Four

"Oh my god."

Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my fucking god.

A mix of horror and relief courses through me, making me re-read the message until I'm positive it's real. Next to me—butt naked and unmoving—Lander exhales audibly, but I absolutely refuse to look at him.

Oh my fucking god.

Silence persists between us, practically spotlighting the elephant in the room. This is a fiasco—an outright and obvious calamity. How the hell does someone send a false nuclear alert to the most tightly guarded seventy square miles in the entire United States of America?

Breathing is starting to feel arduous, and my ears are ringing…or maybe it's an actual alarm. Maybe there really is a missile bound for the District, and would that be such a bad thing? Because I'm frozen, stock-still from shock, and Lander's dick is literally right there.

Quiet, absent chuckles rise from Lander's side of the couch and steadily escalate into a full laugh. Seriously? As if this evening weren't bizarre enough, the literal stranger I let drop a hot load of cum inside of me is now laughing.

"You've got to be kidding." He lets the last syllable draw out and peter into an exhale. The expression on his handsome face, illuminated by the light from his phone, teeters between amused and perplexed. "What a mindfuck."

It's all too much. The room is shrinking. And yes, Lander, it's a total mindfuck. I hate it. I hate everything about this moment because—oh right, I fucked my next-door neighbor because I thought I was going to die.

The way I spring off the couch is practically Olympian. Throw pillows fly across the room like shrapnel and I'm in the center, struggling to cover my pussy with my ripped shirt because my stretched thong is practically dangling off my body.

Sleep shorts. Did I wear sleep shorts? Both my hands are busy holding up the tattered remnants of my clothing, so I kick gracelessly at a pillow. Or did I seriously waltz over here in my underwear?

"Is this a joke…" I mutter while flipping another throw pillow.

"Valeria, hold on," Lander urges. He gets up from the couch, half-assedly covering his junk with his hand. Except his hand isn't big enough to do the job, so his cock is hanging out at half-mast, thick and mortifyingly shiny from my arousal and his cum. It's just, like, there because—again—I fucked my next-door neighbor because I thought I was going to die.

I don't acknowledge him and don't care if it's cruel. I don't even care if it's irrational. I'm escaping this condo as fast as humanly possible, and if my shorts don't want to join, they can stay here as Lander's trophy for all I care.

Right before I quit searching, I finally spot my shorts—and so does he. We lunge for them at the same time, except he's faster and I'm not thinking straight, and…

"Shit!" he bellows when the top of my head collides with his nose.

Great. Sogreat.

Apparently, fucking my next-door neighbor isn't undignified enough. Looks like I'm going to round out this banner evening by slamming my skull into his face.

"Shit, sorry!" I reply while yanking the shorts from his hands. And sure, I'm obviously apologizing for wrecking his model-perfect nose, but I'm also apologizing for all of it—all of this. For me.

Stumbling, I tug my shorts up my legs before I make a beeline for the door.

"Wait," Lander calls after me, his voice muffled from the hand covering his nose. "Valeria, wait a second."

But I don't look back. I have to get home, and once I'm there, I'll have to pull up the police scanner and find a violent crime to witness so I can get myself admitted into witness protection where Lander can never find me again.

At the front door, Lander catches the doorknob, but he can't stop me. I've done three years of Muay Thai—I'm agile as fuck. Darting under his arm, I shoot into the hallway, not sparing him another glance. It's a first.

I've spared Lander Dawson hundreds of glances over the year we've been neighbors. Quite literally hundreds. Not just glances, but sustained and hefty stares that have left my heart thrumming while I've fantasized about him in unspeakable ways.

Now, everything is different. Now, it's critically important that I never spare this man another glance.

I've only been behind my locked door for a moment when Lander begins knocking.

"Valeria," he says through the door. "Look, I know it's a lot, but can we talk?"

My hands and forehead are pressed against the wood and I'm holding my breath like maybe I can be quiet enough for him to forget I'm here.

I wait.

It feels like an eternity, but it's probably only fifteen seconds, give or take. His soft knock, a tap tap tap against the wood, vibrates against my forehead.

Exhaling through my nostrils, I take stock of how immature I'm acting. I should talk to him, I know. I'm not the only one who just went through a twenty-minute panic and existential crisis that drove her to screw a stranger, so the least I can do is speak to him. He deserves it.

Steeling myself, I begin to turn the doorknob.

But at precisely that moment, Lander's cum leaks out of my pussy. It's slick and warm, but it's also a bucket of ice water over my head. I broke my rule. I broke the only rule I've ever followed, and now I have to live next door to a man I swore I'd never pursue…

…and I have his cum inside of me.

There's no force in the universe—not even another emergency alert—that could get me to open this door.

"Did I do something?" Lander questions, sounding earnest. "The last thing I wanted to do was hurt you."

It takes me a few seconds to realize I'm frowning, and a few more to understand why.

It's his voice.

Lander sounds different. On the work calls I've overheard from my condo, he's formal, spouting legalese and corporate-speak as naturally as I speak Spanish. But now, when he's talking directly to me, his voice is electric. There's a crackly vocal fry beneath his words that's so sexy, it has to be brujería because nobody else's voice has ever made my heart race. It's the same low, rough texture that punctuated his satisfied growl when he emptied his cum inside of me. It makes my hand tighten around the doorknob a second time.

"Can you at least tell me you're okay?" he presses. "Or tell me what I can do to make this better, other than sue the ever-loving shit out of the Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency."

The word "sue" makes my hand freeze on the doorknob.

Lander is a lawyer.

Never date a lawyer.

"Was I too rough?" he goes on, softer this time.

That one almost breaks me. He wasn't too rough; he was nothing short of perfect.

"I'm fine," I manage to say, although I'm nowhere close to disentangling the knot of mixed emotions in my chest. "Go back to your condo, Lander."

My directive is met with silence, but I know he's still out there. I can feel his presence. I can hear him breathe. In fact, somehow—without looking through the peephole—I know he's gripping the frame and waiting for me to open the door.

He thinks I'll give in. I won't, but he thinks I will because he doesn't know shit about my willpower.

It's rock-solid.

Because even though Lander and I are strangers, there's always been a thing between us. This inescapable, shadowy thing. This confusing, needy thing. This frustrating as fuck thing.

I fought this thing masterfully and lasted an entire year, which is far longer than most single women with a penchant for dick would have lasted—what with him flaunting that handsome face all over the building, the absolute fucker.

I fought it even though Lander has always wanted me—and obviously so. The flinching. The staring. There were so many lingering looks in the hallway. The lobby. In the elevator. I knew he was interested when his eyes roved: unabashed and blatant, waiting for me to stare back.

But I fought it.

It was tough, but I knew it was for the best. From the moment I first saw Lander on the day he moved in, I wanted to pleasure myself with every appendage on his magnificent, godlike body. After frantically texting Cora and Essie several iterations of Bitch, I'm about to ruin my life and offer my pussy to my new neighbor as a welcome-to-the-neighborhood gift, I googled him. Google delivered, and Lander and I were dead in the water like an inflatable pool swan at the end of a bachelorette weekend in Cabo. Despite the literally endless list of professions available to a tall as hell, distressingly attractive, well-educated guy, he had to be a lawyer. So, I fought it.

In a matter of minutes, I torpedoed a year's worth of willpower.

"Valeria," Lander pleads one more time, sounding strangely…gutted, "was it that bad?"

No. It wasn't bad—at all. In fact, it was incredible, far beyond my wildest dreams of what it would be like to touch Lander. To taste him. To fall apart with him inside of me.

It's precisely why I'm not opening this door for him. Not now, not ever.

Without a word, I turn and retreat to my bedroom, grateful for the wall between us.

The wall is staying there—and only a real ballistic missile could bring it down.