“Where are we going?”

“My place. I’m cooking you dinner.”

“I could have worn jeans for that.”

He smirked. “Might want to ask where we’re going in the future, rather than what you should wear. Because my answer’s always going to be sexy dress and heels, even if we’re going to McDonald’s.”

I laughed, stepping aside. “You’re impossible. Come in for a minute. I need to tell Izzy I’m leaving.”

Inside, Izzy had emerged from her bedroom and was hanging on the refrigerator door. She glanced up. “Hi, Hunter.” And went back to staring at the food.

“I made you ravioli.”

“I’m on a diet. Do we have anything low carb?”

“What? A diet? Since when? And better yet, why? You’re a size two.”

“Since this morning.”

I walked to the refrigerator, took out the ravioli and sauce and put it on the counter. “Start your diet tomorrow.” I kissed her cheek. “Mrs. Whitman knows I’m going out. I won’t be home late.”

She shrugged. “Whatever.”

“No one in the apartment while I’m gone.”

Izzy rolled her eyes. “There goes the rager I had planned.”

The nerves the wine had calmed were back in full force once I was on the way to Hunter’s apartment. I stared out the car window, debating whether I was ready to sleep with him. I’d thought we were going out to eat, and since he knows I have to be home early for Izzy, it wasn’t something I’d been worried about. Now dinner was at his house, and I knew all it would take was one kiss and my decision-making skills would be hampered. I needed to make a decision while I was not under the influence of his hard body pressed against mine.

Hunter side-glanced to me and back to the road. “What’s going on in that head of yours?”

“Nothing.”

We stopped at a light, and Hunter turned to me. He didn’t say a word. Instead, his eyes pointed down to where my hands were picking lint off my dress that wasn’t there. Then his gaze met mine.

“Shut up,” I said.

He chuckled, and the light changed, pulling his attention back to the road. I’d thought I’d been granted a reprieve, but a half a block later, he casually said, “We’re not having sex tonight, if that makes you relax a little more.”

Did he just say…

“What?”

“Sex. We’re not having it.”

“Why not?”

“Because tonight I’m making you dinner. We’re going to share a good meal and talk about sex. I want to know what you’re up for and what you’re not. But you have to be home early for Izzy.”

“Isn’t that a tad presumptuous of you? Assuming you’re the one who gets to decide when we have sex. What if I don’t plan on ever having sex with you?”

“I think your wet panties when we kiss says you do plan on having sex with me.”

“My panties are not wet when we kiss.” I totally lied.

“Okay. I’ll check next time to prove you wrong.”

I didn’t put it past him to do exactly that. “Let’s back this conversation up a little. So you’ve decided we aren’t having sex tonight. What if I told you I wanted to have sex? You wouldn’t have sex with me?”

He actually considered my question for a minute, which I found rather amusing. “What I meant was, I wasn’t going to try to have sex with you tonight. But if you try to have it with me, by all means, you’ll be getting fucked.”

I probably should have been offended for a dozen different reasons, but I wasn’t in the slightest. Instead, the ludicrousness of the conversation made me burst out laughing. “You know what?”

“What?”

“I was stressing over us potentially having sex tonight. And now I’m not. So as strange as this conversation was, it actually made me feel better.”

Hunter smiled as he pulled into an underground parking garage. “Glad to help. And trust me, I haven’t even begun to make you feel better yet.”

***

“Wow. This is a sublet?” The apartment Hunter was staying in was really nice. It wasn’t huge, but it was modern, with high ceilings and an open floor plan, so it felt bigger than the square footage—though it was the outside space that elevated the place from really nice to damn spectacular. New York and outside space weren’t normally bedfellows. But this place had a balcony big enough for two lounge chairs, a table that seated six, a barbeque, and a dozen potted plants.

“It’s owned by Khaill-Jergin, the builder I work for. They keep this one and a few others as corporate apartments, mostly for when executives from the London office are in town. I lucked out that one was available.”

“It’s beautiful.”

Hunter slid the sliding glass doors open and held his hand out for me to step through first.

“The view is sensational,” I said. “Yet it feels serene at the same time.”

Hunter smiled. “That was the goal. Each project has an essence statement. This building was an oasis in the jungle. It opened five years ago. After I graduated, I did my internship with the architect who designed this building at Khaill. The initial design was done, but the architect winds up doing a lot of revisions while the building is going up. So this was the first project I ever worked on.

“Wow. That’s really cool. Honestly, most of the time, I don’t even think about the buildings I’m walking past every day. It must be amazing to walk by one and look up, knowing you designed it.”

He nodded. I’d become plenty acquainted with conceited Hunter, but I’d never met the humble side of him before. I liked it.

Come to think of it, I liked conceited Hunter, too.

“You warm enough to have a glass of wine out here before dinner?”

“Sure. I’d love that.”

Hunter went inside and returned a few minutes later with two glasses of merlot. He came up behind me, handed me my wine, and leaned both wrists on the rail on either side of me, caging me in as we took in the sunset and sipped. The silence was comfortable, although the feel of him so close behind me, and the profound effect it had on my body, was unnerving. After a few minutes and the feel of his warm breath tickling my neck, I felt my breaths coming quicker and deeper.

“Turn around, Natalia.”

Hunter’s voice was low and so damn seductive. I waited for him to step back so I could maneuver around to face him. After a few more heavy breaths, I realized he had no intention of giving me space, so I turned while locked between his arms. Between the close proximity, his light blue eyes, and his intoxicating smell, I needed more wine. Raising my glass to my lips, I proceeded to down the half-full glass.

When I was done, Hunter raised a brow.

I held up the empty glass and shook it back and forth. A snippet of the conversation we’d had in the car replayed in my head. “I wasn’t going to try to have sex with you tonight. But if you try to have it with me, by all means, you’ll be getting fucked.”

I bit my lip, and Hunter seemed to read my mind. Taking the empty glass from my hand, he set it down on the floor next to us, along with his own half-full glass. When I unconsciously wet my lips, he muttered a string of curses before planting his mouth over mine.

The taste of wine on his tongue was enough to make me feel like I’d drunk the entire bottle myself. My head was woozy, my body tingled, and I wanted to climb the damn man like a tree. He pressed his body even tighter to mine, and my back arched from the railing toward his as my fingers clenched a fistful of his hair.

He groaned when I yanked. “I can’t wait to be inside you. You make me hard as a rock.”

With a thrust of his hips, he demonstrated that he wasn’t exaggerating. Oh God. I was so desperate I could probably come from just dry humping with this man. Resisting taking things further was a challenge I wasn’t sure I could endure for too long.

When the kiss broke, Hunter looked just as bamboozled by our chemistry as I was. We stared into each other’s eyes for a while.

“You’re really good at that,” I told him.

His smile was playful as his brows drew down. “What?”

“Kissing.”

He leaned in and brushed his lips with mine. “I’m good at kissing other places, too. Just say the word and I’ll show you.”

I laughed. “Seriously. Why don’t you have a girlfriend, Hunter? You’re handsome, smart, have a great job, own a beautiful house, you’re an amazing kisser, and you can fix a sink and build things. You’re prime boyfriend material.”

His playful look turned serious. He also pulled back a bit, though he didn’t release me from the confines of his arms and the balcony rail.

“I don’t want that type of relationship.” He studied me carefully. “I like you. You’re beautiful and smart. We enjoy each other. But I’m not looking for anything serious.”

Even though he’d been upfront since we met, and I was not looking for a relationship at all, somehow it stung to hear him say that.

“What does that mean, exactly? That I’ll be in your bed one night and someone else the next?”

“Absolutely not. We’d be exclusive. To be clear, that’s a two-way street. My expectation, once you’re in my bed, is that you won’t be fucking anyone else either.”