Umm, what?” I blink at Jackson. Surely he’s not serious. No matter how much lube we just rubbed on our hands, there’s no way I’m looking at porn with him.

Jackson reaches for my laptop and sets it in front of me. “We’ve been looking at all this stuff in a vague way, but we need to know how the nuts and bolts of how we’re branding it. Our marketing needs to be sexy. So we’re going to go where the sex is for ideas.”

He nods for me to open the device and stands behind me to look over my shoulder.

A fine layer of sweat breaks out on my chest. “I’m pretty sure my computer is going to explode,” I tell him. “Is that a thing that happens when you look at too much porn?”

“You’re fine.” He bends down next to me and types “porn” into the browser. A list populates but I can’t think because Jackson’s shoulder is pressed against mine and he’s solid and warm and we’re about to look at porn together. Oh my god.

The idea of looking at these images with Jackson makes me feel naked, like I’m showing him part of myself that only Matthew has ever seen. We’re about to go down a naughty, dangerous road. We’re about to see skin and sweat and lust all splashed across the screen and it’s going to make us both feel things and I don’t know if I can be in the room with Jackson and handle that right now.

It’s not that I’m so prudish—I’ve looked at plenty of websites doing research on this lube idea and, hell, I thought of lube as a business in the first place—but it’s a very different experience to look at these things with someone else in the room.

Even with Matthew, we never looked at porn together. Sex is something we did but we didn’t really talk about it. He was my first and only partner, so I don’t have a whole lot to compare the experience to. And Jackson is…Jackson, and every complicated thing that means to me.

The cursor hovers over the first website on the list.

“Wait.” I take a deep breath. But because he’s Jackson, he clicks the link.

The screen loads and my room—my tiny guesthouse fifty feet away from my dad’s back door—fills with the sounds of groaning and panting. On screen, a gif of a couple pounding away doggy style repeats again and again as the couple moan and grind and come together. There’s no hiding what’s going on.

“Oh my god, Jackson!” I scramble to mute the computer.

He grins. “What have you been doing with the volume turned up?”

“Listening to music.” I glare at him. “Not watching porn.”

“Riiiight.”

I don’t dignify that with a response. I just scroll down the screen, making note of keywords I find on the page. I’m going to make SEO my bitch, just as soon as I get through this.

“Count the advertising slots,” Jackson advises, leaning over my shoulder.

I create a new spreadsheet on my computer and label the columns with Domain Name, Type of Site, and Advertising Ideas. Then I try not to squirm as I count advertising slots. I focus on filling out the numbers on my new page, scrolling past fifteen couples having sex in various positions. I keep my eyes glued to the page as we work, not wanting to know if Jackson’s breathing just as heavy as I am.

This is my life now. Holy shit.

Unfortunately, the scroll to the top of the page makes me agonize just as much as the scroll down. So does the next website. And the next. But we carry on anyway, in the name of science or marketing. Or something.

We stay like that for a while, Jackson behind me while I’m on my computer, his thumb straying across the side of my neck. It’s so casual, just him, and I don’t even notice I’m leaning into his touch until I feel him still behind me.

I drop my hands from my keyboard and look over my shoulder. Jackson’s eyes are fixed on mine, focused and intense. He moves his hand to my cheek, quiet and calm, like I’m a wild horse about to startle. The bottom of my stomach drops out and my heart skips and skips and skips.

Jackson rubs a thumb over my lower lip. “You are crazy turned on right now, aren’t you?”

“What?” I choke out. I squeeze my legs together because, dammit, I am.

Jackson drops his hand. “You are. Your face is all pink and your breathing just got super fast.”

“Oh my god. No, Jackson. I’m just doing my job.”

“And your eyes are big, too.”

I bite my lip and taste the salt of his skin. I want to put his finger back in my mouth and suck it hard. I want to taste him again, for real. But those are dangerous thoughts. I shake my head at him. “Shut up. It’s not like I can do anything about it, even if I was.”

He tilts his head at me.

“Parents’ guesthouse? No boyfriend?” I remind him.

“Those sound like excuses to me.”

“What?” I snort. “Are you offering yourself up for the job?”

He gives me a long look. He is.

My face flames and it takes me a second to breathe. What the hell is happening?

“Jackson, if you think sleeping together is good idea, your judgement is seriously flawed.”

“It’s pretty hard to be around those images and you,” he says. “It gets my imagination going.”

I suck in a breath and remind myself that Jackson Wirth has slept with more women than I want to think about, that he’s so full of shit he could fertilize a farm. Jackson already proved he didn’t want me all those years ago. Nothing has changed.

“Oh, don’t, Jackson,” I tell him. “You have to know that I can sniff out a line from a mile away. Just because I have a vagina doesn’t mean I’m going to fall for it.”

He grins but his eyes stay serious. “It’s not a line.”

“You don’t even know me anymore,” I protest. “I’m different.”

“In some ways, sure. But you’re also still you. Smart and funny and sexy. You’ve got this amazing drive and you don’t even know how special that is.”

“Okay, now you’re really trying to get into my pants.”

“One of these days you’re going to stop running away from me, Natalie. And then we can test products for real.”

“Don’t hold your breath,” I tell him, but my voice sounds shaky, even to me.

And that’s when the doorbell rings.