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I wasn’t
planning
on getting laid while I’m here, but that doesn’t mean I’m not prepared. Once a Boy Scout, always a…well, the kind of guy who prepares and also fervently hopes his old Scoutmaster doesn’t know how he makes a living these days.

I’m up on my knees, and she takes the condom from me. She slides up and down with her hands, staring straight at me and biting her lip. Slowly, painfully slowly, she slides the condom over my waiting dick. Ribbed for her pleasure, baby. I press her shoulders into the bed and line my cock up against her entrance. I tease her opening, never fully sliding in. I love this part, this pressure against my head.

Our foreheads are pressed together, her big blue eyes staring straight into mine, and she pushes her hips upward so I slide all the way in. Fuck. We lie there a minute so she can get used to the stretch of me inside her and so I can get my shit back together. Usually, I can hold out so much longer than this, but she kisses me again and I start to lose it.

This chemistry is not something I’m used to.

I move slowly, our bodies pressed together like glue, and she matches my rhythm. Them hips, though. Fuck fuck fuck. She clenches tight around me, and my dick has basically won the goddamn lottery. But it’s not going to end this way, not this fast.

I push up on my knees and throw her legs over my shoulder. I fuck her from this angle, fondling her clit and licking the side of her calf. From here, I have the best view of her beautiful face and how fucking sexy she looks while worked up. And worked up she is.

She hooks her legs over my shoulder and shoots up her hips so I can reach her deeper. She moves my hand and plays with herself, which is my top favorite thing in bed. She pleasures herself like a champ, eyes shut tight, sweet moans filling my ear.

But I think I’ve gotten the idea of what she likes, so I take over. I guess I was observant enough, because her moans get louder and she nearly takes my head off with her thighs while she thrusts her hips in the air.

Eric Hosmer, first base. Christian Colon, second base. Alcides Escobar, shortstop.

Miranda clenches around me again, and I have to change positions so I don’t blow this beautiful thing we have going on. I flip her on her knees and run my hands down her spine. She arches her back like the good little kitten she is, and I thrust into her, hard. Her moans are my new drug, and they’re instantly addictive.

We move together, desperate, in rapid thrusts. She plays with herself again, moving between her nipples, so hot, and I can’t take it anymore. I slip one finger into her ass, put another on her clit, and fuck her so hard I’m seeing stars. In seconds, she screams out my name and I’m right behind her. The orgasm is huge and heady, making me feel dizzy, but I fuck through it until my legs threaten to give out.

We collapse in a heap on the bed and crawl into each other. She kisses me again, and between the alcohol and the fucking, I fall asleep with her nestled in the crook of my arm. She’s no Gus, but she’s a pretty fantastic substitute.

I wake up around two a.m. in desperate need for a piss. The bed is empty.

I fist pump my way to the bathroom. Excellent night was
quite
excellent.

W
ell
, Christ on a cupcake. Was last night ever a
night
. How many authors can brag about hooking up with a cover model? Okay, probably a lot, but whatever.
I
never could, until last night, and so I’m going to dance my ass off in the shower. And out of the shower. And as I’m getting dressed. And as I’m making coffee. Which I said I was going to spike with Bailey’s yesterday, but today it got upgraded to the full Irish with Jameson too, because
celebration,
bitches.

I got laid! By a supremely hot guy with killer oral skills!

My goodies quiver at the thought of him. Oh, man, today is going to be fun.

“Knock knock!” Jane lets herself in, armed with her bags and a box of donuts. “I thought you could use a real breakfast this morning.”

“I love you.” I hug her and pour out some coffee, still grinning like an idiot. Yesterday’s spirit of generosity has expanded, so not only does she get the big cup, I let
her
choose the pink sprinkle donut. It matters not that she picked it out for herself, I could have totally taken it. But I didn’t because I am a new woman today.

“Good first day?” she asks, surveying me. “You look awfully happy. Glowing, matter of fact. Wait. Wait. Did you…oh my god, who did you bang?” Such intuition! No wonder she’s a great nurse. Jane claps her hands and bounces on her heels. “Details! Details!”

“Guilty!” I sing, spreading my arms wide and doing a spin. “With one of the models! Can you believe it? Me! With a model!”

“Of course I can believe it. This was the plan. You’re gorgeous.”

“Whatever. Your makeup skills landed me a dick whose attached gorgeous guy graces countless covers of slutty fiction.” I am floating. Floating!

This grin won’t fall off my face if I pay it. And I like it that way. I graciously offer the second best donut to Jane (I am unrecognizable as my former self) and plop down on a barstool so she can do my makeup. Instead, she just crosses her arms and stares at me.

“What?” I take advantage of the break to enjoy a luxurious bite of cruller.

“Details!” She nudges me. “Tell me everything. What’s he like? Where’s he from? How good was he? And which covers?”

“Okay!” I grin even wider. Tell you about my sexual exploits? God, yes, please. I’d tell the Pope. “We met at the hotel bar last night after the final panel. You know I wanted to go to the Entwined party—”

“Because they need to sign you, like, yesterday. Yes.”

“Exactly. Well, I was on people overload, as you do, and went to grab a drink at the hotel bar first. I really needed to loosen up and process everything before I dove into a party.”

“You writers and your introversion.” Jane wrinkles her nose and shakes her head. “So cute.”

“Writing is pain, remember?” I tease back. “Anyway, I’m at the bar by myself—where I completely got blown off by Bethany Bonafont and her Beehive, but that’s a story for later—and I look over and see this
completely
gorgeous guy sitting by himself at the other end. We’re talking Brad Pitt in his prime hot. We’re talking shirtless all the time hot. Next thing I know, he comes over and we strike up a conversation. It’s perfect, Jane. Just perfect. We absolutely click on everything. He’s funny, he’s sweet, he’s surprisingly smart for someone who works shirtless.”

“‘Smart model’ always feels like an oxymoron to me. I know it’s possible, but it still never fails to surprise me. Mostly because it feels unfair, I guess,” she says.

Totes agree. You should only be mind-blowingly attractive or mind-blowingly talented. Looking at you, Melanie Harlow.

“Right?” I shrug. “He wasn’t pretty and dumb, that’s for sure. We laughed and talked and drank for hours, and then he invites me up to his room. Oh, god, Jane. His tongue…” I shiver just thinking about it. “The man knows how to work it. We’ll just say that.”

“So it was good?” She lays out the makeup and starts working on my flushed face. I need no blush to glow this morning.

“Better than I’ve had in years. Years. I’d bang him on lunch break today, and you know I don’t like skipping meals.”

“Damn.”

“I know.”

“You know.” Jane shifts into business mode with the makeup, and I can only sit there, mentally rehashing my tryst with Joe on a loop. “You remind me a lot of my friend, Melissa. She had this exact same morning-after glow when she met her fiancé. I thought she was going to take off in flight. Of course, there were some real hiccups on the way to putting a ring on it, but…”

“Oh, you misunderstand.” I shake my head and earn a frown from Jane, who is wielding a mascara wand. “Sorry. But no, you have it totally backwards. I don’t want a relationship. I didn’t even get Joe’s last name, or where he’s from. I don’t want to follow him on Facebook. I don’t want to trade numbers. I don’t even want to see him again today. Well, okay, I’d totally see him again today and bang him sideways. But I don’t want to see him again after this week. I’m in the middle of a very important time in my career. That’s my relationship right now, my writing.”

Jane throws her hands up in disgust and cocks an eyebrow at me. “You don’t think writing romance would be a little easier if you had some in your own life?”

“I’ve had enough. Good writers know how to dig down deep from past experiences to write something. I don’t need more distractions if I’m ever going to break onto a bestseller list.”

Jane frowns but shrugs. “Methinks thou doth protest too much.”

“How so?”

“Romance
is
your life. How do you keep it fresh without experiencing it more often? Look at you!” Jane holds up a mirror, her handiwork done. “I barely had to put on anything because you are positively radiating. You mean to tell me you don’t want more of that? Mr. Knows-How-To-Work-It can keep it to himself because one helping was enough for you?”

“I’m fine,” I say, waving her off and grabbing another donut. After all, last night surely pre-burned many calories. “I’m so happy in my life right now. A relationship would only complicate it and get in the way of my writing time. However, I have recently considered getting a cat. Like an old one.”

“You.” Jane looks skeptical. “You want a cat? You can barely take care of yourself. Matter of fact, when I told you we were looking for a puppy, you told me pets were a waste of time and money.”

“Well, then I got laid and changed my mind.”

“You either need to get laid more often, or never again,” Jane says. “Because that’s weird.” She leans against the counter and digs through the donuts.

“Okay, okay. I’ll rephrase. I just don’t need a
relationship
. Like, give me all the sex, okay? I would take two of those fuckings a day, four times on Sunday.”

“But, okay, just—tell me more about him!” Jane nudges me with her shoe and passes some lip gloss. Guess that’s her not-so-subtle way of getting me to stop eating donuts. “If he’s so wonderful, but not wonderful enough to get his freaking last name, what was so special about him? You never struck me as the one-night stand type.”

I’m really not. They usually terrify me, and I spend the whole evening so freaked out, the opportunity dies before I have a chance. It seems so effortless for some women, but I get entirely too hung up in my head. I’m a writer! I
live
in my head, with imaginary people and situations sprinting across my eyes like gazelles on an open field. Branching out of my comfort zone is rare.

Hell, the only reason why I’m friends with Jane is because she accidentally rear-ended me in front of our subdivision turn-in, and she showed up on my doorstep later that evening with apology wine. And rearranged my living room. She’s my kind of people, that Jane.

“I’m usually not into one-night stands,” I finally answer. “It’s just—I really wanted him.”

“So what made him special?” Jane asks again.

“The wine and shots may have had something to do with it.”

This makes her laugh. “I should have known! Put hard liquor in your system and you go crazy!”

“I wasn’t dancing on tables or anything!” I protest. To be fair, Jane has actually witnessed me dance on tables after one too many vodka stingers. Most memorably, my own table, in this kitchen. The good news is when you fall off a table in front of an ER nurse, she can totally stitch you up, no problem.

“Sheesh. I was just…a little looser than normal. We had so much fun.” I collapse back in the chair and stare dreamily at the ceiling, remembering it all over again. “We laughed and we told jokes and we made fun of the weird agent with the puppet.”

“Someone brought a puppet?”

“Not just anyone. A literary agent. Brought a puppet. To a conference.”

“You guys are weird.”

“I didn’t bring the puppet.” I shrug and eat another donut. “Joe was just so gorgeous. The way he looked at me was…incredible. I felt special. I felt like he really found me special, instead of just some random bar hookup. And we were inseparable all night, Jane. Constantly touching and brushing against each other. It was all very heaving bosoms and totally cliché, but it was perfect. I felt like the only girl in the room with him.”

“You sure you want nothing to do with him again?”

“Like I said—”

“Yeah, yeah. Do him at lunch. But if he made you feel so special, you don’t want to hang on to that? How can you not?”

“Because.” My turn to stare at her like she’s dumb. “My career is on the precipice of something incredible. I can feel it! I’m not going to be stuck in this stupid midlist hell forever, and this is my year to do it. My books are selling well enough on my own, and there are a bunch of agents who are looking for books just like mine. This could be my year to walk away from the conference with a real literary agent, who can submit me to a real publishing house and give me a real marketing budget. No more splicing it together like I’ve been doing. No more begging and pleading with book bloggers so they’ll review me. I’m so close, Jane. Why would I fuck that up?”

“Miranda.” She puts her hands on my shoulders and leans in close. “You can have both.”

“No, you really can’t. Being an author is not like being a nurse. I don’t go to work and then come home and keep them separate. Writing is my entire life. I’m constantly working and editing and brewing up new story ideas. I’m making contacts and writing letters to fans and tweeting about contests. I’m running a small business that takes up my entire day. If I go for a walk and end up with a cup of coffee, it’s a freaking luxury.

“But I like it this way. I love my work and I love my life. Yes, having someone like Joe in my life every day would be amazing. I can’t pretend it wouldn’t be, because I’m a truth-teller. But a life with someone like Joe would mean radically changing how I do things now, and I don’t want that. I don’t want external obligations. I can barely get my oil changed on time, much less make commitments with friends and family I don’t know, or spending quality time with him when I should be writing instead.”

Jane’s lips are pursed, but she slowly shrugs and sighs. “If you say so.”

“I do say so.” And rather eloquently, if I do say so myself. There are so few opportunities for a good monologue in real life.

“If you mean it.”

“I do!” I take her hand and squeeze. “You’re a wonderful friend for looking out for me, but you’ve seen my hours. I’m not in a place to have a relationship right now. I just want to potentially continue having earth-shaking sex with Joe for the next four days, or at least live on the high, and then go back to my regular schedule. I’m only getting away with it because conference week is like my vacation week.”

“But you’re still working.” She finally begins to see. “You’re networking and all that other crap.”

“Yeah, but I’m not writing as much, so I can soak up all the new things I learn this week. Believe it or not, it feels like a fabulous vacation and I love it.”

“I guess you did get vacation sex.”

“Which everyone knows is the best sex.” I point at her, and she has to concede. “So, really, I’m living the dream.”

“I guess you are.”

“Stop it.” I swat at her as she’s packing up her makeup. “I’m
happy
.”

“I’m glad you are.” Jane kisses me on the cheek and squeezes me in a tight hug. “I just want you to be the happiest ever. And if you could look like this every morning, it would be the happiest ever.”

“You’re the best. And I’m absolutely happy with exactly how things are right this very moment.”

But as we pack up and part ways, a little niggling sensation appears in the back of my brain. It follows me all the way to the Marriott and into the conference hall. What if,
big if
, but what if Jane is right? What if I’m cheating my work, and my fans, by not experiencing something new and fresh? Would that one-night stand, delicious as it was, be enough?

What if I accidentally fall for Joe, like all my heroines and my dating history, and then we have to part ways at the end of the week? That would be ruinous. I would write devastating fiction and cry all day.

Wait, I do that already.

A personal hell would be terrible. I can’t connect with him. I can’t fall for him. He’s got the power to ruin everything. But I can’t deny being with him was amazing. Feeling so special, so focused on, was incredible.

It’s not like I hide in my house and never date. I do date. Sometimes. It’s just usually terrible and a total waste of my time. Joe didn’t feel like a waste, and even better, he didn’t make me feel like a waste, either. It was a perfect evening.

Sometimes, though, perfect evenings deserve to be just that—an evening. Perfection can tarnish after so long, and I don’t want to mar the memory of something so special and incredible. So I won’t try and track him down. I won’t stalk the convention website to try and figure out his last name and then stalk him on social media. And then I think of Jane, and the way she lights up when talking about Bobby.

Where is the line? Where does it become different, and worth pursuing?

Maybe I’m being ridiculous. It was just a one-night stand. Those happen all the time.

There’s no time to dwell on it, because I’m due in Conference Room B for the panel I’m on today. Oh hell yes, Randi Rose is going to be showcased on a super fun panel called
Grinding It Out: Strategies for Staying Consistent
. I have no idea who my fellow panelists are, but I’m positively giddy at the idea of getting to be interviewed anyway. There were so many people who helped me get started in the writing community and giving back in this way is just…awesome.