His smile was slight, lopsided, and . . . fond. That was the word. Fond. “I know you have a lot on your mind, and you don’t do well with time when you’re busy, so I thought coming early might help. That’s all.”

He made it sound as if she struggled to remember his existence—which she certainly did not, thank you very much. But perhaps she behaved that way, sometimes? Dani found that idea infinitely bothersome. Zaf took up a lot of space and spread a lot of warmth and did a lot of good, and someone like that should not be treated as an afterthought. It was the principle of the matter. It was bad for the balance of the universe. So maybe, next time she was supposed to meet him, she’d set an alarm to make sure she wasn’t distracted or forgetful.

“I understand, but you don’t need to worry. I won’t be late again,” she said decisively. And then she had to turn away, because something about his expression changed. His eyes seemed even darker and more dizzyingly lovely than usual, and she couldn’t bear to hold his gaze. “I’ll just . . . get ready, then,” she blurted, heading toward the bedroom. “There are glasses in the cupboard over the sink, if you want some water. Or mugs, if you want tea, do help yourself to tea.” When he didn’t answer, she glanced back to make sure he hadn’t fallen through an interdimensional gap or been kidnapped—giant-napped—by a team of skilled and silent individuals.

No, he was simply staring, his mouth hanging slightly open, at her arse. Ah. Yes. She’d forgotten about the cut of these sleep shorts, and also about the tattoo on her bottom. Cheeks burning—which was ridiculous, since she planned to show him far more skin after they dealt with this interview—Dani slapped a hand over her backside. Zaf responded by bursting into laughter, possibly because her hand wasn’t big enough to cover even a fraction of that particular body part.

“Well, I never,” she muttered, and hurried off.

“Sorry,” he called after her, not sounding remotely apologetic.

“Pervert!” She hoped he was, anyway.

“No, no,” he said, utterly deadpan. “I just really like tattoos.”

Danika Brown was fucking impossible.

Zaf stood by the living room window, watching her walk away in the dark mirror created by its glass. She was all strong calves and heavy, dimpled thighs, half her arse exposed by those fucking shorts, her palm covering a tattoo that read bite me. She disappeared through a door he assumed led to her bedroom, slamming it shut. Zaf released a long sigh of relief and leaned forward until his brow touched the cold glass. He needed to calm down. His pulse was a rhythmic punch against his throat, so violent it must be dangerous. He’d be in the news tomorrow: MAN KILLED BY OWN AROUSAL. ARTERY BURST BY THE FORCE OF HIS BLOOD.

No messing around with Danika, he told himself firmly. Not before they’d gotten this fucking interview out of the way. His nerves about the whole thing mixed with the hot, electric anticipation of what they’d do after, and it was making him shake as if he’d downed three espressos in a row. Or maybe he was shaking because he had downed three espressos in a row. Hadn’t wanted to yawn midinterview.

Then again, was he even capable of yawning with a woman like Dani beside him? Probably not. His dick had been hard before he’d even crossed her threshold. He’d never seen her wear anything other than black, never seen her barefoot and braless without a scrap of makeup, so the way she looked tonight had hit him like a fist to the gut. Who else saw her like this? Not many people, he’d bet. It was a tiny and ridiculous and meaningless thing, but to Zaf, it whispered intimacy, and the fact that it was all in his head didn’t stop him from biting his fist. Hard.

The pain didn’t help; it just reminded him of that tattoo. He’d bite her all right, if she wanted it. He’d kneel at her feet, put his hands on her hips—soft, she’d be so soft—and turn her around. Slowly. Drag down those shorts to expose the full, fat curve of her arse, and sink his teeth so fucking gently into all that ripe flesh, until every inch of her was marked by him.

Then, obviously, he’d stand up, push her against the wall, free his greedy cock and spread her pussy open. Cram her full of him and rut until he couldn’t see, burying his face against her neck, all that lovely skin so bare and vulnerable for him and, holy fuck, his dick was thick and leaking in his jeans and he really needed to stop this or they’d never get to the fucking radio station.

Slow and deliberate, he breathed in through his nose, then out through his mouth, a twisted smile curving his lips. He was officially using his old anxiety tactics to deal with an erection. His brother’s laughter rang in his head, so real he almost turned around to see if Zain Bhai was there. But he didn’t turn, in the end. Because Zain was never there.

“Nope,” he muttered under his breath. “What we’re not going to do is swing straight from horny to depressed.” He rubbed a hand over his freshly trimmed beard—what? Every guy wanted to go out looking his best—and turned away from the window, since Dani wasn’t around to spot the fucking baseball bat stuffed down his jeans. “Distraction. That’s all I need, a distraction.” He had a feeling he was going to spend this entire fake relationship looking for distractions, because Danika got impossibly prettier and sweeter and smarter and sexier every time he saw her, like a very sophisticated torture device.

But he wasn’t going to think about that, not when he couldn’t do anything about it just yet. He was going to think about . . . about all the things in this huge studio apartment he’d never seen before. Like the books and statues and the pink sticky notes on the wall. Like the countless plants packed onto windowsills and counters, standing tall in ceramic pots, hanging from the ceiling, even. He ran his fingers over the fine prickles of a nearby cactus, and when that didn’t help, he wandered across the room to the bookshelf. It was made of some glossy wood, taller than Zaf and twice as wide, taking up the whole sunshine-yellow wall by the front door. He squinted at the titles, failed to find any he’d heard of, and gave up when he saw something called Summa Theologica, which didn’t sound like English, Punjabi, or Arabic, and was therefore none of his business. Some of the shelves held glass jars, too, like fishbowls—but instead of water, they were filled with cut leaves and dried flowers and random crystals. He recognized lavender in one of the jars. Another held a teardrop stone that gleamed like the moon.

When Zaf and Zain were kids, their dad used to tell them stories about the moon, just before bed. Zaf should’ve flinched away from the memory, but he didn’t. And nothing bad happened. Instead, for a moment, he thought about sharing it with Danika, and how she’d probably say something weird and wonderful like “Moons are eminently important. Your father sounds a very sensible man.”

Or maybe that was wishful thinking. Maybe she’d be like everyone else, and say, “Your father and brother died at the same time, and then your mental health plummeted and your life spun out of control? Sounds awful. Tell me all about it, every gory detail.”

That didn’t seem likely. But it hadn’t seemed likely with anyone else, either.

Zaf left the strange little bowls and moved on to the coffee table in the center of the room. It was small and sturdy and polished, with a golden statue of a woman planted dead center. The woman had a head full of curls, bees on her wrists and collarbones like tame pets, and a mirror in one hand. There was a marble cup of water in front of her, along with a little dish of orange slices. There were candles all around her, solemn white things with wax dripping at their edges and burnt-black wicks. It took him a moment to realize this was probably an altar, and he was gawking at it like it was a circus sideshow. Oops.

He turned away, moving on to the last oddity in the room: a wall of pink sticky notes beside Danika’s desk. He studied them for a few moments, taking in the scrawled words and phrases, most of which he’d only ever heard from her mouth. Then he realized what he was looking at. This wall of sticky notes was Danika’s brain.