Angel sat in the white Toyota Corolla with the engine idling and the AC on low.
Two bottles of water waited in the cupholders. Neon glow sticks bled cold blue light along the ceiling, taped above the back doors for "ambiance." She found the glow sticks repugnant on principle, but they meant better tips from drunk people who wanted "a vibe" with their rideshare.
When you were a college girl trying not to live on instant ramen, you did what you had to.
She checked the app again, thumb tapping against the steering wheel. The fare still showed as active. The little spinning icon mocked her.
If they didn't hurry, she was marking them as a no-show.
She leaned toward the mirror and checked her hair. The purple already looked dull at the roots. Cheap-ass dye. She needed to hit the salon and ask what shampoo didn't strip color like acid. Or change it completely. Neon? Silver? A deep, villainous red?
Her fingers combed through the strands, pushing them back from her face. She adjusted the black choker at her throat and thumbed the little metal pentacle. The gesture steadied her.
Her reflection glared back—black lipstick, nose ring, sharp-winged liner.
Good. Let the country club crowd choke on it.
"Fuck you, you country club mother fuckers," she muttered under her breath, then huffed a laugh.
The passenger-side rear door opened.
Angel's eyes went a little wide.
A woman slid in first—black gown, slit high, the neckline a suggestion more than a boundary. Her perfume rolled through the car, warm and expensive. The bodice dipped deep enough that Angel had to snap her gaze back to the screen on her dash.
"Angel?" the woman asked, voice bright with a tipsy giggle.
"Yes, ma'am," Angel said automatically, then wanted to bite her own tongue. Ma'am. Really. She was not bowing to anyone's dress code.
The car rocked as someone else bumped the frame.
"Hey, what's going on out there?" Angel called, twisting slightly.
More giggling. A muffled kiss.
A man folded himself into the backseat, the door shutting with a heavy thunk behind him.
Angel's mouth went dry.
Tux. Perfect shoulders. Dark hair pushed up in front, jawline that looked like it had been carved with intent. He slid in next to the woman like he belonged in every ballroom she'd never be invited to.
"Hi," Angel said, because her brain had apparently disconnected from her survival instinct.
The blue from the glow sticks turned his white shirt to frost and shadow, washed his cheekbones in cold light. The woman shifted, straddling his lap without hesitation, gown spilling like ink.
"Do you know the inn on Main Street?" the woman asked, lips already brushing his throat.
"Yeah," Angel said. "ETA says about thirty minutes. And hey, could y'all not—"
Her hand cut a sharp little arc. "Not what?"
"Not… do whatever you're about to do in my backseat." Angel jerked her thumb at the road. "I'm just trying to pay for books. Last thing I need is you and Adonis back there breaking in the upholstery."
"Which school?" the woman asked. Her voice was light, curious, not mocking.
"ETSU." The answer came out with more edge than she intended.
"You came up just for the weekend? To make extra money?" the man asked. His tone was smoother, lower, as if everything amused him.
"Yeah," Angel said. "And I will absolutely kick you both out if you trash my rating."
"How about a compromise," the woman said. She turned her head just enough that Angel could see the glint in her eyes. "I give you two hundred dollars cash on top of the fare, and you pretend you don't notice what happens back here."
Angel opened her mouth. "Look—"
"Four," the man said. He shifted his shoulder so their gazes met in the rearview. "Her two. My four."
Six hundred dollars.
For thirty minutes.
Angel swallowed. Her hand tightened on the gearshift. The Corolla had never felt so small.
"Okay," she said. "But if anything gets… broken, that tip doubles."
The woman laughed, pleased. "Deal."
Angel dropped the car into drive.
She tried to focus on the road, on the line of headlights, on the measured female voice of the GPS. Behind her, fabric rustled. A zipper whispered down. The faint crinkle of foil. The soft, obscene sound of a kiss that didn't care who heard it.
She stared straight ahead.
Don't look.
The woman—Rowan, according to the app—let out a satisfied little hum that slid under Angel's skin like warm syrup. Angel's gaze flicked up to the mirror before she could stop it.
The tux jacket lay abandoned. His shirt was open now, white panels pushed wide to bare chest and the clean line of his stomach. He was all pale planes and shadow, sculpted muscle under careful hands. Rowan's dress had slipped, baring more curve than coverage as she settled over him, the gown spilling over his thighs like spilled ink.
Angel snapped her eyes back to the road.
Nope. Absolutely not. She did not need to see this. She did not need this story lodged in her brain in the middle of an exam next week.
Rowan's soft moan filled the car anyway.
Heat crawled up Angel's neck. She reached for the AC controls and turned the fan up a notch. Her fingers brushed against the metal bar under her shirt, the one threaded through her nipple, and a sharp, traitorous shiver ran through her.
The seatbelt cut across her ribs, keeping her upright as the world narrowed to three things—the road, the sound of their breath, and the way her body had decided to participate…
"Alright," she said, a little too loud. "I'm taking the back roads. The last thing any of us needs is a cop tapping on the window during… whatever this is."
She turned off the main highway and onto a narrower road lined with trees. The streetlights thinned. Darkness slipped closer to the glass.
Behind her, the rhythm of their bodies matched the curve of the asphalt—slow, then faster, then slow again. She could hear a low rumble from him, that quiet, bitten-off sound men made when they stopped pretending they weren't enjoying themselves. Rowan's breath grew uneven, words threading through it, too soft for Angel to catch.
She tried not to look.
Her eyes flicked to the mirror.
Rowan met her gaze dead-on this time.
Their eyes locked in the glass.
"Don't worry," Rowan murmured, voice a velvet scrape. "You can watch. Being watched makes me so hot."
Heat surged under Angel's ribs. She bit down on her lower lip hard enough to sting. Her cheeks burned. Her grip tightened on the wheel until her knuckles went white.
She should have looked away.
She didn't.
Rowan moved with a slow, deliberate grace that made the cramped backseat feel suddenly sacred, some kind of dark little chapel. Her hands braced on his shoulders. The low light caught on the curve of her breasts, on the fine tremor in her arms when she shifted. His hands slid along the line of her thighs, fingers disappearing under black fabric.
Angel's breath hitched. She heard it. They probably did too.
The windows fogged softly at the edges. She flipped on the defroster. Her heart felt too big for her chest.
"Almost there," she managed. Her voice sounded wrong in her own ears—thinner, rougher.
Minutes stretched. The backseat went quiet in bursts, broken by soft gasps, a low laugh, and the wet sound of mouths meeting again. Angel forced herself to watch the road, to ignore the way her own body hummed like someone had flicked a switch.
At last the inn's sign appeared ahead, its warm light bleeding into the dark.
Rowan's voice dropped to a contented purr. "Mmm. Exquisite."
Angel pulled into a spot near the entrance and dropped the car into park. She let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding.
Behind her, fabric rustled. Water bottle caps twisted. She caught snippets of soft conversation, the quiet intimacy of post-storm weather settling.
"Do you mind if we use your water?" Rowan asked.
Angel reached blindly toward the floorboard and lifted a brown paper bag from the passenger side. She twisted around and held it out. "Here. Trash, if you need it."
A hand took it from her. Warm fingers brushed her knuckles—a small, accidental contact—but sensation jumped up her arm like static.
She turned back around.
The rear doors opened almost in unison.
The man—Cole, according to the app—stepped out first. He had buttoned his shirt, though not completely, and his throat was still bare. He shrugged into his jacket, folding it neatly over one arm, the picture of a man who had never been messy in his life.
Rowan followed, gown smoothed, hair pinned back up with dark sticks. Only the faint flush along her neck and the contented slant of her smile betrayed what had just happened.
The cool night air spilled into the car.
Cole leaned down to Angel's open window and offered a folded stack of bills. "You can count it."
She took it, fingers brushing his just long enough to send another little jolt through her. Sixty… eighty… no, she could feel the thickness of it. She didn't need to count.
"Thanks," she said, voice soft.
Rowan came around to the front passenger door and opened it. The overhead light spilled down over her, catching the gleam of her lipstick, the edge of her teeth when she smiled.
She slid into the front seat sideways, one leg tucked up, gown gathered in her hand. From this close, her perfume washed over Angel—jasmine and smoke and something darker.
She popped open the back of her phone case, slipped out two crisp hundreds, and placed them in Angel's palm, folding her fingers around them.
"There," Rowan said. "As promised."
Angel's throat worked. "That's… a lot."
"You gave us privacy in public," Rowan said. "That's worth paying for."
Angel wanted to make a joke, something sharp and deflecting. Nothing came out.
Rowan studied her face in the blue and gold wash of light. Her gaze caught on the nose ring, the black lipstick, the faint bloom of color still high on Angel's cheeks.
"What do you say, beautiful girl?" Rowan murmured. "Would you like to come in with us?"
Angel blinked. "With… you."
"Three is an interesting number," Rowan went on, voice low and sin-soft. "You said it yourself. You thought we were beautiful." Her eyes dipped briefly, tracing the line where Angel's shirt pulled across her chest. "I thought you were beautiful too, back there. Making those little sounds and trying so hard not to."
Angel's whole body went hot. "I—"
Rowan didn't wait for the rest.
She leaned in and kissed her.
It wasn't a chaste, polite brush. It was certain. Warm. Her mouth tasted faintly of champagne and something sweeter. Angel made a small, startled sound that turned into something else when Rowan's tongue teased gently at the seam of her lips.
Angel opened for her without thinking.
Rowan's fingers slipped under the hem of Angel's shirt, calloused pads finding the bar of the piercing and circling it in a slow, careful stroke. Sensation arrowed straight through her. Her back arched away from the seat.
A quiet exhale came from outside the car.
Cole.
Rowan smiled against Angel's mouth, then drew back just enough to speak against her lips.
"I've always wanted to try a girl," she whispered, breath warm. "I bet that tongue ring feels incredible. Have you ever been with a woman?"
"Yes," Angel breathed. The word surprised her as much as anything.
"Good," Rowan said, eyes bright. Her hand still rested against Angel's ribs, thumb barely brushing the edge of metal. "Then maybe you could teach me a few things. You said you enjoyed watching us." Her smile turned wicked. "Do you like men too? Do you want him as badly as I do?"
Angel's gaze flitted past Rowan to Cole.
He stood by the hood, jacket still folded over one arm, watching them with clear interest and no arrogance—like he respected the invitation as much as the answer.
"Just when I thought tonight couldn't get more interesting," he said dryly.
Rowan's attention returned to Angel. "No one will be angry if you say no," she murmured. Her hand stilled, giving Angel space to pull away.
Angel's heart thudded against her palm where her fist pressed to her chest. She looked from Rowan to Cole and back again. A laugh tried to rise, half-disbelieving, half-hysterical.
How had she gotten here? In a parking lot, in a borrowed town, with a woman like fire and a man carved out of shadow watching her choose.
Rowan tipped her head, red curls slipping loose around her face. "How about it, gorgeous?" she asked softly. "I enjoyed hearing you moan. I'd like to hear you again."
Angel held her breath.
The night felt suspended—like the whole town had inhaled and forgotten how to exhale.
"Yes," she said.
She wasn't sure whether she was answering the question or the hand that had moved again, slow and deliberate, over the thin fabric of her shorts. Maybe both.
Rowan's smile turned satisfied and soft. She kissed her once more, quick and claiming, then slipped out of the passenger seat in a rustle of black fabric.
"Come on, then," she said, holding a hand out toward Angel as if inviting her to step over a threshold.
The inn's warm light glowed behind them.
Angel cut the engine.
The glow sticks faded, and for the first time all night, she stepped out of the car for something that had nothing to do with money.