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“Perfect,” Florence confirms.

With another dimpling smile, Luca dips her head.

Unlike Luca, Florence likes hearing herself—almost as much as she likes being heard. Her lips part on a soft moan the moment Luca’s mouth is on her. Luca knows what she’s doing; the drag of her tongue, barely muted by the latex, is firm and torturously slow. Within seconds, Florence’s breathing turns fast and shallow, her hips rocking up of their own accord.

Luca lifts her head to mumble, “Sound so good.”

Florence smiles, warming at the compliment like a cat bathing in the sun. Desperate for something to hold on to, her hand finds its way into Luca’s hair. “Is this all right?” she asks breathlessly.

Luca’s agreeable hum vibrates through her, drawing a hiss from Florence. The way her mouth closes over Florence’s clit has Florence’s fingers tightening in her hair.

“Oh God,” she gasps. “Yeah. Like that.”

Luca’s small answering sound lights up every single one of her nerve endings. She feels like she’s melting. This might be the best decision she’s ever made.

Her orgasm is a slow, rolling wave that builds gradually and takes her breath away when it crests. She expects Luca to stop, but she just keeps going, drawing it out until Florence is writhing beneath her.

“God. Fuck.” Florence’s fingers tighten in Luca’s hair. It’s just on this side of too much, the kind of feeling she chases when she touches herself, slow and decadent, drawing it out until the pleasure melts into pain. “You’re so—you’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

The small, wrecked noise Luca makes sounds like confirmation.

“Yeah, I can tell you are.” Florence laughs, near delirious, before she chokes on another moan. It’s so much. She can’t take any more, but at the same time she wants to take everything, wants to lie here and let Luca take her apart until she can’t remember her own name. “God, you’re beautiful. So handsome. So good, sweetheart, it’s like you were made for this,” Florence babbles, and Luca honest-to-God keens and—

And then she’s coming again, quicker than she’s ever gotten off on her own, her entire body alight with it. It’s the kind of pleasure that makes her heart stop for a moment, that has her entire body twitching with overstimulation until she uses her hold on Luca’s hair to pull her away.

When she manages to open her eyes, Luca is already looking up at her. Her cheek is resting against the inside of Florence’s thigh. She looks just as satisfied as Florence feels, quiet and sated in the glow of the bedside lamp. “That was incredible,” Florence says, still catching her breath. “You are incredible.”

“Thanks,” Luca says, flushing. Slowly, she pushes herself up to sitting. Florence doesn’t know how it’s possible for her to seem so shy again mere seconds after giving Florence two of the best orgasms of her life. There’s a hint of tentative humor on her face as she asks, “Do you feel warmer now?”

“Much,” Florence says. She casts a look at the alarm clock on Luca’s bedside table and winces when she sees how late it is. “Oh, God. I should go. My flatmate probably thinks I’m dead in a ditch.”

With a small nod, Luca gets to her feet and hands Florence her clothes from the floor. They’re still damp as Florence shimmies back into them, but, floaty with postorgasm endorphins, she can’t find it in herself to care.

Once they’re both dressed, Florence follows Luca back to the front door. They pause there, awkward in the half light of the hallway, Florence’s hand lingering on the doorknob.

Luca scratches at her neck. “So.”

“So.”

“Do you think . . . Um. Do you think we’ll see each other again?”

“I would love that.” Florence brushes a damp curl behind her ear. “It’s just that I’ll be gone soon. I won’t be in London for a few weeks, so . . .”

She regrets the words as soon as they’re out. They come with an unexpected sense of disappointment that settles, cold and heavy, in the pit of her stomach.

Luca quickly nods, hazel eyes slinking elsewhere. “That’s all right. Get home safe.”

“I will.” Florence hesitates for a second before she gets up on her tiptoes and presses a kiss to Luca’s cheek. “Thank you. I had a great time.”

Luca smiles. “Yeah. Me too.”

Then Florence is stepping outside and the door is clicking shut. Her breaths echo in the stairwell. Almost instantly, the last hour feels like a vivid hallucination. The only thing that proves otherwise is the sense memory of Luca’s fingers digging into her hips and the full-body shudder still echoing in her bones.

Florence slips her tote bag higher up her shoulder and makes her way downstairs, trying to suppress the pang of remorse that comes with leaving. She could’ve given Luca her number, but she doesn’t want to make this more complicated than it has to be. Once they’re on the road, she won’t have time for anything real—she’ll only end up ghosting Luca after a few painful weeks of stilted texting, and what good would that do either of them? Better to keep tonight preserved in her memory as it is: a hot, dizzying, lightning-in-a-bottle encounter that she’ll probably be thinking of for months to come.

3

The bed still smells like her when Luca wakes up. It was one of the first things Luca noticed about Florence yesterday: her perfume. Her scent clings to the sheets, sweet and heady, like dark wood and cinnamon and the faintest hint of smoke.