No-strings sex. With as many men as took her fancy. Because she was a third-wave feminist and sex positive and whatever else she was supposed to be these days. The truth was, she’d never had time to while away her days worrying too much about her love life.
Maya had always focused on one man at a time, because how could she be expected to juggle all her work and school commitments and date a variety of them? She’d had two boyfriends in college. Another for most of law school. And then Ethan. She felt confident she knew everything there was to know about the particular joys of sex with intimacy, inside the bounds of a committed relationship.
At some point today, it had occurred to her that dumping all her feelings on Charlie was a knee-jerk reaction based on those experiences. Emotion was something people in intimate, committed relationships did—it was the point, she’d always thought—but this trip wasn’t about that.
This was her time to do things she hadn’t done with her newfound independence. And the one thing she’d never done was joyfully and deliberately slept around. By choice and design.
If the debacle with Lorraine and Ethan had taught her anything, it was that she needed to take a step back from intimacy and commitment and focus a little more on honesty, excellent sex and her own damned self.
And that meant she was going to have to learn how to pick up men in bars.
A fancy hotel bar in a faraway Italian hotel in the middle of the off-season, festooned with Christmas lights and featuring a suggested dress code at the door, seemed like the perfect place to practice.
After all, Maya had a certain stature back in Toronto. If she was going to start going out on the prowl—as Lorraine had always called it, she thought with a wince—she would have to figure out how best to do that in ways that could never come back to haunt her in the light. She would have to learn how not to embarrass herself or, worse, her firm. Or worst of all, her family. That meant she had to be careful how she went about things and certainly couldn’t use one of those dating apps. The very thought made her shudder.
This would have to be her new normal.
She swirled her drink in her hand, letting her gaze move around the dimly lit space. How hard could it be? She’d never propositioned a man before in her life, but she’d done that already this vacation, too. Charlie hadn’t been wrong. She was the one who had started things between them. She was the one—
If all you’re going to do is sit here thinking about Charlie, you’re defeating the purpose, she snapped at herself.
She applied herself to the task the way she would with any other project. She’d overheard her colleagues talking about how, when they went out to bars, apparently all they had to do was set foot inside and they were besieged by all kinds of men. “Beating them off with a stick” was the phrase she’d heard, more than once.
Maya swiveled around on the bar stool, waiting for the siege. Assuming a little encouragement wouldn’t go amiss, she smiled anytime she caught a man’s eye when he wasn’t sitting with a woman or a family. There was that one in the corner who was fiddling with his drink in a way she liked, his eyes hooded and his lips full as he looked back at her, like every Italian fantasy she’d ever had without realizing it. There was the older gentlemen at a nearby table, exuding a distinguished, authoritative air, who kept pausing in his conversation with two other far more portly and even older men to look at Maya appreciatively. And yet one more, entirely too young for her, who was nonetheless offering her a cheeky, suggestive grin from farther down the length of the bar.
Was it that easy? Did she simply...choose one? Because if it was that simple, it suggested to her that she’d simply failed to notice male interest for most of her life. Not, of course, that interest led to sex—but maybe that was the point all the men she’d known had been making. If she wanted it to turn from eye contact into sex, it could. And wasn’t that revolutionary?
She ordered herself a second drink and wondered why the drinks and her realizations didn’t make her feel more...buoyant inside. Why the thought of doing whatever she had to do to transform one of those smiles or heated glances into more filled her with something too much like sadness.
But she was not going to sit here mooning over Charlie any longer. She was not.
Maya squared her shoulders, lifted her chin and started to turn in her seat again to make a choice and get the ball rolling—no pun intended—when a hard hand came down on the nape of her neck.
Then held her there.
With a certain gentle implacability that should have infuriated her but instead made her melt. Everywhere.
“I wouldn’t do it if I were you.” Charlie’s drawl was low and laced with a fire that swept through her, lighting her up like one of those Christmas trees. “The pouty one in the corner is Alessandro. Known con artist. He prefers rich, bored housewives to play with in the summertime, but he’ll take anyone this time of year. On the very off chance he could make you come at all, he’d fleece you on the way out.”
Maya tried to turn to glare at him, but he wouldn’t let her. His hand kept her in place—unless she wanted to make another scene—and she felt the heat of him in the moment before she felt him behind her, not quite pressing into her. There was no mirror behind the bar, only polished wood, and she gritted her teeth, wondering how a man she’d never seen in anything but battered jeans and maybe a T-shirt had wandered in past the prissy hostess out front.
“The old man is an expat from somewhere cold. Denmark. Norway. One of those. The wife stays behind in Rome collecting pretty young boys to call her own, but he likes it here, where he can relax. Rumor is he’s a kinky motherfucker, so maybe you’d like that as part of your downward spiral. Though you don’t really strike me as the golden-shower type.”
Maya stiffened and then hated herself for it, because of course he could feel it. “I don’t remember asking you for consultation,” she managed to say.
“And the kid would be energetic, I’ll give you that.” Charlie sounded amused, though the grip he kept on her neck suggested otherwise. “I doubt he’ll last that long, but the upside is he’d be ready to go again pretty quick.”
“Lucky for you, then, that you’re not planning to sleep with any of them.”
Charlie’s hand tightened at her neck, and her curse was that she liked it.
“Are you planning to sleep with them, Maya? Or are you looking for a cheap, petty revenge fuck because you’re pissed at me?”
“I beg your pardon. That sounds like you’re talking about feelings, which I was under the distinct impression was forbidden.”
“Here’s the thing, babe.”
He spun her stool around, and it couldn’t have taken more than a second or two, but that was ample time for Maya to reflect on the fact that she didn’t find that word—babe—as offensive as she should have. As she would have if anyone else had called her something like that. Not the way he said it.
But then he was in front of her, and her heart kicked at her. He was dressed in a dark, impossibly well-fitting suit that did uncomfortable things to her body while it made a symphony out of his. It was obviously bespoke, tailored to his every muscle and sinew, making his rough power elegant. A different kind of raw.
His hard, gorgeous face was grave as he stared down at her. Those blue eyes of his, on the other hand, blazed.
And in case that possessive grip on the back of her neck had failed to announce to the entire bar that he was claiming her, he made it worse by stepping too close and wedging himself between her knees.
“Step back,” she hissed at him, aware that if she moved too much—or at all—her dress would roll too far up her thighs and expose her to the entire bar.
She could tell that he knew it, too.
“Here’s the thing,” he said again, that blaze in his eyes like a terrible