I have to smile before getting serious again. “When I saw you at Cristina’s party, I thought I hated you. It was ten years later, but everything felt so raw because deep down, I still thought about you all the time. Anytime I wrote about love or want or pain in one of my books, I drew on those feelings from what we had. Bits of you and me are layered inside each one of my stories.”

Ryan takes a moment. “So what you’re saying is, you’re not just using me for my body.”

“Oh, no, I absolutely am. I just happen to like you as a person, too.”

We both smile as Ryan leans down to kiss me with a gentleness that makes my head spin.

His hands soon drift around my waist to slip under the bottom of my shirt, lightly rubbing along the skin of my lower back. I do the same, sneaking my hands under his shirt and sliding them up along his spine. I feel the goose bumps there when I repeat the path down again.

“Maybe we should go into the bedroom,” I say, already heading in that direction.

“Or we could stay here.” Ryan pulls me back and moves his mouth to the curve of my neck, hot and insistent. I turn my head to the side to offer more. To feel more.

Through the haze that’s becoming more intense by the second, I look around for Duke. I don’t spot him anywhere, so he must still be asleep in the bathroom. How Ryan managed to end up with the world’s most discreet wingman of a dog, I’ll never know.

I feel bolder knowing we’re alone and start to shift towards the couch. Ryan stops me again.

“Not there. Here.” He looks down at the reading chair and a mischievous thrill shoots through me at the prospect.

“I’ve never done that in my reading chair.”

The tips of his ears turn red and he looks at me with a hungry sort of smile. “I like having your firsts.”

It feels like my whole body breaks out in a blush. He steps into me slowly, brushing my chest with his in his lethal ratio of desperation and devotion. Our mouths fuse together and I twist a hand into the back of his hair. His kisses start out tender but then turn frantic. He pushes a knee between my legs, grinding against me and forcing a needy whine from the depths of my throat.