A glance at her phone reassured her she had plenty of time, and a look around told her they were in her room. Her carry-on, never unpacked, lay neatly across the luggage caddy.
And Trip, whose last name she still hadn’t learned, lay next to her, his breathing light and even. His clothes were draped over the chair on his side of the bed.
She had friends who would have felt a stab of shame: they may have proudly worn pink Pussyhats but still had internalized the patriarchal preaching that girls didn’t do one-night stands. Lark was different. Her mom, a freethinker who’d written a book in the 1980s about feminist theory—a mostly forgotten tract for an academic press, but still a book—had told her since age sixteen that there was nothing wrong with having sexual desires and acting on them, as long as it was safely done. Which it had been. Twice.
What she’d expected to feel was a sense of having completed a dare in service of a story she might tell her roommate, Callie. She’d fucked a handsome salt-and-pepper guy in a hotel in Buffalo, of all places, and it was awesome. Anonymous hotel-room sex and the guy had actually been a considerate—no, incredible—lover.
What she was actually feeling was something different. Kind of—god, don’t think it—a glow. A tingly combination of satisfaction and the lust for more.
She rolled onto her side so she could study him more closely.
He opened one eye. “Morning, Lark,” he murmured, shifting toward her.
And not that a guy deserved credit for remembering her name, but at least he wasn’t afraid to use it.
In the gray light seeping around the edges of the drapes, he looked a couple of years older than he had last night, and she could see there was a lot more salt in his stubble than there was in the hair on his head. His hair was flat on one side and wild on the other. But those eyes, crinkled around the edges.
That smile.
He threw back the covers and, with his fingers, traced the tattoos visible just over her left hip, then nudged her onto her stomach so he could see the full-color scene on her back. The whole thing—Mauna Kea and the rolling waves of the Big Island, done by an artist who specialized in the Japanese style—had cost three years and thousands of dollars but had been worth every sting and every cent. Trip, as far as she could tell, was uninked.
“I didn’t get a good look at this last night,” he murmured. “It’s amazing.”
“My dad grew up in Compton, and my mom grew up in Hilo,” she told him, rolling back on her side. “I was born in Honolulu, but we moved to LA when I was little. A piece of my heart will always be in Hawaii, but I’m a California girl.”
He grinned. “You’re not like any California girl I’ve ever met.”
She didn’t even answer, just worked herself toward him, felt his insistent stiffening, and plucked another condom from the nightstand before climbing on top. Lark was not usually one for morning sex, for kisses laced with morning breath and for sheets smelling of sweat and alcohol. And they didn’t kiss. Where last night’s sex had been hot and frantic, despite his consideration, this morning they started slow, continued slow, and kept it going until she thought she was going to lose her mind.
If she was being honest, the thing that put her over the edge was the eye contact. Those penetrating brown eyes locked on hers and never looked away, never gave her a moment to suspect he was thinking about another girl or the meetings he had to have scheduled this morning. His eyes, his smile, and the achingly slow crescendo as they moved in unison.
He finished first but she was close, riding him, grinding against him, gripping his arms tighter and tighter until she finally came, surprising them both with a cry of relief and delight that quickly became happy laughter as she collapsed against his chest.
“Morning, Trip,” she whispered.
They ordered room-service breakfast and Trip signed it to his room, explaining to the bellhop that yes, he knew which room he was in at the moment. Wearing robes, they set the tray between them, fluffed up the pillows, and reclined while they worked their way through coffee and orange juice, toast, and mixed fruit, with a side of eggs and bacon for Trip. The toast was cold and the fruit was hard and flavorless, but Lark wolfed it down, hungrier than she’d been in months.
She remembered her last breakfast with Dylan, the day she’d finally told him to move out. He’d been stringing her along for months as their relationship deteriorated, always insisting he was just about to land a job or sell his screenplay, until she began to suspect he hadn’t been trying at all and had simply been hoping she would have a change of heart. At their usual Saturday-morning spot, he ordered french toast smothered in syrup with a side of sausage patties—the same thing he’d had every single time for two and a half years—and she suddenly realized he would never change. She wanted a larger world, and he was content on her couch.
Despite Callie’s insistence that Lark pursue what she called “rebound sex,” last night and this morning represented her first intimacy since Dylan. It was both a huge relief and a dramatic improvement.
“You said last night you’d tell me in the morning what you do for a living,” she said, after washing down a bite of toast with orange juice.
“Can we just say I work with money?” he asked, sipping coffee.
She shook her head. “Not good enough. You could be an accountant or a bank robber, for all I know.”
He chuckled. “Lots of people who work in the financial field are bank robbers, even
