PROLOGUE

 

My pulse races, and I drag him against me. Hard muscles and heat are packed into a nice pair of worn jeans and a linen shirt. One of his legs slides between mine. The denim is a rasp of fine sandpaper on my skin, giving me a mind full of another type of friction I’m desperate for.

“Do you come here often?” He has this voice, kind of rough, overlaid with deep sensuality, and it wraps itself around my core as his dark stubbled jaw tickles my cheek.

The guy, his name is something I can’t remember, puts his mouth to my ear. His breath flutters on my skin, his lips a caress, and my brain is on overload with the sensations running rampant inside me.

“No.” Turning my face, I seek out his mouth. I want his kiss almost as much as I want to get my hand in his pants.

Grasping my hips, he shifts me tighter against him. Those soft jeans don’t hide the hardness underneath them. It prods my thigh and liquid fire pools in my panties.

“Let’s get a room?” He makes a soft groan, barely audible above the din in this casino bar.

The scent of citrus and spice makes my mouth water. “Stop talking and kiss me.”

One of his hands slaps the faux log wall behind me as he pitches his whole body to mine. The rubbing of linen against the silk of my dress makes my nipples ache and pucker. I whimper as he drags his mouth from my ear to my lips. It starts out slow and cool. His lips trace mine, a gentle nip to my bottom lip. Then his tongue slides over my parted lips to dig into my mouth. It turns hot, heady. My fingers bite into the flesh of his shoulder, my leg slides higher on his, opening me up for more of the delicious pleasure that makes this about being as close to another person as possible. Inside them even.

 

Okay, hold up.

Pause there.

 

He’s gorgeous, right? I mean sure, who knows if he has a personality. He could be the most boring sod on earth, or he could be one of those guys whose only commitment is to how many women he can bang in any one given week. But those blue eyes, that perfect set of abs —I got my hands on them a few minutes ago, so sue me. Like you wouldn’t have. His demanding touch, and the rather sizable bulge he’s toting is definitely worth swooning over.

See this right here? This is the problem with relationships. You meet someone, you’re attracted to them. Your body gets flooded with all these awesome hormones. Everything about the other person is amazing. That’s love, right?

Nope. Wrong. That’s lust. That’s your body’s reaction to pheromones, and if you ever took a biology class then you know that those pesky little pheromones are for one reason and one reason only. To populate with good genetic material. It’s not about connection. It’s not some mystic neon sign telling you you’ve found Mr. Right. There is no happily ever after here.

Love is another beast entirely, and even if you do find it there is no guarantee it will last. Sure, thinking the sun shines out of your boyfriend’s ass probably helps. I mean, if you can overlook the other person’s failings, then sure, that makes developing real, deep emotions easier, but what happens when the chemical high wears off?

We fight it. We’ve been programmed to believe that love is the stronger connection. We’re not talking family and friends here, people. Sure you’ve spent most of your childhood with the same group of Homo sapiens. You’ve put up with them, been put up with, and at the end of the day there’s not much that will change that. But we’re talking about romantic love, the happily ever after, body on body, let’s make babies type love.

I’m sorry to be the one to break up your Disney princess fantasy, but love like that doesn’t exist. We don’t get to spend the rest of our lives with one person. The sex won’t always be fantastic. And the cute way they have of talking in their sleep is going to get old real fast.

Honestly, the chances of finding that special someone, that other half of our whole, the one who completes us for the rest of our lives isn’t in our favor.

A study determined that three million first dates happen each day. That’s three million chances on any one day that any woman might be lucky enough to come face to face with the love of her life. Three million chances, can you imagine, and yet something like seventy percent of couples break up within the first year. Sure, after that the chances of breaking up goes down. For the couples still together after five years the percentage drops to twenty. Good odds, you’d think, but that’s still one in five.

One in five.

And that’s not including those relationships that wouldn’t survive if they were honest with each other. Twenty-two percent of the world population have cheated on the person they supposedly love. Only eight percent will admit it though. And these are the statistics, if only eight percent will admit it to their partner, how many won’t admit it to those running the analysis reports? That number has to be higher, don’t you think?

But sometimes, very rarely, we do manage to find that person who we can stand for the next fifty or sixty years. Only four out of five couples will come close, but the real number of those who make it… nobody knows.

Some of you won’t believe me. I bet right now you’re saying, but my man would never cheat on me. He wouldn’t lie to me about anything. He’s the man of my dreams, and I know that we’re going to be together for the rest of our lives.

Well, maybe that’s true, and maybe it isn’t.

And some of you are thinking, maybe this chick has a point. So what do you do if you’re starting to get that gut sinking feeling your man isn’t all you thought he was? What if you’re thinking, I see your point, and I’m concerned that I’m destined for heartbreak?

You come to me, of course. The Anti-Cupid. I’ll help you discover whether your relationship is built for a lifetime, or if it’s time to get out.

 

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have quite the sexy man to unabashedly grope in public.