“I’m . . . going to go check on Nick and dinner,” she tells me and reaches out to wrap my fingers around the key she gave me. “Why don’t you check out your apartment? Take your time. We’ll keep dinner warm for you.” The look on her face is kind and sweet and so totally Daisy that I want to hug her all over again.

I don’t, but I think she’d understand why. “Thanks, Daisy.”

“We’re in 2A,” she tells me. “Come by when you’re ready.”

Then Daisy heads down the hall, and I’m alone with Daniel and my new apartment key. I stare down at the key for a moment, then look over at Daniel. “Sugar tits again, huh?” My lips twitch with laughter.

“Great conversation starter, ain’t it?” he drawls.

“I need a conversation starter of my own,” I mutter as I put the key in the door. “Like ‘sweet dick’ or ‘pork and beans.’”

“Do I get a vote?” he asks. “Because I’m partial to ‘big Johnson’ or ‘Goddamn-Daniel-Your-Dick’s-So-Huge’.”

I snort and push the door open, trying not to giggle again.

Then I grow silent as I stare at the new apartment.

Daisy’s thoughtful, I’ll give her that. The new apartment, despite a slightly different layout and a higher ceiling, is set up like my old one. She must have unpacked everything and put it down how it was, right down to my beat-up cookie jar on the counter and my B-Grade horror movie posters on the walls. There’s even the crappy futon that I had in place of a sofa, and my DVDs are lined up on their familiar shelf.

It’s like walking into a dream. “It’s my stuff. All of it.” Tears brim from my eyes as I walk inside.

“That was nice of Daisy,” Daniel says in a careful voice behind me. He sets our bags down on the futon and tucks his gun into his pants, then proceeds to go through the entire apartment, checking it out, while I stand, numb, in the doorway. It’s a process of ours, and one that I normally don’t mind—especially not after Rio—but it feels weird in this new place with my old stuff. “All clear,” he tells me a moment later and then moves past me to shut the door and lock it.

I step inside, still in a daze. There, on my coffee table, there’s my old picture of me and Mike from a friend’s wedding. I pick it up, staring at his face. I don’t feel anything for him, oddly enough. Maybe an irritated twinge that he moved right on to Becca, but there’s no love lost, no sadness.

Daniel’s arms move around my waist, and he peers over my shoulder. “Is it bad form if I say the guy looks like a lousy fuck?”

I giggle again. “You sound jealous.”

“I am jealous,” he admits, his arms tightening around my waist. “He should have fucked your brains out and given you a jillion screaming orgasms, but all he did was think of himself.” Daniel sounds totally disgruntled.

I put the picture aside and turn in Daniel’s arms, wrapping mine around his shoulders. “No need to be jealous. He never gave me one orgasm. You gave me more orgasms last night than he did in all the years we were together.”

“I am pretty awesome,” he teases, pretending to consider this.

“Pretty awesome,” I agree, and suddenly I’m feeling frisky. To think that a guy as gorgeous, sexy, and dangerous as Daniel is jealous of my old boyfriend is kind of . . . sweet. Daniel is a thousand times better to me than Mike ever was. There’s no comparison. And I want to show him how sexy I find him. “Have you ever had a blow job on a futon while sitting underneath a poster of Attack of the Killer Tomatoes?”

“Attack of the Killer Tomatoes? That’s a real movie?”

“Oh, it’s real. I have it on DVD. That and the sequel.”

“You’re shitting me. They made a sequel of that?”

“They made a few,” I tell him, pushing him backward toward the futon. “Would you rather watch it than get a blow job?”

“Christ, no,” he tells me. “But don’t you want to go see Daisy and Nick?”

“Soon,” I tell him, putting a sultry note in my voice. “But right now I want your cock between my lips and in my mouth.”

He groans, and I know I’ve won this round. I’m delighted as he flops back on the futon, takes the gun out of his pants and tosses it onto the old, beat-up coffee table that I rescued out of a rummage sale. He watches me with hot, avid eyes.

“I love you,” I tell him as I sink to my knees in front of him, pushing his legs apart.

“I love you more than anything,” he tells me, and he’s so serious for a moment, so intense, that I feel a shiver go through my body. Then, I give him another naughty look and unzip his pants.

“This loves me too, obviously.”

“Shit yeah it does,” he tells me. “Fucker can’t get enough of you.”

“Mmm.” He’s already hard, and I wrap my hands around his length, admiring him. “I think I might have to spoil my dinner with this.”

His eyes gleam as he watches me lean in. His hand goes to my hair, stroking it back from my face. “This is the perfect angle for me to watch you suck me.”

Even though we talk dirty in bed to each other all the time, with those words, my mind flashes to the brothel. The gun pushed to my forehead. I close my eyes and swallow hard. Those memories aren’t gone. I don’t know if they’ll ever be gone.

But then Daniel’s hand is caressing my cheek, the touch loving. “God, you’re beautiful.”

And just like that, I’m okay again. I open my eyes and it’s Daniel’s handsome face I see before me, Daniel’s skin warm underneath my hands. And when I lean down to drag my tongue over the crown of his cock, it’s Daniel’s taste on my tongue.

I can make new memories, starting now. I lick the head with a quick swipe and look up at him when his hand fists in my hair. “You trying to distract me, baby boy?”

“Fuck no,” he rasps. He lifts his hands in the air as if to show me that he won’t touch. “That’s the last thing I want.”

I take the head in my mouth again and giggle, and I feel him shudder as the vibrations from my laughter move against his skin. My hand grips the thick base of his cock, and I tease and stroke the head with my tongue while my other hand toys with his sac.

I’m pleased when his head falls back on the couch, his entire body tense, and his cock seems to visibly swell in my hands. He’s extremely hard, the head leaking pre-come faster than I can lick it up. He loves this, and I love doing it to him. I love the pleasure on his face.

“I want to put my hands all over you right now,” Daniel says as I lean in and suck his length into my mouth, careful of my teeth. “Just drag those pretty tits out of your shirt and play with them while you suck my cock.”

He’s not touching me, though. He’s just laying back and watching me work on him. Maybe he realizes that if he grabs me, it’d be too much for me to handle with memories pushing at the back of my mind. This makes me love him all the more, and I show my love by taking him deep and sucking so hard that my cheeks hollow.

His groan of pleasure is delicious to hear, and it makes me redouble my efforts. I practice all the skills that I know, working him with my mouth and now both hands at the base of his cock, pumping him in time with my motions.

“Christ, you’re good at that,” he rasps when his cock prods at the back of my throat again and I loosen my jaw so my gag reflex doesn’t kick in.

I don’t respond—my mouth is full. My mouth is full, and my senses are full of Daniel: his salty taste, the feel of his warm skin, the tickle of his groin hairs on my hands as I work him, the pleasure on his face with every pump of my mouth. There’s nothing but pleasure here for me.

I’m disappointed when he grabs me and tosses me down on the futon.

Well, almost.

But when he plunges into me, I give a shriek of pleasure and cling to him like a wild woman. His strokes pound me against the futon, and we’re slamming it against the wall, and it doesn’t matter one bit because we’re both coming hard and fast and I’m so happy I might burst.

We don’t make it back to Daisy’s apartment for well over an hour. And that’s okay, too. Somehow, I think Daisy was expecting that.

Daniel

MAKING LOVE TO REGAN IN a place where we don’t have to keep one eye on the door and one foot on the floor is both weird and amazing. I can’t wait to actually go to bed with her and then be able to wake up and have morning sex. Then we can go back to sleep and wake up and have mid-morning sex. When I suggested that we stay in the small futon bed and pretend we fell asleep, she shakes her head. Daisy is expecting us. Well, fuck Daisy, I think, but I pull on my trousers and join the surly Ukrainian and his farm girl for dinner. At least they have food. In the kitchen, the girls are making drinks that contain candy canes. I don’t mind a fruity drink now and then, but I draw the line at candy canes in my booze.

Nick, in a rare fit of insightfulness, invites me to the rooftop. In theory it’s a good idea. Go outside and get a fresh perspective. The reality involves standing out in sub-zero temperatures, which sends my balls inside my body for warmth. I hope the boys come out when we see Regan again. Nick is Ukrainian so apparently he’s impervious to the cold because he’s standing in a thin cotton shirt looking like he’s enjoying the Arctic breeze. I’m drinking my Shiner Bock as fast as possible to get some heat into my veins.

Nick doesn’t speak, merely stares out impassively into the distance. I wonder if he misses Russia or how he feels about the current situation in the Ukraine, but we don’t have that kind of relationship so instead I admire the night landscape. The night is cloudless and the slice of moon brightens up the sky enough so that you can make out the dark blues and black in the atmosphere. It’s strange to see Nick without a gun, though. He was an exacting, methodical, and successful hit man. If he took your job, your mark was dead. The only project he didn’t complete was his last one because he had to run off to rescue Daisy in Russia. Now he’s an art student and a landlord. The world has turned upside down.