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  By a quick burst of unexpected emotion. My throat tightened, and I was entirely unsure where this feeling was coming from. A feeling of something like . . . gratitude? Was that it? Was I simply grateful that Adam had administered my first non-solo O?

  As I spread cherry body wash over my legs, I shook my head, the answer to my question coming quickly.

  No, it wasn’t gratitude. It was something stronger.

  This kernel inside me felt closer to hope, too much like a wish for something beyond the bedroom.

  That was a problem.

  That wasn’t what last night was about.

  Hell, that wasn’t what my list was about.

  My list was a road map to and through pleasure, and only pleasure. It was a chance for me to learn a new language, one that had been impossible to speak when I was with clients, having private conversations. And it was my opportunity once and for all to move beyond my mind. To take all the desires in my head and explore them so they’d stop gnawing at me.

  I rinsed my body, turned off the shower, and dressed, listening to another episode of Ask Aphrodite. A listener had wanted to know the hostess’s best advice when it came to communicating with a lover. Turned out to be the perfect wisdom for me too.

  After drying my hair and applying blush and mascara, I turned off the podcast and took a deep breath, ready to face Adam in the bright light of morning.

  Adam, my friend.

  Adam, my neighbor.

  And Adam, my very temporary lover.

  That was all, although we weren’t done with that role. We had more erotic hills to climb, and I hoped we’d summit them without more of these pesky morning-after questions.

  Still, would everything be different for us in the light of day? Could we still be us?

  I wasn’t sure, but I had to try, and that required more honesty. We’d always been honest and open as friends, so nothing should change now that we were temporary lovers. We’d stay honest, and that meant the question of why would need to be answered sooner rather than later.

  Surely he was curious. I’d be curious too if I were him. Rather than waiting for him to ask, I chose to tackle it head-on, recalling Aphrodite’s most recent words.

  The key to communication is facing your fear. Why are you afraid of what your lover might say when you reveal yourself? Ask what scares you. Are you afraid he or she will judge you? Will look at you differently? These are normal worries, but facing them is brave, and moving past them can give you the keys to your future. So let me leave you with this: Don’t be afraid to speak your mind. Talking is sexy. Sharing is sensual. You don’t have to reveal everything, but intimacy comes from honesty, and when you can speak truthfully, you just might find yourself reaching new levels of connection.

  I wasn’t sure it was intimacy I sought so much as knowledge. But both went down the same path. The path of truth.

  With my shoulders squared, I left my bedroom, resolute that we’d be the same and I’d talk to him as I always had.

  Once I entered the living room, my nose lifted and I inhaled the most fantastic scents.

  Breakfast. Adam’s omelets. Fresh mushrooms and eggs and slices of avocado. And coffee. The rich aroma of a cup of morning joe.

  It was heaven.

  My mouth watered as I turned into the kitchen to find him at the stove. He wore only jeans as he cooked.

  I blinked.

  Why wasn’t this on my list? This was a fantasy I hadn’t known I had. This handsome man shirtless and making food for me.

  I stared at the lean muscles of his back, his toned biceps, and his sinewy forearms as he folded the eggs, singing under his breath.

  He flipped the omelet then brought the spatula to his mouth, crooning softly about being hooked on a feeling.

  A smile took over my face. That song.

  I loved that song.

  Loved even more that Adam was himself the next day. Singing in the kitchen.

  “I can’t believe . . .” I sang softly, offering the next line in the tune.

  He spun around, but his frown of confusion quickly turned into a grin as he handed me a second spatula. “Duet?”

  “But of course.”

  I joined in, singing in harmony about lips as sweet as candy. We cruised through the song, hitting some notes, missing others. And as we reached the lyrics about good love, I told myself it was just a song. They were just lines. We were having a blast.

  And it was everything I wanted as he finished making our breakfast while we rocked out karaoke-style in my kitchen.

  Talk about not weird.

  The sheer normalcy of it lubricated the path to my admission. As soon as we sat down to eat, I jumped off another cliff.

  10

  Nina

  “It’s because of my sister,” I said.

  He tilted his head, his eyes waiting for me to say more. “Ella?”

  “Yes. She’s a single mom. As you know.”

  “I do,” he said, then took a bite of the mushroom omelet.

  I took a bite too, chewed, then spoke again. “And don’t get me wrong. Her son is the coolest eleven-year-old I know, but . . .” I heaved a sigh. “She had him when she was seventeen.”

  He nodded. “Right. I sort of did the math the few times we’ve visited her,” he said, since he’d met my sister and her kid, and my parents too. They lived nearby.

  “She didn’t plan on getting pregnant in high school, but she wasn’t going to give up the baby. It wasn’t easy,” I said heavily, remembering the terror on Ella’s face when she’d learned she was having a baby. “I was only in eighth grade. We’d always been close, and I wanted desperately to help her, to fix the problem. But there was, of course, nothing to be done. My parents didn’t want her to have an abortion, and she didn’t either. She’d planned to give up the baby for adoption.”

  “That must have been tough for Ella.” His eyes filled with sadness.

  “But once she was further along, she couldn’t go through with the adoption,” I said, recalling Ella’s tears, her heartache. “I used to hear her crying at night, and in the morning, she’d talk to my mom about what to do.”

  “That’s so hard. I can’t even imagine how my sisters would have handled that,” he said sympathetically, his eyes soft as they locked with mine.

  “My parents supported her choice. They understood it too—why she’d had a change of heart. But once he was born, everything was upended for her, and for them too. They became grandparents, and, in a way, parents again.”

  “It’s the kind of life change that shocks everyone,” he said, taking a second to squeeze my arm, a friendly, caring squeeze.

  “And she also took it upon herself to make sure I wouldn’t follow in her footsteps. She urged me to be careful, to use protection. It was nonstop, her advice train. And, of course, it was and is good advice,” I said, and took a drink of the coffee, thinking of my overprotective sister. “Her advice worked. But in a different way.”

  He lifted a curious brow, as he took a bite of the omelet. “How so?”

  “I made a different decision then—to wait. I didn’t want to take a single chance, Adam. I didn’t want that type of soul-ripping, bone-crushing heartache. And I also knew from an early age what I wanted in life.”

  “Your photography,” he said, smiling, like he was delighted to know the answer.

  I smiled too. “I knew what I wanted when I was thirteen and my parents gave me my first camera. All I ever wanted was to be a photographer. To go to art school, to learn the craft. I didn’t want anything to derail my plans. And when Ella got pregnant, I learned exactly how one mistake, one stolen moment where you took a risk, could backfire. Could capsize your future. Even though my parents helped, Ella had to drop out of high school for the first six months after the baby was born. My mom cut back at her job to help with the baby. And when Ella finally went to college, it took her six years and so many sleepless nights to get her degree.”

  “That’s rough,” he said, sha
king his head and reaching for my hand, clasping it. “I had no idea how hard it was for her.”

  “She’s on the other side now. An amazing nurse, with a great kid. Her own place too. But it took a long time, Adam,” I said, squeezing his hand in return. “And I wanted something different. I wanted my dreams first, and my dreams meant a bachelor’s degree. I promised myself I would remain a virgin all through college. But I wasn’t stupid. I took precautions just in case. I started on protection back then, because I didn’t want to ever worry about a broken condom. I knew I had to be in charge of my own fate and my own body. And I suppose I figured I’d meet someone after college, but I haven’t met anyone I liked enough,” I said with a what can you do shrug. “And honestly, it was easier to devote all my energy to work and photography.”

  He flashed a proud grin, gesturing around my home and to the studio at the far end of the hallway where I shot my pictures. “And it paid off. You’re so young and so far ahead in your career, and you own your own home at twenty-four. That’s amazing.”

  “Thank you,” I said, and I was proud too—I’d accomplished a lot already at my age, and I was relentless with my drive. I’d shut most things out of my life except for friends and photography for the last few years, dating only sparsely. “And I’m glad of that. Even when I dated, I never met anyone who thrilled me.”

  He scoffed. “Because you dated tools.” He took another bite of his breakfast.

  “Gee, thanks.”

  He set down his fork, leveling me with an honest stare. “Well, they kind of were, Nina. That guy Kenny? He was a professional poker player, and all he talked about were different combinations of cards. He nearly put me to sleep the night we all went to dinner. Wait, I think he did. If memory serves, I fell asleep at the table.”

  I didn’t want to laugh, to admit I’d had bad taste, but I couldn’t help myself. “So he wasn’t terribly scintillating.”

  “‘Scintillating’? He was tedious.”

  With a huff, I shrugged. My admission. “Okay, he was duller than Dullsville.”

  “Good. While we’re at it, how about Jared? Wasn’t he, like, a product manager of spreadsheets, or something equally mind-numbing? You’d need a microscope to find his sense of humor.”

  My lips quirked into a grin, as I tried to rein in a chuckle. “No. The requirement was actually the world’s strongest microscope to find it,” I said, then laughed. It was so good to be normal with him the next day. To poke fun at me, together. To be who we’d always been with each other. He’d seen me half-naked, he’d sent me soaring to the heavens, and he’d come on me, then watched me lick his release off my lips. And still, we were laughing and teasing the next morning. It was so easy to be with him. To be us, and this conversation tugged at the part of my brain that craved interesting facts. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking? What is the world’s most powerful microscope?”

  Like twin gunslingers, we grabbed our phones from our pocket holsters, fingers swiping. I beat him to the punch.

  “Berkeley has a twenty-seven-million-dollar electron microscope,” I blurted out.

  “It lets you see to a resolution that’s half the freaking width of a hydrogen atom,” he said, jumping in.

  “That’s one ten-millionth of a millimeter,” I said, my jaw dropping with wonder. “It can see everything.”

  He smiled as he read more, devouring intel about microscopes, then he stopped and met my gaze. “Look at us,” he said, kind of amazed.

  My heart skittered knowing we were on the same wavelength. “Yeah, look at us.”

  “We’re doing this. Like we said we would last night. Breakfast, and lightning-fast searches to look stuff up, and talking.”

  “We’re us,” I said, seconding him, then I returned to the previous topic, because digging into my reasons, my choices, felt good. “Adam?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Maybe I wasn’t so great at picking men. Maybe I was drawn to guys I didn’t have a great connection with because I knew what I wanted in bed.”

  His brow knitted. “I’m not following, but keep going, because I want to.”

  I swallowed, drawing a deep breath of air. “I think I always knew what I wanted in bed, and that it would be hard to find it, and harder still to voice it. So I chose the other path—where I wouldn’t ever be faced with voicing my desires. I chose men who were unlikely to stimulate my mind, and so I kept my desires locked up.”

  His expression turned serious. “Why is it hard to speak about what you want?”

  My throat tightened, but I pushed past the fear, like Aphrodite urged me to do. “Because I might be a virgin, but I don’t want sweet and tender sex. And it’s hard to say that. Because society expects virgins to want sex a certain way.”

  He set down his fork, studied me intensely. “There is nothing wrong with what you want. There is nothing wrong with kinky desires. I think it’s sexy and smart and hot as hell to write down all those fantasies.”

  I sighed, relieved. “Sometimes I feel like a huge pervert. Like, when I’m with my clients, I sometimes picture them sleeping together afterward and imagine the things they’d do, the things I’d orchestrate. Doesn’t that make me a pervert?”

  “No. Your job is sexy. It’s sensual. You’re capturing people all day long who want each other, who want something, who pose in seductive ways. I can’t imagine not thinking about sex, or them having it.” His lips curved in a wry grin. “And there’s nothing wrong with being a dirty pervert. Well, unless you’re looking at their photos when they’re gone and getting off to them, or diddling yourself while taking their pictures.”

  I balled up my napkin and tossed it at him. He caught it with one hand as I said, “I don’t diddle myself in front of them.”

  He wiggled his brows. “You can diddle yourself in front of me though.”

  A ribbon of heat unfurled in me, and my laughter ceased. “I want that too. I want you to watch me, Adam. I want to be the one someone’s looking at.”

  His hazel eyes darkened, that heat I’d seen last night flickering in an instant. “I know. I love your list. I love what’s on it. And, Nina, you need to know—your list is what I like too.”

  I shuddered, both turned on and emotional all at once. This moment was so intimate, almost too intimate. “It is? I thought you were only doing it that way for me.”

  He inched closer. “For starters, I’d do it that way for you. But in a most happy coincidence, I like it rough too. I like it hard. I like it dirty. And I like giving a woman exactly what she wants.”

  His words weaved through my insides, warming me up in ways I hadn’t expected. They turned me on, but they also made me want to turn to him, to draw him close. I had to deflect, or I’d lose sight of the boundaries we’d erected.

  “And you like that it’s just sex,” I said quickly, my pitch rising. “You aren’t into relationships. Well, not after Rose.”

  He took a minute before answering, and I worked my way through more of my breakfast. “She wasn’t my finest moment,” he said carefully. “Sometimes I look back and wonder what I missed. What I should have done differently to avoid that kind of person and the lies she spun. But I was drawn to her from the start, and that was the trouble.”

  “What drew you to her?” I asked, hating talking about his ex, but desperately needing to understand him in a new way, to delve into this side of him that I’d never wanted to explore so fully before.

  Staring off in the distance, his jaw ticked, then he turned to me. “She had this way about her where she could talk about anything, take on any topic. She was outgoing, and it was alluring,” he said, and I made a note of that. I was not outgoing. I took my time with people, watching and observing before I let them in. “And that made it easy to fall under her spell. It seemed at first like we had a lot in common.”

  All of sudden, a plume of jealousy burned inside of me. Did he mean in the bedroom? I had to know. Even if it would hurt. “In bed, you mean?”

  He met my
gaze, his eyes full of nothing but the honesty I knew from him. “Yes. Does that bother you?”

  I swallowed the stone in my throat, then lied. “No.” For some strange reason I wanted to be the only one who liked it the way he did. The way we did.

  But Adam surprised me again when he reached for my hand and threaded his fingers through mine. “But she never had the courage to write anything down. She never had the bravery to tell me how she wanted it. You do, and it’s so insanely attractive,” he said in that growly, alpha voice he’d used last night.

  A voice that perhaps he only used with me.

  “Everything about you is attractive. Remember that. You’re honest. She was a liar, so don’t compare yourself to her,” he said, running a finger down my nose.

  And I was busted.

  He’d seen through my questions.

  He knew why I’d asked.

  And he could tell I wanted to be different than she was.

  He’d given me what I needed to hear, and I wanted to do the same for him. I laced our fingers more tightly. “It wasn’t your fault—what she did. What she took from you,” I said, our eyes holding. “She was a junkie. They weave their wicked magic. They seduce. And she was beautiful, and she was sweet,” I said, and though it was true, the truth tasted bitter on my tongue. But I had to endure it for him, to remind him that he wasn’t to blame. “We can’t erase our pasts, Adam. We can only make different choices. So you’re making a different one now. To stay away from relationships, from the hurt they might inflict.”

  “I am,” he said, and it sounded like a solemn vow. “I trusted her, Nina. Trusted her in my home, in my life, with my heart. And she violated all of that. It’s safer this way.”

  I nodded, getting him completely. I’d chosen safety too, for years, and in choosing him for my list, I would remain cocooned in that security.

  Friendship was our safety net. We’d jump from the sky, and the net of our friendship would catch us.

  “But you know what?” he added. “She is the past. Let’s focus on the present. And the present, as they say, is a gift. So how about I give you a gift before I leave for work?”