“No.” I bite him—just a bit of teeth, to show him how little I liked his answer. That’s okay, I tell myself. He’s thinking about me now. But his hand comes up to push a lock of hair behind my ear. “I don’t do this with other people. Not since Edinburgh.”

I pull back. Search his face. He runs his fingers through my hair, a sweet, warm caress at odds with the fact that I’m all but naked in his lap. With the severity of his erection. “Avery?”

He thumbs my cheekbone. Shakes his head. “You were always there.”

“Where?”

“In my mind.”

I nod. Something sticks in my throat.

Expands even more when he says, “Since the first day I met you, you have been the best thing in my life. And you weren’t even in it.”

I close my eyes, overwhelmed by the wastefulness of the last few years. All that could have been. “What a romantic way to say that you think about me when you masturbate,” I joke.

“Maya.” His head tilts backward, resting against the leather. There’s a red flush on his cheekbones.

“Really? That’s the line, Conor?”

He groans. “It’s the Catholic guilt.”

I grin. “You do think about me, then?”

“I try not to.”

“Does it work?”

Laughter, exhaled. “Not once.”

“Aww.” I pretend to pout, and his thumb finds my lower lip. “I’m sorry.”

“No, you aren’t.” But he’s smiling, too, and looks more beautiful than ever, and I decide to lean backward, my palms on his knees, my ass settled on the lower part of his thighs. I’m spread wide open, but he is doing a great job of holding my eyes, as though his gaze sliding to my tits might unleash a nuclear apocalypse.

“Tell me about these fantasies of yours.”

“You don’t want to know.”

“Oh, I do.”

His throat convulses. Visibly. “I don’t know that you would find it particularly sexy.”

“Try me. Are we in a church? Do I have tentacles?”

Making him laugh turns me on as much as making him hard. “Do you want tentacles, Trouble? I can give them to you next time.”

“Maybe. Are we tickling each other? Turning into werewolves?”

The flush deepens. This is a side of Conor no one else sees. A little boyish. Timid. I adore it. “It’s embarrassing, Maya.”

“You don’t have to tell me. But if you do, I might be able to make it come true.”

He huffs. Shakes his head. But after a minute, voice gravelly, he says, “I come home from work—”

“Stop. Too unrealistic.”

He pinches my knee, lightly. “I come home from work, and you’re there. At the table. Doing whatever it is that you do. Studying. Equations. Reading a novel. I have no idea.”

“At least you don’t think I split atoms for a living.”

His lips twitch. “You’re just doing your thing. The same stuff I’ve seen you do countless times in Eli’s kitchen.”

“But I’m naked?”

“No, you’re just…It’s my house. You’re in my house. And your stuff is around the place, scattered everywhere. Like you live there.”