Too bad I didn’t get a chance to wear it before he drove that treacherous knife right into the center of my back.

I’d had the intense urge to set fire to these clothes. To watch them burn up so I’d have no reminders left of who I’d tried to make myself be for him.

I wouldn’t change for anyone.

Never again.

But I realized wearing something that made me feel pretty didn’t change me. Pride had hit me hard when I slipped into these clothes. Not because of the way they made me look, even though I felt good in them, but because they were no longer for him.

I chewed my lip, shifted to look at myself in the mirror.

“Forget him,” I whispered to myself.

Tonight I was finally letting Hunter go. It wasn’t because I missed him and loved him and was letting my broken heart heal. I didn’t feel any of those things. I knew it now, knew picking a guy like him was just me trying to fit in, to be more like the girls I thought I was supposed to fit in with.

But what he’d done had hurt me.

And today I would finally let go of all that pain.

“Misha!” Indy shouted again.

Grinning, I grabbed my little purse from my bed. “All right . . . all right! I’m coming! Don’t get your panties all in a bind.”

I headed out my door, doing my best not to wobble on my four-inch heels.

“Who said I was wearing any?” she shot back as I carefully maneuvered down the stairs. So maybe the shoes weren’t exactly me, and I was much more comfortable in my sneakers, but I liked them, so I was wearing them, and I didn’t care what anyone else had to say.

Chuckling at her, I clung to the railing as I made my way to the bottom floor. When I got downstairs, I found all three of my roommates in the kitchen. Courtney was pouring amber liquid into tiny shot glasses, one round ready to get the night started.

Indy grinned in my direction. “Cheers!” she said as she handed a shot glass to me.

“Cheers!” The three of us lifted our glasses and tossed them back, Chloe sitting out the drinking like she always did. I was actually surprised she’d agreed to come out with us at all tonight.

Liquid burned a fiery path down my throat, and I forced myself to swallow, doing my best not to choke on it and spew it right back out. My face screwed up with the awful taste when it settled in my stomach. “Ugh . . . that is terrible. Why are we doing this again?”

“Just a little preamble. Tonight we’re letting go.”

“To tonight.” Courtney poured us one more round. We clinked glasses, toasting us. In unison, we slammed them down on the counter, grinning like fools as we swiped the backs of our hands over our mouths.

Was I tipsy off two shots? I wobbled on my heels, giggled more.

Oh yeah. I wasn’t exactly what you’d call a drinker. But I loved the fuzzy feeling that swept through my body, the way my nerves became subdued and thoughts of Hunter became nothing but a distant memory.

The four of us filed out into the night. A dark canopy kissed with twinkling stars covered us like an embrace from high above. We laughed and talked the entire ten-minute walk to the club. It’d been a very long time since I felt so good.

We were ushered in, and I felt like I stepped into a whole new world when I entered through the wide double doors. Music pulsed, heavy and loud, colorful lights throbbing with the beat. Bright strobes flashed over the crush of bodies on the dance floor, people moving against each other, completely free.

As free as I felt.

Indy tugged at my hand. “Let’s hit the bar. I need another drink before I go anywhere near that mess of people.”

Funny, because I felt drawn to it, like the only thing I wanted to do was get mixed up in it. Just for tonight, I wanted to get lost.

I let her lead me through the throng, Courtney and Chloe just ahead. The three of us partook of another shot.

I slammed my glass down as I forced my drink to stay in my stomach. “Gah! That’s the last one for me.” I furiously shook my head. “Whew.”

Indy smirked at me. “Lightweight.”

And that I was.

My head spun, and the music blared, calling me into it. I began to shake my hips right at the bar. “Come dance with me!” I prodded, yanking at my friends’ arms.

“I’m in.” Courtney linked her elbow with mine. The two of us were giggling as we pushed through the groups huddled up close to the bar and wound our way into the middle of dance floor, where we completely cut loose.

Sweaty bodies beat around us, but I couldn’t even begin to mind. We danced for minutes, or hours, I didn’t know. All I knew was I was having the best time I’d had in so long, and I no longer felt like the pariah, like someone people would whisper about.

Because no one here knew.

A month had passed since I returned to campus, and not one person had uttered a word to me about what had happened.

Courtney started dancing with some random guy, and she cast me a telling smile as she turned away. I returned an accepting grin, giving her the go-ahead before I lifted my face toward the high ceiling that strummed with lights. Colors flashed across my face and lit up behind my closed eyes, and I completely gave myself over to my newfound freedom.

I was lost in the crowd, but still I felt it strike me. Tension infiltrated the already heavy air, thickening it more, making it difficult to breathe. I felt them, eyes watching me dance, traveling my curves as I moved.

A burst of modesty tried to crack the surface of the buzz that sedated my mind.

But tonight, it couldn’t touch me.

Because I welcomed it. I wanted him to see me.

God, how much time had I spent dreaming of him? Darryn Wild, that boy-man-god who’d stolen so many of my thoughts, that teasing smile that did something to me I’d never felt before, made me shy in a way I liked, like he saw beneath all the red to the girl below.

Now I could feel him, his eyes all over me, caressing me slowly, up and down.

I let all my insecurities drift away as I swayed in time to the music, in sync with the throb of the crowd and the intermittent lights that glowed against my lids.

A charged moment passed, before strong hands found my hips and gripped them from behind. For a beat, I stiffened, before I again gave in to this sublime release. And again, he felt good. Right. All this intense energy that ricocheted between us wrapped me up in a frenzy of nerves, alight and alive. The smell of him took me whole, all soap and man and sex.

Oh God.

My heart beat frantically, racing to keep up with my thoughts that were spiraling out of control.

A shimmer of fear slithered through me, before he pulled my back into the safety of his firm chest.

And that was what I felt.

Safe.

With him, and I didn’t know why, and I was searching inside myself for resolve, for the commitment I’d made to never allow myself to be so easily played again.

But it was just out of my reach.

Darryn held me close, our bodies moving in time, like we shared the same breath, the same space. I leaned back, my head on his shoulder as his face found the curve of my neck. Chills sped, spinning my body into a violent cataclysm of need. He let his hands roam, palms pressing hard as he ran them down the front of my legs, spanning them wide as he trailed them back up to my hips and over my stomach. Fingertips dipped into my ribs as he slid them up the curve of my sides, and he lifted my arms as he went, in the same fluid motion fastening my hands around the back of his neck.

All those butterflies scattered, a clash of discordant wings that fluttered haphazardly through my insides, leaving my stomach in a coiled mess of confusion and need.

Why him? Why now?

Holding me close, he brushed his mouth over the shell of my ear, his whispered words injected directly to my manic heart. “Goddamn, Misha. What are you trying to do to me?”

I suddenly found it impossible to breathe, because it was him who was slowly undoing all the fibers of reservation woven through my weakened spirit.

“Can’t get you off my mind.” He leaned in closer, his hand sweeping up my stomach. Fingers brushed between my breasts, and I released a sharp gasp.

“Been dying to touch you,” he murmured low. He began to prod me back, slowly leading me away from the heaving bodies on the dance floor. The riot of the crowd bled into black as he edged us through the club, his roaming hands leaving me completely stripped of any defenses. Walls rose on each side of us as he drew me backward into the darkened hallway. Darryn pulled me into its depths, before he suddenly spun me in his hold and pinned my back up against the wall.

And it wasn’t fear I felt when I looked at up at him, captured by those hazel eyes that were more intense than anything I’d ever seen as they searched me frantically, his hands just as frantic when he twisted his fingers through the locks of my hair on both sides of my head.

It was desire.

He yanked me against him, tilting my chin up by the force of his hold in my hair.

I grunted.

“Tell me you want me, too,” he demanded in a pained whisper, his eyes flying across my face. “Tell me you lie in bed at night and when you close your eyes, you see me. Because all I can see is you.”

Shock punched all the air from my lungs, and my mouth dropped open—I was stunned by his blatant admission.

That gaze darted to my parted lips and back to my eyes, our bodies heaving with the tension that continued to wind us higher and higher.