The door opened with a shrill metallic creak and slammed heavily behind me. I turned and tried opening it back up, to no avail. The day was hot, windy, and I was stuck on the roof of a building.

Holy crap. Max had better be up here or I am going to flip out.

“Over here!” Max called from somewhere to my right.

I blew out a relieved breath and walked around a large electrical box. Max stood, alone, with a blanket, pillows, and a giant spread of food and beer at his feet.

“Happy Independence Day, Petal. Ready to be f**ked outside?”

He looked unbelievable, dressed casually in jeans and a blue T-shirt, tanned, muscular arms, and all six foot five of him moving toward me. His physical presence, out in the sun and with the wind whipping his shirt all over his chest . . . holy hell. Let’s just say it did things to me.

“I asked if you were ready to be f**ked outside,” he said quietly, bending to kiss me. He tasted like beer, and apples, and something inherently Max-like. Warmth, sex, comfort . . . he was my comfort food, the thing you indulge in every now and then, without guilt, knowing that it grounds you even as it’s probably not all that good for you.

“Yes,” I said. “So you’re not worried about helicopters or cameras or”—I looked past him, pointing to the people on a roof in the distance—“the people over there with binoculars.”

“Nope.”

I narrowed my eyes, ran my hands up his chest to his neck. “Why don’t you ever worry about being seen?”

“Because it would change me to worry about it. It would keep me indoors, or make me paranoid, or stop me from f**king you on the roof. Consider what a tragedy that would be.”

“A big one.” It occurred to me that he was just as indifferent to being seen as not. He didn’t seek it; he didn’t avoid it. He just lived around the reality of it. It was such a different way of interacting with the press and the public that it threw me a little. It seemed so simple.

He grinned, and kissed the tip of my nose. “Let’s eat.”

He’d brought baguettes, cheese, sausage, and fruit. Little cookies with jam thumbprints, and perfect, tiny macarons. On a small tray were bowls of olives, cornichons, and almonds. In a metal bucket were several bottles of dark beer.

“Quite the spread,” I said.

He laughed. “I’ll say.” He ran a hand up my side, across my stomach, and to my breast. “I plan to get my fill.”

He pulled me down onto the blanket, opened a beer, and poured it into two glasses.

“Do you live in this building?” I asked, taking a bite of apple. The idea that we were this close to his apartment made me feel faintly queasy.

“I live at the building where you dropped me after the handy the other day. I own the apartment here but Mum lives there.” He held up his hand just as I opened my mouth to protest. “She’s visiting my sister in Leeds for a couple of weeks. She won’t be coming up to the roof.”

“Will anyone be coming up here?”

He shrugged, popping an olive into his mouth. “I don’t think so. Not sure, though.” Chewing, he regarded me for a minute, eyes smiling. “How do you feel about that?”

Apprehension warmed my belly, and I looked back to the locked door, wondering how it would feel to be spread on the blanket beneath Max, feel him pounding into me, and then suddenly hearing the sound of the door opening and slamming shut.

“Okay,” I said, smiling.

“It has the best view for fireworks,” he explained. “They set off four simultaneous shows you can see over the river. I figured it was something you’d like to see.”

I pulled him closer to me and kissed his jaw. “I’m actually most excited to see you totally naked.”

With a little growl, Max pushed some pillows to the side and laid me down on the thick blanket. He smiled, closed his eyes, and kissed me.

Damn, why did he have to feel so good? It would be easier to be casual—though certainly so much less satisfying—if Max were a mediocre lover, or treated me primarily as a convenient way to get off every week. But he was tender, attentive, and so sure of himself in this respect that it took very little for him to make me bow beneath him, ache for him, beg him quietly.

He loved the begging. He’d tease me to get more of it. I’d beg him to tease me longer.

In times like this, when he was kissing me, running his hands over my skin and pinching me in sensitive, hungry places, I struggled to not compare this lover to the only other I’d ever had. Andy was quick and rough. After about a year of playful sex, our contact never really was about exploration or sharing something. It had been in our bed, sometimes on the couch. Once or twice in the kitchen.