There’s something so intensely good, a fierce connection—invisible but intimate—in waking up to find a man watching you sleep. It’s not the first time I catch Malcolm watching me, but it’s the first time I don’t start. The first time I open my eyes, meet his quiet stare, and feel a pool of heat in my stomach build and build as I slowly start to smile.

“Hey,” I say.

“Hey.” He cups my cheek, and the brush of his thumb over my lips makes me turn my head into the touch and savor it a little. “Hmm,” I say, admiring how adorable he looks recently awake.

We have officially hit the “four” mark in the sex department, and a part of me wonders if this is it.

He looks at me with respect this morning, as if he liked all the sides of myself I showed him yesterday, and I can’t miss that glint in his eye that somehow silently tells me, I know how you like it. Lazily, he asks me about work, specifically he asks me what I’m working on. It’s the second time he’s asked me—the first was at the Tunnel. My heart leaps a little bit, but he’s too relaxed after all the night’s sex to notice.

I turn the topic around with a frown mixed with a smile. “Don’t you have work too? What are you doing in bed with me?”

“Getting hard.”

I laugh.

With a wry smile, he tilts my chin. “I had a good time last night.” He kisses me softly, no tongue, and it feels as intense as if he’d tongued me.

I count down to ten. Then I groan in protest as I wiggle out of his arm. “Be a good boy and wait,” I say. “I don’t want Gina to have a heart attack.”

I kick the sheets off, slip into my terry robe, and pad out into the kitchen to put coffee on. I come back into the room to brush my teeth and wash my face, then I ponder whether I should put on some makeup. I stare at my reflection. I look bare . . . my skin pale, my sad-panda eyes all dark and tired after last night. But my irises are glowing bright and I can’t really keep my lips from curling upward at the corners. I grab a lipstick and a brush, but then stop myself. It’s not like this is going anywhere, is it? It’s not like I want him to fall in love with me—it was just a hookup. So I force myself to drop the brush and to leave the lipstick where it is. Shaking my head at myself, I don’t bother primping when I go back out to check on coffee and then come back to my room with a cup for each of us in my hands.

In true man-form, Sin’s spread on the bed, completely useless and clearly spent from fucking this lady right here. The duvet is at his ankles, every inch of him bare, one muscled arm behind his head, the other stretched out under the pillow I was on. Fucking god, he’s glorious. I want to catalogue every detail of him—I know Gina will want to hear all about it . . . so will Wynn . . . but he’s in my bed, and I don’t even want to share the details about how he looks in it with my internal journalist.

“What’s that?”

Checking out the goods I carry, he sits up, the muscles of his arms rippling with the move, and smiles at me. When I automatically smile in return, I feel vulnerable, real . . . and human. Why I chose to open up to a guy like him is beyond me. But I feel like my walls are still not erect. I don’t want to put them back up yet.

“Coffee, or me?” I lift the coffee cup and my eyebrow at the same time.

His laugh is soft and raspy as he drags a hand through his rumpled hair, looking even more handsome as he tsks and shakes his head. “You don’t know by now?”

“How greedy you are? You’re right, I do know. I bet you want both.”

He flashes an all-mischief smile as he pats the side of the bed, calling me back to him.

I head over with the coffee, and when he takes his cup, I slide into bed with him. We sip coffee in silence.

Before I’m finished with mine, he takes my cup and sets it on the nightstand closest to him. In one smooth, strong move, he presses me down on the bed and I fall back, breathless as he braces himself above me, his arms long and taut. He takes my fuzzy socks off. His fingers brush my arches, and I can’t hold back a choked little laugh. “Your feet are ticklish, Rachel?” He’s amused. I love how he says Ray-chel.

I nod, growing more and more breathless.

He presses his lips to mine, hard, not forcing me to open up, just soft, warm, demanding lips pressing down. I feel myself yield; and I love how he softens the kiss the moment he feels my resistance vanish. And I love what he’s doing now, giving me some earlobe love, licking me, tugging and kissing my lobe, his breath warm on my ear. “You’re such a man-eater, Rachel. I’m disappointed we didn’t break your bed, though.”