“I might be a little late on Sunday.” I’d started stretching the time between my calls to Mom from daily to twice-weekly. Of course she complained, but I explained that I was busy working. That brought with it the expected tirade about my lack of compassion, but for some reason, working with Stone was giving me a new confidence.

I’d never sought my mother’s approval so much as I wanted her, for once, to be happy for me to a degree that would allow me to live my own life without her interfering. I learned early on that she got her hooks into approval seeking and played me like a sports fisherman. Still, it was difficult not to fall into her trap.

“Clarissa has to travel four hours, and she won’t be late. You’ve always had this way of making things difficult. I think you enjoy the drama. And, you still haven’t told me the name of the author you’re working for.”

“Because legally, that’s not possible.”

“Don’t use that tone, Katrina. I’m your mother. How can I look out for you if you’re hiding things from me?”

A dull pain set up at the back of my head. It would worsen if I stayed on the phone too long. If she knew I was going with Stone to Rhode Island, my life would be miserable. “I’m not hiding things, Mom. I’m simply working within the rules of the contract. There’s nothing to worry about.”

“You may think that, but this lack of consideration on your part is what I have to bear.”

A litany of my shortcomings was due, but I chose for once to end the call before she got started. “I have to go, Mom. Give my love to Dad, and I’ll see you Sunday.”

I don’t know what she was saying when I ended the call. I’d deal with that on Sunday. Mostly, I hoped I’d miss lunch altogether. Clarissa would be held up as the paragon of the ideal daughter, while Mom chipped away at any achievement I might feel I’d made.

I tried to remember all the things Carrie had taught me about not letting Mom get me down. Right now, she’d be working, so I sent her a text about not coming back to the apartment this weekend and asked for bikini advice.

The bikini thing was worrying. Could I get a beach body in a couple of days? Even thinking like that was nuts. I didn’t know what Stone expected, but he had a good enough idea of the shape of me. Removing a layer of clothes wasn’t going to reveal a supermodel underneath. I’d be less stressed if I had some idea of what was going to happen in Rhode Island.

I wished I could find the list again. In reading, I’d stumbled at the ‘Kiss a famous person’ and the betrayal I’d felt. And, true to his word, Stone had never mentioned the kiss again.

Of course, I was disappointed. Every single night in bed, I was disappointed that during the day, nothing more had happened beyond Stone’s teasing/not-teasing, flirting/not-flirting, unintentionally (I hoped) playing whack-a-mole with my emotions. I couldn’t tell if Stone was leading me on or if, just like his readers, I was inserting myself into a fictional narrative.

I’d look back on all of this one day as I folded laundry in a suburban house, with a couple of children playing in the yard and a husband due home from his white-collar job in the city, and laugh at the absurdity of my man-crush. At coffee mornings, I’d tell the other moms about the time I’d worked for the famous author and how I’d kissed him to help him write a book.

Stone would probably be onto his third wife, still making the most-read lists on the entertainment and gossip sites, and those moms would gasp and say what a manwhore he was, but how he was hot and dangerous too. For a small moment, I’d be held in awe.

Yes, my short brush with Stone would be enough for me.

* * *

Stone looked gorgeous. His jeans fit perfectly, and the t-shirt almost hugged him, but draped just enough to make you think more carefully about what was behind it. The leather jacket he wore was butter soft, and I wanted to slide my hands inside and see if the cotton of his shirt had the same qualities. Beneath all that soft cloth, I knew, was a body that was hard. Around his neck was a casually looped Damien Hirst skull scarf. I worried he’d get mugged for it.

His bag was a classic Louis Vuitton Keepall. I knew about his luggage and scarf because I looked them up on my cell when he was standing off to the side of the platform making a call while we waited for our train at Penn Station. I only did that because Carrie had asked for every detail, and when the time came for my completely normal wife-life, I wanted the finer details of my time with Stone cemented in my memory so that my story would be laced with authenticity.

My new approach for being with Stone had almost settled my crush. This was a project, a blip in my otherwise mundane life that I’d document to the last detail the way one does a vacation on an exotic island. A once in a lifetime memory to treasure.

In comparison, my own luggage was a plain, hard shell wheelie in black, with silver trim. It had looked classy when I bought it, and at least it wasn’t covered in psychedelic flowers, which was the one Carrie had talked me out of buying. It had caught my eye because I knew it would irritate my mother, but Carrie suggested it wasn’t the right way to escape her narcissistic hold. Better to do it with counseling than luggage choices. She was probably right.

We traveled first-class, and as the train rolled out of the station, I settled into the luxurious seat in the near-empty car. Stone gave me the seat by the window, and he shifted in beside me, immediately opening his laptop. I should have been pleased with his new work ethic, but for some reason, I was stupidly excited and hoping we could chat through the journey.

I watched out the window for a bit, then pulled out my Kindle. I was up to book six on the Steele Heart series binge I’d been on since taking the contract. I angled myself slightly so that Stone couldn’t see what I was reading. It was easy to tell I was approaching another torrid sex scene—they appeared in every other chapter, after all—and I didn’t want him to see the effect the eroticism of his writing had on me.

The train ride was relatively smooth, but the occasional corner and bump meant our legs brushed. The first time it happened, I snapped mine together, keeping my focus on the story as I casually relaxed my legs again. Stone hadn’t moved his, so I decided the next time we touched, I’d stay in place and see what happened.

I tried to concentrate on the story, then tried not to as Steele, the book’s character, went down on the lucky female lead, licking her, penetrating her with his fingers. The carriage began to feel airless, making me tug at the neck of the sweater I wore, eventually pulling it off.

Stone spoke as I eased the sweater over my head, trying not to wreck the hairstyle I’d spent twenty minutes on this morning.

“Heating up there, Poppins?”

“I think it’s the air conditioner. They must have it up too high,” I lied, my voice muffled through the sweater still covering my head. I finally freed myself, stuffing the garment alongside me, only to see that my Kindle had gone from the table.

I glanced at Stone, who was nodding, his focus on my missing Kindle. He looked up and gave me a grin, complete with dimples and a wink.

“This works for you, huh?”

“Sarah said I had to read your books.”

“Because romance isn’t your thing.”

“I don’t usually read it.”

“Of course you don’t. Nobody actually reads it in the same way nobody actually masturbates.” He flicked through a few pages. “Here you go,” he said, passing it back to me. “I found you the really hot part. He fucks her pressed against the floor-to-ceiling window of his penthouse. It’s night, and the lights are on. Across in another building, someone watches. Steele knows this, but the girl, Lissa, she’s completely oblivious. He makes her bend a little at the waist to give their watcher a good view of her perfectly enhanced tits that scarcely move—filled as they are with silicone—as Steele pounds into her. When he’s close to blowing his load, he pulls out, puts her to her knees, and finishes in her mouth.”

I swallowed and squeezed my legs together to ease the ache in my pussy. “Thanks,” I muttered, taking my Kindle from him and slapping the cover closed.

“Hope I didn’t spoil the story. There’s a lot more detail that I probably missed telling you. I can demonstrate, if you’d like.”

Dear God, his voice. I still needed more air. Trying to keep my breathing normal was impossible when my body had increased its demand for oxygen. I pushed to my feet. “Excuse me.” I edged past him. “I need...the bathroom.”

Squeezing past Stone meant a lot of leg-on-leg contact. He steadied me with his hands on my hips as the train cornered at exactly the wrong moment. I made it to the bathroom, pushed the door closed, leaned against it, and pulled in some long, deep breaths.

I don’t think I was inflating what had just happened back there with my imagination. The offer to demonstrate still rang in my ears. If I died now, with those being the last words I ever heard, I’d die happy—not necessarily fulfilled, but happy. In the mirror, I looked the same, if not a little flushed. I splashed cold water over my face, ruining the barely nude makeup I’d carefully applied. With a paper tissue, I blotted my eyes. At least my mascara had remained intact.

I wanted to text Carrie to ask her what to do, but my phone and handbag were back at my seat. Really, I needed to take control. Carrie was good for wardrobe decisions and chatting, but I couldn’t make her my Magic 8 ball, seeking advice for every move in my life.

I braced my hands on the vanity and took a few more breaths. I couldn’t hide here in the bathroom all the way to Providence. I straightened up, tugged on my blouse, and exited the bathroom.

He was waiting for me outside the door. In an instant, I wasn’t on the train, but in Stone’s arms. He backed me into this little nook right near the point where you could cross over to the next car.

“Stone, what are you doing? Somebody will see us.”

“I’ve got you covered, Poppins.”

And he did. I knew he meant that jammed in this spot, all anyone would see was his back and the obvious fact that he was kissing somebody. I hadn’t forgotten his mouth, the feel of his lips, the taste of him, but this kiss was different. It came with a hard urgency, a knee wedged between my thighs and a more sexual than seductive feel.

My world turned into a blazing white light, and I totally went for it. I abandoned every idea of keeping my crush under control as I fought his tongue with my own, biting his lip this time as he drew away from me, then came back for a second round. Suddenly, he broke off, murmuring something about ‘that’s two’, and he led me by the hand back to our seats.

My. God.

He helped me into my seat, sat me down, then followed, sitting on his hip a little to face me.

I finally regained my senses. “Is this another thing we’ll never mention again?” I asked.

“You taste fucking divine, Poppins. I wanted to tell you that after the first kiss, but I’d made that promise not to talk about it. Now? Now, I don’t think I can stop.”

I tried hard to make sense of what was happening, the other part of me trying to catalog it, remember every detail, and throw caution to the wind and run with whatever the hell was going on here.

“I know about the list,” I blurted in case a second kiss had been written on the bottom of it and I’d failed to read that far. He should have been embarrassed. Any normal person would be, but Stone looked pleased with himself.

“I know you do,” he said. “You’re a lousy snoop. I found it on the floor, and you hadn’t even folded it properly. Don’t ever go for a spying job, because you’d be discovered by dawn.”

“Because I’m honest, Stone. I don’t make secret lists.”

“No, you just read them.”

While we spoke, he kept his eyes on my face, his own quite unreadable. Sure, he looked calm in contrast to the chaos taking place in my head, but this felt distinctly different to any conversation we’d previously had. His attention was squarely aimed at me.

“I shouldn’t have done that, and neither should you. What is the list, anyway?”

“I thought you’d have recognized it.” He slipped a strand of hair that had come loose away from my face. “Need these sweet cheeks uncovered so I can watch you turn scarlet.”

Right on cue, a rush of heat shot up my neck to my face.

“There you go.” He rubbed the back of his knuckles down my face. The shiver it caused left a low tremble that settled in my stomach.

“So, the list,” he continued. “It’s all those things you need to experience. We’ll work through them.”

“Are you crazy?’

“That’s almost a compliment.”

“What makes you think you know the things I want to experience?”

“How wrong have I been so far?”

He had a point. All the things we’d done had appeared on my vision board in an effort to manifest them. And it had worked, even though I knew the whole law of attraction thing was a load of nonsense. That’s when I got the idea. “Stone Logan, did you stalk my Pinterest?”

“Guilty. And Facebook, and Instagram.”

I experienced that terrible moment when somebody says they remember you from a party and you dash through the events of the night to work out if you’d done anything you needed to defend. I’m sure I hadn’t posted anything too awful, as if the vision boards weren’t bad enough. Still, I needed to find out where he intended to head with this. “So, having gone through my sorry dreams, what did you think?”

“Are you fishing?”

“Don’t worry, I really don’t care,” I said, turning to look out the window, caring all the way to my core.

He slipped a finger under my chin, angling my face back to him. “You care, and I’m going to tell you. I found a young woman wishing to do things but incapable of taking that first step. So I decided to make a list and show her how to walk through it. Then I decided, what the heck, I’d walk through it with her. And I’m really glad I did because I’m jaded, and I find it hard to get jazzed up about stuff these days. Your pleasure is my pleasure.”

“Can I see the list again? I want to know a bit more about the pleasure promise.”

“And I want to surprise you, so that’s a no.”

I pouted and feigned immense disappointment.

“That’s not even cute, Poppins. You’ll have to try harder.”

“What if I blush?” I asked.

He grinned. “I bet you can’t summon any color.”

He was right. Trying to blush was as impossible as trying not to be affected by his kiss. Then I remembered something. “What did you say, back there after you kissed me?”

“Oh, now you’re changing color. I said ‘that’s two’. See if you can work out why I’d say something like that.”