It’s been a while since Bas has been up here. He showed me the place when I rented it, gave me the keys when I moved in, and he came up twice to fix things in sexy landlord style.

He’s never come up to talk.

I always go to him. Follow him around like a lovesick puppy—which he ignores like a boss. So, I don’t know, I guess I got complacent.

Obviously, my little flounce out of the bar was noticed. I probably offended his new friend.

The one he was touching.

Gah, I’m a sucker. A sucker who has been paying for two homes for six months, although the AirBnB guests enjoying my condo downtown more than cover the mortgage.

But still. I moved out to the sticks for a pair of big hands and a gorgeous smile, and tonight I saw those hands on someone else—totally his right, because I’m nothing to him—and now he’s going to lecture me about boundaries or something.

Let’s get it over with.

And maybe I’ll move out, because who needs a thirty-minute commute anyway?

“What’s up?” I ask as he follows me into my empty living room.

I may be the sucker who’ll pay for two homes. I won’t buy extra furniture. Now I’ve got two apartments with half the usual amount of stuff in each.

Good thing I like a spartan aesthetic.

“I think we’ve got something we need to discuss. Between us.”

“Sure,” I say breezily. I’m not looking at him. Something I’ve learned through medical school and residency is take feedback with a certain detachment. It’s just data. Just information. Not personal.

Even when it’s painfully personal.

“Do you want coffee? Tea?” I lead him into the kitchen and reach for the kettle. I don’t even have a coffee maker here, but I can do a pour over if I need to. Hell, it’s still early enough that the coffee shop across the street might be open. “We could go over to—”

“I want to clear the air.” His voice is low and rough, like he’s not fucking around.

I turn to look at him, almost against my will. But I can’t not look at him a second longer.

He fills the doorway.

Great, I’ve trapped myself in the kitchen with someone three times my size, not that Bas is scary. No, he’s not frightening. But the look on his face is terrifying in a different way.

In a real, emotional way.

Like he knows he’s going to break my heart. So maybe he has been paying attention all this time.

God. I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to hear whatever it is, except I invited him in. “About what?” I manage to squeak.

“What you saw downstairs, to start.” He frowns, his brows pulling hard over his dark, piercing eyes. “That was work.”

“Great. Good.”

“That was just work,” he repeats, stepping towards me.

I back up, bumping into the counter. “You don’t need to explain that to me.”

His gaze drills deep against me. “Except I think I do, for some reason.”

“Oh.” This is the part where he lets me down easy. Or not so easy. His look isn’t very sympathetic right now. “Are you mad at me?”

“Pardon?” His face gets even tighter. “No, I’m not mad at you, Meadow.”

My hand shakes as I lift my arm and point my index finger at his eyebrows. “That’s not a happy look.”

He blinks. And frowns even further. I don’t think it’s possible for a human being to look angrier than he looks right now.

But he’s still not scary.

He flicks his gaze from my face to my finger—still pointing at him—and then back to my face. “There’s a mile of other feelings between happy and angry,” he finally grates out.

“Oh.”

“I feel like I missed something, at some point, and it’s important. So I’m going to say this again. What you saw downstairs was work.”

“She was touching you,” I blurt out.

“She’s an ex.”

“They’re all exes.”

His eyes go wide, and well, there it is, I guess. In for a penny…

I swallow hard. “You have an endless parade of exes. And they all touch you.”

“You’ve noticed?”

“I spend a lot of time in your bar, Bas. Yes, I notice. It’s right in front of me.”

“You’ve never said anything.”

I take a deep breath. “No, I haven’t.”

“Do you want to say something now?”

My heart hammers against my ribs. Not really. “You seem to have a type. I mean, if one were a casual observer of all things Bas, one might notice some consistency on that front.”

“And you might be that kind of casual observer?”

I nod.

He moves closer, and my hand—still between us—pushes against his chest. Or his chest presses into my fingers, curling them into a soft fist between us. He leans in and rests his hands on the counter on either side of me.

I’m still not scared of him. Scared of my feelings, absolutely. Scared of being rejected, even, which is starting to feel a bit silly.

If he was going to reject me his mouth wouldn’t be this close.

His perfect, soft, full lips.

His white teeth, set in a straight line as he smiles at me.

“You don’t look mad anymore,” I whisper.

“I’m not angry. I told you that.” His voice is soft and quiet now, too. Like we’re exchanging secrets. “I had no idea you were watching me.”

“I didn’t want you to know.”

“Why not?” His hot gaze pins me down. Like I can’t escape his inspection.

“There was always someone else. And when there wasn’t, you were…uninterested.”

Something dark flickers in his eyes, and a corresponding hard tug deep inside me responds.

I remember back to how I landed here in the first place. Max had told Bas about me, and then suggested I look him up. Bas was looking for someone just like me, but I chickened out. Maybe it wasn’t too late to follow up on that. “Did I give you the impression that I might not be the girl for you, Bas? Because I like you. A lot. I want you. A lot.”

He laughs, a harsh, unexpected sound that ricochets around my kitchen. It sends a shiver down my spine and makes my thighs quiver. “That could be a dangerous proposition.”

“Maybe I like danger.”

“Whoa,” he whispers, his face softening. “Hang on, that wasn’t what I meant. I’m not any kind of threat to you, sweetness. Okay?”

Now it’s my turn to laugh, a nervous giggle. “I wasn’t opposed to the dangerous proposition.”

He sways over me, his mouth twisting in a matching smile. “I heard that.”

My heart rate is now speeding along like a freight train. “Am I doing this all wrong?”

He shakes his head. “Nope.”

“I mean, we haven’t even kissed yet, and I’m telling you I want you to…”

His eyes search my face as I trail off. “Yes?”

My cheeks turn pink. “I don’t know.”

“Should we start with a kiss, then?”

The freight train in my chest slams into a mountain of need. “Yes, please.”

Using his index finger, he tips my chin up and gently brushes his lips to mine. I’ve waited so long for this. I open to him, eagerly. He tastes me first, a hungry slide of tongue against tongue. It’s rough and soft at the same time, commanding and delicious. When his licks slow, I suckle on his tongue gently, playing with it. He groans and squeezes my waist, then drops his hand to my hip.

So close to my ass. But he doesn’t palm it, doesn’t squeeze it.

No spanks for me, because neither of us are psychic.

And there’s at least a part of Bas that is sweet, because he rubs my hip and lifts his hand back to my chin, easing out of our lingering, amazing kiss. “That’s probably enough for tonight.”

“What? No.” I tug on his shoulders and brush my lips against his jaw. “Get back here. I want more.”

“Or we can take it easy and—”

“I’ve wanted to use you as a sex toy for six months. We don’t need to wait a second longer.”

He groans and shakes his head. “Please stop talking. If I’m going to leave, you’ve gotta—”

“I imagined your fingers inside me for ages. Why would I want you to leave?” I glare up at him, feeling bright and bold and challenging. Fearless. “I imagined your tongue on me—”

“That’s enough,” He growls, hooking his fingers into the front of my jeans. My skin sizzles under his touch.

With his thumb, he flicks the button free. Then he wrenches the zipper down and peels the denim open. He whispers my name as he strokes the bare skin of my belly, and he crushes his mouth against mine again. This kiss is hard and fast, obscene and demanding.

As his lips work against mine, he teases with is tongue, licking and thrusting. I’m taking this as a promise of what it will feel like between my legs. And his fingers get as far as my panties before he stops again.

This time, he doesn’t pull away.

He just stops.

I can feel how conflicted he is. And I know it’s a big, hard conflict, because there’s something big and hard pressing against my hip. I rub against his erection and he groans again.

“Here’s the thing,” he says, his breath ragged and his eyes wild as he looks down at me. “I want to take you to bed now. I want to stay there for a week and talk about all the filthy things you want me to do to you. But we don’t have that kind of time right now, and I have to re-design a street party to accommodate the wife of the prime minister getting her public kink on in a safe-for-public consumption way.”

“What?”

“That’s what Corinne was here about.” He kisses me again. “I want your help with that, if you’re willing?”

I’m the textbook definition of willing, for anything and everything Bas might want. “Sure.” I still don’t quite follow. One minute we were making out and his fingers were an inch away from my clit. Now he’s talking about the street party. “Why can’t we have sex?”

“Because you’ve watched me, Meadow. You know I’m a shitty boyfriend. I ghost women when I do a deep dive into projects. I forget dates. And nobody minds that much, because everyone has my number, and it’s no big deal when we drift in different directions. You’ve seen all of that, right?”

I blink at him. Yeah, I have. And yes, that’s how I’d sum it all up.

But wouldn’t we be different?

He cups my face in his hands. His big, warm, sexy hands, which I’ve wanted on my body for months now. And he sighs. “I don’t want to be that guy for you. I’m not that guy, not always. I’ll tell you all about that some other time. But tonight, I want you to go to sleep knowing I won’t hurt you. That I’ll wait until I can give you my all.”

“So sex will be next week?”

He grins. “Halloween, if you want.”

I have to work tomorrow. And I don’t have to work the day after the street party. This is a good plan.

My body doesn’t agree. My body wants Bas now, in whatever way we can get him.

But he’s right. We should take things a bit slower. Spend a week kissing and talking, and then there’s the small matter of me coming clean about how I wound up in his apartment… “Okay,” I whisper as he brushes his lips against mine again. “Next week. And yes, I’ll help you clean up your dirty street party.”

“An hour ago I thought you were the right person to consult on all things sweet,” he murmurs. “And then you said those filthy things about what you want me to do to you…”

I roll my eyes. “If you don’t think the PM and his wife are super dirty, I’ve got some news for you.”

He shakes his head. “Don’t tell me.”

“The way they look at each other…”

Bas presses his forehead against mine. “You’re telling me anyway.”

I smile. “And I know some people who know him.” Max, who knows Bas too, but now is not the time to admit that. “And they strike me as kinky, too. I don’t know. I just get the feeling.”

He shrugs his big, broad shoulders. “And I know people who are for sure kinky around the PM, and they’ve never said anything, so who knows. But it’s as good a theory as any, so let’s go on that idea: Mrs. Strong is secretly kinky, and can’t explore that in public most of the time. So how do we make the whole thing safe for public news consumption but also delightfully perverted for everyone, including a VIP?”