With a nervous flip in my stomach I slip between two tables and walk over to the booth where Ansel is smiling up at me. In however many minutes we’ve been apart—or however many I’ve been unconscious—I’d forgotten the effect of him up close. Nerve endings seem to rise to the surface of my skin, anticipating his hands.

“Good morning,” he says. His voice is hoarse and slow. He has dark circles beneath his eyes and his skin looks a little pale. Given that he’s clearly been up longer than I have, looking at him doesn’t make me especially confident I’ll feel better in a couple of hours.

“Good morning.” I hover at the edge of the table, not sure I’m ready to sit down. “What was Finn talking about?”

He waves his hand, already dismissing it. “I saw you coming and ordered you some orange juice and what you Americans like to call coffee.”

“Thanks.” When I sit, I suck in a breath at the throbbing ache between my legs, and the reality of our night of wild—and maybe a little rough—sex is like a third person at the table. I wince, a full-body wince, and Ansel notices. It sets off a comical chain reaction: he blushes and his eyes drop to the marks he’s left all over my neck and chest. I try to cover my throat with shaking hands, wishing I’d brought a scarf to the desert, in the summer—which is ridiculous—and he bursts out laughing. I drop my head onto my crossed arms on the table and groan. I’m never drinking again.

“About the bite marks . . .” he begins.

“About that.”

“You kept asking me to bite you.”

“I did?”

“You were very specific,” he says with a grin. “And being the gentleman that I am, I happily obliged.”

“Oh.”

“Apparently we had a wild night.”

I lift my head, thanking the waitress when she puts a carafe of coffee in front of me. “The details are slowly returning.”

And they are, finally: the way we crashed into the hotel room, laughing and falling onto the travertine floor just inside the entryway. He rolled me over to playfully check for scrapes, kissing along my neck, my back, the backs of my thighs. He undressed me with fingers and teeth and words kissed into my skin. Far less artfully I undressed him, impatient and practically ripping the shirt from his body.

When I look up and meet his eyes, he rubs the back of his neck, smiling apologetically at me. “If what I feel today is any indication, we, ah . . . took a long time.”

I feel my face heat at the same time my stomach drops. This isn’t the first time I’ve heard this particular bit of feedback. “I’m sorry my body is sort of . . . hard to please. Luke used to work forever to get me there and when we were first together sometimes I would even just pretend to come so he wouldn’t feel like he failed.”

Oh my God did I actually just say all that out loud?

Ansel scrunches his nose in an expression I haven’t seen on him yet and it’s the portrait of adorable confusion. “What? You aren’t a robot, sometimes it takes time. I quite enjoyed figuring out how to give you pleasure.” He winces then, looking even more apologetic. “I’m afraid the one taking forever was me. I had a lot to drink. Besides . . . we both wanted more after each time . . . I feel like I did about a million crunches.”

And as soon as he says it, I know he’s right. Even now my body feels like an instrument that had been perfectly played for hours the night before, and I seem to have gotten my wish: last night I did have a different life. I had the life of a woman with a wild, attentive lover. Beneath the haze of my hangover, I feel stretched and worked, the kind of satisfied that seems to reach the middle of my bones and the deepest part of my brain.

I remember being carried to the couch in the living room, later, where Ansel finished what he’d started in the lounge’s hallway. The feel of his hands as he pushed my underwear aside, sliding his fingertips back and forth over my sensitive, heated skin.

“You’re so soft,” he’d said into a kiss. “You’re soft and wet and I worry I’m feeling too wild for this small, sweet body.” His hand shook and he slowed himself down by pulling my underwear all the way down my legs and off, throwing them onto the floor. “First I’ll make you feel good. Because once I get inside you, I know I’ll lose myself,” he’d said, laughing, tickling my hips, nibbling at my jaw as his hand slid down my stomach and back between my legs. “Tell me when it’s good.”

I was telling him almost immediately, when he pressed his fingers against my clit, sliding back and forth until I started to shake, and beg, and reach for his pants. I shoved them down awkwardly, without unbuttoning them, wanting only to feel the heavy pulse of him in my hand.

I shiver as my body remembers that first orgasm and how he didn’t let up, pulling another one from me before I pushed him away and rolled off the couch, taking him in my mouth.

But I don’t remember how that ended. I think he came. Suddenly I’m consumed with panic. “In the living room, did you . . . ?”

His eyes widen briefly before that light amusement fills them. “What do you think?”

It’s my turn to scrunch my nose. “I think so?”

He leans forward, resting a fist on his chin. “What do you remember?”

Oh, the little fucker. “You know what happened.”

“Maybe I forgot? Maybe I want to hear you tell me.”

I close my eyes and remember how the carpet felt on my bare knees, the way I initially struggled to get used to the broad feel of him in my mouth, his hands in my hair, his thighs shaking against my flattened palms.

When I look up and he’s still watching me, I remember exactly how his face looked the first time he came against my tongue.

Reaching for my coffee, I lift it to my lips and take a giant, scalding gulp.

And then I remember being carried into the bedroom, Ansel wildly kissing and licking every inch of my body, sucking and biting. I remember us rolling from the bed to the floor, the crash of a lamp. I remember, however many hours later, watching him roll a condom on, his bare torso looming over me. I don’t think I’d ever felt so greedy for something as I had for the weight of him on top of me. He was perfect: sliding in carefully even as drunk as we were, rocking in small, perfect arcs until I was sweaty and frantic beneath him. I remember the groan he made when he got close, and how he rolled me over, my stomach flat to the mattress, his teeth bared on my neck. Leaving one of so many marks.

Ansel watches me from across the table, a tiny, knowing smile curving his mouth. “Well? Did I?”

I open my mouth to speak but with the mischievous look in his eyes, maybe we’re both remembering when he lifted me against the wall, pushing roughly back into me. Where had we been that he moved me to the wall? I remember how hard the sex was then, how a painting rattled a few feet away, him telling me how perfect I felt. I remember the sound of glasses tipping over and breaking near the bar, the sweat of his exertion sliding across my breasts. I remember his face, his hand pressed flat to a mirror behind me.

But no, that was a different time.

Jesus, how many times did we have sex?

I feel my brow lift. “Wow.”

He blows a breath across his drink; the steam curls in front of him. “Hmm?”

“Yeah, I guess you did . . . enjoy. We must have done it a lot.”

“Which was your favorite? Living room, or bed, or floor, or bed, or wall, or mirror, or bar, or floor?”

“Shhh,” I whisper, lifting my cup to take another, more careful sip of coffee. I smile into my mug. “You’re weird.”

“I think I need a cast for my penis.”

I cough-laugh, nearly sending a hot mouthful of coffee through my nose.

But when I lift my napkin to my mouth, Ansel’s smile disappears. He’s staring at my hand.

Shit shit shit. I’m still wearing the ring. I can’t see his hands below the table now, and the crazy sex we had last night is officially the least of my worries. We haven’t even started talking about the real issue: how to disentangle ourselves from this drunken night. How to fix it. It’s so much more than being relieved we used condoms and having an awkward goodbye. A wild one-night stand isn’t legally binding unless you’re stupid enough to get married, too.