He’s solid and strong and I can feel his muscles tense and adjust to my weight as he carries me across the living room and into his bedroom. It feels almost like a movie until he trips and all but throws me onto the bed, falling in after. I smack my head on his collarbone, and he grunts as he holds himself back on shaking arms, then laughs as I pull him down against me.

We kiss, our hands moving up and down, finding fabric and occasionally skin, moving, moving, moving, like we’re trying to start a fire. My legs are trembling.

Gabe is having difficulty with my shirt.

“I just…these fucking…goddamn buttons,” he mutters, his fingers fumbling, the backs of his hands haphazardly brushing against my breasts, making me wiggle, which in turn makes it even more difficult to get the shirt undone. “Can I just…please…can I…?”

I don’t exactly know what he’s asking but I don’t exactly care.

“Okay, yeah. Yeah.”

He gives me a grin, equal parts wicked and boyish, and before I really realize what’s happening, he grips the sides of my shirt and pulls. Buttons scatter, the fabric rips. And my shirt is gone.

“I’ve always wanted to do that,” he says.

I’m breathless with how much I liked it. Gabe stares down at me like I’ve just given him everything he’s ever wanted.

“They’re just breasts,” I say for literally no reason at all.

He looks up, and shakes his head, long and slow, his hair falling across his forehead.

“There’s nothing just about you,” he says.

If I hadn’t already been literally swooning beneath him, that would have done it. My entire body feels itchy and crackling and desperate. I’m ready for more. I’m so ready.

We remove clothes. My jeans. Gabe’s shirt. My shirt.

It’s like high school, but better—that sweet, hot anticipation of kissing, kissing like you’re the first people in the world to discover it, like there’s no possible way other people are doing it like this, because if they were how in the hell would anyone ever get anything done.

I let my hands wander. I’d gotten a chance with his chest ten years ago on his couch in Laurel Canyon, back when he was fighting fit—on his Hollywood Bond diet, lean but muscular, his torso as waxed as my kitchen floor.

The muscles are still there, but he’s nowhere near as chiseled as he was. The six-pack isn’t as prominent and he even has the tiniest of love handles on his sides. And his chest. His chest is covered with a sprinkling of hair, his shoulders unreasonably broad.

I love all of it.