and Thor. Whatever. He’s one of the few people I care about, and so for him I make an effort. We’ve been friends since freshman year at Santa Cruz when we shared a dorm room and terrorized the computer science department. When we graduated, we went in different directions. He married on the beach and founded a venture capital company. I coded dating apps and had hookups. We also each made a billion dollars along the way but, to be fair, we’re still fundamentally the same people we were back in our college days. We know when the other is full of shit or having a bad week or just needs to get out on the ocean and surf. I’m sure a surfboard is enough to fix Jack this time.

Jack steals a second taco from the bag. Right. He’s waiting for an answer.

“I was at your wedding.” I snatch the bag back and assess. Ten tacos plus the two currently residing in Jack’s bottomless stomach make six each since California is a community property state and dividing shit in half is legally mandated. I pull four foil-wrapped tacos from the bag and pass them to Jack. “Don’t worry, I’ll bear witness that you’re married.”

Jack is suddenly very interested in his taco.

Item: Jack isn’t a hundred percent good.

He points his half-eaten taco at my laptop and even I recognize a brilliant diversionary tactic. “What are you really working on?”

“Revenge. True story.”

Naturally, Jack slides my laptop around to see for himself. The picture of Maple is downloaded from a cached version of the San Francisco Ballet website. In it, she balances on the toes of one foot, her other leg extending into space behind her. Her arms are flung wide as if to hug her audience, and despite the solemn look on her beautiful face, her eyes smile at us. Sparkly white fabric fills the frame around her and there’s something on her head that looks as if a tiara and a peacock mated and produced feathery diamanté babies. I prefer the naked dancing.

Jack returns his attention to his taco. “Who is she?”

“Lola’s friend. She paid me a visit this morning.”

“And you decided to get to know her better?” Jack raises a brow. It’s one of his innate talents and it drives me crazy that I’ve never mastered the move myself.

“She was upset. Her boyfriend posted a video of her on Kinkster. It was our number one video.”

Jack sighs and knuckles his eyes with his hand. “Kinkster doesn’t post cute puppy videos, so I’m assuming there’s a connection between her upset and the boyfriend’s video.”

I’m never a complete ass, not on purpose. “It’s down.”

“But how many people saw it first?”

“It has 2,348,992 hits. It turns out that Maple is a very talented naked dancer and she’s totally uninhibited.”

Jack groans. He’s always been Mr. Rules, while Dev and I are a little more flexible. Dev was the third guy in our freshman suite at UC Santa Cruz, the first of us to earn a billion dollars, and the member of our friendship triumvirate most likely to use his coding skills for evil. His is a wicked taste for revenge. Steal his ecommerce software and you’ll wake up one morning to discover that you’re unexpectedly selling dildos or other hard-to-explain items. I admire the effort he puts into keep our world fair.

Jack clears his throat. Right. He believes we’re having a conversation in which we take turns talking. Honestly, it’s more like a one-way sermon—as his next words prove.

“Which is 2,348,991 people more than Maple intended.”

Is it?

I’m not so sure about that.

I feel my mouth curve up in a smile as I repossess my laptop.

“I can’t make people unsee her,” I say when the silence stretches on too long. Duh. Even I don’t possess superpowers. “But I can get even with Madd.”

“What kind of a name is Madd?” he mutters. I don’t say anything because the answer is obvious. Stupid, pretentious, owned by a man with a small dick and no brains—take your pick. According to Madd’s website, he was born in Orange County, California, but I’d bet five bucks his mother didn’t put that name on his birth certificate.

Jack’s eyes shift up and to the left. Now he’s thinking, too, which means Madd is totally screwed. Jack’s brain is scary good when it comes to revenge and diabolical plots. “Public access records?”

“Mostly? This is why it’s important to beef up government security. Since I’m using my powers for good, however, you can save the lecture.”

To be fair, there will undoubtedly be a next time and the next time might not be motivated by a belief in justice and fairness. I’m a big fan of rule breaking for any reason, plus I’m nosy.

“And the public good is somehow best served by stalking Maple’s boyfriend?”

“Ex-boyfriend.” Five fun facts about Madd?

1. The password on his voice mail was 123. I add fourteen decimal places and record a new message announcing his move to Siberia to seek a natural cure for his STD.

2. He’s either unaware that his phone automatically saves the photos he takes to the cloud or he’s the ultimate narcissist because his cloud storage includes 129 dick pics. I make picture 116 his avatar on all his social media accounts.

3. Madd isn’t into charitable giving. I help him out by rerouting the contents of his checking account to an erectile dysfunction research group and a save the gorillas campaign. Personal growth is important and this way he’s covered literally and metaphorically.

4. Madd’s inbox is a busy, busy place after I run a handy little script that signs his email up for every known newsletter on the planet without an unsubscribe link. He currently has 19214 welcome emails.

5. He uses the same insecure password on his dating profile, his bank account, his rideshare apps and multiple online shopping sites. Naturally, I change them and his security questions to a twenty-seven-character password complete with arcane punctuation in random spots.

6. His real name is Raymond. I haven’t decided what to do with that yet. I’ll save that dessert for later.

Jack shakes his head when I close the lid of my laptop three minutes later. Mischief managed. “I hope you have a good lawyer.”

This is a rhetorical question since we have the same firm on retainer. You get what you pay for and we pay a lot. I flip him the bird. “I won’t get caught.”

“This isn’t college,” he says, and I hear the warning there.

“I know.” I do, too. Sometimes I miss those days. Not the broke-and-starving part, but the freedom to do whatever we could get away with. Having a company of people who depend on me for their paycheck and health insurance took some getting used to, but so far I haven’t let them down and Kinkster makes good money. Still, I’m standing on the steps in the pool of life while Jack and Dev splash around in the deep end. While the number of married couples in the United States with kids is currently at an all-time low, it’s still not unlikely that Jack and his wife procreate in the none-too-distant future and then things will change even more.

I finished inhaling my first taco. “How’s Mrs. Jack?”

Jack shoves the remainder of his taco into his mouth and chews methodically. I count to freaking forty before he swallows. I’m never quite sure when people are legitimately acting weird—maybe he’s on one of those diet quests where you chew twenty times and commune deeply with your meal so that you enjoy more, consume less and magically shed weight. It’s equally possible, though, that he’s avoiding answering my question.

“You killed her and buried the body,” I deadpan, going for my second taco.

He frowns. “She’s traveling for work.”

Huh.

Mrs. Jack travels a great deal. I’d share that comment or make a joke, but Jack’s face takes on a closed-off look I process while I consume tacos three and four. He doesn’t want to talk about Molly, I decide. Usually Jack’s an open-book guy, happy to share and either tell you all about the awesomeness that is his life or bitch about the work-related stuff. Sometimes, though, he gets in a mood and slams the book shut. I’ve had my fingers pinched more than once, so I back off. I’ll ask Dev and then we’ll figure out how to fix whatever is wrong with Jack.

“Maui?”

“No.”

“Mexico?” Molly’s work takes her mostly to tropical destinations. She’s visited Mexico, the Bahamas and Thailand in the last year. I had no idea that being a pharmaceutical sales rep was so much fun, but Jack claims she’s really, really good at it and that these trips are often company-sponsored rewards for being a superstar employee. While Jack tries to remember where his wife is this particular week, I briefly debate with myself whether or not my fellow Kinksters would be more or less productive after a week in Mexico.

Honestly, we’d probably single-handedly destroy trade relations between Mexico and the US. At the very least, some of us would end up on a first-name basis with the consulate and since I like keeping my vacation options open and my engineering team intact, I finish off my fifth taco and reluctantly scratch “group tropical vacation” off the mental prize list I keep. When I was a kid with a reluctant acquaintance with toothpaste, my dentist used to motivate me with postcleaning visits to a cardboard treasure chest he kept underneath the receptionist’s desk. I’m the dentist now in this scenario and my employees are fishing for prizes. The most popular is cash, although Prada bags and Harleys come in second and third.

“Iceland,” Jack announces.

What?

Right.

Mrs. Jack.

“They sell drugs in Iceland?”

Jack takes a sip of his drink. “Molly went to Iceland.”

Iceland has never struck me as a hotbed of industry, but I’m pretty sure that’s where the northern lights are and it sounds really cool. And then I have a moment of sheer genius.

“Why don’t you join her for the weekend?” My fingers are already flipping the laptop open, pulling up my favorite travel site, and plugging in dates and airport codes. Wow. If you get bored having hookup sex, you can stare out the window at glaciers and lava fields. Or go fishing! Or have sex in geothermal pools! (Actually, I’m not sure of the effect of what is essentially superheated bathwater on the male penis, but kissing has to be possible.)

Jack frowns. “She’s working.”

24/7?

I open my mouth and close it. Don’t go there.

Plus, Jack’s already off onto another topic.

“Are you planning on hooking up with Maple?”

Quickly finishing my last taco, I protest, “I’m not interested in her.”

Jack just snorts. “Sure you aren’t. She’s a girl and you haven’t hooked up with her yet. That makes her your type.”

I shrug. “Clearly, she’s attracted to asshole idiots and I only qualify on one count, not both.”

Jack laughs, which was my plan.

The thing is, Maple and I might have something pretty important in common.

I love to watch.

And she clearly lives to perform.

I’m not Mr. Relationship—hello, I wrote a hookup app. Can I be any clearer? Hookups are short, expectations are agreed upon in advance, and everyone goes home with the fabulous parting gift of an orgasm. Plus, when I open my mouth I run everyone off. I’m blunt, I love numbers and I’m the nerdiest billionaire ever. Yes, I own a Jedi lightsaber and I’d have levitated out of bed and through my day if I could. I have two PhDs, I type at light speed but my handwriting is shit, and I remember everything in numbers: miles, seconds, URLs or IP addresses. The ladies not on Kinkster frown on numbers unless they’re the number of zeroes in my bank account. Maple is obviously creative (very, very creative, particularly at 1:12 in her video), so there’s no way we could ever work. Plus, she’s more than a little crazy—and (let’s be honest) I’m an engineer at heart. A dirty, filthy rich billionaire engineer, but she’s way too unpredictable for me. Code does exactly what you tell it to do, with no surprises, no messy emotions and no drama.

Fifteen minutes later, Jack abandons my office for his and I go back to stalking Maple online. Ten minutes more and then I’ll stop. I promise. From their respective Facebook timelines, I learn that Maple and Madd had been seeing each other for eleven months. In dog years, that’s fourteen years. In human years, that means hundreds of cute couple photos. There are so many that I skip counting them because I’m burning through my minutes and I already know that Madd is a total dick.

I’m not sure I’ve done enough, to be honest. A quick check in Kinkster’s databases reveals Maple currently has an impressive 937 hookup requests. I send her 937 lavender roses as an apology because purple is the color of royalty (I google it) and she’s a fucking queen.

Deleting her video from our online storage takes even less time. A few keystrokes and Kinkster no longer has its very own dancing ballerina. Removing her performance from our backups requires a few additional steps and documentation, but five minutes after I start, I’ve erased all traces of her. No breakup was ever quicker or more thorough.

Goodbye, Maple.

CHAPTER THREE

Maple#cheatnight #notsohealthy #betterthansex

“HE SENT YOU the flowers?”

The he is one Max O’Reilly, hot, sexy, frustrating-as-hell, impossible-to-read billionaire bachelor. Yes, there’s an entire app devoted to dating financially successful San Franciscans. Yes, I looked him up. Yes, despite his weird dating-and-job extra value combo meal proposition, he’s as commitment averse as any of the guys I’ve dated before and the only relationships he seems to have embraced have been brief connections between his penis and a handy vagina. He’s like public transit in San Francisco, rushing from stop to stop and predictably overcrowded, while I’ve always been more of a Trans-Siberian Railway girl, in it for the long haul and the memories.

Lola stares at me, nail polish brush hovering over my bare feet in her lap as she waits for my answer. Or possibly she’s just dizzy from the overpowering scent of roses in full bloom. I’ve been walking around in a rose-scented cloud since they arrived three days ago. I hum a few bars from The Blue Danube waltz. Strauss wrote it to cheer up the Austrian nation after they got their butts kicked in the Seven Weeks’ War and went broke, so it seems like a good post-Madd-breakup theme song. Plus, it’s catchy and the ultimate earworm.

I’m hosting our monthly girls’ night in my San Francisco studio. Despite the limited space (made even more limited by the addition of 937 roses in full bloom), I love my tiny, closet-sized living quarters. Said quarters are at the very tippy-top of a house fronting a square that’s alternately foggy, hot or just outright grimy, and inhabited by trees, pigeons and the occasional homeless guy. Everything in San Francisco is short on space and so the house is tall and gangly like a twiggy, sun-starved plant reaching for the occasional spot of sunshine when it breaks through the inevitable clouds and fog. The outside is all decorative bric-a-brac and a real-life turret with a wind vane sitting on its red-tile top. I had a choice of living in the turret or the unit next door, which has a balcony. If I’d been a billionaire, I’d have gone for both and knocked down the wall between them, but instead I chose the balcony. I do a morning barre routine there, fingers curled around the balustrade while San Francisco trundles sleepily below me as I plié.

Lola alternates pink with white polka dots and pink stripes on white, which means my toenails are as cheerfully pretty as the rest of my feet are not. Years of dancing en pointe have changed the shape and look of my toes, and even though they’re no longer blistered and bloody from hours of daily dancing, they’ll never look the same again. Doesn’t matter. I love them. They’re a reminder that I really can do anything if I try hard enough and long enough.

“He sent 937 roses when he returned my phone.” At least I’m almost certain they’re from Max. The handwriting on the florist’s card was really bad, to the point where if you’d told me the note was in Cyrillic, I’d have believed you. The one person I know, however, who did not send those flowers is my ex-boyfriend. Madd never sent me roses. In retrospect, I’m lucky he didn’t gift me with an STD. Part of me wants to laugh or find a way to rub my ex’s face in my flowers (starting with the thorny bits), but the rest of me is still a sad, angry llama that appreciates expensive flowers. And the quick phone repair job. I definitely wasn’t offended by that.

“Wow.” Lola caps the polish. “That’s random.”

“It’s very precise,” I counter. “I think he sent one rose for each hookup request I had on Kinkster.”

Frankly, that number is obscene. Literally. I need no more dick pics in my life, so flowers and a free phone repair are a welcome change even if the only “message” was Max’s name scrawled on the florist’s card in black Sharpie, bold and impatient. The picture I snapped of my new floral accoutrements already has a thousand likes on Instagram.

Lola just grins. “That sounds like Max actually.”

I try to sound cool, as if hot, smart guys send me the contents of a florist’s shop all the time. “He sends flowers wantonly and indiscriminately?”

Lola considers this for a nanosecond. “Max is not a flower guy.”

“His mother? Dead coworkers? Nada?”

“You’d have to ask him, but flowers are for the well mannered. Max is blunt.” She makes a face. “Wrecking-ball blunt. He tends to put people off. It’s the precision flower-sending that makes perfect sense. He wouldn’t send a dozen roses, but 937? Absolutely. That number means something to him and he loves numbers. He’s equally likely to send you 937 truffles or 937 thong panties or 937 of whatever else pops into his dirty mind.”

“Tell me more.” The smile stretching my own face is as big and goofy as, say, a bouquet of a thousand purple roses. I only want to know more because he’s seen me naked, I tell myself. And never mind that by that standard I should be holding mass meet and greets across the foggy, fine city of San Francisco. “Is he seeing anyone?”

Lola snorts. “Not for more than an hour at a time.”

I don’t have relationships.

I have hookups. For sex.

Doesn’t he realize that relationships are special? Any two people can hook up, but it takes effort to maintain that connection. It’s the difference between a salad of edible flowers and growing a garden from seed. It’s what makes Madd’s betrayal so much harder to stomach, because not only had I almost decided that he was my forever man, but I’d invested a considerable amount of time in us.

“He’s a billionaire,” Lola says. “That makes it harder, if you know what I mean.”

Now it’s my turn to snort. “Because not having any money makes everything so much easier? Pardon me if I’m not feeling sympathetic.”

“People date him for the experience or because they want stuff from him.” She turns my foot, admiring her handiwork.

I’m not stupid. I’d connected a few dots even before flouncing out of his office on Monday and then promptly checking him out on the Billionaire Bachelors app he created, an app that’s apparently the best way to meet the love (or lay) of your life. Think about that for a moment. He’s the CEO of a company that hooks people up for kinky sex and DIY porn. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that’s a money-making idea, but billionaire conjures up images of hot, cut guys (or old, fat guys) in expensive suits. But maybe that’s like assuming all dancers run around in tutus 24/7?

“That explains how he could afford all the roses.” I can’t remember the last time I dated someone who was financially solvent enough to purchase a dozen roses, let alone almost a thousand apology flowers. Not that Max and I are dating. Or hooking up. Or even remotely interested in each other. Although I do appreciate the fact that he did what he promised to do and took my dirty dancing video down. Madd had definitely set the bar low in the promise-keeping department.

“Do you want me to cut Madd’s balls off? Or send Dev to perform the amputation?” Lola grins, clearly enjoying her mental revenge fantasy.

Frankly, it appeals.

“That would be a career-limiting move,” I say finally. “I think I’m going to have to take the high road here and avoid a recreational stay in San Quentin. I’m holding out for the round-the-world tour.”

“Madd’s a dick.” Lola waves the nail brush for emphasis. “I never liked him. Next time, you should listen to me.”

“Duly noted. Walking away from a long-term relationship sucks. Madd and I were a couple and I invested time in us. I thought I knew him.”

Does that sound plaintive? Yes, it does. I make a note to kick myself in the butt.

Lola’s already shaking her head. “How many times have you gone out with a guy just for fun?”

“We had fun,” I protest.

“You go from zero to sixty,” Lola says. “You move him in and then it’s all future plans and serious talks because everything has to be a milestone and a step forward and special.”

“Lola.”

She leans her head against my shoulder. “You need to slow down, Maple. You don’t think about what’s happening right now because you’re so busy planning for a future that never arrives.”

“The future never arrives because I pick shitty men,” I say.

“You don’t know them, Maple. You just fantasize them into being right. I think you need to take a break.”

“From life? From sex? Or just the entire male gender?”

Lola sits up and slaps my shoulder. “Just have fun the next time you go out with someone. Use him for sex. Don’t go plunging into another long-term relationship five minutes after meeting someone.”

I make a face, willing someone to knock on the door or a telemarketer to call. Now would even be a good time for the upstairs neighbor to do the galumphing walkabout she usually saves for 3 a.m. “No more relationships. Just fun. And business. I’m still trying to get offered that contract from the Live Your Best Life people.”

I’m not ashamed to beg. Please, please, please pick me to be the face of your yearlong campaign because there is nothing I’d love more than to spend twelve months touring the world on your dime and shooting fabulous, yoga-and-dance-related content. Can you imagine what that would be like? Jet-setting from one tropical island to the next? They just fired the influencer who was the social media face of their campaign for drunken scooter driving in Thailand, so they need to find someone fast.

My phone pings, alerting me that dinner has arrived. Saved! I lever myself off the bed and walk to the door on my heels because it would be a shame to spoil Lola’s handiwork. I haven’t had pretty toenails in years—it’s one of the downsides to being a dancer. Nightly ice baths, gauze, blisters—none of those scream “pedicure.” Even now that I’m no longer dancing professionally, my feet are still tough and I love them.

When the intercom buzzes, I let in the delivery guy and carefully walk over to the door on my heels to retrieve our dinner.

Lola frowns at me. No, at my feet. “How do you do that?”

I look down automatically, but those are the same feet she was painting seconds ago, albeit slightly dustier. I need to up my housekeeping game. “Do what?”

“Walk so gracefully,” she says. “It’s not fair.”

“Years of practice.” I dig into the bag and pass her a set of wood chopsticks. While anybody can dance, ballet requires a commitment. In relationship terms, it’s a monogamous, twenty-five-year marriage rather than a fun hookup. And while I think I like my new life, it feels strange not to be spending sixty-plus hours a week dancing. “How are things with Dev?”

She grins. “He’s amazing.”

“Out of bed, too, I hope?” I arrange my food on the table and snap a picture then ten more because the lighting’s not quite right. #cheatnight #notsohealthy #betterthansex. Which, I discover when I dig into the first carton, isn’t an exaggeration at all. Mmm. Chow mein with those bright red chunks of pork.

Lola launches into a Dev story, something about a romantic weekend up in Napa. I think there were supposed to be wineries and maybe a romantic picnic surrounded by grapevines, but Lola’s story meanders from a really cool-sounding lunch in a restaurant that even I’ve heard of to a roadside pit stop (kissing) to finding a stream surrounded by wildflowers (where far more than kissing happened).

Her face glows when she talks about Dev. She met him by crash-landing in his lap at a networking event, and then followed the introduction up by hiring him as her new summer intern. Of course, it turned out he’d really come to her office to find out why she was illegally using his software (a completely innocent mistake on her part) and then they’d had hate-sex before agreeing to mutually use each other for orgasms. Or so Lola tells it.

Because there’s that glow that says their relationship is far more than crazy hot sex in some pretty kinky places. They’re happy together rather than angry and I think they may be working their way toward that long-term monogamous thing sooner rather than later. Like picking-out-a-puppy-together territory or possibly even a permanent move to the Kingdom of Happily-Ever-After. I’ve heard they have engagement rings and killer ceremonies there. Lola’s Dev stories are pretty freaking amazing, but I hope he realizes just how lucky he is. Lola may not have a billion dollars, but she’s worth the world to me and I’ll kill him if he can’t see that.

The Kinkster app on my phone pings and I can’t stop myself from giving the screen a quick glance. “Max owes me a rose—I have another hookup request.”

And eww. This guy also sent a picture and my eyeballs are burning. There are things you can’t unsee, no matter how small the phone screen.

Lola grabs a carton of kung pao shrimp and digs in. “I thought you deleted that app.”

I shrug. “Just keeping track of my fans.”

At first, I kept the app on my phone to make sure Madd hadn’t uploaded anything else. Then, I kept it just because. Just because I’m curious. Just because the kink other people get up to is amazing. Just because it reminds me of Max and then I can’t focus, imagining the way his mouth curled into a grin and his legs brushed mine. Maybe just because part of me wonders if he really deleted all the copies of that video—or if he’s still watching me.

CHAPTER FOUR

Max

SATURDAY IS THE crown jewel in a week that went rapidly downhill after I met Maple on Monday. It takes twenty minutes to find a place where I can pull off the Santa Cruz highway because the sandy stretch fronting the Pacific Ocean is busier than an In-N-Out drive-through after a pot festival. And then, when I finally battle my way to the surf break, rookies clog the water, battling for a shot at the waves. Secrets have a way of getting out. The whole time I’m out on the ocean, my brain keeps rewinding my encounter with Maple. Did she really believe her boyfriend would keep her video secret? Does she think about my watching her video? Does she imagine, even for a second, what I look like fisting my dick as I watch? Watched. After an epic wipeout on what should have been a good wave, I abandon my surfing attempt and head in. The sun is setting and tomorrow is another day. Just call me Scarlett.

My board bumps against the backs of my knees and I adjust my grip, towing it to shore and up onto the sand. Splashing behind me indicates Jack and Dev are following my lead.

I lob the usual no-brainer over my shoulder. “Tequila and tacos?”

Jack, Dev and I always hit up T&T after our Saturday surf. Not only is it just down the road from our favorite beach, but the bartender makes all sorts of weird margaritas and there’s a taco al pastor that’s the best this side of Cabo. This time, however, no one rushes to agree or joke about whose turn it is to pick up the bar tab. Instead, the silence stretches out between us. I turn until I can see their faces. Nope. I’m still clueless.

Jack finally shrugs. “Sure.”

He doesn’t sound sure.

A frown puckers his forehead. When did he get so distant?

Dev’s not even looking at me because he’s head down in his phone. “Lola’s in.”

This is supposed to be our time together, but things have changed since Dev met Lola and our Saturday nights have changed.

“The more the merrier,” I say because I can’t let him know that I mind. I’m the laid-back one in our group, the one who bounces from hookup to hookup because anything longer than twenty-four hours is too long.

Dev shoots me a look and I bite back a wince.

Right.

Lola’s a default setting now and not a user preference.

After four years at UC Santa Cruz and then flopping together in a crazy small San Francisco studio while we got our businesses off the ground (and I finished off PhD number two), old habits die hard. It’s always been the three of us. Four, I guess, if you count Jack’s wife, Molly, whom he married six weeks after graduation. But things change.

Items one and two: Dev and Jack have changed. Is it terrible that I feel a little bad about that? We’ll sort it out, but right now I feel unsettled. I don’t like not understanding the rules.

By the time we’re seated on the deck at T&T, the sun’s down, it’s dark, and I’m feeling better. T&T is the best beach bar in the world. The thatched roof talks back to the near-constant ocean breeze, whistling and flapping and filling up any silence not handled by the waves crashing on the shore just yards away. The furniture’s a comfortable, mismatched set of wooden Adirondack chairs (not Mexican but I cut the owners some slack) and swings suspended from the palapa roof so that you can rock gently back and forth while you belly up to the bar. There’s no better place to unwind and analyze the day’s waves and rides. It’s so good, in fact, that I’ve given serious thought to buying a beach bar of my own on some fun tropical island in the South Pacific but ownership laws for noncitizens are draconian and I suspect I’d get tired of listening to drunk people whine because they won’t own their shit.

For the first hour, drinks flow steadily as we break down the waves and our rides. We complain about the rooks crowding our sand, and for a few minutes, it feels like it always did.

But eventually Lola pops in, making a beeline for our usual table in the corner. She’s wearing a tank top and a pair of athletic leggings like the ones Maple wore. I calculate the distance between her San Francisco place and here, and come to the obvious conclusion that she’s once again spent the night at Dev’s Santa Cruz place. At some point, the two of them need to just move in together, if only to cut down on the carbon emissions.

Item: They have no qualms about kissing in public.

In fact, Lola launches herself at Dev and they end up wrapped around each other, arms, hands and tongues going all sorts of places. This isn’t a bad thing, although I prefer watching strangers go at it rather than one of my best friends. Dev also tends to be possessive and private, so I’m not sure what to make of this change.

Lola waves a greeting at Jack and me when she comes up for air, and for the next half hour we chat about the easy stuff—which companies have IPO’d, who’s seeing who, and who’s gone bankrupt since the last time we caught up over nachos. Silicon Valley is tough. We tease Jack about being Silicon Valley royalty, but he always counters that he’s more pirate than prince. Nice people get eaten alive.

“I hear you’re sending girls flowers now.” Lola digs her elbow into my rib cage. Is she being friendly or is she pissed off?

“One girl.” I stare at her for a moment. “And how do you know about those?”

“Maple’s my best friend?” She makes a face. “Plus, it’s really hard to overlook a gazillion purple roses in a San Francisco studio.”

“Nine hundred and thirty-seven roses,” I correct automatically.

Lola’s grin widens. “You owed her six more by the time we finished dinner last night.”

It takes me three seconds to work out that she’s joking, although my fingers itch to order the missing flowers from my phone. “She didn’t delete the app?”

Lola slurps her margarita. “Nope.”

Oh. I try to figure out what that means. Is Maple interested in kink? I remember the heat in her eyes when I said that I’d watched her dance. I think she liked that.

Lola stares at me speculatively. “Why did you really send her flowers?”

“I wanted to,” I say truthfully.

Jack looks up from inhaling his beer. “You like her.”

I certainly like specific parts of her—and is that such a terrible thing? She’s lovely. A whole list of adjectives pops into my head and I let them filter through my head. Funny, talented, tenacious, vibrant. Plus, I’ll bet she’s unbelievable in bed. Her eyes give away what she’s thinking and she’s super bendy thanks to that ballet career of hers. I suspect she’d surprise me, and in a good way. She’s completely unlike anyone I’ve had sex with before, and not just because she can touch her head to her toes.

But the thing is? We’d never work. She’s the queen of relationships, scouring her kingdom for The One; I’m the king of hookups. She has a wholesome business brand to manage and preserve, whereas I’m all about the dirty and the not-so-secret fantasies. After scrolling through her Instagram, I get why she’s not so happy about her Kinkster stardom. Everything on her Instagram is the kind of pretty polished that makes you wonder why your life doesn’t look that way and if buying a pair of leggings and doing a session of hot yoga might be the magic answer.

Maple’s selling fantasy, just like me, but hers is a clothes-required world.

Lola’s phone erupts, an entire troupe of Polynesian drummers banging and whooping it up in her purse. She pulls it out, looks down and frowns. Since I’m sitting next to her, I look down, too, so I can read along.

Rude.

Obnoxious.

Effective.

Sticks and stones—call me whatever you’d like but Lola has a text from Maple. I know this because the picture of the sender is Ballerina Maple, complete with crown. She looks like a wholesome, pink, sparkly princess, which just goes to show that you should never judge a book by its cover. I pluck the phone out of Lola’s hands so I can double-check the message for myself.

HELP

My inner fixer revs, begging to go into overdrive, and I remind myself to step back. Assess. Maybe she’s just got a shoe emergency or needs help picking out dish towels or forgot the name of the awesome Chinese restaurant they ordered from last night. Maybe it’s nothing.

Bubbles dance across the screen as Maple texts.

And dance.

And dance.

No words appear—just more stupid dots. Even Tolstoi handwrote War and Peace faster than this. Lola makes a grab for her phone, but no way I’m giving it up. Instead we (she) compromise: I let her squeeze up against my side and angle the screen so we can both see. Finally, Maple finishes her text and hits the send button. A riff of Polynesian drums announces its arrival on Lola’s phone.

Calling it in on the girlfriend code. Send troops ASAP. Need rescue before this guy cums on my butt.

And then nothing. I nudge Lola, slapping the phone into her hands. “Text her back.”

I should try to be nicer. More polite. Something.

And if Maple wasn’t asking for help, I’d try. Maybe. Lola opens her mouth to speak, then shuts it and starts tapping away. She texts even more slowly than Maple. I resist commiserating with Dev because sexting is clearly not going to play a part in their future life together. Finally she settles on: Where r u?

That’s the wrong question. “I can find her.”

Jack groans. “We’ve discussed cutting back on the felonies.”

“I won’t get caught.” I never do.

Maple saves me from any felonious behavior by responding: Club XYZ.

The photo that pops up on Lola’s screen is both slightly out of focus and badly lit. I think Maple’s on a dance floor. Looking down over her shoulder. Where some guy is grinding on her ass and I see red.

Think.

I grab my own phone and bring up a little app I wrote. Five seconds later, I have Maple’s GPS coordinates (south of Market in San Francisco) and a plan (drive there faster than a speeding bullet, kill the creep, rescue the girl—hot thank-you sex forming an optional epilogue). Fortunately, I’ve had a quarter of a beer so I’m good to drive. I stand up, registering the surprise on Dev’s and Lola’s faces. Jack just looks resigned.

“Going” is all I say.

I’m no one to Maple. Of course it’s none of my business. Do I care? Not really.

Lola bolts upright. Nachos fly. “Not without me.”

“Keep texting her,” I order Lola. “Let her know help is on the way.”

I don’t deny that I’m going after Maple, but I drive a Porsche that’s far faster than the piece of crap Jeep Lola owns. I’m going to get there first, and from the way Lola bellows after me as I stride away from our table, she knows it, too.

I execute the first part of my plan—the speeding bullet step—successfully, arriving in record time at 10:07. Club XYZ is indeed deep in the warehouse district. The surroundings are sketchy enough that I don’t like the idea of Maple walking around here on her own. I bound out of the Porsche, toss my keys at the valet parker along with a generous tip and head for the front door. From the quantity of bandage dresses and sparkles decorating the line of people already waiting to go in, I’m seriously underdressed in my post-surfing uniform of jeans and a T-shirt. Fortunately, cash is always the perfect accessory and the bouncer happily lets me skip the queue when I share a little sartorial wealth with him.

The music’s so loud that it’s more vibration than sound, the kind of mind-numbing decibel level that entirely rules out conversation. A DJ spins in a cage above the dance floor. It reminds me a bit of my last launch party. I’m downright terrible at interacting with people, and the closer I get to the dance floor, the harder it becomes to avoid my fellow clubbers.

The outsize price of admission included a private table and bottle service in the VIP section. Eyes follow me as I’m led to my table. Having a table makes the next step in my find-and-rescue-Maple plan easier because I simply jump onto the table, searching for the dance floor. Spotting Maple is easy.

She’s shockingly beautiful. I stand there a moment too long staring at her face—if only because I can.

Her hair falls around her face in a silky, flat curtain as she moves. Her part is a perfect white line down her scalp. I don’t know if she came here alone or not, but three men crowd her. They likely think they’re dancing with her but instead they fill up her space, throwing off the line of her dance, forcing her to either move backward or dance thigh to thigh with them. She’s wearing a fabulously short dress with wide straps and a scoop neck. The whole thing is covered with silver sequins. Flowers? Spirals? Pi? Whatever the pattern is, I like it.

She dances all out, body moving fast and sure to the beat. Her cheeks are flushed, eyes sparkling, as she thrusts her hands over her head as if she’s reaching for the moon or the stars. God, she’s special, I think, wishing I was the one dancing with her. Not that I dance. People crowd the floor, bodies brushing, arms touching, everyone moving together for as long as the song plays.

Maple’s skin glistens beneath the heat of the lights and one hand traces the line of her collarbone, dipping down. I’m staring at her and I don’t want to stop. My fingers itch to touch her, to kiss her and learn the salty-sweet taste of her. Dev was right when he said I was the hookup king and bad news for Maple, but he forgot to factor Maple into the equation. She’s a new variable and that could change the entire outcome of the problem.

I like to think that when she looks up, eyes roaming over the watchers crowding the edge of the dance floor, she spots me.

That she’s dancing for me.

She stares up at me, at someone, for a beat. Another. Her head falls back, hair spilling everywhere, and her lips move. Does she sing along when she dances, make up words when there are none? Is she smiling that secretive half smile for me? I look down, she looks up, and there’s something between us.

Item: She makes me crazy.

Item: I don’t mind.

Item: She needs rescuing.

Each step dances her farther away from one particular asshole who refuses to get the memo. He follows her relentlessly, gaze lingering on Maple’s tits and ass. He doesn’t look her in the eye and he’s definitely not interested in her smile. He’s missing out and he doesn’t deserve a single second of her attention. Be smart about this. She’s got it. The SOS was a girl thing, a joke, not an action plan.

And then he says something, Maple stops dancing and I see red. It’s not a pretty color.

That’s it.

No more.

I launch myself over the narrow wall separating the private tables from the dance floor. I’m no superhero, not even close.

Maple exhales, her eyes digging daggers into the stupid fuck who’s now touching her arm. I agree with her. The guy’s got a death wish, and tonight? I’m happy to play the tooth fairy and fairy godmother to his stupid.

He’s going down.

Down.

Down.

CHAPTER FIVE

Maple#nightlife #vip #sexydance #lifesituations

WHEN I’M CLUBBING, I dance all out. I throw my body into the techno music, finding the pulse, the beat, the rhythm that perfectly fits each measure and note. The heat of the lights overhead is a familiar weight against my skin, as is the burn in my muscles and lungs, the beat of the music in my body. Tonight I’m dancing solo and it feels good, even if I sometimes miss the intimacy and trust of a pas de deux. You have to trust your partner to be strong enough to lift you high above the stage, to know his part in the dance and support you in yours. Those were good nights.

Someone puts his hand on my ass.

I don’t think so.

Shift onto my left leg.

Jeté.

I’m reaching back with a sharp heel when strong hands close on my hips and lift me off my feet. For a brief moment, I’m flying through the air, connected to the ground only through the man dancing with me. I should pull away but I can’t stop myself from smiling; I miss dancing with a real partner. I land gently, my knees automatically bending into a plié as the hands let go.

I turn my head but he’s behind me already, big body leaning in, eliminating any distance between us. Somehow, even though it’s been five long days since we meet, I’m not surprised it’s Max. For a moment, I tense in anticipation, wanting his hands back on me, lifting me, partnering with me in this dance. This is what I miss most about my ballet days, this connection, the disciplined intimacy between myself and another dancer. He breaks the silence, though, and with it the spell or whatever it is.

“Holy shit, Maple.” He growls my name. Possibly, he yells it because the music is loud and we’re on a dance floor after all. He’s staring at me, his eyes full of emotions I can’t sort out.

I noticed his eyes when I stormed his office, dark and watchful but a deceptively sweet, rich hazel with flecks of green like little secrets that you have to get close to discover. He’s just as gorgeous tonight as he was then and no happier, either.

I look again. But no. So much unhappiness.

“Problem?” I lean back against him, resting my head on his chest as I slide my arms up around his neck. My hips move to the beat, teasing his with dirty circles. The poor baby’s not feeling playful, though. He stands there like the Colossus of Rhodes, a big, broody, expensive statue just daring me to topple him.

Okay, maybe he didn’t come here to dance.

Maybe he doesn’t see the challenge he poses.

“Dance with me.”

Hazel eyes hold mine. “I don’t dance.”

“You’re not dancing right now,” I correct. “But we can fix that. Move your feet.”

“I saw your SOS.”

And...still not moving.

SOS doesn’t compute until I think for a moment. Right. The text I sent to Lola—and not to him. I narrow my eyes at him.

“Breaking some more rules, Mr. Bigshot Billionaire?”

He outright laughs, a devilish smile playing over his pretty, pretty mouth. It’s a miracle I can hear his laughter over the music but we’re pressed close together, so I definitely feel it. His chest shakes so hard he almost throws me off. I press my ear to his chest, grinning up at him. His breath feathers over my cheek, my throat. Laughter looks good on him.

His head dips. “Did you like your flowers?”

“Dance with me and I’ll tell you,” I suggest.

He shakes his head but then one hand settles on my hip, pulling me tight against him as he tries and fails to find my rhythm. His front bumps awkwardly against my rear and one thing is immediately clear: Max was first in line when God handed out penises and he got the biggest, widest dick of them all.

“See? Anyone can dance.” I tilt my head back, grinning up at him. “One foot, two feet, no feet, you move what you have.”

He frowns now, his mouth curving down. I reach up and gently tap the corner. “You’re so sulky.”

He jerks back. I’ll bet billionaires don’t get much constructive criticism and that’s okay. I’m a dancer—I live for that shit. “I don’t know how to dance,” he grumbles.

Right on cue, his jeans-covered hips bump my ass as he loses our rhythm again. He’s not kidding. He really can’t move. I dance with exaggerated slowness until he finds me, us, again.

“You don’t dance well.” I shrug. “I don’t care.”

He snorts. “Says the professional dancer.”

The other guy, the one who wouldn’t leave me alone and kept trying to grab my ass, hovers a few feet away. He’s stupid enough to believe he still has a chance. The delusion is strong with that one. Max’s other hand, the one not cradling my hipbone, splays low over my stomach, his fingers brushing dangerously low. Awareness heats my skin where he touches me.

“I like this.” I close my eyes, the better to feel each shift of his body behind me. I think he may say something else, but words don’t matter right now. We’re dancing and the whole world could be watching and that just makes the moment better. I curl a hand behind his neck, setting the other on his thigh. As if he’s fucking me slow and deep from behind, each roll of his hips making my panties wetter even though I’m almost certain I don’t like him.

When the song ends, however, he stops. I pout, not ready to stop, but his hand on my lower back steers me toward the edge of the dance floor. Eventually we push through the crowd and lock in on the VIP section. Of course he’ll have a table there. I’m sure throwing money around must be a membership requirement of the Billionaire Bachelors club.

People watch us. It isn’t just that I enjoy dancing for an audience—which I do—or like cuddling up against Max—which is a hell yes despite his rather prickly personality. It’s the way he makes me feel as if all of his attention is focused on me and that he’s okay with my taking the lead if that’s what I want. I feel safe with him, especially in a club crowded with drunken assholes, because he’ll step in if and when I want, but otherwise it’s my dance.

He doesn’t so much as pause when he reaches the stupid velvet rope the club uses to separate us masses from the wealthy special snowflakes and sure enough, bouncer dude unclips it with a respectful nod. Max sails straight through, headed for prime real estate loaded with unopened bottles of champagne and one of those dark-chocolate-colored whiskeys that scream money.

I’m not a big drinker, so I pass when Max waves at the bottles. You have to pay for bottle service to sit in the VIP section, but clearly he doesn’t feel the need to actually consume the alcohol.

“Phone,” he demands.

What?

“Didn’t you just go to a whole lot of trouble to return it?” I plant my backside on the already crowded tabletop because my feet are too antsy for full-blown sitting and this way I can swing them back and forth. “That seems like wasted effort.”

“Phone,” he repeats, leaning in. God, he smells good. “Please.”

I imagine his face if I asked him why he smelled like cedar and spice and everything nice. Does he smell like this every morning or only when he makes an effort?

Back off, Maple.

Don’t scare the nice man.

This could be why Madd left you.

Did I sniff Madd? Did I come on too strong, too fast, too much? Funny how I can’t remember now. I give up and I pull my phone out of my bag slung across my front. The bag’s awesome, all silver, beads and tassels. Lola swears I’m either a reincarnated Vegas showgirl or a disco ball wannabe. Whatever.

Max plucks the phone from my hand, taps in my passcode and frowns. “You didn’t change it.”

“What?”

“You should have immediately changed your passcode when I returned your phone.” He shakes his head. “You can’t trust random strangers.”

“Are we strangers? You’ve seen my vulva.”

The grin he gives me is crooked. “True, but if that’s your criteria, then you should trust most of San Francisco.”

“I probably could have Sharpied my passcode on my stomach and they wouldn’t have noticed. Or maybe on my boobs.” I cup them in their sparkly dress-nest and consider the available real estate. “I could fit a four-digit ATM passcode on my left tit, but the phone’s eight-digit number is gonna get cramped. What do you think?”

He gets the cutest little crinkle between his eyes when he’s confused. “What?”

“Are my boobs big enough to hold eight numbers?”

The idea of knocking Max off balance makes me oddly giddy. He’s so logical. I stare at him expectantly, while the crinkle grows to Grand Canyon proportions as he stares at my chest.

He’s actually considering it.

Or he’s really, really checking out my rack.

Finally, he says, “How big are the numbers?”

“Max!”

He grins, and oh my God, I’m in trouble because it’s a total panty-melting grin that sparks joy in my southern regions. It starts in his eyes, crinkling up the corners deliciously, and then spreads to his mouth.

“Gotcha.” He returns his attention to my phone. “I’m putting my number into your contacts.”

“Why?” Max doesn’t strike me as the kind of person who randomly texts pictures of his cat but I’ve been tricked before. “Do you have pets? Because no more than three cute kitten or puppy photos or I’ll initiate the autodestruct sequence. Also, no bathroom selfies. Or gourmet food pictures unless you’re standing on my doorstep about to share.”

“You have a lot of rules.” My phone explodes into song in his hand, pealing out a rousing bar or six of Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus.”

Madd’s calling.

Max hands me the phone and I decline the call because I’m not stupid. He’s a stupid, bad-news cheater but he was my mistake and it’s hard to let go of the potential I saw in him. Madd gave great fantasy.

Madd is also persistent. When I don’t answer, he texts a picture instead. In the photo he’s cuddling a brown-and-white puppy in a big white tumbled bed. I bought him that duvet cover and now it dips artistically, teasingly, beneath the sharp, sexy line of his hipbones. I think he’s naked. I can almost imagine that’s the thick line of his penis beneath the sheet that’s slipped beneath his lean belly.

Dreaming of u and our fur family.

I swear my heart stops for a second because this is the way I’ve imagined him for months and, now that he’s walked out on us, he wants to be my dream man?

Max growls something so profane that I revise my opinion of his creativity upward.

“I thought he was a dick but puppies are a new level of clickbait,” he says.

I cock my head, trying to figure out the man in front of me. “Wow. You truly don’t have a filter, do you?”

He shrugs, his give-a-fuck either as broken or nonexistent as that filter. “I don’t lie, if that’s what you mean.”

Madd did. Does? I look down at almost-naked Madd again. Is that Madd’s puppy? Ours? A prop for his insta-life? Responses to Madd’s text tumble through my head.

It’s too late.

Why are you doing this to me?

Why don’t I care more?

“Not-lying is good.” My fingers skim over the phone screen, but I’m not going to answer Madd. Not tonight, not ever. “I realize you’re just being honest with me, but I don’t think I’m ready to discuss my ex-boyfriend with you.”

He tucks my phone back into my bag. For just a moment, I feel the weight of his palm brush against my stomach and I fight the urge to lean in. “If you need me, text me.”

“Why?”

He lifts me down off the table while he thinks about it. I’m used to being lifted and moved about, although usually I’ve agreed beforehand and there’s a well-established script. I wouldn’t have predicted that Max’s high-handedness is sort of sexy. Part of me wants to explore what else I might find sexy about him, but that’s just madness. Or maybe horniness. Unfortunately, the guy attached to the very large penis isn’t particularly likable even if he is eminently sex worthy.

His hand settles on the small of my back, fingertips brushing my bare skin. Unlike the creep on the dance floor, I don’t think he even realizes he’s touching me. He’s just there and I’m here and somehow we have this bizarre connection. I should step away but instead I let him steer me in the direction he wants to go.

We’re moving toward the exit before he answers me. “For whatever you need. Because I owe you. Because you clearly need either a fake boyfriend or your own personal bouncer until your San Francisco fans forget about your video.”

If you had asked me earlier what I wanted, forgetting would have topped my list. That’s why I Ride of the Valkyried his ass and issued a personal takedown notice.

I look over at him. “I lost a campaign today. I was supposed to shoot this big dancer, little dancer number with a pink-tutu-wearing mini-me, but now some other influencer will land it.”

“They saw the video?”

I try to be fair. “They claimed their budget was maxed out so they weren’t going to move ahead with the campaign after all, but my agent heard through her network that they booked a different influencer because I was trending for some very unwholesome reasons.”

I’d been so excited to be scouted for that campaign because I’d always loved that brand. They were my first shoes and I still have them in my box of dance souvenirs.

There’s a handful of paparazzi waiting outside the club in the hopes that someone shot-worthy or famous will exit and they perk up when they spot Max. Questions fly: Who’s the date tonight, Max? Are you and Hannah through? How about Melissa? Alice? Are you seeing anyone?

“No comment.” He frowns, his hand at the small of my back urging me toward the waiting car.

Nothing to see here.

Move along.

CHAPTER SIX

Max

A MISSILE CRASH-LANDS on my chest. Instinctively, I roll, cradling my laptop. Everything’s backed up but replacing hardware is inconvenient and I’ve already done so once this week. For a brief second I’m airborne and then I fall, my shoulders hitting the floor hard as the rest of me slides off my sofa. The laptop slides to a gentle landing beside me. Fuck me, but I should invest in carpet. Maybe one of those shaggy rugs or a faux sheepskin.

I haven’t slept in a bed since moving into my Santa Cruz place as I prefer to work until I pass out. The couch is the only piece of furniture in the big empty living space. It came with the house and has three legs; the missing fourth has been replaced by a stack of books. The Realtor described my style as postmodern. My housekeeper has declared it “easy to clean.” I crack an eye, but the only thing on eye level is a Roomba slowly gliding over the floor. The black wood shows every piece of lint and dust. It drives me nuts, hence the Roomba army. There’s a scratch in the floor by my nose that I need to get fixed.

Sun pours in the floor-to-ceiling glass windows. I don’t own curtains. If you want to watch, watch. The sofa creaks a warning and I tense as the missile hammers my rib cage. I grab it with my free hand. Danger. Did I hook up last night after rescuing Maple and forget? Because that’s a female hand. I let go fast while my brain catches up with the rest of me and I pry my eyes open.

Lola crouches over me.

No.

Scratch that.

She’s straddling me.

“You suck,” she bellows.

Given her lack of an inside voice, I decide she’s talking about the way I abandoned her last night to go after Maple and not about any kind of sexual activity, but... I’m not sure. Houston, we have a problem. It’s not that she knows the passcode for my alarm system—using the first fourteen places of pi was predictable—but that we’re touching in ways a guy should never, ever touch his best friend’s girl.

Oblivious to my dilemma, she glares down at me. “Maple deserves more than a hookup.”

“What?” Despite my multiple PhDs, I sound less than intelligent but I require three hours of sleep to be functional and I’m now operating on less based on the angle of the sun on my floor. Rescuing Maple took the better part of the night.

“Do not mess with my friend.” Lola punctuates her words with additional and vigorous rib poking. I turn my head to check my laptop while trying not to move because grinding my morning wood against Dev’s girlfriend—even accidentally—would be disastrous.

“Can we discuss this over breakfast?” It’s not unusual for me to stay up all night, but this is the first time Lola’s paid me a solo call. Usually she’s attached by some body part to Dev and I’m busy trying not to perv on them.

Lola bounces, I grunt, and she must figure out what my problem is because now it’s her turn to freeze.

“Right,” she says, staring out the window. Pink flushes her face. “This is awkward.”

“Generally speaking, women don’t attack me or try to ravish me,” I offer. “In fact, I can remember zero instances. So I’m assuming I’m misinterpreting this situation and you’re not trying to get me killed by Dev or offering yourself up as a substitute for Maple. Which is a very friendly overture but one I’m going to have to pass on.”

Lola groans and pounds her head into my shoulder. I think. Honestly, I’m not sure what she’s doing, but she’ll have to do it by herself. Dev is a big motherfucker and I know exactly how hard he can hit. She climbs off me, however, which is progress.

I stand up cautiously, considering next steps. It seems likely that everything will become clearer after I caffeinate, so I head into the kitchen. Rather like my relationships, I have a policy of getting in and getting out of my kitchen. The room channels a Siberian snowstorm, all white subway tile, white marble and big-ass stainless steel appliances. You practically need a parka or snowshoes to fight off the pristine chill. I pull the fridge door open and check the contents. I need to place a grocery order. For all my dollars, I appear to own no more than a can of Coke, a bowl of Mini Moo’s and an unidentifiable white take-out container.

Fake milk it is.

I get busy with the Mr. Coffee, shoving an espresso pod in and cranking on the buttons.

“Why are we talking about Maple?” I hope I’m not smiling like a jackass.

Maybe I am, because Lola holds up her hand. “Your app shared her naked nudie dancing with most of San Francisco.”

She folds down a finger.

I think she might be really mad at me.

“She confronted you.” Another finger.

“Instead of simply taking down her video, you made offers that included a job, stock options and sexual intercourse.”

There’s a brief pause. I suspect Lola is waiting for me to confirm or deny, but I settle for a noncommittal shrug.

“You sent her roses.”

Finger, finger, finger.

“You rode your big, sexy white horse to the rescue.”

“Am I the knight in that analogy? Or a cowboy? Because I drove my Porsche to that club and I’m confused.”

Lola stabs her middle finger in my direction. Point made. “Poetic license. Either way, you don’t seem to be keeping away from her and you need to rethink that decision, big guy.”

“I didn’t realize that she was off-limits.” The coffeemaker finishes filling my lucky mug with tarry black goodness.

“You are the hookup king.” Lola peers in the cup and shudders. “That is so gross.”

I think she’s referring to my personal life and not the coffee, so I hand her the cup and Mini Moo’s and start drink number two. What does Maple drink when she gets up? Does she like her coffee milky and sweet? Dark and bitter? God. What if she doesn’t even drink coffee? She could be one of those weirdos who starts the day with hot water and lemon or a hit of matcha. Whatever that is.

“Executive summary.” Lola dumps a handful of fake creamers into her cup and then lobs the empty plastic cups at me. “Don’t mess with her.”

I redirect her missiles into the trash. “Do I look like a total dick?”

She looks around instead of answering. “This place is almost completely empty. You should buy some furniture.”

I look around, too.

I have a trash can, a fridge and a sofa.

I think she might be right. I should invest in something to fill up the space.

“They have people for that,” Lola points out. “You could support the local economy and hire out.”

“Dev hired a decorator, but I don’t want some random stranger waltzing into my place and making decisions that I have to live with.”

“Wow.” Merriment dances in Lola’s eyes. “And yet you’re totally good with random hookups?”

“Sure?” I guess it sort of is the same principle, picking out what I’ll live with based on the outside packaging. On the other hand, I’d have to pay a decorator and I’ve never paid for sex unless you count dinner and drinks. Which I haven’t because I’ve never expected a girl to sleep with me because I’ve fed her. That’s all kinds of wrong. You don’t drop a bag of canned goods off at the local food shelf and expect the recipient to put out.

“There’s nothing wrong with hookups.” Lola takes a sip of her coffee and makes a face. “Although your taste in coffee is bad. Sometimes you don’t want forever.” From the way her mouth curls, though, she’s thinking about Dev again. I’m pretty sure both of their hookup days are behind them.

“But you don’t think I should hook up with Maple.”

“Not really, no. She’s no good with short-term rentals.”

“So I’m not allowed to take her out and then get down on my knees, run my hand up her—”

Lola grabs my laptop. “Shop. Buy a room.”

I think I understand why Dev likes her so much. She’s fun. Since she’s taken and we’ve already established that I don’t do long-term anyhow, I do as she suggests and go online. I choose one of those mattresses-in-a-box for my bedroom, but after that I’m stumped. Houston, we have a problem. There are 11,298 furniture options and more filters on the website than the user interface for the space shuttle. I try a few sample searches before giving up and attacking the problem from a different angle.

“What would Maple like?”

Lola makes a face. “Maple is a hoarder.”

“More words.” I try to decide if I know what size my mattress is but I draw a blank. It’s big.

“Maple loves keepsakes. Or she’s a collector. Possibly a shopaholic.” Lola leans over and taps a few filters. My possible choices narrow to 1,456. I suppose I could just order them all and then donate the ones I don’t like, but then I spot the dreaded words: assembly required.

“She has lots of stuff?” I’m not exactly sure what Lola’s getting at, but now I sort of want to see Maple’s place. I’m also certain she’d hate mine because the only word to describe it is empty.

“She went to Bali.” Lola dumps some stuff into my cart. “When she came back, she re-created her hotel room because she’d had such an awesome time. Most people take photos or buy a T-shirt. She bought a Balinese bed. In Bali. It required a shipping container on a cargo ship to bring it back to San Francisco.”

“So?”

“She could have bought a cheaper, look-alike bed here, but she wanted the real deal. A Bali bed from Bali. Maple is an overcommitter.”

And again...so?

Lola sighs, so clearly I’m the problem here. “She’s all in when she loves something—or someone. Her bed is the biggest, most ginormous, out-of-place bed I’ve ever seen crammed into a studio. She had to drag it up the stairs one piece at a time. She didn’t quit.”

“Is that the kind of bed with posts?” I mime the sticking-up bits. “Because if so, I want one of those. Think of the promo shoots I could host for Kinkster, with tied-up people.”

Lola groans. “Never mind. Don’t share your dirty thoughts with me.”

“Right. No talking business.” I save the cart to look at later.

Lola waves toward the ocean. You can’t see it until you’re leaning over the edge of the minicliff where my house perches, but there’s a staircase to a private beach. “Are you coming down?”

“Maybe later.”

Lola sticks her tongue out at me. “Rapunzel.”

She darts out of the house so that she can have the last word, disappearing down the staircase to the beach. She’s the silver lining to a bad piece of business for Dev. When his hookup stole his software and illegally posted it on a freelancing site for five bucks, Lola bought it. Dev went rampaging after her of course, determined to exact vengeance, but then he fell in lust—and now he claims to be in love. Jack’s been off the market for years. Out of the three of us, in fact, I’m the only single guy left.

She’s right. It’s funny. I’ve always been happy hooking up before. I’ve never wanted more. And I don’t now, I tell myself. It’s just Maple I want. I kind of, sort of want to know more about the nonnaked parts of Maple, the parts she’s never, ever shown the world.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Max

ADRIFT IN WONDERLAND, Alice chose to believe in five impossible things before breakfast.

I’m an engineer.

I believe in facts.

Fact #1: Maple has never asked me to text her. Not once in the twelve days since I met her.

Fact #2: Maple has never texted me herself—and she has my number.

Fact #3: I suck at texting.

Fact #4: She just broke up with her long-term, rat bastard boyfriend and she deserves the unicorn of the dating world.

That unicorn would be Mr. Perfect, a Ken doll and happily-ever-after rolled into one hot, muscled package that adores her, her family, her pets and every quirky thing about her. In other words: not me.

All I have to do to remind myself of my inability to string together words is scroll through my non-work-related texts from the last week. There aren’t many—a pizza coupon and a reminder to put out the trash cans on Tuesday for pickup. Am I up for tacos? Yes. Surf Saturday? Where? I prefer communication to be both short and clear. Why waste time when you could be doing instead? Instead of taking a girl out for dinner and then forcing myself to engage in small talk, I hook up.

Still, I can’t stop myself from imagining what Maple might be doing right now. In fact (har har), I don’t even have to imagine her because I have the video of her dancing in the club saved on my phone. I replay it for the seventeenth time because watching Maple move is making this my favorite Sunday morning ever. I know by heart each dip her body makes to the music pounding around her. The way her hips find the beat and her arms rise as she turns. Something started between us when she exploded into my office a week ago. She may be ignoring the chemistry between us, as if the lack of words can put out what we feel or make us into friends or fuck buddies or some other neat label. Somehow my fingers fly over the screen, pulling up her contact info and tapping out two little letters: Hi. As soon as my thumb slides off the send button, however, I know I’ve made a mistake.

Hi? Why don’t I just text hey while I’m at it?

Embarrassed, I stare down at my phone, mentally willing Maple’s cell phone provider to have some kind of catastrophic server meltdown that will erase her messages from the last sixty seconds. The odds of that happening are low, so I’m weighing the odds of hacking in when my phone pings.

What’s up?

Okay. That’s a question and a question deserves a response, right? Not much. Lying on couch.

A long pause follows, during which I suspect she’s lost interest, but then she types back: Pretty tame for a billionaire?

Gave the private pilot the night off, I text back.

She responds almost immediately: You have a private plane for real?

Timeshare.

This time the pause stretches out until I get tired of waiting for her response. Fuck taking turns. Does my partial plane ownership mean you no longer respect me?

I haven’t checked my personal Kinkster app in a while. I pull it up while I wait for Maple to respond. I have 312 hookup requests, but strangely I don’t feel like looking at any of them. Or maybe it’s an abundance of riches. Or laziness.

Is it possible to be too lazy for sex?

The ping of an incoming text has me drooling like Pavlov’s dog.

Does that mean you get tipped out a third of the way to Paris?

I grin down at my phone.

Come with me and find out?

There’s a pause, and then: HAHA. Goodnight Max.

One text leads to another, and then somehow over the next two weeks we fall into a pattern. I don’t know what’s happening between us. We’re not hookups. Are we friends? Maybe. I mean, clearly we flirt and give each other shit. She’s funny. She teases me about her star status in the hookup world even though I know she’s still worried about her professional reputation.

Plus, it’s good to not be the odd man out anymore. My friends have all paired off, and while I don’t want happily-ever-after, I’m not a fan of awkward, either. Dev and Lola. Jack and Molly. That just leaves me. Do I want to hang out with Maple?

Maybe. I mean, she’s sexy as hell and I’d get naked with her in a heartbeat. Maybe.

Because I don’t want her to stop texting me, either, and that’s what happens when two people hook up. Maple’s on a man diet, or so she assured me. She’s just barely broken up with Madd and now he’s begging her to take him back, making promises and doing the woo. I could tell her that once an asshole, always an asshole, but she doesn’t want to hear that right now. That’s another reason I haven’t hit on her, not really. Madd’s holding out the fantasy of their perfect future together, and believe it or not, naked, spread-eagle me isn’t such a tempting counter offer that she’s rushing over to my place to drop her panties on my floor and rip my boxers off with her teeth. I figure there’s always tomorrow or next week—whenever Madd shows his true colors.

In the meantime, I get free decorating advice because it turns out that Maple really likes furniture and she’s willing to choose non-Balinese pieces. She also adores pillows and pictures and a million other pieces of crap, the absence of which marks me as a total barbarian. I spent a weekend making mood boards, which is way less kinky than I’d hoped. The best part about it was Maple’s snort-giggle when I asked her if a mood board was the Christian Grey, X-rated version of pin the tail on the donkey. FYI? Totally not. Drawing my favorite sexual fantasies on a piece of poster board with a handful of crap markers would have been cake.

I am acquiring a houseful of furniture, though. Maple has an unhealthy love of floral prints and faux fur. Leather also has to be of the faux variety because sitting on dead animals is inhumane. Today I’m considering a vegan leather couch to replace the hand-me-down in my living room. In the plus column: ninety-six inches long, twelve inches of Roomba-approved clearance between the bottom and my hardwoods, and the color of a high-end Cuban cigar or an apple-cider doughnut. In the negative column?

Max: Legs look like gold paper clips

Maple: Hairpin legs

Max: WTF?

Maple: Very trendy

Max: On a scale of 1 to 10, my give-a-fuck has achieved negative numbers

Maple: Think of how impressed your hookup will be ;)

Max: More worried about banging her on the couch. Too slippery? What if we break it? Think I should buy two in case there’s an accident? Do you want one for your place? I owe you.

Maple: TMI and no thank you. I have a big bed.

I ask for pictures but no go.

Maple is an early morning texter. Not the predawn hours when normal people are coming home from a wild time out at the clubs and bars or getting up to get ready for work because when you live in California, you’re going to spend hours commuting to the office. And before you go getting all judgmental, I’ll just point out that I’m usually up all night coding. Sue me if that means I like a nap at seven or eight in the morning.

Still, when she hits me up, three weeks after we started texting, I don’t see it coming. Partly this is because I’d just gotten vertical on my bed, pillow over my head, because I’ve just committed a huge check-in and there’s not enough Red Bull in the world to keep me up. I’m crashing hard when a herd of demented bumblebees erupts a few inches from my head.

Shit.

I grab my phone.

Maple: How’s your day going?

Max: Maple?

Maple: You forgot my name already?

I can feel the stupid grin stretch my mouth. Not that there’s anyone here to give a damn if I look stupid. She’s so cute.

Max: Right. Oak. Crepe Myrtle? I’m in bed.

I snap a picture of myself. Not that kind. I know better than to send Maple crotch shots. If she wants to see my dick, she’ll ask. I send her a perfectly lovely shot of my head. Yes, the big one. My hair’s sticking up on end, my jaw’s rougher than a cornfield after mowing and I’m naked. Not that she can see my goods, but I stripped off before dropping into bed and not even for Maple am I getting up to find a shirt.

Maple: Lazy bastard. They made me wear pants with buttons today at work.

Since she’s working, I suppose taking her pants off isn’t an option.

Max: What’s up where you are?

Maple: Wanna buy a blender?

She sends me a picture. Score. It looks like she’s standing in some kind of conference or exhibition space. There’s a ton of people around her selling crap and networking as if their lives depend on it. That’s just background music, though. Maple’s front and center, beaming at me. I take in her goofy smile, the tight white T-shirt with the name of a nutrition drink company scrawled over her tits. Must be one of her influencer gigs and I briefly wonder how much they’re paying her. Whatever it is, it’s not enough. Her phone’s aimed over her shoulder, which means I can’t see her ass in the picture, but I imagine it just fine.

Max: I’ll take a dozen

Maple: I need an honest guy opinion, okay?

Max: Hit me

Maple: Madd wants to meet for drinks tomorrow night. Bad idea to go?

Max: Don’t want to be a dick about this but—

Maple: Uh-huh

Max: No, seriously. I’ve got one, he’s got one, and that gives us a special bond, if you know what I mean.

Maple: Be serious?

Max: Delete and block. He’s playing you and it’s not the kind of game you’re gonna win. He wants a hookup. He wants your panties on his floor because he’s either got nothing better going on or he’s got nothing.

She goes silent after that. I try shoving my pillow over my head, but my brain’s awake and there’s no going back to sleep now. Since I don’t feel like getting up and adulting just yet, I take advantage of my naked, happy-to-see-Maple state and fist my dick. Whacking off alone in bed isn’t my first choice but Maple’s working and there’s no one else I want to call, so I keep my hand beneath the sheet and get busy. When my phone vibrates, I groan.

Max: Interrupting, Palm

Maple: You know anything about Madd’s sudden purchase of not one but two Mexican timeshares? He says he’s locked out of his online banking app so he can’t shut it down.

Maybe it’s because I had so much fun texting Maple about blenders earlier today, but tonight’s dinner meeting is excruciating. It’s like a hookup gone bad where you know before the main course ever arrives that you’re cutting the night short and nobody’s scoring. The guys pitching me are eager and they’ve mastered all the right buzzwords, but the deal they’re pitching isn’t one I’m interested in. In fact, it’s safe to say I’m bored, so when my phone buzzes, I look down discreetly. I have a message from Maple: What are you doing?

Dying, I promptly type. Business dinner. Send naked picture immediately to salvage day.

And even though I’m a firm believer in going for what you want in life, I’m surprised when Maple actually does send me a picture. She’s ever so slightly sweaty, mostly undressed, and there’s a railing behind her that I’ve learned is called a barre (preferably in a French accent). She’s wearing pink tights and I swallow. It’s not as if she’s naked, but... Fuck. Me. Pink toe shoes peek out beneath an enormous pair of wooly leg warmers. The black cotton of her leotard skims her breasts, hugging the curves. She’s leaning forward on her elbows, legs spread wide as she stretches, the phone held out in front of her. Better yet, since she’s in a studio, the wall behind her is all mirrors and I can see the heart-shaped peach of her ass. A mischievous smile lights up her face. Fuck, she’s gorgeous.

Hot and sweaty Friday night fun, she types.

I can’t resist. No hot date? Is this me-time?

Her reply is almost instant. Sex right now would be awesome. I need a boyfriend stat.

My dick tents the front of my Armani dress slacks, demanding we go help her out with her abstinence problem. I excuse myself from the table. Hiding out in the men’s room seems too clichéd, so I head outside to the restaurant’s private terrace. Forty stories below, San Francisco lights twinkle around me. Those stupid rosemary balls on sticks and other perfectly manicured plants line the deck. I feel like I’m in a zoo but I take a picture anyhow (of my face because I’m not stupid) and send it to her.

At your service.

We’ve flirted with each other the last couple of weeks, our teasing veering between the dirty and the playful. Sometimes it’s the kind of shit friends give each other, while other times I don’t know what we’re doing even if I want to do it all the time. I can almost feel her laughter shaking her phone. Maple loves dirty puns, bad jokes and having fun. I bet she fucking rocked that stage and lit up the room. I wish I could have seen her dance in the theater. I wish she were here. I wave off the waiter who approaches me.

Have a drink with me, I write back. To myself. Because even though she hasn’t responded to me, I’m all in. I text her directions and wait. I may or may not be holding my breath. I’ve hooked up dozens of times through Kinkster, but that was easier. I didn’t care about the women reading my texts; I just cared about having sex.

This is Maple and she makes me wait long enough that I suspect she’s actually seriously considering my invitation. Haha. People will think I’m after your money.

I type back: My dick’s even bigger than my bank account. I’m sure you can prioritize correctly.

Of course she’s not going to let that go. Ask Guinness out then and go for the world record.

Right. I’ll get right on that. I fire off: Record is 13.5 inches. How do you think they measured that?

I love numbers. Yes, I measured my dick when I was twelve. And then again when I was fourteen, sixteen and seventeen. If your boner clocks in at less than three inches, you’ve got a less-than-average problem—so I have nothing to worry about.

Maple’s still going to give me shit. She types: Pfft. That’s the official record. Unofficial guy in the UK is claiming almost nineteen inches. He can’t work because his dick is so huge. He might actually get Disability.

I make the mistake of googling this, thus burning the images of a pants-less guy with his massive schlong covered in what looks like panty hose into my brain forever. Def a future as a porn star there. I reply, You’re right. I can’t compete.

Maple sends me a smiley face emoticon. Emoticons are tricky. They’re not, as I’ve pointed out more than once, actual letters. They form no words. It’s an interpretive dance where you can’t hear the music and I hate the ambiguity. Is she smiling because she’s imagining my dick? Or is she being sarcastic because she wouldn’t be getting off on a foot and a half of panty hose? Maybe she’s just in a random good mood. Or messing with me.

I take a stab at answering anyhow. No boyfriend doesn’t have to mean no sex.

I’m sure this has occurred to her, but I feel the need to point it out. While I wait for her response, I abandon the pitch guys, settle our check and catch the elevator. It takes fourteen seconds to descend forty floors, and most of that time I spend imagining exactly what Maple could be doing with her boyfriend. Or to him. For him. Then I swap the pronouns around because I’m an enlightened kind of guy. I could do her. I know her feet get tired and ache. She claims that’s the dance tax, for slamming them into the stage floor over and over again, but I don’t think TLC would hurt. I’d be happy to rub them.

Or do other things.

There is a time and a place for a nonsexy, it’s-all-about-you-babe massage, but personal experience says that it’s also foreplay. Don’t lie. You know that when you’re naked and oiled up and I’ve rubbed all the places that hurt and the tension’s leaking out of your body like helium from a balloon, you’re going to start thinking about other things.

Jesus.

I come to a decision as I step out of the elevator and stride over to the valet parking podium. First, my hard-on’s reached ridiculous proportions and I’m in serious danger of snapping my dick in half if I move wrong. Second, the guys there either remember me or, more likely, my car. One of them darts off to retrieve my darling and I return my attention to my phone.

Maple hasn’t answered, but I totally think we should have sex. It’s practically a public service on my part. Sexless Friday nights should be illegal. While I wait for the valet to return, I make my pitch:

We could hook up.

Dirty sex.

Multiple orgasms.

Lots of fun.

Say yes.

I’m still waiting for Maple’s response when the valet hands me my keys. I slip him a twenty and slide into my Porsche. My music’s already pounding, the beat vibrating through my seat. I don’t flat out sing along or seat dance, but it’s tempting. I had a poster of this car on the wall of my bedroom growing up and now she’s mine. Of course, I also had a trio of sexy, naked ladies cohabiting in that same space. Hope springs eternal. I drive through the city while I wait for Maple to decide what she wants to say to me. Or, hopefully, do with me. I give her five more minutes to respond before I tell Siri to text her again:

Too blunt? I take feedback.

The highway here runs along the ocean. The road falls away from the shoulder in a steep, stony roll to the water. Waves break on larger rocks a few hundred feet from shore. I find a pullout and bring my Porsche in for a safe landing. I need both hands for this shit.

Ping. Two days ago, I decided that Maple required her own ringtone, so I assigned her the opening measure from “Flight of the Bumblebee.” She’d told me a story about trying to do fouetté turns to it as a five-year-old and I’d almost peed myself laughing.

My phone buzzes with her response: How do I know you’re not all talk? Prove it.

I’m Mr. Show, but clearly she’s mistaken me for Mr. Tell. I’m grinning like an idiot at my phone when she texts again.

Chicken.

The squawking, clucking bird emoji needs no interpretation on my part, although it looks more like an ostrich laying an egg to me. She’s on.

You want a menu? Am I a drive-through?

Her answering text is almost instant: Quit stalling.

Uh-huh. She thinks I’m bluffing.

If I give you a menu, you have to rank the options.

I don’t give her a chance to disagree. Instead, I start texting.

A. The gourmet foodie option. I’ll cook you a meal. Asparagus, oysters Rockefeller, licking your crème brûlée. A four-course meal on my table or my private yacht.

Not that I own a yacht, but I could. If that’s what Maple fantasizes about.

B. The trip to a strip club option. I can buy the club out so it’s our private place, or we can invite the whole world in. Lady’s choice. You dance for me and I’ll strip for you.

C. Blindfolded. You can imagine what’s coming next. I might even take orders.

D. Stairwell quickie. Your workplace, mine or whatever building you’ve fantasized about your boss in.

E. Can you be quiet? I’ll share my toys with you—and I have a great remote-controlled one. You know where it goes. You wear it and a pretty dress, I take you out to one of those fancy crystal-and-china places, and then I see how many times I can make you come before dessert.

F. Sex in a hotel room with the curtains open and you up against the glass. First floor, fortieth, four hundredth. How many people do you want watching?

G. Get your Fabio on. We’ll have sex in a meadow. I’ll pretend to be the big, bad duke. You can be the milkmaid, the misbehaving duchess in need of a spanking or the Queen of England.

That last one’s a little over-the-top but I’m all in if that’s how she likes to play. My phone slips in my hand as I wait for her to respond. To choose one. I try not to imagine Maple over my knee while I turn her butt hot pink. Spanking’s never been my kink but I’m willing to broaden my horizons for her.

I tap my phone.

Nada.

No texting bubbles, no message, no naked selfies.

Usually, I make an offer and then I’m out. I don’t have to beg and I certainly know how to take no for an answer. I’m not San Francisco’s biggest manwhore but I love sex and I love taking care of my temporary lady. Something about Maple makes me want to push, however. I can’t let this—her—go. Before I can overthink it, I call her.

“Hey.” Her voice is husky when she answers, or possibly she’s ever-so-slightly breathless. Or I’m indulging in wishful thinking—stranger things have happened.

“At least tell me what you’re wearing.”

“You saw. I’ve added pants.”

“Pants are overrated,” I murmur.

She pauses. “I’m headed home. Pants seemed prudent.”

“Alone?”

“Are you up for a ménage à trois?”

I drop my phone and have to retrieve it from the passenger-side seat. “Jesus, Maple. Play fair.”

“You’ve never had a threesome?” Laughter fills her voice. “Because it’s very, very popular on Kinkster. Don’t tell me no one’s offered.”

“They’ve offered,” I say mock gravely. “But I’m not a fan of eating family-style. I don’t want just a taste—I want the whole thing.”

“Wow.” She takes a moment, possibly to process what I just said. I didn’t think she was shockable, so she’s probably working on the perfect comeback. Sirens wail in the background, followed by a string of car alarms. She’s walking on a San Francisco street somewhere.

“So you’re selfish?”

“Focused,” I counter. “I prefer to give my undivided attention.”

She hums a bar from a jaunty tune. “Please. I bet you’ve fantasized about two women together.”

“I have,” I admit, “but I’m watching them. I’m learning what they like, how they make each other feel. If I got in that bed with them, then I’d be thinking about my dick, too, because he’s a selfish git and he likes having his turn. And then I’d also need to keep track of who I’d touched last. Or licked. Or finger-banged.”

“Wow.” Maple sounds breathless. Score.

“I’m not sure I’d have enough coordination to keep both my ladies happy without some serious one-on-one practice,” I say thoughtfully. “Which is why I’m calling you to follow up on that menu.”

“Oh?” She’s definitely laughing now.

“We had a deal,” I point out. “I give you a list of choices and you rank them from ‘omg yes let’s do that now’ to ‘only if it’s my last chance ever to have sex.’”

“What’s your favorite?”

I don’t have to think. “You.”

“I’m going into a tunnel. I’m losing you.” Laughter threads through her voice. She’s lying, she’s teasing. We both know it.

“There are only eleven tunnels in San Francisco. Is this a wormhole?”

She’s laughing when she hangs up on me.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Max

I EARNED MY first billion dollars with a dating app: Billionaire Bachelors. It’s a digital shopping list for all you out there who prefer Prince Charming with a generous side of cash. You punch in your zip code and then the app gives you the down low on all the Prince Charmings who meet your criteria. Billionaires are one of our most popular options, although you can pick your future mate based on other important qualities like good looks and favorite winery.

I whipped it up in the Santa Cruz dorm room I shared with Dev and Jack, spending every second we weren’t surfing with my head down in my code. I launched the app the day we graduated and I haven’t looked back since. Both Jack and Dev have bitched repeatedly about being two of Billionaire Bachelors’ leading men, but they weren’t willing to bankrupt themselves to lose their starring roles, so screw them.

My second app is Kinkster, and it’s equally popular (and unpopular with Dev and Jack who are adamantly vanilla in bed). One of the downsides, however, is that my PR team wants me to host a series of glamorous, sexy parties that sell the brand. Glamorous pool parties scream fantasy hookup, so tonight we’ve invited hundreds of celebrities, influencers and pretty people to my Santa Cruz pad to dance and get drunk on my dime. The music pounds away, drowning out the ocean and the buzz of dozens of conversations as my team puts the final touches on the event.

My fingers itch to text Maple and invite her over. It’s not that I think this party is her scene, but I’d like to see her again. I’d like to hear her laugh and just...hang out with her. Even if we don’t ever hook up, she’s fun. When we first started texting, our messages were purely functional. She said thank you for the roses. And then she asked something, or I did, but we fell into a rhythm. Question and answer. Rinse and repeat. Yesterday, though, when I gave her a menu of kinky sex options to pick from, I wasn’t joking. Not really. Something’s changed between us as we text. I stare at my phone, willing it to show me a clue. A sign. A multistep, results-guaranteed plan. I think I went wrong when I sent the menu.

I removed myself from the friend zone and went—

Somewhere.

Limbo sucks. I stare at my phone, willing it to buzz with an incoming text from Maple. Since it’s Saturday night, I don’t think she’s working.

Outside, the PR team continues birthing a party. Everyone’s focused on the infinity pool that spills over into the ocean, adding the little details that will make tonight one Instagrammable moment after another. Citrus trees in terracotta pots sourced from Italy. A pop-up bar with themed cocktails. White lights. White lotus flowers floating on the surface of the pool. The only thing missing is the kinky sex—but that will come later, after my guests have had time to settle in.

Those guests arrive thicker and faster as the night progresses. I watch from upstairs as they come. They’re allowed to roam downstairs, but the second floor is my haven and it’s off-limits. Two hours after the party officially begins, I’ve made a grand appearance and the music is so loud that I feel rather than hear my phone buzz in my pocket.

I step behind a particularly impressive citrus specimen and pull it out. Maple’s texted me a picture of take-out Chinese on a floral melamine plate balanced on the edge of a small tub, but it’s her words that have a smile tugging at my mouth.

Fancy a swim?

I do a quick volume calculation. You’d have to sit on my lap and even then there’d be no room for water. Immediate displacement. Need to know if downstairs neighbor has flood insurance?

My phone buzzes again, Maple’s picture flashing across my screen. Before I can overthink things, I answer.

“Hey, Maple.”

She launches into rapid-fire speech the way she does everything: bold and certain. “Do you like Chinese? Do you want to come over for dinner? We could watch a movie.”

“What kind of movie?”

She tells me all about the romantic comedy she’s Netflixing and the unlimited potential for happy endings. I mean, who doesn’t like getting his happy ending? I’m seriously considering ditching my party when a deafening series of shrill screams erupts from my pool. Water hits my back and I instinctively hunch to protect my phone. It’s water-resistant but that’s a lot of water. I’m enjoying our conversation and I don’t want to have to stop it in order to retrieve my backup phone.

“Are you killing someone?” She sounds cheerful but...

“Would that make you more or less likely to come over?”

“Less,” she says eventually. I like that she stopped to think about it.

“Then I’m hosting a pool party.” I lean against a convenient palm tree and eye the tangle of girls being fished out of the pool. From the size of the guy they crash-landed on, I suspect the football team I invited has shown up.

“Do I have to wear a swimsuit?”

I smile at my phone. “You should always feel free to swim naked in my pool.”

“Be serious.” Water sloshes on her end of the line. Is she in the tub?

More important: is she naked?

“You can do whatever you want, Maple. Wear a swimsuit. Don’t. Yoga leggings work fine, too. It’s a party, not rocket science. I’d just like you here.”

“So your pool isn’t full of bikini-wearing hot girls?”

“Truthfully, no.” I snap a picture of my pool and send it to her. “You’d be the hottest person here anyhow, especially if you showed up naked. You owe me a picture of your pool party for one now.”

That makes her laugh. My phone buzzes a second later and I fumble it. Jesus. There are a whole lot of white bubbles above the soft, sweet curve of...

“Did you just send me a boob shot? I thought you had a no-bathroom-selfies rule.”

She snorts. “I thought you lived for naked boob pictures.”

“I like them,” I say solemnly. “But I’m not sure I can commit to them being my favorite body part. I’d need to see all the parts first so I could make a fair assessment.”

Maple hums a bar of something. It’s a church hymn, which is kind of weird, but she says it’s just autopilot because she did a lot of zoning out in church as a kid (her dad was a minister) and that’s what she associates with tuning out the world. It’s her thinking noise, though, so I hope she’s making me a list of candidates for Max’s Favorite Body Part.

“Come over,” I say.

“Why?”

Because as much fun as playing word games with her is, I want to see her?

“We can play twenty questions in my pool.” I don’t know why I want her here, just that I do. “I’ll send a car.”

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