The first thing I register is the smell. Not jasmine, not my shampoo. Chlorine, sun-warmed concrete, and something else—clean, male, faintly of earl grey. I open my eyes. The ceiling is wrong. The light is wrong, a high, hard Wyoming sun cutting through blinds I didn’t close.

I’m naked. The sheets are twisted around my hips, a foreign cotton, crisp and cool. I’m alone in a bed that is not mine. Every muscle in my body feels pleasantly, profoundly used. A specific, deep ache between my legs pulses a reminder with every slow heartbeat.

So it wasn’t a dream.

I let my head fall back and close my eyes again, and the night paints itself on the inside of my lids. The shower after the pool. Him pressing me against the cold, wet tile, his mouth finding mine while water sluiced over our shoulders. The way he’d sunk to his knees, his hands spreading my thighs, his tongue— Oh, God. My breath hitches now, just remembering. The precise, relentless focus. The way I’d cried out and my voice had echoed off the glass.

He’d dried me with a soft towel, his movements brisk, almost clinical, until he’d carried me to this bed. Laid me down like something precious. And then proper Professor Sebastian Fairfax had vanished. In his place was a man with a starving mouth and clever, demanding hands. He’d tasted every inch of me. He’d let me taste him, the salt and musk of his skin, the heavy, velvet weight of him on my tongue, the way his control shattered into a choked groan.

And later, his body over mine, inside mine, his blue eyes holding mine captive as he moved. Slow, then hard, then desperate. The headboard knocking a steady, frantic rhythm against the wall. My nails scoring his back. His voice, ragged and British in my ear, whispering filth that would make a sailor blush. Proper is not a word I will ever, ever use to describe him again.

A slow, smug smile spreads across my face. I stretch, feeling the delicious pull in my limbs, and the smile widens. I won. I cracked the code. I turned the observant academic into a hedonist.

The click of the door handle is ridiculously loud. I freeze mid-stretch, my arms above my head, sheets pooling at my waist. Sebastian walks in. He’s dressed. Crisp, dark jeans. A grey henley that stretches across his chest. He’s holding two mugs. He stops just inside the doorway.

His eyes sweep over me—the tangled hair, the bare skin, the undoubtedly smug expression. A flicker of something hot and possessive crosses his face before it’s banked behind a more familiar, analytical calm. “You’re awake.”

“Astute observation,” I say, not bothering to cover myself. Let him look. “I was just conducting a forensic reconstruction of last night’s events. The evidence is… compelling.”

He approaches, sets a mug on the nightstand beside me. Tea, steam curling. “I brought you this. I wasn’t sure if you… took coffee.”

“Tea is perfect.” I prop myself up on an elbow, letting the sheet fall further. I watch his gaze dip, then deliberately return to my face. The power is heady. “So. Morning-after protocols. Is there a schedule? A questionnaire? A debrief?”

He sits on the edge of the bed, the mattress dipping under his weight. He smells like soap and toothpaste. “The protocol is tea. And an acknowledgment that we have thoroughly and spectacularly broken every single one of my previously stated rules regarding cohabitation.”

“Rule number one,” I recite, picking up the mug. “The washing machine.” I take a sip. It’s perfect, just a little milk. “I’d say we made a much bigger mess.”

A real smile, small and dry, touches his mouth. “Indeed.” He sips his own tea. His eyes are on me, but it’s different now. The clinical distance is gone, replaced by a warm, focused intensity that makes my stomach flip. “Are you… all right?”

The question is so earnest, so un-Sebastian, it disarms me. The sarcasm dies on my lips. “I’m sore. In the best possible way.” I glance at him. “You?”

He looks down at his tea, then back at me. “I find myself… regretting that I have a faculty meeting at two.”

My phone, buried somewhere in the tangled sheets, begins to vibrate with the particular, insistent ringtone I’ve assigned to my sister. The real world, crashing in. Sebastian’s eyes flick toward the sound, then back to me. The new day officially begins.

I answer it cheerfully, performing normalcy for him, my voice bright and clear as I fumble for the buzzing phone in the sheets. “Amelia! Hi!”

Sebastian watches, his blue eyes tracking the performance. I can feel his gaze like a physical touch, noting the shift in my posture, the artificial lift in my tone. My sister’s voice is a sharp, efficient sound in my ear. “Where are you? Arthur said he saw the guest house lights on late. I was about to send a search party.”

“I’m in the guest house,” I say, stating the obvious, pulling the sheet up to my chin as if she can see me. Sebastian’s mouth twitches. “Just… sleeping in. Recovering from the bar. You know how it is.”

“I do not, actually,” she says, and I can picture her in her sterile kitchen, one hand on her hip. “I need you. We have a final fitting for the bridesmaid dresses at the boutique in Laramie at one. I’ll pick you up in forty-five minutes.”

“A fitting?” The words come out as a squeak. My eyes dart to Sebastian. His faculty meeting is at two. The day is constructing itself around us like a cage. “Today? I’m not really… dressed.”

“Then get dressed. Forty-five minutes, Imogen. Don’t make me come in there.” The line goes dead. I lower the phone, the cheerful mask dissolving. “She’s coming to get me. In forty-five minutes. For a bridesmaid dress fitting.”

Sebastian takes a slow sip of his tea. “I deduced.” He sets his mug down on the nightstand with a soft click. “The performance was admirable, if a tad manic. You sounded like a children’s television presenter.”

The silence after the call is a physical thing, thick and clumsy. I drop the phone onto the rumpled sheets. Sebastian is already standing, collecting the mugs. He doesn’t look at me. “You should get dressed,” he says, his voice perfectly neutral, a lecturer stating a fact. “She’s rarely late.”

I scramble from the bed, the sheet falling away, my nakedness suddenly feeling exposed instead of powerful. I don’t look back as I dart across the living area and into the sanctuary of my own room, closing the door with a soft but definitive click.

The ten minutes it takes me to shower off the night—the chlorine, the sweat, the scent of him—and throw on jeans and a sweater are ten minutes where the world resets itself. When I step back out, the transformation is complete. Sebastian is at the small dining table, a laptop open, glasses perched on his nose. He’s wearing a proper button-down shirt now, pale blue, the sleeves rolled precisely to his forearms. The professor. The wall is not just up; it’s been fortified, mortared, and painted a tasteful eggshell white.

I hover in my doorway, the cheerful performance for Amelia shriveling inside me. “So. I’ll… see you later?” It comes out as a question, small and stupid.

He glances up from his screen, his blue eyes cool and distant behind the lenses. A polite, efficient nod. “Indeed. Good luck with the fitting.”

The casual dismissal is a tiny, precise incision. I take a step further into the room, the sunlit space feeling cavernous. “Hey. Sebastian. Look, about last night…”

He closes his laptop with a soft snap. The sound is a full stop. He looks at me, his expression one of mild, professional interest. “Let’s just keep that to ourselves for now, hmm?” His tone is gentle, final, the way one might suggest avoiding a controversial topic at a dinner party. “For simplicity’s sake.”

I just stand there, my own nod feeling mechanical. He’s already looked back at his closed computer, his posture signaling a conversation’s end. The gulf between us isn’t just the sunlit floorboards; it’s the entire Atlantic, cold and grey and spanned by a bridge he’s just politely incinerated. I turn toward the front door, the cheerful yellow of my sweater feeling like a lie, the pleasant ache in my body now just a souvenir from a country I’ve apparently been deported from.