Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
Evan
I shouldn’t have been at Vivid Colors.
That was my first thought when my friend Danny ditched me at the bar, citing some emergency text from his boyfriend that I was ninety percent sure he’d fabricated.
Danny had been trying to get me “back out there” for months, and apparently his strategy involved abandoning me in a gay club on a Friday night.
“You need to have fun,” he’d said before he left, squeezing my shoulder. “Stop being so serious all the time.”
I wasn’t serious. I was careful. There was a difference.
I nursed my vodka tonic and scanned the dance floor, watching couples grind against each other under the strobing lights. The music pounded through the speakers, the bass reverberating in my chest. Everyone looked like they were having a great time, laughing, dancing, touching without inhibition.
Three years ago, Ryan would’ve had me out there, posing for the cameras, standing beside him while he signed autographs, smiling while strangers gushed about his latest film. I’d never enjoyed the noise, the crowd, the spotlight.
Some things hadn’t changed. I still hated clubs.
I pushed thoughts of Ryan away and took another sip of my drink. Tonight was supposed to be about moving on, about proving to Danny—and to myself—that I was fine.
Except I didn’t feel fine. I felt restless and uncomfortable in my skin.
Maybe I should just go home.
And then I saw him.
He stood against the wall across the room, beer in hand, watching the crowd with an expression I recognized immediately.
That mix of excitement and terror that came from being somewhere you weren’t sure you belonged.
He was unmistakably attractive—tall, dark hair, broad shoulders, and with a build that suggested he spent a lot of time in the gym.
An expensive-looking black leather jacket topped a white T-shirt that stretched across his wide chest.
He looked like trouble.
Our eyes met across the room, and I felt a jolt like an electric shock. He didn’t look away. Neither did I.
Don’t. Don’t even think about it.
He walked toward me, all confidence and effortless grace, and I recognized the type immediately: exactly what I’d sworn off after Ryan.
My brain registered the warning. The rest of me ignored it.
I cataloged the way he moved through the crowd—the slight smirk playing at the corner of his mouth, the way his brown eyes stayed locked on mine, like I was the only person in the room.
Ryan had moved like that too. Like he already knew you’d say yes.
“Hey,” he said when he reached me. “I’m Nico.”
Up close, he was even more attractive. Square jaw, straight nose, full lips.
A face that stopped traffic. And those eyes…
dark and intense and fixed entirely on me.
But underneath the confidence, I caught something else: the slight tension in his jaw, the way he held his beer a little too carefully.
He was nervous. Presenting ease he didn’t quite feel.
That detail softened something in me against my better judgment.
“Evan,” I said, because apparently my mouth was working even if my brain wasn’t.
We moved away from the bar to a quieter corner.
He was vague about his work—"I’m in sports,” he said, with a smirk that suggested I was way off base when I guessed personal trainer.
I filed the evasiveness away. The question formed, and I let it go before it reached my mouth.
Old habit. Easier than what came after asking.
Ryan had deflected questions too, though his deflections had been smoother, more practiced.
Nico’s felt less like concealment and more like someone who hadn’t figured out what he was allowed to say yet.
That was a distinction I couldn’t entirely explain, but I felt it.
When he admitted it was his first time—at a club like this, doing any of this—something in his expression shifted.
The confidence didn’t disappear exactly, but something underneath it showed through.
Uncertainty. Genuine, unguarded, unmanaged.
Ryan, for all his charm, had rarely let me see anything he hadn’t already decided I should see.
He reminded me of Ryan. The easy smile, the way he could make me feel like the center of the universe.
But he also didn’t. And I couldn’t decide which fact scared me more.
The heat in the club was stifling. He shrugged off his jacket and draped it over his arm, and I watched the movement without meaning to: the flex of his biceps, the expanse of his chest visible through the thin white cotton. When his gaze returned to my face, he caught me looking.
I took a sip of my drink and didn’t apologize for it.
The attraction between us was obvious, crackling in the air like static electricity. I wanted him. That part was simple. Whether wanting him was wise was a different question entirely, and I was rapidly losing the ability to care about the answer.
When he asked if I wanted to get out of there, I hesitated.
I didn’t know his last name, where he really worked, or anything beyond Nico and a charming smile.
“We can go to a hotel,” he said. Not his place. Not mine. Neutral ground, no strings, no way for this to follow me home.
Safe enough.
“Yeah,” I said finally. “Let’s go.”
We walked to an expensive hotel a few blocks away that raised my eyebrows.
I hung back in the lobby seating area and tried to talk myself out of the spiral forming in my head while he checked in.
Personal trainers didn’t drop this kind of money on a random Friday night hookup.
Which meant he’d either lied about what he did, or he hadn’t told me enough of the truth for personal trainer to mean anything.
Ryan had been rich and famous. It had made everything complicated in ways I hadn’t been prepared for.
But there was something more genuine about Nico, something that felt less like acting and more like the truth, even buried under all the things he wasn’t saying.
So, when he came back with key cards and that nervous energy humming beneath his easy grin, I followed him to the elevator anyway.
The doors closed.
For about three seconds, we stood there, carefully not touching. My heart hammered against my ribs. I stared at the digital floor numbers like they were the most fascinating thing I’d ever seen.
He turned to face me.
“Can I kiss you?” he asked.
My breath caught. No one had asked me that in longer than I could remember. Ryan had never asked. Ryan had just moved, confident in the answer, and I’d let him because I’d mistaken assumption for certainty, possession for wanting.
“Yeah,” I managed.
He closed the distance between us, cupping my face in his hands. The kiss started soft and questioning, giving me room I hadn’t expected him to give me. I gripped his jacket and kissed him back harder than I meant to, answering the question he’d had the decency to ask.
Being wanted like this, being asked… I’d forgotten what it felt like. Given the choice, I chose yes.
We broke apart just in time for an older couple to step on at the sixth floor. Stood on opposite sides, both trying to look normal. The couple got off at eight. The doors closed.
We lasted maybe two seconds.
When the elevator reached the twelfth floor, we stumbled out into the hallway, half laughing. He fumbled with the key card, hands shaking, and something about that—the fumbling, the shaking, the laughing—made him feel real in a way the club hadn’t quite managed.
The door opened, and we were inside.
The suite was gorgeous, with high ceilings, modern furniture, a bedroom visible through an open doorway. Probably cost more than my rent.
I didn’t care.
Nico’s jacket hit the floor. My blazer followed, then our shirts, and we shed our clothes as we stumbled into the bedroom. By the time we reached the bed, we were both down to our boxer briefs, and I could finally see all of him.
He was beautiful. All muscle. Smooth, tan skin, and sharp angles. He pushed me down onto the bed and followed, covering my body with his. The weight of him, the heat, was overwhelming in the best possible way.
“Fuck.” His warm breath ghosted against my neck. “You’re so—”
“Kiss me,” I breathed. “Please.”
His mouth was everywhere: on my lips, my jaw, my neck. He worked his way down my chest, pausing to bite gently at my collarbone, and I arched into him.
Our boxer briefs disappeared. I wasn’t sure who’d stripped them away—him, me, or some desperate combination of both—but suddenly we were bare, pressed together with nothing between us.
The first contact of his cock against mine made us both groan.
Hot, hard, slick with precum. He rolled his hips, and I felt the friction everywhere, pleasure sparking up my spine.
We found a rhythm of grinding and thrusting, our bodies moving together like we’d done this a thousand times instead of just tonight.
His hands gripped my hips, guiding the motion, pulling me harder against him.
The pressure built with every slide, every movement feeding the ache that had started the moment I’d seen him across the club.
When he took me in his mouth, I had to grab the sheets to keep from coming apart entirely. I fisted the expensive cotton in both hands like it was the only thing tethering me to earth.
He started slowly with just the tip, tongue circling the head, licking up the precum. Then he sank down, taking me deeper, and the wet heat made my breath catch. He pulled back and did it again, building a rhythm that had my toes curling.
He was good at this. Too good. His mouth was hot and wet and perfect, lips stretched around me.
He hollowed his cheeks when he sucked, tongue working the underside on every upstroke.
When he took me deep enough that I felt the back of his throat, I had to fight not to thrust up into that perfect heat.
But it was the way he looked up at me through his lashes while he did it, his dark eyes holding mine, watching my reaction, seeing exactly what he was doing to me, that made my brain short-circuit.