“I haven’t forgotten,” he said quietly, grabbing his clothes off the floor as she threw on a robe. He felt like throwing a farewell ceremony when she covered that magnificent body, but now didn’t seem like the time. “I was wondering if maybe you forgot. For a moment.”

She shot him a sarcastic look as she sauntered out of the room. “Oh dear.”

“What?” He zipped up his jeans, threw on his shirt, and followed.

“Already searching for excuses to stick around?” She reached the front door and leaned against it, a teasing smile playing at the corners of her lips. “Why do I get the feeling you’re falling tragically in love with me as we speak?”

“No idea,” Zaf lied, planting his hands against the door, one on either side of her shoulders. “Why do I get the feeling you’d be terrified if I was?”

Her chin lifted. “I hope you’re not psychoanalyzing me, Zafir. The last person who tried that ended up defenestrated.”

“Which means what, exactly?”

She arched an eyebrow, slow and sexy as fuck. “Keep looking at me like that and you’ll find out.”

“Looking at you like . . . this?” he asked, holding her gaze. “Do I make you uncomfortable, sweetheart?”

Dani stepped closer, moving away from the door and into his chest. She was a head shorter than him, but there was steel in her eyes and confidence in her smirk, and he felt like they were players squaring up before a match. “I’m never uncomfortable, Zafir,” she whispered. “I lack the necessary social awareness, and anyway, in case you hadn’t noticed, I’m kind of a badass.”

“You’re impossible, is what you are.”

She cocked her head, shooting him an incandescent smile. “You say the sweetest things.”

“Why do I want to kiss you so badly right now?” The question was more for himself than for her. In fact, he hadn’t meant to say it aloud—it just rushed free on a breath of frustration. He should be horrified, or panicking, or concerned, at the very least, by his affection for a woman who didn’t want it. He should be leaving fast enough to make tracks on her shiny floor.

Instead, he was seriously considering fucking her all over again. On the aforementioned shiny floor.

No, Zaf. Stop that. He couldn’t process his emotions and shit while he was balls-deep in the source of his conflict. That much seemed obvious.

“You want to kiss me,” Dani said, “because I’m incredibly good at it.”

“Your middle name is modesty, right?”

“Close.” She grinned. “My middle name is honesty.” But then she sobered. “This is how people work, Zaf. We want what we want, and we get it however we can, and when morals or ideals or promises get in the way, we say fuck it and push right past.”

He didn’t want to agree with that kind of cynicism—not even now, when he was ignoring the warning sirens in his head in favor of the ache in his cock. So he slid his hands beneath her short robe to cup her arse and pulled her close until they were pressed together, their heavy breathing in synch. “There’s nothing immoral about the way I want you, and what I promised was three weeks of making you come. So say the word, and I’ll take you to bed again.”

Danika tilted her head back, rising up on her toes until her lips brushed his. “And fall asleep right after,” she murmured, “and snore all night like a big bear, and develop delusions of romance in the morning because you read too many novels.”

A reluctant smile curved his lips. “I’m not that easily carried away, you know. I won’t forget what this is.”

“Good,” she said. “Now bugger off.”

He laughed, and kissed her cheek, and let her go. She practically shoved him out the door, and as soon as he was alone in the hallway—as soon as he was without her—the confusion he’d been looking for crushed him like a brick wall.

I won’t forget what this is.

Fuck, he was such a liar.

The thing about mental health was, you couldn’t take a course of antibiotics and be magically healed. Some people’s brains just thought too much or felt too much or hurt too much, and you had to stay on top of that. Zaf, for example, would always be an anxious motherfucker—which was fine. He’d learned to handle it. And, like he taught the kids at Tackle It, taking the time to work through your feelings was never a bad thing.

Unless working through your feelings involved walking home from a friend’s house after she’d screwed you senseless, coming to terms with the fact that something about her made you wonderfully, dangerously silly.

Zaf shoved his hands into his pockets and watched the cracks in the pavement as he moved. Fact was, he had . . . feelings for Danika Brown. Soft, mushy, I need you feelings that made him want to hold her hand, or introduce her to his mother, even when she was threatening him with words he didn’t understand. The problem: Dani didn’t want his feelings. In fact, she didn’t want any of the things Zaf wanted, which made him wonder how he’d managed to develop this attachment in the first place. Weren’t you supposed to prefer people who shared your core values, or whatever the fuck? Yeah, that seemed right. And yet, here he was, pining after a woman who’d never be interested. Typical. Bloody typical.

It wasn’t like he could convince Dani to change everything she believed and be with him for real. She was a person, not a doll or a character in a book, and expecting something she hadn’t offered would feel like . . . It would feel like trying to change her, like saying what she had to give wasn’t enough. But it was. Their friendship, it meant something. It meant everything, because it was from her.

Which was why he couldn’t do the sensible thing and cut her off completely. Avoiding her would probably stop these feelings getting any worse, but for fuck’s sake, he didn’t want to avoid her. They worked together, and they were in the middle of a fake relationship, here, and he’d promised her three weeks of sex, and—and who the hell was he kidding? None of that shit mattered. None of it. He just didn’t want to go without her smile.

Zaf stopped in the middle of the street, rubbed a frustrated hand over his beard, and glared at a passing car, just because. Then he decided it was officially time to call Jamal.

Fuck, he’d never hear the bloody end of this.

But when he dialed Jamal’s number, no one picked up—which meant he’d either gone to bed earlier than usual or was dead in a ditch somewhere. Zaf racked his brain for their last conversation, remembered calling his best friend a pretty-boy twat with his nose in everyone else’s business, and decided to mentally rewrite that as something more poignant and loving. Then he reminded himself sternly that not everyone in his life was doomed to die (well, they were, but hopefully not yet) and called Kiran’s number instead.

After a few rings, Jamal answered the phone with a gruff, irritable, “What?”

Well. That was unexpected.

Actually, no it wasn’t.

“Who’s this?” Jamal grumbled, and Zaf realized he hadn’t said anything yet.

His surprise wore off, and he felt himself smile. “Why are you answering Kiran’s phone?”

Jamal’s sleepy tone vanished. “Zaf?”

“Yeah. Bet you wouldn’t have picked up if you’d noticed it was me, you shit.”

In the background he heard Kiran’s voice, faint and yawning. “Jamal, who’s that?”

“I only came over for dinner,” Jamal said quickly. “Your mum was there. But we went upstairs to talk, and then we fell asleep—me and Kiran, I mean. Not me and your mum.”

“I should bloody well hope not. Are you ignoring her?” Zaf asked, sounding vaguely threatening and trying not to laugh.

“Am I ignoring your mum?”

“No, dipshit, Kiran. I just heard her ask you a question. Are you ignoring her right now? Because I really don’t appreciate that.”

There was a pause before Jamal sighed. “You’re fucking with me, aren’t you?”

“Who, me? Never. Now piss off and let me speak to my sister.”

“God, you’re a dick.” There was some fumbling as the phone was passed around. Then Kiran’s voice floated down the line.

“Stop tormenting my suitors,” she said dryly, “or I’ll beat you.”

“It’s not torment. It’s just my personality.”

“Shut up.” There was a pause, and her next words were hesitant. “Jamal and I have technically been misleading you about just how often we speak. I asked him to—”

“Lie out his arse, yeah, all right.”

“I just didn’t want to put any pressure on . . .”

“I know,” Zaf said softly. “It’s fine.”

“Really?”

“Obviously. Your business. Actually, you can’t see me, but I’m jumping for joy.”

“That sounded extra sarcastic, so it must be true.”

Zaf’s lips twitched into a smile. Of course, the smile might have been wider if the night’s events weren’t still weighing on him.