Reunited, Horny, and One Roulette Bet Away from Naked

Mia hated everything about the casino bar’s fluorescent glow, the way it made her cheap company-branded lanyard look like a dog collar and turned the watered-down gin in her glass the exact same piss-yellow as the wallpaper. Soul-crushing corporate graphic design had already flattened her soul into a PowerPoint template; now it was forcing her into “team-building happy hour” with the same assholes who micromanaged her kerning. She leaned against the sticky mahogany rail, twenty-eight and already calculating how many more of these nights she could survive before she set the office printer on fire and fled to Bali.

Then Jake fucking Rivera walked in.

Ten years hadn’t dulled a single sharp edge. Same ridiculous shoulders stretching a button-down that probably cost more than her rent, same dark hair that somehow looked deliberate even after a day under fluorescent lights, same mouth that used to trash-talk her straight into soaking her panties during every college critique. He spotted her instantly—of course he did—and the cocky half-smile that had haunted her late-night vibrator sessions slid into place like it had never left.

“Well, well. Mia Chen. Still drawing circles around everyone else’s mediocrity, or did the soul-suck finally claim you?”

She snorted, tipping her glass at him. “Jake. Still compensating for a microscopic dick with those shoulders, or did you finally learn to use a measuring tape?”

He laughed, low and filthy, stepping close enough that she caught the cedar-and-sex scent of him. The bar noise faded. Suddenly it was just the two of them and a decade of unfinished business vibrating between her thighs.

“Microscopic, huh? Bold talk from the girl who once spent an entire all-nighter staring at my crotch every time I leaned over the light table.”

“I was judging your kerning, asshole.”

“Sure you were.” He ordered two shots of tequila without asking, slid one to her. Their fingers brushed. Electricity, stupid and immediate. “So. Same beige hellhole. Funny how fate works. Or HR. Same thing.”

They downed the shots. Heat bloomed in her belly, then lower. Banter had always been their foreplay; tonight it felt like someone had cranked the volume to porn-theater levels.

Jake’s gaze dropped to the V of her blouse, lingered on the freckle just above her left breast that he used to sketch during lectures when he thought she wasn’t looking. “You still single, Chen? Or did some poor bastard finally convince you that sarcasm isn’t a personality?”

She smirked, feeling the tequila loosen the last professional filter. “Please. Dating apps turned me into a ghost. Swipe, match, panic, delete. You?”

Something flickered in his eyes—amusement, heat, recognition. He pulled out his phone, thumb flicking. “Funny you mention that.” He turned the screen. There it was: her own face, three weeks younger, smiling in that stupid bathroom selfie she’d almost deleted. The little green “It’s a Match!” banner still glowed like a neon confession.

Mia’s stomach dropped, then clenched hard. “No fucking way.”

“Swiped right last Tuesday. You ghosted so hard I thought my phone died.” His voice dropped, rough. “I may have jerked off to that photo twice before I chickened out and closed the app.”

Heat flooded her face, her cunt, everywhere. She snatched her own phone, scrolled, and there he was—shirtless at some beach, abs ridiculous, that same smirk daring the camera. She’d stared at it for ten solid minutes, thumb hovering, then yeeted the whole match into the void because the idea of fucking her college rival in real life felt like inviting lightning to strike her vibrator.

“I swiped right too,” she admitted, laughing so she wouldn’t moan. “Then I pictured you still drawing dicks in the margins of my sketches and nearly threw my phone in the toilet. Classic dating-app courage: match with the hottest mistake of your past, then flee like the building’s on fire.”

Jake’s grin went feral. He stepped closer, thigh brushing hers, the hard line of his cock already obvious against his slacks. “We’re idiots. Ten years of hating each other, one mutual swipe, and we both ghosted because… what? Fear the hate-sex would actually be good?”

“Fear it would be transcendent and then we’d have to sit through budget meetings together after you’d come on my tits.” She said it flat, filthy, watching his pupils blow wide. The tequila sang in her blood. “Dating apps are just elaborate cock-tease machines. Algorithm serves you the one person you’ve jerked off thinking about since sophomore year, then watches you both chicken out like virgins at a circle jerk.”

He barked a laugh that turned into a groan when she pressed her knee deliberately against the bulge in his pants. “Fuck, Mia. You’re still the only person who can roast me hard enough to make me hard.” His hand found her waist under the bar’s shadow, thumb stroking the bare strip of skin above her skirt. “I used to sit behind you in studio and watch you bend over the cutting mat, imagining sliding that pencil skirt up and eating you out while you pretended to hate it.”

“I never pretended.” Her voice came out husky. She let her fingers trail the front of his thigh, feeling muscle jump. “I used to get so wet listening to you critique my layouts that I’d have to sneak to the bathroom and finger myself thinking about gagging on your dick just to shut you up.”