Ooh, the bliss.

Amanda slid down the smooth enamel surface of her sitting bathtub and brought her knees to her chest, which was the only way to have both her chest and legs in the water at the same time. She did miss the proper baths she used to stretch out in and enjoy at her old place. But a sitting tub was the only way to soak in such a tiny bathroom, and it was still better than not having the option at all.

Besides, this was her bathtub—the lawful property of Amanda Roussel—and not her interfering landlady’s tub. Just for that, it was worthy of Amanda’s love.

The idea behind taking a hot bath in mid-June was to relax her body enough to fall asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow. And the reason she needed to instantly drop off was to avoid fantasizing about Kes. Those fantasies were too wild, too dangerous.

Too real.

Having made love to the man, she couldn’t tell herself his avatar was just the fruit of her imagination. She couldn’t persuade herself Kes was a terrible lover or a pervert because he was neither of those things. He was the exact opposite.

After Rob broke up with her, Amanda’s sex life had been a disaster. Her first post-Rob date—financial analyst Victor—told her over the main course in an upscale restaurant that the importance of sex to a good relationship was vastly overrated. She agreed, pleased to have met a man who didn’t objectify women. But then he informed her during dessert that he hadn’t had sex in four years and wasn’t planning on having any in the foreseeable future.

Amanda didn’t bother seeing him again.

Her second date—tech start-up founder Laurent—enjoyed sex, all right. He also loved food—carnally. She should have suspected his adoration went too far when, on their first date, he plunged his fingers into the topping of her strawberry cake and plucked a strawberry. Slowly, he licked it and then attempted to feed it to her.

She politely declined.

Four more chaste dates prescribed by her Guide to Perfection later, Amanda upgraded their relationship to Stage Two: Sleeping with the Candidate. She invited Laurent over to sample her wine collection and the delicious chocolate mousse she’d whipped up for the occasion. They finished the sampling in bed with said mousse smeared all over her body. She felt so sticky and upset about the quasi-certain ruin of her expensive sheets that she didn’t enjoy a moment of his elaborate foreplay.

But she gave him another chance.

And he blew it by turning up on her doorstep with three bananas and a pot of honey. With a lascivious smile, he told her he was going to put those items to a very good use.

She kicked him out.

Her third date, Fabrice, was a schoolteacher. Under normal circumstances, she wouldn’t have considered a man with such a low income potential, but she was traumatized. And desperate.

Fabrice showed good promise in the beginning. He had a reassuringly conservative relationship with food and didn’t commit a single gaffe in any of the five pre-sex dates. Better still, Fabrice wore unusually elegant shoes for someone on a teacher’s salary.

A couple of weeks into Stage Two, he invited her to his parents’ house—where he still lived—and showed her his BDSM playroom in the attic.

“Seriously?” Amanda did her best to hide her disappointment behind a sneer. “Did I ever say or do anything that made you think I was into this sort of stuff?”

“But . . . I thought . . . I spotted a copy of Fifty Shades on your bookshelves, and I thought . . .”

She let out a heavy sigh. “I also own a copy of Twilight. It doesn’t mean I want to be bitten by a vampire.”

He looked down at his feet.

“You should’ve done some market research first,” she admonished, “before you bought all this . . . equipment.”

“I did!” His expression was both hurt and defiant. “I read several articles in men’s magazines. They all said the same thing: women can’t resist a man like Christian Grey.”

“Poor fellow, you don’t get it, do you?” Amanda breathed as much pity as she could into her tone—she wasn’t going to let on how disappointed and betrayed she was feeling. “What women find irresistible about Christian Grey are his billions, not his whips and paddles. If he were a schoolteacher with a playroom in his parents’ attic, how do you think they’d react to him?”

He jutted out his chin but didn’t answer.

“Well, I think they’d call him a disgusting pervert and wouldn’t want to touch him with a ten-foot pole.” She spun around and marched out the door, not bothering to say good-bye.

What was wrong with men these days? Why couldn’t they just make love to a woman without using crutches and contraptions?

She’d enjoyed 9½ Weeks as much as the next cultivated person. But even the most tasteful things Mickey Rourke did to Kim Basinger on-screen would be messy and off-putting in the real world. Especially in Amanda’s world, where discomfort extinguished desire and ridicule blew it to pieces.

After Fabrice, she went out with a couple of high-profile businessmen whose lovemaking turned out to be every bit as self-centered as their conversation.

And after that, it was just her and Faceless Man.

Until that mind-blowing weekend in Deauville.

Now, Kes was a different matter. She couldn’t think of anything he’d done in bed—or in the beach cabin they’d borrowed—that she hadn’t liked. In fact, with respect to most of the things he did, the word like was too mild to describe her reaction. Take pleasure would be a more adequate expression. Savor would be an even better fit. As for what he’d done to her with his clever tongue, relish might begin to convey how she’d felt.

Amanda’s right hand went to rest on her tummy and then slid lower, settling between her legs. Her treacherous mind blocked out the inconvenient fact that the very reason she was taking a bath was to avoid doing what she was about to do now. She threw her head back, closed her eyes . . . and felt someone—or something—staring at her.

She sat up and tensed.

It was a spider. A big, black, disgusting creature sat across from her on the edge of the tub. It was close enough for her to discern each of its eight legs.

Had there been another human within earshot, she would’ve screamed. But seeing as there was none, she didn’t. She just froze.

So did the spider.

Right. OK. She could handle this. All she needed was an object that was sufficiently heavy and broad to squash the critter. Amanda pictured herself picking up one of her pumps and hitting the spider with it.

Yuck. She’d have to clean its revolting remains from the sole of her shoe afterward, and that was more than she could handle.

The alternative was to finish her bath, lock herself up in her bedroom, and hope that the spider would go away by dawn the same way it had come in. And if it was still there, well, she’d have to get over her squeamishness and sacrifice one of her least favorite shoes.

She glowered at the mini-monster. “Stop staring, you perv, and turn around.”

The spider shifted its position.

Amanda rolled her eyes and scrambled to rinse the soap off her body. She stepped out of the bathtub, grabbed the towel, and rushed into her bedroom. As she dried herself in there, a memory began to take shape in the back of her mind.

A happy memory.

It was a book, or more precisely, a series of beautifully illustrated books called Christophe’s Adventures in the Enchanted Forest. She hadn’t given them a thought in two decades, but she still remembered most of the stories and the pictures that accompanied them.

Amanda must have been five or six at the time of her Christophe mania, and she insisted that her dad read to her from those books every night. She just couldn’t get enough of Christophe . . . who happened to be a little spider. Christophe was funny and curious. He was, as a matter of fact, her best friend for at least a year until she finally acquired her first nonfictional buddy, Magalie.

Wasn’t it ironic that she should remember Christophe when she was considering the least disgusting method of eliminating the spider in her bathroom? The real-life thing was a lot less cute than her book hero, and it couldn’t sing or dance. Even if it had turned around when she told it to stop staring.

Which was, of course, a mere coincidence.

Hmm, did spiders have brains?

Amanda pulled on her pj’s and slipped between her crispy Egyptian cotton sheets. To her surprise, instead of going over her day, she said a clumsy prayer that her voyeuristic bath crasher move its little ass and vacate her apartment during the night. As she addressed the universe, she felt her ears flame with embarrassment. Was she getting sentimental? Was she praying for an arachnid because of her trip down memory lane?

No way.

She shook her head. Amanda Roussel had never been too squeamish to flatten a pest. Neither was she a touchy-feely ninny who would naturally evolve into a crazy spider lady in her old age.

She had hesitated earlier only because . . . because . . .

She loved her shoes.