Harlem Between Us

Zora Ellis is 28, brilliant, curvy, and chronically overstimulated-from her grad school research in astrobiology to the noise of the city she calls home. Relationships? Not a priority. Not when she's got Evan Marshall.

Evan is 28, a neuroengineering PhD student with a face that doesn't match how filthy his mouth can get. And for the last few years, he's been the one she calls between relationships-for hard, no-strings-attached sex that leaves her breathless and temporarily sane.

They've watched each other fall in and out of dating disasters. They know each other's trauma, coffee orders, and pressure points.
It's uncomplicated.
It works.
Until it doesn't.

Because lately, Evan's hands linger longer after he cleans her wounds.
And Zora's starting to picture him when she touches herself.
And neither of them is saying a damn thing about it.

In the Bronx, where Evan's apartment smells like incense and chaos, and on Harlem streets where catcallers call her wife and mean it-Zora is starting to feel the cracks in their arrangement.

One jazz night. One late train ride. One mistake away from breaking all their rules.

They said it would never get complicated.
They lied.