I gape at him, and the silence stretches. His mouth twitches as I search for words. “You seem to have an affinity with sheds,” I finally observe.

He loses his grip on his hilarity, his laughter pealing.

I’m unable to keep from smiling as his face lights up. He takes a deep breath and catches my gaze. “And that’s my tale of sexual awakening.” He snorts. “Common or garden, really.”

“Oh, undoubtedly.”

“What was yours?”

“Hand job behind the village shop,” I say.

He laughs again. “How very boring, Mags.”

“You got caught with your tennis instructor. How old was he?”

He wrinkles his nose in thought. “Early thirties. I thought he was terribly old.”

We look at each other and start to laugh.

“I know,” I say, wiping my eyes. “I used to think my university tutor was ancient. I later found out he was thirty-five.”

He grins at me, and I shake my head. “You win,” I concede. “That would have been a lovely story to tell at my parents’ dinner table. They enjoyed tales of sexual awakening. I don’t know why they didn’t just stick to reading Anais Nin and Henry Miller like everyone else.”

“Oh God, those were the days. I once spent ten minutes trying to convince our school librarian that I wanted to read Lady Chatterley’s Lover because I was interested in estate management.” I snort, and he carries on. “Kids today don’t know how lucky they are with online porn. If we wanted porn in our day, the mood was rather killed by the fact that we had to rewind the video tape and then keep stopping and starting it to pause the action.”

He sprawls on the bench, spreading his arms across the back. The position shows off every inch of him, and I give in and stare. His ribs are too pronounced, but his olive skin gleams in the heat and droplets of sweat glisten in his sparse chest hair. Everything about him is deliciously long—his legs, his feet, his fingers, which are tapping a beat on his knee. I curse the fact that I’m naked for possibly the first time in my life as my cock stiffens.

When I look up, he’s watching me, and the atmosphere thickens as though we’re sitting in a bath of warm honey.

“I think you should kiss me,” he says in a conversational tone.

Shock roars through me. “I beg your pardon?” I sound regrettably like Miss Marple.

“Kiss me,” he repeats.

“Did you sustain a head injury in the massage room? I don’t kiss my friends.”

“Try it,” he says with a sunny smile that doesn’t quite conceal the daredevil glint in his eyes. “Go on. Just the once,” he instructs. “I dare you.”

“You are Satan sitting on a towel,” I say.