The bass came up through the floor first—thump—thump—thump—like a hand under the ribs, steady and persuasive. The club was all mirrors and smoke machine breath, light slicing the dark into twitching panels of blue and pink. Somewhere near the ceiling a disco ball threw a restless galaxy. Bodies moved in the half-light, eager to be anyone else for an hour.
Ethan Cole stood at the bar with his jacket unzipped and the rain still needling his shoulders. He hadn't meant to come in; his feet had chosen for him. He nursed a whiskey that had survived too many marketing meetings, let the heat slide down, and listened to his heart slow to the beat the room demanded.
He looked like what he was: a man built for hard tasks. Broad back, clean haircut gone a day too long, a jaw that held tension like old concrete holds rebar. The bartender clocked him the way bartenders do—is he trouble?—and decided he was the kind of trouble that tips well and leaves when asked.
She was three stools down, elbows on black lacquer, lipstick the color of bad decisions. Short dark hair. A dress that clung without pleading. The glance she gave him had a price in it and then, a beat later, curiosity instead. He didn't smile; he let his eyes admit interest and nothing more.
"You look like you lost a fight," she said without turning fully toward him.
"I don't lose fights," Ethan said. "I misplace evenings."
She snorted. "That's not a thing."
"It is if you're tired enough."
"Name?"
"Tonight I'm nobody," he said, then relented a fraction. "Ethan."
"Sofia," she lied with a grace that made him like her more. "You carry your shoulders like you're waiting to get hit."
"Everyone gets hit," he said. "Good nights are about picking which angle."
She watched him watch the room. "You're not here for the music."
"I'm here to remember how not to listen."
"To what?"
"The part of my head that narrates exits." He tipped his glass at the door. "There are three."
"Four," she said, and jerked her chin toward a curtain near the DJ booth. "Kitchen. The staff pretends it's broken."
He laughed, a small thing that came out of him like a cough that enjoyed itself. "You local?"
"Local enough to know which nights the floor gets mopped and which nights they just move the dirt around."
"Which is this?"
She leaned closer. Perfume and skin and a whisper of gin. "This is a move-the-dirt night."
Her knee brushed his thigh and didn't apologize. He let the contact live. Their eyes held for two heartbeats—long enough to say yes without wasting syllables.
"Upstairs," she said, already slipping off the stool. "There's a lounge no one uses because the ice machine screams."
"Sounds romantic."
"It sounds like privacy."
He left cash enough to be remembered as generous and forgotten as detail. They threaded through the noise, her hand toying with the hem of his jacket like she wanted to test the fabric for secrets. The stairwell smelled like lemon cleaner and warm metal. The second-floor landing was a dim corridor with black doors and a broken ice machine making the slow dying-walrus sound she'd promised.
She pushed a door that protested and gave. The room beyond was low light and a leather banquette with a rip down the middle, a table ringed with old glass circles where drinks had sweated. The bass was softer here, like being inside a body instead of in front of it.
Sofia closed the door with her heel. She watched him the way patient hunters watch the tree line.
"No small talk?" he asked, amused.
"We already had the only kind that isn't lying," she said, and stepped into him.
Her mouth tasted like mint and gin. He kissed like a man with economy to spare—no wasted angles, no search for a map, just arrival. Her hands went to his jaw, then lower, fingers testing the shelf of his chest under the shirt. He let her lead and then didn't. He caught her wrists, gentle, set them against the wall above her head. She arched; her breath left her in a soft, surprised sound that doubled back as approval.
"Okay," she said into his mouth. "Yeah. That."
"Color?" he asked, because consent is a language you learn if you plan to keep living with yourself.
"Green," she said, quick, amused. "I'll tell you if it changes."
He smiled with one corner of his mouth, then kissed the pulse beneath her ear. Her head tipped; his name found her throat as if it had been printed there. When he freed her wrists, they hooked around his neck on their own. He slid his palms down the line of her sides, felt heat through fabric that didn't pretend to be armor, and then under the hem, the clean itch of nylon, the soft heat of skin.
"Mm," she said, sounding pleased with herself and him. "Hands like you work for a living."
"Some nights."
He explored with the patience of a man who never assumes the first map is the last. She softened under him, rolled her hips, caught his mouth again with her teeth scraping the lip like a promise. He turned her toward the banquette, sat, pulled her knees astride his thighs. Her dress rode up without argument. He palmed her, thumb teasing through damp lace, and watched her eyes half-close, watched her chase the feeling without embarrassment.
"Here?" she managed, and looked around with a laugh that had a dare in it.
"Here," he said, and his voice had dropped.
She wriggled fingers under his belt, found the buckle, worked it with the competence of someone who enjoys being good at the things she enjoys. He shut his eyes for one beat, let the small stupid pleasure of being wanted pass through him without apology. Then he helped, because efficiency is love in its own way.
"Condom," he said, already producing one from a wallet that had six identities and one uncomplicated priority.
"Green," she breathed, smiling like a sin, and the word sounded like permission disguised as a joke.
He rolled it on. She guided him with her hand, a notch, a breath, the exact angle that turned heat to hunger. She sank down slow, taking him in like she meant to remember the route, and then sat with her palms flat on his chest, eyes locked to his. For a second the room went quiet enough that the ice machine's scream sounded a long way off.
"Yeah," she said, voice gone low. "Like that."
He let her pace. She moved with a confidence he admired, rolling her hips to write little cursive letters against him, circling until her breath stuttered and she bit the inside of her lip to contain the sound. He'd learned a long time ago how to pay attention to small tells: the way her shoulders loosened, the way her thighs began to tremble just enough to announce rather than complain.
"Keep going," he said softly, and put his hands to her hips, not to command but to steady so she could take what she came for. She rode him with a rhythm that would have made the DJ jealous—slow—slow—sharp—slow—sharp—and when his thumb found her again, the sound she made was not modest. She laughed at her own lack of modesty and pressed harder.
"Ethan," she murmured like she was practicing ownership. "Don't be nice."
"Green?" he asked, and his voice wasn't steady anymore.
"Green."
He stood without leaving her, turned, set her on the table edge, one heel knocking a glass down to its final small circle. He kissed the hollow between her collarbones while his hand slid under her again, fingers and mouth and the kind of pressure that asks rather than insists. She came fast this time—embarrassingly, adorably fast, a ripple that started low and climbed her spine, twisting her mouth into a grin that turned into an oath that turned into a gasp.
"Again," she managed, a little shocked at herself, and then "fuck—yes—there—"
He obeyed with the obedience he gave only to gravity and honest pleasure. When she shivered through the second, he followed, hips jerking once, breath catching, the tidy end to a well-constructed problem. They laughed into each other's mouths, the kind of laugh that occurs when bodies make good decisions on a bad night.
"Color?" he whispered against her cheekbone, because some habits are religion.
"Green," she sighed, then snorted. "Okay, yellow if you try to steal my drink."
They cleaned up with the awkward grace of adults who are good at being alive. He tied off the condom and pocketed it because he wasn't a savage. She smoothed her dress, found her lipstick, painted a new mouth over the used one. He watched her without apology.
"You look more awake," she said, pleased.
"I am."
"You going far?"
"Harbor," he said, and the word tasted like rain.
She caught it. "Trouble?"
"Always."
He pulled on his jacket. She stepped into him once more, placed her palm flat over his sternum, the human gesture as old as opposable thumbs. "Try not to die, Ethan."
"That's the only thing I'm truly good at," he said.
"That and—" she gestured with her eyebrows; he grinned despite himself.
He opened the door. The ice machine screamed like a kettle in hell. Downstairs the music tried to rearrange hearts. He took the narrow stairs two at a time, paused at the bottom to listen to the room breathe, mapped exits again out of reflex, then slipped through the staff curtain, past a bartender who pretended not to see him, past a bouncer who assessed and decided against ceremony.
Outside, the rain had found its rhythm. It slicked the alley into black mirrors and turned neon into licking tongues of color. He tugged his collar up and stepped into it, the kind of man who never felt wetter than necessary.
He didn't look back. He turned his face toward the harbor and walked.