On Friday afternoon, I go splurge at Whole Foods because I’m not cooking cheap food for Greyson—I just couldn’t. So I bring home a brown bag full of healthy and fresh items, slip on the only apron I kept—a frilly yellow one from Anthropologie—and I cook a homemade dinner for him because it just seems like a nice “welcome home” thing to do.

Menu-wise I went for arugula and pear salad with goat cheese and a light vinaigrette, my special pasta pesto, a loaf of homemade bread, and apple tarts dusted with cinnamon for dessert.

I’ve always done my best thinking when I’m cooking. This time as I’m chopping and prepping the food, I think of how I’m slowly beginning to recognize my own needs, as a woman, needs I’d never realized were not being met by sleeping with a dozen different guys, needs that couldn’t possibly be met until you make a real connection—scary, powerful, inexplicable—with someone. Someone you least expect. Greyson’s face haunts me—serious, smiling, thoughtful. I can’t stop recalling and replaying his different kinds of smiles. The smirky one, the sensual one, the indulgent one, the sleepy one, the flat one he gives Pandora, and the one that’s almost there, but not quite, as though he won’t give himself free rein to give in to it . . .

I love that best.

Because it feels like I’m pulling it out even when he doesn’t want me to. Like he’s yielding something to me he didn’t plan to give me.

“Something smells good around here and my bet is that it’s you.”

My blood soars when I recognize the warm, smooth voice behind me. Somehow, Greyson got inside and crept up on me! Without making a single noise. And now he slides his big arm around my waist and spins me around, the move placing over six inches of bad boy with his lips only a hairbreadth away from mine. My senses reel as I absorb his nearness and slide my hands in a fast, greedy exploration up his thick arms.

“Hey,” I gasp, “I—”

He kisses me for a full minute.

A minute and a half.

Our lips moving, blending, my knees feeling mushy because his kisses are better than anything I’ve ever had. And now I can’t think or talk or hardly stand on my own two feet.

He pulls away and I feel myself blush at his heated appraisal. “I like this,” he whispers and signals at my apron, and the delighted light in his eyes makes me feel like I just won top prize on Iron Chef—and he hasn’t even tasted my food yet.

“You’re going to like it even more when you realize I plan to feed you dessert myself,” I whisper. His dirty mind seems to get the best of him, for he looks instantly ravenous. Laughing, I urge him down on one of the two stools at the end of the kitchen island. “It’s not what you think, it’s actual food!”

“Are you taking this off for me?” He tugs the sash of my apron.

“Maybe if you finish your food like a good boy.”

He chuckles, a rich, full sound, his grin devastating, taking over my brain. “You like it better when I’m bad,” he points out.

Biting back my grin, I pull out the pasta dish with a glove, aware of him noticing that I’m only wearing a short dress under my apron—maybe he can even see I’m wearing no panties. The thought sends a tingle through me.

There’s a silence and a creak of the stool as he leans back, kicks off his shoes, and there’s a confused, almost amused tone to his husky voice when he speaks to me, rubbing his jaw as he watches me wind around the kitchen. “I keep wondering what you’re doing all the time.” He pauses, then, his voice lower and thicker than ever, “You miss me?”

“What kind of question is that?”

He gives me a roguish grin. “One I want to know the answer to.”

I return the grin with one of my own as I serve us both, and when I set down his salad and pasta, he clamps his bare hand around my wrist. “Do you?”

Our eyes meet, and he gently stokes a growing fire in me as he rubs his thumb along the inside of my wrist.

“Do you?” he asks, softly.

“Yes,” I whisper. I trail my free hand across his jaw and impulsively lean over to kiss his cheek. Adding, near his ear, “A lot.”

He watches me like a predator as I go take my seat on the stool across the island.

We smile at each other, those smiles that seem to spread our lips simultaneously; from the moment we met it’s always been like that. I notice, at last, that he’s brought wine, and I watch as he pops open the bottle, searches my cabinet for glasses, and comes back to pour a glass for me, and another for him.

We clink glasses, smiling, and before he drinks, he murmurs, “To you, princess.”

“No, to you,” I counter, taking a sip.

“You like going against me, don’t you,” he purrs, still swirling and sniffing his own glass.

I laugh and suddenly I feel like the sexiest thing in existence as I start to eat. As if my every move is meant to entice him, excite and exhilarate him.

Not even my breaths escape his notice.

I feel him look at my fingers, my bare arms, my bare shoulders, my lips. I fork some salad and watch him tear off a piece of bread and stick it into his mouth. We sip quietly, watching each other, savoring each other’s company. The look of each other. The energy of each other. I’m a decorator who believes in feng shui. I believe in yin and yang. I have never felt such a yang to my yin. Ever.

“Do you like the meal?” I ask him.

“Am I the first man you’ve cooked for?”

I narrow my eyes, sipping a bit of red wine for courage, but there’s no cure for the nervous spinning in my stomach. “Truth? Yes. You are. So think very well about your answer,” I warn.

“Every spoonful was as delicious as you.”

I smile. “Really?” Feeling insecure, I check his plates and notice he’s wiped them both clean.

He edges back, and his gaze drops from my eyes to my shoulders to my br**sts. “I’m ready for dessert.”

“Wait, mister, I’m not finished. I have some actual dessert that’s not me, you know!” I twirl some pasta onto my fork a little faster and ram it into my mouth, licking some pesto off the corner of my lips.

Greyson watches me intently, and he looks so big, dark, and sexy in my apartment, I’m not accustomed to the deep little pangs of longing springing up inside my chest.

“How was your week?” he asks.

A flash of feelings stabs me when I remember all the nights I’ve lain in bed, more frightened than I want to be, and more lonely than I’ve ever felt in my life. Maybe it’s because I know who I want to be with right now. Maybe it’s because I feel vulnerable and scared.

“Actually, good,” I lie. “I wanted to ask you. I got an offer for my car.”

“You’re selling your car?”

I gaze at him in despair and notice the sudden grim set to his mouth. “Yes, I’m selling it.” I get up and go get his empty plates as I tell him how much I was offered. “Do you think it’s a fair price?”

He’s silent as I carry his plates to the sink, tracking me with his gaze as he asks me, “Why do you need to sell it?”

I can’t help but notice he looks more than a little curious. He seems determined.

So I try going for lighthearted, including adding a casual shrug to my explanation. “Just have my eye on something else.”

One dark eyebrow goes up, followed by another, and then an achingly slow, clearly smart question. “Another car?”

He’s not buying it.

I wrack my brain for something to say that will be as far away from the truth as I can, until he speaks, sighing as though I wear him out, “They’re low-balling you. Don’t sell your f**king car, princess, not for that, not for anything.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” he grits out, “you need your car.”

“Not to go to the office,” I lightly counter, “and I can hitch a ride with friends to go out during the weekends.”

When he continues looking displeased, I feel instantly suspicious. “Why are you so protective of my car, Greyson?”

After a rather interesting silence, during which my heart melts in my chest, I answer for him. “Because thanks to that f**ked-up car, I hooked up with you.”

He hikes up one big shoulder in an angry shrug. “That car is you. It doesn’t go with anyone else.”

I feel giddy thinking he might feel protective of the spot where we met, but I’m also sad that I can’t explain to him that no matter how attached I am to that car, I’m more attached to myself. “My buyer is a young eighteen-year-old, she’ll have as much fun with it as I have.”

When he speaks again, his voice carries a unique force, almost like a command. “Nobody can ever have as much fun as you do. You are fun, Melanie. And life. And so is that crazy, sweet little blue Mustang.”

I bring my hand up to stifle my giggles, because he’s being terribly cute and protective, and when he scowls, I tell him, “I think it’s adorable, Greyson.”

“That word and I don’t go together, princess.”

“It’s adorable. You’re adorable.”

He stands as though he’s going to make me pay for that. I run toward my room, laughing, and say from the door, “Greyson, I know this will break your tender heart, but I really need to sell my car. I’ll just ask for a thousand more. What do you say? God, even that scowl you’re wearing is adorable.”

He throws his head back and laughs—the sound rich and deep—and when I realize he won’t ever get the direness of my circumstances, I excuse myself to the bedroom for a moment and call the interested party to ask for one thousand more.

The girl tells me she’ll talk to her dad and let me know. When I come back out, Greyson’s standing with his arms crossed, looking at me with the kind of look a man wears when he doesn’t know what the f**k to do with you.

“I counteroffered,” I explain, once again the word “adorable” whispering through my hair as he rubs a hand through his own in frustration.

“Ahh, princess. Really. I can’t even . . .” He shakes his head in obvious frustration.

“Greyson, it doesn’t matter!” I cry. “Even if the car is gone, you’ll always be both my and my Mustang’s hero, you know.”

Somehow aching to appease him—hey, his volatile energy feels like a tornado in the room—I approach him and brush my hand through his mussed-up hair as I try to smooth it out again, loving the softness, which is just about the only thing soft on his hard head. He growls and catches me by the waist, surprising me when he drops his head and sets his nose between my br**sts and kisses my cle**age with fierce tenderness.

“If you weren’t going to listen to me,” he murmurs, his voice muffled by my apron, “why ask me?”

“I like knowing your opinion.”

“Show me you like it by proving you’re listening to me, Melanie.”

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, rumpling his head playfully as I try to make him be happy again. The pleaser in me just can’t take his displeasure. Not his. “I’ll make it up to you.”

“Hmm.” His eyes glow like torches all of a sudden. “Make it up to me by telling me how you’d like to spend your twenty-fifth birthday,” he proposes.

A moment’s hesitation settles between us. What would he say if I told him I wanted to spend the day with him? Doing nothing but him all day? That I want him to tell me about his life, his family, that I just want to be with him because, lately, that’s when I’m happiest?

Prying free of his hold and forcing him to settle down on his seat, I bring over the cinnamon apple tart on a plate, then I boost myself up to sit on the island counter right in front of his seat. Using my lap as a table, I set my bare feet on his thighs and lift a spoon to feed him dessert.

“Where did you spend your twenty-fifth birthday?” I ask, spooning a little of the tart into his mouth.

He eats every spoonful I feed him, and the act is not as hot and sexy as I’d imagined it to be; it’s ten times more so. Because of those eyes. The way they watch me feed him like some predator biding his time for the real meal. “Probably drunk. Nowhere memorable. You braid your hair when you cook too?” he asks gruffly, tugging at my knot as I feed him another spoonful.

Something intensely intimate flares between us. Every second, he’s unlocking both my heart and my soul, and there’s no stopping the barrage of emotions overtaking me. Longing, tenderness, want, hunger, need, fear, happiness.

“It’s to keep my hair on my head and off my plates,” I tell him.

“Ahh,” he says, eyes twinkling as I bring up another spoonful of tart to his mouth. Watching as his tongue takes the spoon and runs around it teases all my senses. A buttery sensation flows across my thighs as I watch how his lips close over the spoon, how he savors it, how he watches me as he eats his tart, his eyes bright and hungry and brilliant like a bastard who knows I’m wet and ready for him. I feel like he’s baking me on the inside just like the oven baked my pie. As he takes the last bite, he tugs the tip of my braid and runs it under my chin, caressing me down my throat, and then . . . into my cle**age.