Chapter 1: Blind Date Gone Wrong
Nikola stared at her own reflection with the expression she usually reserved for meeting invites that could have been an email.
The woman in the mirror looked suspiciously good. Platinum ombré with dark roots — sharp enough to read as intentional, not I forgot my appointment — falling in loose waves over her shoulders. Black wrap dress, mid-thigh. Dark undereye liner, just enough to look like someone who actually sleeps. Gold hoops, a delicate chain. Heels that said I made an effort but not specifically for you.
HR Director on a blind date.
Brilliant use of a Friday night.
Her phone buzzed on the counter.
Jess: Remember. Your face.
Jess: Don’t scare him off before the drinks arrive. Neutral expression. Practice in the mirror. Go.
Nikola snorted.
Nikola: My face is fine.
Jess: Your face says “you’re fired” when you ask how someone’s weekend was.
Jess: I’m just saying, maybe don’t interrogate him like it’s a job interview?
Nikola: I know the difference between a blind date and a screening round.
Jess: Good. You paid the agency a lot of money. At least pretend you’re here for fun.
Nikola: I mean. Better than wasting time on some random idiot.
Jess: Oh my GOD!! You know what I meant >:(!
Nikola rolled her eyes, but the corner of her mouth lifted without permission. She tucked the phone into her bag, then hesitated, fingers tightening on the strap.
Professional matchmaking.
She’d told herself it was a practical decision. Efficient. Delegating the part of her life she had neither the time nor the emotional bandwidth for. She ran background checks and behavioral interviews for a living — handing romance over to a service that promised compatible partners sounded, on paper, like a reasonable investment.
In practice, she felt like someone who’d wired money to a stranger to be assessed and then dispatched on a date with a man who’d definitely listed ambitious and family-oriented in his profile.
She grabbed her keys before she could change her mind.
On the way out, she passed the hallway mirror. Jess was right — her neutral expression was veering hard toward HR incident report.
Not entirely her fault.
She was born with this face. Slavic girl, what can you do.
She tried something softer. Less you’re in trouble, more I’m open to conversation but don’t push it.
Almost.
Not great, but not terrible.
The bar in Montrose was trendy without trying too hard. Exposed brick, trailing plants, lighting that made everyone look five percent more attractive and ten percent more mysterious. The kind of place the agency had described as casual but elevated — which meant the cocktails cost too much and the napkins had logos.
Nikola checked the confirmation email on her way in.
We’ve reserved a table for two at 8:00 PM under the first initial of your name. Your match will be nearby. The hostess can direct you to the table if needed.
She scanned the room.
Couples at high-tops, groups at the bar, a man in the corner performing I meant to be alone into his phone. Nobody looked like they were waiting specifically for her.
Which was fine.
Or not fine.
Too early to tell.
Her phone buzzed again.
Jess: You there?
Nikola: Just walked in. If I die, tell my parents I loved them and that the agency overcharged.
Jess: If he’s weird, stay for at least two drinks. Minimum ROI.
Nikola: You’re so wise.
Jess: I’m a married woman who hasn’t been on a date in ten years. I live through you. Go sit down. And remember. Your face.
Nikola pocketed her phone and made her way toward the bar seating. The hostess smiled.
“Just the one tonight?” she asked.
“Blind date,” Nikola said. “There should be a reservation under N.”
The hostess checked her tablet and nodded. “Got you. Right over there.” She gestured toward a two-top near the bar. “Your match should be here shortly.”
Nikola thanked her and lowered herself into the chair with more composure than she felt. Set down her bag. Smoothed her dress. Ordered a vodka tonic with lime when the server appeared.
Five minutes.
Her jaw tightened.
Ten.
She checked the time, then made a firm decision not to check it again. She’d rather be kept waiting than keep someone else waiting — that was her flaw.
She was considering the ethics of drinking half her cocktail before the man even arrived when someone stopped beside the table.
She looked up.
Tall.
Broad shoulders in a navy shirt, sleeves rolled to mid-forearm with the kind of precision that couldn’t be accidental.
Dark hair slightly unruly — it looked like deliberate dishevelment, but Nikola had her suspicions. Blue eyes swept over her once, unhurried, economical, the way someone catalogs before they speak.
He was older than she’d expected. Old enough to notice. Not old enough to do anything with.
“Nicole?” he said.
“Nikola,” she corrected. “Like Nikola Tesla. Minus the electricity.”
He was quiet for exactly one second. Something passed through the corner of his mouth — too brief to confirm — before he pulled out the chair and sat down.
“Understood.” His voice was low, measured, the kind that didn’t need to be raised to be heard. He rested a forearm on the edge of the table and looked at her. “The hostess said Nicole.”
“The hostess is wrong.”
“That often?”
She blinked. She hadn’t expected that.
“Ethan,” he said, before she could answer.
The server materialized with menus.
Ethan waved him off before Nikola opened her mouth — same thing, please — with an intonation that landed somewhere between a question addressed to her and a declarative sentence. Under normal circumstances, she’d bristle. Instead she set down the menu.
“Two lines and a surveillance camera photo,” he said, eyes calm, voice even. “That’s what the agency gave me.”
“And? Did I disappoint?”
He tilted his head. Looked at her with that same focused attention, not rushing his answer.
“I don’t know yet,” he said finally.
I don’t know yet. Like he intended to conduct an evaluation and would inform her of the results when he was ready. Heat climbed the back of her neck without warning — unearned, unjustified, and she knew it. She raised an eyebrow.
“What were the two lines?”
“New to Houston. Ambitious. Looking for something serious but allergic to small talk.” He delivered it without irony, voice neutral. Then he lifted his glass. “Accurate, so far.”
“Thank you.”
“That wasn’t a compliment.”
She drew a slow breath through her nose.
“Better and better.”
The corner of his mouth. That same corner — it twitched and held, controlled at the last second. His gaze didn’t leave her face.
“Where are you from?” he asked. “The name doesn’t exactly sound American.”
“Florida.”
“That’s not an answer to the question.”
“I know,” she said pleasantly.
He watched her for a moment. Said nothing, but the silence had something in it that wasn’t discomfort — it was more like a decision. Like someone who’d chosen quiet over words and was at peace with that choice.
“You’re difficult,” he said finally. Not as a complaint. More like a note he’d just added to something.
“Always.”
“I see.” And in those two words — calm, no irony, no question mark — her shoulders dropped a centimeter. Against her will. Without her consent.
He settled back, one arm draped over the back of his chair. Watched her with that steady, clinical attention.
“Your whole face,” he said finally.
She narrowed her eyes. “Excuse me?”
“You look like you have somewhere better to be.”
“What can I say,” she replied, tone flat and dry. “I work in HR and I paid strangers to find me a man.”
His expression shifted. The amusement deepened into something sharper.
“HR. You?”
“Yes. The soulless arm of corporate America, where I fire people and make sure nobody harasses anyone at the company Christmas party.”
“Sounds exciting.” His eyes settled on her — stubbornly, intently, like he’d stopped pretending his attention was anywhere else.
“It’s a circus,” she said without affect. “But as long as they’re paying me, it’s my circus and my monkeys and I have to make sure nobody sets the tent on fire.”
He smiled — and she saw it then, the faint lines at the corners of his eyes. He was older than her, maybe pushing forty, maybe just past it.
Polished in a way that said money and control, but with something underneath — dry, sharp, human. She realized she’d been looking at his face too long.
“Whoever hired you got lucky.”
“We’ll see.” She tilted her head. “I start a new job Monday.”
“Good luck with the new circus.” He paused. “Shame I don’t have an opening. We just filled ours.”
She laughed before she could stop herself. A beat later she cleared her throat and took a sip of her vodka tonic.
Ethan watched her with that quiet, analytical focus and said nothing. But the corner of his mouth. That damn corner.
“And you?” she said. “What do you do, besides ordering drinks for people you’ve just met?”
“Energy. Tech.” Brief, no elaboration. “Family business.”
“Big office?”
“Big enough.”
“Assistant?”
“To schedule my coffee breaks?” He raised an eyebrow. “I manage.”
“CEO,” she said. Not a question.
He studied her for a moment.
“That obvious?”
“You carry yourself like someone who signs things that matter,” she said. “And you ordered a drink for a woman you’ve never met before in a tone that suggests no one usually tells you no.”
Something in his eyes turned to approval then — warm, brief, careful. Like he’d just decided she was worth paying attention to.
“Family business,” he confirmed. “Houston, born and raised.” A pause. “Divorced. Two years.”
She raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t ask.”
“I know.” A sip of whiskey. “But you were asking about the full picture, so there it is.”
She wanted to say something sharp. Instead she took a sip of her vodka. Something under her ribs — wound tight since she’d walked into this bar — eased by a millimeter. Against her will.
His knee grazed hers under the table. A fleeting contact that had no business landing the way it did.
Ethan didn’t move away.
She looked at him.
For a fraction of a second there was something in his eyes that wasn’t accidental — awareness, precision, that warm amusement he kept behind a second layer of everything else. Then a sip of whiskey and his gaze returned to her face, steady as if nothing had happened.
She looked away from his hand on the glass.
Focus, Nikola.
But he was saying her name differently than he had at the beginning of the evening — slower, like he’d learned how it sat in his mouth and wasn’t in any rush. And the line of his shoulder was very clear from this distance. And the way he’d rolled his cuff — without thinking, one motion, like the suit was a tool and not a uniform —
The events coordinator appeared with a tablet and apologies and the whole catastrophe of the wrong table, and Nikola shifted back in her chair an inch so no one would notice she’d been sitting closer than she should have been.
Ethan listened to the explanation with complete composure. Said I understand in the tone of someone who wasn’t bothered in the least. The coordinator disappeared.
They looked at each other, longer than they should have.
Nikola reached for her bag.
“Well.” She straightened up. “So we traumatized the wrong people from the plan. Great.”
“It was nice.” He stood with her. “Good luck Monday.”
“Thanks for the drinks. Even if we were both a glitch in the system.”
She walked out without looking back.
Outside, Houston wrapped around her — humidity, heat, the distant hum of traffic. She opened the app, finger on the screen, and was mid-selecting pickup when footsteps sounded behind her.
“Hey.”
She stopped.
Turned.
Ethan was walking at an unhurried pace, hands in his pockets. He’d just passed his actual match — a blonde in a pink dress who was staring after him with barely contained confusion — as if she were part of the background rather than the person he was supposed to have spent the evening with.
He stopped a few feet away.
He looked at her for a moment, eyes steady — and her throat tightened, because that steadiness wasn’t indifference. It was a decision.
“I think we both had a good time,” he said. “Even if it was a mistake.”
“And?”
The corner of his mouth.
“Maybe it was a mistake,” he said, “but I’d like to spend the rest of the evening with my little grump.”
Nikola’s mouth opened.
Then closed.
"Excuse me?"
“You heard me.” His voice dropped half a register. No apology whatsoever. “Unless you’d rather let the agency try again.”
She looked at her phone screen. Then at him. At the way he was standing — no rush, no doubt, with that light challenge in his eyes that said he already knew her answer but wanted to hear it from her.
“One drink,” she said. “Maybe two. That’s the limit.”
He smiled — and for the first time all evening it was a smile without control. Wide, real, unguarded for a fraction of a second.
“Of course.”
Two drinks became four in a quieter pub two streets over, all dark wood booths and candles that smelled like cedarwood.
They sat side by side instead of across from each other — her heel had slipped off under the table, his sleeve grazed her arm every time he reached for his glass. She didn’t know exactly when she’d stopped keeping her distance — only that at some point she had.
Somewhere between mocking corporate buzzwords and comparing the specific damage of immigrant parents who expected perfection — she’d stopped keeping her distance.
His hand found hers on the table. Fingers curled around her knuckles.
“You’re trouble,” he murmured.
“You’re worse,” she said.
“I know.”
When he asked if she wanted to call it a night, Nikola looked at his hand over hers on the table for a moment.
Then she shook her head and texted him her address before she could think about it.
The door to her apartment had barely clicked shut when his mouth was already on hers.
His kiss didn’t contain a question.
Nikola had her own for a fraction of a second — what am I actually doing — before the whiskey on his tongue mixed with something sweeter and the question dissolved somewhere around the first word.
Her back hit the wall. Cool surface through the fabric of her dress, his body full weight from the front — warm, solid, too good to be fair.
First date in a new city — she thought, in fragments — and already against a wall. Excellent, Nikola.
She grabbed his collar and pulled him closer.
Ethan smiled against her mouth — she felt it before she saw it.
“And to think,” he murmured against her jaw, voice low and rough and too close, “HR girls are so boring.”
Heat moved under her ribs at a speed she had no way of managing.
“That’s because,” she said, slightly breathless, “you’ve been meeting the wrong ones.”
“Lucky me.”
His teeth closed on the skin beneath her ear — light, deliberate, like someone who already knows — and a shiver ran down her spine from the base of her neck without asking, without any consultation with her better judgment. Her fingers tightened on his collar.
Her hands found his shirt buttons.
First, second — the fabric warm from his body all evening — and when the shirt slid off his shoulders she stopped for a second.
The faint light from the hallway traced the line of his shoulders, his chest, the definition along his abdomen.
Kurwa — she thought, without address and without regret.
Her hands moved over warm skin — the hard muscle of his chest and arms, tensing slightly under her touch, hot like something that had always been there and had only been waiting.
He smelled like cedar and wood and something warmer underneath — sweat and the evening and something she couldn’t name but already knew she’d remember.
Ethan made a low sound in his throat.
In a fraction of a second he caught her wrists in one hand — firm, no brutality — and pressed them above her head against the wall. His other hand slid along her thigh, her dress riding up.
“And to think,” she whispered, pressing her hips toward him, “every CEO I’ve ever known was old and boring.”
His smile was dark and dangerous and completely self-aware.
“That’s because you’d been meeting the wrong ones.”
“Lucky me.”
He kissed her slower this time — deeper, with that controlled force that made her knees do what knees did around Ethan Kammeyer and what she didn’t yet know was his specialty. His tongue lazy at her lips, then inside, tasting her without rushing, like someone who intended to remember.
She could feel him through the fabric of his pants — hard, unmistakable, leaving no room for doubt — and her own breathing changed rhythm before she’d decided yes.
When he released her wrists her hands went straight for his belt — but Ethan had his own agenda.
He gripped her thighs, lifted her without effort — strong, God, actually strong — and pressed her back against the wall.
Her legs wrapped around his hips on instinct, because that was just how it worked, and she felt under her fingers how the muscles of his arms flexed holding her up like she weighed nothing.
“I have never in my life,” she breathed against his neck as his mouth found her throat, “done anything like this. Especially not with an older man."
He vibrated against her skin — a low, throaty sound that was and wasn’t a laugh.
“Crazy or drunk?” he murmured against her collarbone.
“Probably both.”
“You want me to stop?”
No — her body answered before her mind could form a thought.
“No,” she said.
“Good.” His voice at her skin, warm breath on her collarbone. “Because I don’t want to stop either.”
He slid her dress off her shoulders. The fabric pooled at her waist and Ethan pulled back just enough to look at her — his gaze traveled over her collarbones, her ribs, lower — warm and explicit as a touch without touching.
His mouth closed over one nipple — hot, wet — and he sucked slowly, his tongue drawing circles, biting gently until her back arched from the wall without her consent and sounds came from her throat that she had not officially planned.
A large warm hand took care of her other breast — certain, his thumb moving with the same focused precision as everything else he did — and Nikola threaded her fingers through his hair and held on.
Finally he pulled her away from the wall.
He carried her toward the bedroom like it was obvious — strong arms, broad back, her face at his neck where he smelled most intensely — and she was breathing in through her nose thinking I’ll remember this smell, this is a problem, I’ll remember it for a long time.
He dropped her onto the mattress.
She barely caught her breath before he was over her — solid, warm, with that expression he’d worn looking at her all evening, only now without any layer between them.
“You’re definitely trouble,” he said. That voice.
She grabbed the back of his neck.
“You already said that.”
“Worth saying twice.”
The dress disappeared.
His mouth moved lower — hot, open kisses over her ribs, her stomach, the line of her hips — his stubble dragging against her skin in a way that was too good to be accidental, the scratch of it contrasting with the softness of his tongue.
Her back arched off the mattress, fingers in the sheets, and Nikola heard herself — quietly, then less quietly — and somewhere around her ribs she stopped counting.
When he came back up his chest pressed against her — every muscle, every heartbeat, every warm breath on her skin — and she pulled him closer.
He pushed inside her in one slow, deep stroke — so slowly she felt every inch of it, the stretching fullness of it — and Nikola dug her nails into his back and made a sound that came out too honest to contain. Ethan let out a low, guttural groan that moved through his chest and she felt it under her fingertips.
He started to move.
Slow at first, deep — each thrust carrying the full weight of him behind it, precise, finding that angle every time like he had a map — and Nikola heard her own breathing change with each one. Then harder, with that animal composure that was worse than if he’d been rushing, because she knew he wasn’t going to rush.
His weight, his smell, the heat of his skin — the scrape of his stubble at her neck, low curses at her ear, his hand gripping her thigh — it surrounded her completely and Nikola stopped thinking about anything but him.
The tension gathered and broke in a wave that moved through her from her hips upward and she pressed her face into his neck and didn’t control a single sound that came out.
A moment later, him too.
Then they lay still.
His chest rose and fell under her cheek in a deep, even rhythm. Skin on skin, warm and damp. Beyond the window Houston continued — sirens, the distant rush of traffic, summer cicadas — and she lay in her own apartment and didn’t recognize it at all.
First hookup of my life — she thought at the ceiling — with someone I met three hours ago. Wonderful.
He got up when the cab was twenty minutes out.
Gathered his clothes with composure, tied his shoes, kissed her briefly — lips at her temple, one sentence: I’ll call.
And left.
The door closed quietly.
Nikola stared at the ceiling.
They’d exchanged numbers.
But she knew.
There was no chance this was turning into anything more.
Monday would bring a new job at a new company in a city she’d arrived in with one suitcase and a will to survive. It would bring org charts to study, policies to review, the whole corporate circus waiting to be unpacked.
And this — this elegant detour in an apartment that now smelled like expensive cologne and bad decisions — was just a footnote.
Her first night in Houston with some absurdly attractive man she’d probably never see again.
She covered her face with a pillow.
At least she’d have something to tell Jess over margaritas.
The sheets smelled like his cologne.
That was a problem.
There’s always a first time.
Especially when the first time is with someone like him.
