🎶I'm that bad type
Make your mama sad type
Make your girlfriend mad type
Might seduce your dad type🎶

The allegro tune of Bad Guy was irresistible, and Eva wasn't spared from its captivity. Her body moved in tune, her hips swiveling as she drank from her bottle of apple cider.

Damn, Vicky wasn't the queen of parties for nothing. The girl knew how to pull you in the mood. The whole living room was dim with lightning provided by strategically placed temporary disco lights that bounced around the room delightfully, creating a clubby feel. Eva sang along with the rest of the people as she danced.

Her hackles suddenly stood, that instinct that she was being watched. Her dance rhythm slowed, and she stealthily looked around to confirm her suspicions.

Her breath hitched when she met the owner of the gaze. He was studying her, his gaze intense. Eva quickly looked away when a sudden heat speared her body and continued to dance, pretending that she didn't care that he was staring.

Somehow, she could still feel his piercing gaze on her. When she could take it no more, she looked back at him and his gaze was still on her.

She studied him carefully. Leaning on a wall just across from her with the dim light only just illuminating his form, he looked so relaxed holding a beer bottle while he seemed intent on giving her an uncomfortable time.

Why did he look so familiar?

His spiky, dark hair was deliberately tweaked every tweaked way and left to lie haphazardly on his head in messy disarray, giving him an outdoor, rugged-man look.

He levered his bottle and took a sip from it, his gaze not breaking from hers for even a second.

Jeez, what was his problem?

Wanting to rile him up some, she fixed her gaze more firmly on him, not knowing she'd turned her gaze way too intense until he chuckled and finally looked away, shaking his head at her tactic.

Well, at least she'd won the staredown.

Eva brought the bottle of apple cider to her lips and took a swig. Bringing it down, she nearly gasped, startled to find the stare-obsessed stranger walking toward the dancefloor in her direction. Her body movement stilled completely.

Up close, he looked even more breathtaking. He had a lean but muscular-looking body, and she didn't have a problem admitting that he was sexy.

What she had a damn problem with was the instant attraction she could feel sizzling to life, because she couldn't be looking at another man that way. Lord knew, she just couldn't.

"I'm assuming I'm allowed dance with you?" He spoke.

That voice: it had her stiffening at the vague familiarity of it, but deciding she had to be crazy for thinking of him now, she shrugged at the man instead of the 'fuck off' she wanted to hurl at him. She began moving her body to the beat again, hoping her movements weren't awkward.

"I see you're enjoying yourself." The stranger said, sounding amused.

The voice!

About half a foot taller than her five foot eight height, he wore well-worn denim jeans on top of which he had a long-sleeved, light-green unbuttoned shirt thrown over a white sleeveless, well-fitting shirt.

A simple style, but she'd never seen anyone pull it off better.

"And I see you are in your pervert mode and so have no problem with staring at a girl for five minutes straight." She mused, wishing she was as put off as her words suggested.

He quirked his right eyebrow at her, blinked, and then burst out laughing. Even over the beat, the sound was fine and rich, like cognac, and she had to pause her eyeroll and stare, mouth dropping open. His laughter made him look even more familiar.

"What can I say?" He spoke again after his humor had died. "When I'm in my 'pervert mode' as you call it, I can't help but admire beautiful women. But when they're abundantly gorgeous like the one I have in front of me, it just works overtime."

Eva had to trample down the fuzzy feeling his words began to generate in her stomach. "Is that how you woo all the women you take to bed?" She asked him as she took a swig of her cider.

Most guys with the kind of beauty he had were hardcore playboys.

"Well, I don't usually have to do the wooing. I guess I'm just so hot that women get pulled to me like I'm a magnet." He said, and Eva didn't doubt that for a bit.

She snorted. "More like an incredibly cocky heartbreaker."

"Oh my God, how could you? You wound me."

He placed his hand on his chest and contorted his face in a grimace of mock pain. He chuckled when she rolled her eyes at the cheesiness of his act.

Eva stopped moving her body to the beat, feeling weird that she was dancing even though he wasn't.

"But on a more serious note, it's not my fault if girls end up heartbroken after associating with me."

"Why's that, if I may ask?" She drank some cider, licked her lips, and was uncannily pleased to find his eyes following her movement.

"Do you think we should go somewhere more. . . quiet?" He asked, the look in his eyes all too lustful.

Instinct had her pausing with reluctance, but her body vibrated with the temptation the man was posing. "Fine."

Pleasure lighted up his light brown eyes before he stepped closer and attempted to reach for her waist. She instantly stepped back and shot him a look she hoped was dark enough.

"I think I have two legs of my own."

"Well, I can see that." He gave her that laugh again as she led the way, the one that made her stomach ping inexplicably.

Everyone around was busily binge drinking or dancing to the upbeat music that had replaced Billie's, something Eva had refused to do because she had work tomorrow and she couldn't wake up with a hangover, thank you very much.

She spotted Vicky some distance away talking to a guy in a corner. Vicky winked when their eyes met, and Eva rolled her eyes.

"So to answer your question..." Hottie turned to her. "...you know no-strings-attached? That's where..."

"I'm not in grade two? Of course, I know what no-strings-attached is."

She stepped aside, more towards him so that a furiously dancing girl wouldn't crash against her, and caught the woody scent of his cologne.

"That's where two people have meaningless sex. Meaningless because there's no commitment outside the sexual pleasure." Eva explained just as they stepped onto the terrace of Vic's penthouse, and decided she had to be going crazy.

Why then would she be talking to a stranger about sex?

"You seem to know it well. Frequent participant, are we?" He drawled in s playful, suggestive tone.

Any woman in her right senses would've been offended, and the fact that she wasn't a bit annoyed with his statement shocked her. "No, never engaged in one."

She took in the riveting view of Los Angelo in all of its shimmering glory, and the dark, cloudless sky where several stars dotted.

She'd always envied this view that Vic got access to every night ever since her father bought her this house.

"So that's what you engage in? No-strings-attached relationships?" When they reached the railing that bordered the terrace, she leaned her hips against the second rail.

"Packaged with lots of hot, mindblowing sex." His casualness about it shocked her.

Then again, she didn't know much about how men did their wooing, because she was sure that was exactly what this man was planning to do with her.

"I just have rules and standards I live by."

"Tell me I'm not reading A Gentleman's Guide To Hooking Up all over again." She chuckled until he gave her a heated look that made her cheeks flush crimson. It was all she could do not to duck her head.

"What's that?"

"It's just a book I read on this story app. The main guy loves no-strings-attached sex and he has rules that govern them." She explained.

"Hmm, I don't know about this fictional character but then I do have rules of my own." Hottie said, then finished the rest of his beer in one large gulp.

"So what? They are your rules. How do they relegate you from the heartbreaker position."

"That's the problem. I never go to bed with a woman without letting her in on my rules. Or if there isn't much time, I just tell them I'm only looking for a one-night fun."

He focused his gaze on her, the purposeful gleam in his eyes making his intentions all too obvious. "Just like I'm doing right now."

"Ha, nice try playboy." She looked away from him, drinking from her glass so he couldn't look her in the eye.

So that he didn't notice that his words had made a frisson of raw anticipation sizzle through her.

"Why do you go so strictly by the rules though? Afraid of commitment?" She asked, suddenly very curious to know.

"What about you?" He smiled. "Hate to explore sexually?"

Eva pretended she didn't notice the casual way in which he'd turned the topic.

"I wouldn't use 'hate'," She said after some deliberation, "but I'm sensible enough to not be having meaningless sex with people I won't be marrying, thank you very much."

"Hmm, too bad. You sure I can't change your mind?" He flashed a lopsided grin as he leaned his ass against the railing.

"Hundred percent."

As she drank the last of her cider, she had to admit that she was enthralled by the prospect. How it would feel to be able to live freely sans any commitment, to be able to engage in affairs on a footloose, fancy-free level?

They both chuckled at once. Enchanted by his mirth, she turned to take in a fill of him, only to find him doing the same thing, and their eyes locked twice in a roll that night.

She would've looked away but for the intense emotions his eyes suddenly conveyed, and her breath caught as she glimpsed the raw desperation in them.

Right then, she could swear he wanted to tell or at least ask her something, that his unvoiced question was eating him up from the inside.

Finally, as if he couldn't take it anymore, he spoke, voice hesitant. "You seem familiar."

"I don't know about me, but you sure as hell look a lot familiar." She whispered, breathless.

Her mind sent her back more to that night about four months ago on New Year's Eve, the masked stranger who had kissed her and had unknowingly set in motion erotic dreams that she wanted nothing to do with.

And then she remembered the videos she'd just been watching this morning. "Oh my God! You are Adam Garcia, right?"