Mika

The bar doesn't have a sign out front. Just a door with a brass handle and the smell of bourbon seeping through the gap. You found it two drinks ago, or maybe three. The breakup is four days old. She's already changed her relationship status. Already posting photos with someone whose arm sits around her waist like it belongs there. You came here because the apartment is too quiet and the bartender doesn't make conversation.

Amber pendant lights hang low over dark wood, casting everything in warm gold. Jazz plays at a volume meant for thinking, not drowning. A Wednesday crowd: scattered, quiet, keeping to themselves. Your glass is almost empty. The ice has melted into the whiskey, thinning it to something sad. You're staring at it when the barstool beside you scrapes back.

Someone sits down.

You don't look. Not immediately. But your peripheral vision is a traitor, and yours is feeding you information in pieces: long dark hair falling past bare shoulders. A silk camisole, thin straps, loose fabric. Smooth skin catching the amber light. Legs crossed, thigh-highs, a skirt ridden up just enough to suggest the shape of a thigh underneath. A slim hand sets a phone on the bar. Nails painted dark.

The bartender materialises with a gin and tonic before she even orders. Regular, then.

You glance.

Your brain stutters.

Pretty. Genuinely, disarmingly pretty. High cheekbones, big eyes with lashes that catch the light, full lips tinted a soft rose. The kind of face that makes you forget what you were doing, which was nothing, but you've forgotten it anyway. She's not looking at you. She's looking at her phone, thumb scrolling, the faintest frown on her face. The pendant light gilds the line of her jaw and the curve of her neck.

You look away. Back to your watered-down whiskey. Back to the breakup. Back to the apartment that smells like her shampoo because she left the bottle in the shower and you haven't thrown it out yet because throwing it out means it's real.

The bartender refills your glass without being asked. You take a sip. Better.

"Rough night?"

The voice comes from your left. You turn.

Up close, she's even prettier. Those eyes are focused on you now, head tilted slightly, a small smile playing at the corner of her mouth. There's genuine warmth there, or at least a convincing imitation of it. Close enough that you catch a faint scent, something floral, something warm underneath it.

The door clicks shut behind you and the silence of your apartment rushes in to fill the space where the bar's jazz left off. Mika steps past you, unhurried, already looking around with the casual interest of someone cataloguing a space. His heels, strappy little things that added two inches to his five-five frame, click on your hardwood. He pauses at the kitchen counter, runs a fingertip along the edge, turns back to you with that same smug expression he's been wearing since the barstool.

The ceiling light is on. You turned it on automatically, habit, and now you're standing in the full wash of it with nowhere to hide.

Under proper lighting, the illusion thins. He's still pretty. Annoyingly, impossibly pretty. But there's no mistaking him for a girl under a sixty-watt bulb. The jawline reads sharper. The flat chest is obvious under the silk. The Adam's apple sits prominent when he swallows. He catches you processing it again, standing there in your own doorway like you forgot how to take your shoes off, and his mouth curls.

"Second thoughts?"

He doesn't sound worried. He sounds amused. He leans against your kitchen counter, ankles crossed, arms folded under the loose fabric of his camisole. The posture is deliberately casual, but his eyes are on you. Steady. Patient.

You don't remember agreeing to this.

Somewhere between his third gin and tonic and your fifth whiskey, the distance between your barstools closed. Then his hand was on your knee. Then his hand was on your thigh. Then he was sliding off his stool and onto yours, one leg on either side of your hips, settling into your lap with the ease of someone who's done this before. His weight is nothing. Light, warm, the press of his thighs bracketing yours.

The bartender is at the far end of the bar, very deliberately polishing a glass.

Mika's arms rest on your shoulders, fingers laced behind your neck. He's close enough that his hair brushes your jaw when he moves. The camisole has shifted, one strap slipping down his shoulder, exposing the smooth line of his collarbone. No bra straps. No cleavage. Just flat silk over a flat chest and the faint outline of something else underneath.

You can feel him.

Through the thin fabric of his skirt, pressed against your thigh, he's hard. Not half-hard, not a suggestion. Fully, unmistakably hard. And big. Big enough that the shape of it is obvious through the fabric, warm against your leg, and your brain is doing absolutely nothing useful with this information.

His lips find your ear. His breath is warm. His voice is low, that same soft husk that short-circuited you an hour ago.

"You feel that?"

He doesn't wait for you to answer. He shifts his hips, a small, deliberate grind that drags the length of it against your thigh. Your body responds before your brain can intervene. Blood moving south. Pulse picking up. Hands gripping the edge of the bar so hard your knuckles ache.

"That's what you've been doing to me for the last hour." His teeth graze your earlobe. "Sitting there looking all sad and pretty, buying me drinks, pretending you weren't thinking about what I'd feel like."

He pulls back just enough to look at your face. His eyes are dark, pupils blown wide, that smug smile still in place but softer now. Hungrier. His hips roll again, slower this time, a teasing pressure that makes your breath catch.

"I told you what I want." His fingers trace up the back of your neck into your hair. "The question is whether you're going to keep sitting here letting me grind on you in public, or if you're going to take me somewhere I can actually do something about it."

His thumb traces a circle behind your ear. The bartender polishes the same glass for the fourth time.

You wake up to grey light and the smell of someone else's sheets.

The ceiling is unfamiliar. White paint, a hairline crack running toward the corner, a dead smoke detector with no battery. The pillow under your head is softer than yours. The sheets are darker. The room smells like sex, like sweat, like something floral, like him.

Your body reports in first, before your brain catches up. Dull ache in your lower back. Soreness somewhere deeper, a tender throb between your legs that pulses when you shift. A hickey on your neck you can feel without touching. Your thighs are sticky.

The memories come back in fragments. His mouth. His hands. The sound he made when he pushed inside you. The way you gripped his sheets and said things you don't normally say. How many times you came. The tender way he kissed your forehead afterward before pulling you against his chest.

You turn your head.

Mika is already awake. Propped on one elbow, watching you with that same expression from the bar, smug and warm and impossibly pleased with himself. Without makeup, in grey morning light, he reads more male. The jawline is sharper. The brows are thicker without the careful shaping. His hair is mussed, tangled, spread across the pillow. His chest is bare, flat, smooth, and the sheets pool at his waist. One leg is hooked over yours, possessive.

"Morning." His voice is deeper than last night, rough with sleep. The husk has turned gravelly. He looks you over slowly, cataloguing his handiwork: the hickey, the marks on your hips, the way you're wincing as you shift. "You look like someone got wrecked last night."

A pause. His smile curls.