As Clara tried desperately not to think, Josh kissed along the line where her panties met her leg. The contact shot through the lower half of her body like a current. It had been an embarrassingly long time since anyone had touched her with sexual intent.

Josh employed his mouth and hands like a maestro as he made his way down one leg and then the other with devious patience, but he didn’t follow any discernible routine. He tempered his touch across various pressures and patterns, never lingering on one spot for long and avoiding the most pertinent areas of her anatomy entirely. Each maddening stroke made Clara more indignant, more desperate.

Finally, his knuckles brushed against the front of her underwear, the barely-there friction against the cotton leaving her breathless. But just when she thought he’d finally give her some relief, Josh did the opposite, moving away and starting another round of openmouthed kisses down her leg.

“Oh, come on.”

“Excuse me.” Josh nipped her lightly behind her knee and Clara let out a tiny, wholly involuntary squeak. “Was there something you wanted?” He had the nerve to sound innocent.

Clara clenched the arm of the sofa and bit back a groan, not knowing how much more of this slow-burn stuff she could stand. Was it rude to politely ask him to cut to the chase?

It wasn’t that she couldn’t appreciate his technique. The slow, tender touches loosened her limbs, making everything languid and hazy. But she’d been promised an orgasm and no matter how talented he was, Josh wasn’t going to deliver one by kissing her thighs. Clara raised her hips, offering him a helpful hint.

Instead of following directions, Josh removed his hands altogether, giving her nothing but the wet heat of his mouth as he kissed the cotton covering her core. “I’m not gonna let you rush me.”

When he brushed his hand over her knee, she swore she’d go mad. Sometime in the last five minutes, all of her nerve endings had multiplied.

It felt like a punishment, though not like any one she’d ever earned, when he circled her ankle with his fingers and brought it to his mouth to suck on the thin, tender flesh he found there.

Familiar doubts and fears began to play across her mind: this was taking too long. He was going to get tired. Or bored.

Josh seemed to notice her mind drifting because he applied a particularly sharp bite to her calf. The acute press of his teeth, mingling pleasure and pain, made her gasp. Her entire lower body tingled, begging her to remove her own hand from its death grip on the sofa and provide the relief he continued to deny her.

Clara swallowed a choked breath.

“Wheaton,” Josh said, lightly. “This only works if you relax. Erase the finish line, okay? I don’t have any expectations for you to meet.”

He moved to lick a fiery stripe across her hip.

“I don’t care if this takes hours.”

Hours?

“I’ve got nowhere to be.”

The timbre of his voice alone was making her sweat at this point.

“I’m going to make you feel good until you tell me you’re ready to stop.”

Clara could feel his words between her legs. Each syllable pulsed, filling her with eager emotions that she couldn’t separate, couldn’t name. They blended together into a single insistent need.

Josh pushed the heel of his hand against her sex and sparks exploded behind her eyelids. Clara made a very unladylike sound. To think, a minute ago she’d thought his teeth on her ankle felt good.

Josh ran both thumbs up and down the damp seam of her sex before bracing one hand on her leg and using the other to slowly circle her clit.

With each caress, he inspired a sharper, deeper hunger until she found herself keening, as he worked her over without mercy. It was a cruel twist of fate that for twenty-seven years she’d settled for a pale imitation of the pleasure Josh wrought as he laid siege to her senses.

To act this way with a veritable stranger, right out here in the living room, without a carefully curated playlist of R&B slow jams, the casual carnality had her drunk on rebellion. At this point, she’d take anything Josh gave her and beg for more.

He played her body like a golden fiddle, ruthless in his quest to prove that he could make her come, fully clothed, barely skimming the surface of his amorous arsenal. That edge, the spike of superiority in him, as he bent her to his will made everything a little bit hotter. She couldn’t pull enough oxygen into her lungs. Clara didn’t understand—couldn’t even follow—his movements as they blurred together into a single heavy throb in her pussy.

For as varied as his touches had been earlier, they were constant, unflinching now. Clara knew she had soaked through her panties at this point. She didn’t care. Somewhere along the line, Josh had stripped her of every ounce of shame and replaced it with raw desire.

She hovered on the precipice of orgasm, her body so sensitized that every moment, every movement, almost but not quite sent her over the edge. The louder she got, the firmer Josh made his strokes, but it was never enough.

Still, even as the minutes continued to tick by, Josh never rushed her along to “get to the good part.” He never tried to take advantage of her compromised state to barter for services-in-kind. Everything he did, he did for her to enjoy, to savor, until she couldn’t survive another second on the edge.

“Please,” Clara choked out.

Josh slowed the motions of his hand. “What do you need?”

They both knew the answer, but saying it out loud? She shook her head.

The bastard took his hand away entirely. All that pleasure—just paused.

Clara opened her eyes to find Josh leaning back on his heels. He would have looked ready to discuss the evening news, if not for his dilated pupils and the strain beneath his belt.

“I want to come, you ass,” she said slowly through her teeth.

Josh smiled. “Oh. Do you? Why didn’t you say something sooner?”

Clara groaned in frustration and closed her eyes again, blocking out his stupid, smug face. She tried to picture Everett. Hoping that a familiar fantasy carved into the grooves of her brain would do the job. She imagined running her hands through dark hair, Everett’s eyes tracing her mouth. But for some reason, the images barely elicited a flutter in her belly.

Tears of frustration formed at the corners of her eyes as Josh’s voice racked over her frenzied flesh. “Open your eyes again and I’ll give you what you want.”

Against her better judgment, she complied.

His easy swagger had faded. There was nothing but conviction and a hint of possession on his face now. She’d never realized that eye contact could cause hyperventilation.

This interaction might be all about her body, her pleasure, but here was Josh’s consolation. Clara could never deny the identity of the man who made her whimper. She would know exactly who brought her over the edge.

“Wild looks good on you,” Josh said, and this time when he put his hands on her he didn’t hold back. The difference in tempo and technique was staggering. He’d been playing with her before. Pulling his punches. And it was obvious why. No one, especially a novice like her, could last against an onslaught of pleasure like this. Clara had no power in that moment, not even an ounce of the control that she considered her constant companion. Nothing mattered anymore, nothing but the way he let her fall apart. All the tension evaporated from her limbs as she shook in his arms.

After a few moments, as the sensations slowly began to fade, Josh cleared his throat and eased her thighs closed. But the passion in his touch was gone. His face had turned impassive, more like a man shutting the trunk of his car than a lover drawing out aftershocks.

“Well, that’s done then.”

Clara tried to gather her bearings. Right. Josh. Orgasm. Her and Josh. Orgasm. She’d . . . Oh dear.

“I’m sorry,” she said automatically as she wiped her hand across her forehead, brushing hair that probably resembled a tumbleweed.

Josh stood up.

Clara’s eyes found the bulge in his pants like a heat-guided missile.

Wow. Okay. So he’d suffered an involuntary response. To pheromones. That was fine. Casual. Nothing to get worked up over . . . again.

“Don’t worry about it, Wheaton. There’s no need to be embarrassed. Think of it this way, this will make a great story when you go back to Connecticut. You can dine out on your ‘The Time a Porn Star Made Me Come’ story for at least a year. Hell, considering the circles you run in, maybe for the rest of your life.”

Clara flinched. How sad did he think she was? Had she really gone through that earth-shattering situation alone? She admittedly didn’t share his wealth of experience, but Clara had thought maybe that had been something extraordinary.

He picked up his bag and held it in front of his body.

Idiot. How could she think that a little rubbing over her underwear would even register on Josh’s sexual radar? His mind and body were understandably at war.

Hadn’t she watched him with the redhead? He routinely went all the way with incredible-looking women.

Josh could probably have chemistry with a ficus.

“Right.” Clara pulled at a loose thread on the sofa. “I suppose for you that was just like work?”

Part of her wanted him to argue. To tell her she was special.

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Josh backed toward his room. “At work, I get paid.”