“This looks . . . interesting,” I said, flipping it over to read the summary. “The guy has two partners. One is the human named Cat, and then she has a Werecat.” I glanced up at him. “As a pet. A pet they both have sex with.”

“It sounded rather cerebral.”

“You got this off the dollar table, didn’t you?”

“I did. It looks smashingly crude, though, so I knew you’d love it.” He turned and started moving things around on his desk. “Now, quiet, Petal. I’m very busy.”

At first it felt almost impossible to focus on the book in my hands, but as the minutes ticked by, and Max apparently grew absorbed in the process of packing up his desk, I started to forget that I was sitting on his couch. Alone.

Totally naked.

The book he’d given me was ridiculously filthy, not to mention wordy as hell; the writing was horrible but I suspected that wasn’t really the point. There were multiple men, multiple women; too many appendages to keep straight but again—it didn’t matter. The point was the sex happening, and how descriptive it was. Everyone had some body part that was hard or dripping. Or both. People screamed and—sometimes literally—clawed at things.

And in the corner, the hero sat simply watching.

“You’re blushing.” He put a stack of books down and leaned against his desk watching me. “You’ve been reading that for fifteen minutes and something you’ve just read made you flush scarlet.”

I looked up at him and winced. “It’s the c-word. It just surprised me, that’s all.”

“Cunt?”

I nodded, surprisingly aroused by the bluntness of the word in his accent. It lacked the t. Somehow, that softened it. Made it into something far sexier.

“I bloody love that word. Such an ugly one. Cunt. Sounds so depraved, doesn’t it?” He scratched his jaw, considering me. “Read me the line.”

“I don’t . . .”

“Sara.”

If possible, I felt my face heat further. “He gripped her thighs, forced them apart, and stared at her wet, flushed . . . cunt.”

“Wow,” he said, laughing. “That’s something all right.” He moved back to his desk and started sorting through a stack of papers. “You can tell me all about your favorite parts over dinner.” I started to protest, but he lifted a finger to his lips and hushed me. “Read.”

I stared at the page as the words swam together. What kind of a woman makes a big deal over dinner?

The kind of woman, Sara, I thought, who recognizes that dinner leads to sleeping over, which leads to staying together every night. And that leads to keys, and then moving in. And then come excuses, and quiet sex, and then no sex and no conversation, and hoping that there is some public engagement that invites us as a couple so that I’ll have time with him.

Then again, I’d regretted not sleeping over with Max on the Fourth. And I was starting to miss him during the week.