“You should see what else is shrinking.” I adjust the ice bucket in my arms. “But I know how to take no for an answer.”

She smiles and holds out her hand to make a little give it over motion. “Trade you. It took me forever to figure out how to get this guy to spit out the ice. Hate to see you waste all that time.”

I hand over my bucket and watch as she does a little maneuver involving pressing a button while shoving the bucket under a dispenser before hip checking the hulk of a machine with a growl. Wondering if this is a dream, wondering if I could handle a one-night thing after all, I can’t tear my eyes away from her.

“He’s stubborn,” she says, “but once you get him going, he gives it good.”

Sounds like me.

“Oh really?”

Shit. I said that out loud.

“Yes you did.”

I did it again.

“Still talking, buddy.” She straightens, holding up the full bucket. “Was that a threat or a promise?”

“Uh… both?”

“You know,” she says, tapping her chin with a finger, “the tragedy is, I only have one glass in my room.”

I’m not sure where she’s going with this, since she shut me down already. “Tragedy?”

“I can’t invite you for a nightcap if I only have one glass.”

“But you said you didn’t want anoth⁠—”

Ignoring my protest, she continues, her nose wrinkling adorably. “On top of that, they don’t stock fridges with those cute little liquor bottles anymore.”

My hand shoots into the air.

“Did you have something to share?” she asks.

I nod.

She’s trying to hang on to this mock professor guise, but the glee underneath it zings between us. “Go ahead.”

“I have two glasses and a gift basket with cute little liquor bottles. In my room,” I add, in case it wasn’t clear.

She tilts her head to the side. “Do you have your ID on you?”

“Uh, yeah. But I’m way over twenty-one.”

Pretty sure she rolls her eyes, but she sticks out her hand. “Give it to me.”

“My ID?” I ask, even as I pull out my wallet. She could ask for the keys to my car, my apartment, my soul, and I’d just hand them right over.

She peers at my driver’s license briefly before taking a picture of it. “Sending this to a colleague I have to meet tomorrow in case I go missing, so don’t try anything.”

Before I can assure her that I’m harmless, she hands it back. “Twenty-eight was a good year for me.”

“How old are you?”

“Thirty-one.”

“How’s that been?”

“My thirty-first year?” She grins. “I think it’s about to get a little better.”

“But you said no.” Not wanting to assume anything, but needing another taste, I step closer.

“I said no to just another kiss,” she says, speaking slowly and clearly so that even an emotional idiot like me can understand. “Because that would be maddening.”

“Oh,” is the only thing I can come up with in response. Luckily, my body has ideas of its own. Leaning in, I brush my lips behind her ear, and then drag them down her neck to the skin covering her taut trapezius, pausing to take it between my teeth briefly. When she gasps, I lave it with my tongue before shifting to find her eyes. “That okay?”

“Ye-yes.” Shoving her phone in a pocket, she reaches up, probably intending to grasp the back of my neck, but she’s got a long way to go.

“This’d be easier if we took these buckets and our bodies back to your room,” I suggest, in case she has second thoughts about coming to mine.

“Your room with the two glasses and cute bottles, and you’re on.”

“You sure?”

Her index finger skates across my clavicle, a fingernail circling the button at my sternum like she wants to pluck it off. “If we don’t follow up on this, I’ll be up all night wondering.”

Taking that as a go, I usher her out the door and gesture in the direction of my room. Moments later, we’re inside, and both buckets of ice land on the desk. Before I can offer her a drink, she says, “Wow, I thought I was messy.”

Looking around the room, which is, indeed, a disaster area, I just shrug. “I’ve got a lot on my mind.”

“Let’s see if we can change that.” Turning back to face me, she pulls her simple dress over her head, and her phone makes a muffled clunk when the fabric hits the floor. She’s slim and wearing black scraps of lace that barely cover gentle curves my palms can’t wait to caress.

“Well, that worked,” I say, knocking on my skull. “Nothing left up here.”

Without taking her eyes off me, she backs up until she hits the bed. “I hope you have enough brain cells left to strip.”

My glasses, shirt, and trousers are off faster than I can answer. But before I can follow her across the bed, she calls, “Bring some of that ice, why don’t you?”

After I plonk the bucket on the bedside table, I take a cube and trace a wet line down her abdomen. She arches into it, her skin pebbling, and I follow the trail with my tongue.

“Mmm, I like that. More.”

“As you wish,” I murmur, drawing a heart on her chest and a zigzag down her thigh. When she moans, I drag the rapidly diminishing cube back up her body. “Okay to get this pretty bra wet?”

She reaches behind her to unsnap it and whips it off, revealing teardrop shaped breasts with rosy nipples. I circle one, before sucking it between my lips, then I massage the other with the remains of the chip until the nipple glistens.

When I grab another chunk of ice and use it to trace her lips, she takes it from me. One hand pulls me in for a kiss, while the other slides the ice down my upper back. My own nipples harden, and I grind them into her breasts as my tongue revels in the chill of her lips contrasted with the warmth inside her mouth.