“Like hell I didn’t. God save the Queen,” he said dryly, winking at me. “I notice every single thing about you, Sara.”

“You do?”

“Try me.”

“Where’s my birthmark?”

“On your right side, just beneath your smallest rib.”

“Do you have a favorite freckle?”

Tricky question, I thought. I don’t have many freckles.

“The one on your wrist.” I glanced down to the freckle in question, impressed.

“What do I say when I’m about to come?”

“When you’re coming, you just make unintelligible sounds. But when you’re close, you just whisper ‘please’ over and over, as if I’d ever deny you.”

“What does my pu**y taste like?” I asked, and his eyes shot away from the screen and to me. I bit back a grin as I pushed my underwear down my legs and stepped out of them.

“Some pu**y just tastes like pu**y. Yours tastes like good pu**y.” He stood, walking over to me. “Lie down on the couch with your head here.” He positioned the back of my head on the arm of the leather couch. It was surprisingly comfortable for such firm leather.

“And knees up, legs spread.”

My eyes widened slightly but I did what he told me to, smiling when he brushed the hair from my forehead, and adjusted my posture as if I were a piece of art he was hanging on a wall.

“Draw me like one of your French girls, Jack,” I said, looking up at him.

He reached down and pinched my ass. “Cheeky.”

To test him, I closed my legs a little as he started to walk away.

“Wide,” he called over his shoulder.

I laughed, and moved back to how he’d positioned me.

Max returned with a book and handed it over. “This is to entertain you while I work.”

“You’re not going to be naked, too?”

“Are you mad?” he asked, grinning. “I have to pack.”

I glanced down at the book in my hands. It had a bare-chested man on the cover with a cat and a half-naked woman at his feet. Cat’s Claws.

“This looks . . . interesting,” I said, flipping it over to read the summary. “The guy has two partners. One is the human named Cat, and then she has a Werecat.” I glanced up at him. “As a pet. A pet they both have sex with.”

“It sounded rather cerebral.”

“You got this off the dollar table, didn’t you?”

“I did. It looks smashingly crude, though, so I knew you’d love it.” He turned and started moving things around on his desk. “Now, quiet, Petal. I’m very busy.”

At first it felt almost impossible to focus on the book in my hands, but as the minutes ticked by, and Max apparently grew absorbed in the process of packing up his desk, I started to forget that I was sitting on his couch. Alone.

Totally naked.

The book he’d given me was ridiculously filthy, not to mention wordy as hell; the writing was horrible but I suspected that wasn’t really the point. There were multiple men, multiple women; too many appendages to keep straight but again—it didn’t matter. The point was the sex happening, and how descriptive it was. Everyone had some body part that was hard or dripping. Or both. People screamed and—sometimes literally—clawed at things.

And in the corner, the hero sat simply watching.

“You’re blushing.” He put a stack of books down and leaned against his desk watching me. “You’ve been reading that for fifteen minutes and something you’ve just read made you flush scarlet.”

I looked up at him and winced. “It’s the c-word. It just surprised me, that’s all.”

“Cunt?”

I nodded, surprisingly aroused by the bluntness of the word in his accent. It lacked the t. Somehow, that softened it. Made it into something far sexier.

“I bloody love that word. Such an ugly one. Cunt. Sounds so depraved, doesn’t it?” He scratched his jaw, considering me. “Read me the line.”

“I don’t . . .”

“Sara.”

If possible, I felt my face heat further. “He gripped her thighs, forced them apart, and stared at her wet, flushed . . . cunt.”

“Wow,” he said, laughing. “That’s something all right.” He moved back to his desk and started sorting through a stack of papers. “You can tell me all about your favorite parts over dinner.” I started to protest, but he lifted a finger to his lips and hushed me. “Read.”

I stared at the page as the words swam together. What kind of a woman makes a big deal over dinner?

The kind of woman, Sara, I thought, who recognizes that dinner leads to sleeping over, which leads to staying together every night. And that leads to keys, and then moving in. And then come excuses, and quiet sex, and then no sex and no conversation, and hoping that there is some public engagement that invites us as a couple so that I’ll have time with him.

Then again, I’d regretted not sleeping over with Max on the Fourth. And I was starting to miss him during the week.

Damn.

I coughed, squeezing my eyes shut.

“All right?” Max murmured from across the room.

“Fine.”

After another twenty minutes passed and I’d read about seventeen more sex scenes, Max walked over, ran a hand from my collarbone to my knee, and whispered, “Close your eyes. Don’t open them until I say.”

“You’re awfully bossy today,” I said, even as I dropped the book to the floor and did what he’d asked. Almost immediately, my sense of hearing seemed to become so acute the room almost vibrated. I heard the sound of his belt, his zipper, and a quiet sigh.

Is he . . . ?

I could hear the soft brushing sound of his hand moving, how his rhythm started slow and then grew faster, firmer. The way his breath came out in short, tight gasps.

“Let me watch,” I whispered.

“No.” His voice was tight. “I’m watching you.”

I’d never listened to a person masturbate before, and it was torture to keep my eyes shut. The sounds were teasing, his quiet grunts and instructions to spread my legs wider, touch my breast.

“The book made you wet,” he remarked, and then I heard his hand speed up against his cock. “How wet?”

I reached down, eyes still closed, and touched myself to find out. I didn’t even have to say anything; he just groaned, and then swore in a familiarly deep voice as he came.

I wanted to watch his face, but I kept my eyes closed, my heart pounding.