He put his hand on her lower back and he steered her down another street. Well, it was mostly on her lower back. His fingers extended a little below that, touching the top of her ass. Did he realize he was touching her ass? Her coat was long, so he might just think he was touching her back. Which, in itself, was somewhat intimate. She thought he would take his hand off once they’d gone around the corner, but he didn’t. Nor did she make any moves to remove it for him. It felt kind of nice to be touched by a man, even if it was accidental.

“Let’s get coffee,” he said after they’d had their fill of the neighborhood, and they drove to the drive-through Starbucks near Winterset. Pumpkin lattes and pumpkin bread in hand, they parked in back, the only car there on this cold day. He put the car in park and left the engine running. They drank in silence for a while, the windows starting to fog up, the warmth in the car meeting the cold outside.

“Pumpkin lattes are better than crack,” he said.

“Have you ever tried crack?”

“No. You?”

She laughed and took the pumpkin bread out of the bag. “In my perfect world, pumpkin would be in season all year long.”

“I’d like to live in that world,” he said. He was looking at her.

She broke the slice in half, and gave him his.

“I don’t know why they put pepitas on it. Walnuts and pumpkin are like peanut butter and jelly. The perfect combo,” she said.

He smiled, then leaned toward her, over the console where their pumpkin lattes sat, and kissed her.

She pulled back, looking at him with surprise. Nick Cox had just kissed her. And she wanted to kiss him back. There was no part of her that didn’t. Okay, there was a very small part, but it was microscopic, nearly undetectable. She couldn’t remember the last time she had partaken of a good, juicy kiss. It was high time. And was it so wrong? If her husband was on a sexual sabbatical? She looked out the windows, and, once she’d confirmed that the glass was sufficiently steamed up for no one to see in, she kissed him. After all, a kiss was just a kiss.

Kissing a man told you a lot about his lovemaking style, she’d found in her not-all-that-extensive dating life in college. Nick kissed her like he wanted to eat her face, and she kissed back the same way, resisting an urge to bite. His hands were in her hair, on her neck, pressing against her throat just a little bit, just enough to heighten the sensations in other parts of her body, then a hand slipped under her coat and onto her right breast and gave her nipple a squeeze.