“RORIE!” TAYLOR YELLED over the loud music pulsing through the house—the sound still unable to mask the whine in my best friend’s tone. “I’m starving and we’ve been looking for this mystery guy forever. This would have been so much easier if we’d known who to ask for.”

My stomach instantly morphed into a tornado of fluttering wings. I didn’t know his real name. God, I didn’t even know his name, and that didn’t bother me. That made the memory of him more intense—it made my heart beat harder and caused me to feel dizzy for a second as I replayed every second with him.

His lips on my skin. His husky voice in my ear. His intoxicating cologne clouding my mind. His strong hands learning every inch of me, branding me.

My face fell. Not knowing his name hadn’t bothered me until this afternoon, when I’d decided that I needed to see him again. I hadn’t gone more than a few minutes all week without thinking about him, and that had made my decision to come back up to Durham to try to find him. But all I had were memories and an alias.

He let out a long breath and his eyes drifted to the side. “Jay.” After a moment’s hesitation, those dark pools of obsidian found me again. “Just remember me as Jay.”

I had known then that it was a random name to appease me, but hadn’t cared. Because I had kind of done the same, and it fit to give each other aliases on a night where we both knew I was trying to be someone I normally wasn’t.

“I told you not to come!” I yelled over the music, but Taylor was already turning to raid the table we were near.

I looked around us, hoping to get a glimpse of the only reason we were here. We’d already been here for two hours, and there’d been no sign of him yet. My chest had tightened a few times when I saw closely shaved heads—like the one I’d run the tips of my fingers over—but then the guy would turn and my heart would sink.

An excessively large Jolly Rancher was shoved directly in front of my face, less than an inch from the bridge of my nose, and my eyes crossed as I looked it over before glancing to where Taylor was glaring at me and sucking on her own piece of candy.

“Where did you get that?”

She pointed at the table behind her that was littered with liquors and cups and candies, and mouthed the word starving, but didn’t attempt to actually respond over the music.

I forced myself not to roll my eyes as I made one more quick sweep of the area around us, then sighed in defeat as I grabbed the candy. I unwrapped the Jolly Rancher and popped it in my mouth, and turned just as someone barreled into me from behind.

I gasped at the force of the hit, causing the large candy to fly backward and lodge in my throat. Panic instantly set in when I couldn’t get it to move.

“Ror—oh my God! She’s choking!” Taylor screamed, and her hands fluttered all around me.

I was immediately grabbed from behind, and large, hairy arms crossed over my chest seconds before I was heaved into the air over and over again.

“That’s not how you do it! What are you doing?” Taylor screamed, and started punching the guy doing some unknown form of the Heimlich maneuver on me as one of my stilettos flew off my foot.

Taylor’s screaming, the partygoers’ shocked and worried faces, and my inability to pull in air was taking my panic to another level. I tried to slap the man holding me, but my arms were pinned down to my sides.

Just as the edges of my vision started darkening, my feet hit the ground once again on the guy’s downward drive, and the candy went shooting out onto the hardwood floor.

I started gasping wildly, but no one seemed to notice.

“You’re going to kill her, you idiot, stop it! Stop!” Taylor continued to scream, her hands still hitting the massive man holding me.

“Stop,” I whispered hoarsely. “Stop! Stop!”

“It’s out, man, stop!” a deep voice yelled from somewhere in front of me.

“Stop!” I yelled one last time as my legs hit the floor. Before I knew it, I was going up in the air again, and my second shoe went flying off.

“Rorie!” Taylor screamed as the guy behind me finally set me down, and forced me to lay on the floor. “Rorie, talk to me!”

I looked over at Taylor to find huge tears streaming down her face. “I’m okay!” I assured her, my voice still rough from having the Jolly Rancher lodged in my throat.

“Girl! Girl, are you okay?”

I jerked against the floor at the booming voice as a massive, mostly naked guy entered my vision. Tighty-whiteys, shoes, and a football helmet. Nothing else.

I nodded, unable to say anything as I tried to get the image of him out of my head even though he was still standing right there.

“I saved your life!” He stood up and lifted his arms in victory, and I covered my face to block things I didn’t want to see. “I just saved her life!”

There were loud cheers throughout the house, and the music turned on suddenly, making me jump again. I wasn’t sure when they’d turned it off, but knowing that my choking on unusually large candy had stopped a party had my panic subsiding and my mortification kicking in.

“You scared the shit out of me,” Taylor sobbed.

“Excuse me, Cinderella?” a deep voice called next to my ear.

Cinderella? I removed my hand from my face to look at the guy who belonged to that voice, then quickly pushed myself up onto my elbows when I took in his face, so close to mine.

My cheeks burned with embarrassed heat, but I didn’t know how to look away from him. Despite a large red mark on his forehead, his face was flawless and masculine, with a strong brow and nose, a smirk I knew would’ve made my knees weak had I been standing, and a lethal stare from green eyes so clear it was as if I could see through the iris.

My gaze had become so fixated on the way his lips moved that it took a few seconds too long to realize he’d said something. “I’m sorry, what?”

The smirk broadened for a brief moment, giving me a glimpse of straight, white teeth. He leaned over me until his lips were at my ear, and if I’d had the capability to breathe around him, I would’ve stopped then. “I said I think you lost this,” he drawled, and I swooned.

Literally . . . swooned. As in: all the air left my body in one hard rush, I was unable to keep myself up on my elbows any longer, my head felt light and dizzy, the room spun, and I was pretty sure I’d just entered a romance novel. It really didn’t matter that it was from the lingering effects of nearly choking to death, and then unknowingly holding my breath for too long.