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“Enough of that,” I panted, ripping my shirt over my head. Thank goodness I’d worn a decent bra today—blue satin with a bow in the middle, not frayed or torn anywhere. He eyed it with a growl of approval, but maybe it wasn’t a growl for the bra at all, because a moment of fumbling over my back and—pop—I shook off my now unfastened bra.

“And to think you didn’t like me at first.” He drank me in unabashedly, his eyes roaming from belly to breasts to nose to eyes, and each inch his eyes traveled made me feel more and more powerful. Like I could go anywhere, do anything.

Except all I wanted to do was right here. I ground against him, feeling his cock already hard and strong under his zipper. “Who says I like you now?”

He gasped and pulled me tighter onto him. “If this is what you do to people you don’t like, what do you do to people you do like?”

I silenced him with another kiss as I rubbed up and down him again. Now my own sex was throbbing, and I sucked in a breath with every movement.

I kept moving up and down as he kissed my breasts, tongue tracing lightly over each nipple. When I couldn’t take it anymore, I tumbled to the side, lying down on the couch and pulling him on top of me. Because his was an expensive couch and not the cheap one my old roommate had bought at Ikea, there was plenty of room for us to writhe without making me feel like I might topple off the edge.

He went down to kiss my breasts again . . . and kept going. His tongue slid down my stomach, did a lazy circle around my belly button. I clenched my teeth, holding back a beg for more as he slowly, slowly, way too slowly unzipped my skirt and tugged it down. I kicked it off, along with my underwear, when he reached my knees, nearly clipping him on the ear.

His soft laugh nearly undid me. What actually did undo me was when he kissed his way back up, shivering up the inside of my thigh, and landed between my legs. He swirled. He sucked. He kissed. I closed my eyes, my hips bucking involuntarily.

When I felt close to the edge, I reached down and pulled him up. My hand moved down and took over, zeroing in on just the right spot on my clit. It didn’t take long. I shuddered against his shoulder, biting back a cry, then wondered why I was biting it back and let it out.

Breathing hard, my head collapsed back into the cushion. I was a little worried that now post-orgasm clarity would descend upon me and be like, What the hell are you doing, Julie? but the post-orgasm clarity seemed to approve. With a wink and a nudge, it made me pull away, and the desire roared back inside me. “That’s why it’s great to have a clitoris,” I told Bennett. “Multiple orgasms.”

Before he could question the continuation of my inner monologue, I slid out to the side and moved atop him again, straddling his hips as he lay down where I’d been just before. I reached down and unzipped him. His cock sprang free, and as I wrapped my hand around it, it twitched hot under my fingers. Bennett moaned, the breathing already ragged in his throat, even more ragged when I lowered my mouth and teased the head with my tongue.

When I lifted my head, he pulled me up and toward the stairs to his loft. His pants and boxers got lost somewhere between the couch and his bed. My mind got a little lost, too, tangled up in the hitches in Bennett’s throat and the hard length of his naked body up against mine and the few seconds we had to separate to go up the steep stairs to his loftlike bedroom, aka horrific torture. But then we tumbled into his bed together, rumpling the impeccably made navy blue bedspread, and he was all hot lips and moans and want.

I could only take it so long. “Do you have a condom?”

He responded by reaching into his nightstand drawer. I hadn’t even noticed the nightstand. My whole world was him right now, him and the desire coursing through me. He tore the foil packet and rolled on the condom. I pulled him on top of me, and he leaned down for a long kiss, a kiss that stole every thought other than now, now, now. He gasped as I guided him inside, then growled into my neck as he plunged into me. I ran my hands over his back as he moved inside me, tangled my fingers in his hair, tugged him as close as he could possibly be. He pulled his glasses off and set them on the nightstand at some point, and the way he looked into my eyes was so bare, so open, that I didn’t know if I could take it anymore.

So I flipped him over. Together, we moved as if we’d trained at it for years, putting him on the bottom, me sitting up on top. He’d popped free, and Bennett groaned as I slid myself back onto his length slowly, exquisitely, holding his arms down so that he couldn’t reach up and pull me faster. I leaned down and sucked on his bottom lip as we began rocking together, me moving up and down on top, him thrusting from the bottom. We moved faster and faster until he grabbed my hips and pulled them to him, letting out a guttural cry into my neck as he came.

He ran his hands up and down my back as I moved up and down a few more times, shuddering with each thrust. The look in his eyes could only be described as worshipful. Pleased, I slid off and nuzzled up to his side, tucking my head into his shoulder. A crinkle as he disposed of the condom somewhere I couldn’t see, and then he was hugging me close, breathing hard into my hair. I splayed my arm over his chest, marking him as mine to anyone who happened to be watching. Which was (hopefully) no one.

“I’ve wanted to do this since you yelled at me at the Central Park Food Festival.” Bennett’s voice was thick, already sleepy. Men.

Then again, I was feeling a little sleepy, too. The room was dark and cozy, the bedspread even softer and plusher when Bennett and I wriggled beneath it. “You must be a masochist.”

I could hear the smile in his voice now over the sleep. “Maybe.”

We fell asleep in each other’s arms.

• • •

I woke up a few times during the night to use the bathroom (which, as it turned out, was inside the second door I tried, after having stumbled into his closet and gotten lost among the suits and ties) but didn’t wake up for real until light was filtering in through the blackout curtains. I squinted at Bennett’s analog clock, which was probably an antique worth thousands of dollars. Seven thirty in the morning. Far too early for a Saturday. I tried to fall back asleep, but as cozy as Bennett and his nest of blankets were, my body wasn’t having it.

So I tried watching him sleep for a little bit, smiling to myself. He was a really cute sleeper, not drooly or snory, at least not much. I was happy to be here. Would this be a relationship? I didn’t want to get ahead of myself.

But . . . I could see it.

It turns out you can only watch someone sleep for so long without feeling like a giant creeper. I rolled myself out of bed quietly so that I wouldn’t wake him up and then rifled through his bureau, finding, to my absolute delight, the terrible dead squirrel T-shirt from that night at the bar. It was so big it went past my butt. I slipped it over my head, feeling like I was starring in a romantic movie.

His living room looked different in the warm light of day: the city waking up through his floor-to-ceiling windows, the bookshelves inviting and ready for reading. Maybe I’d make him some coffee. That would be considerate. Though maybe it wouldn’t be considerate if his kitchen went up in flames again, as it had the last time I’d used it.

I’d look through the bookshelves, then, pick out something to read. He’d find me cozy on his couch in his T-shirt, nose in one of his favorite books, and his lips would curl in a smile like steam from a cup of coffee.

Resolved, I stepped from bookshelf to bookshelf, scanning what he had. I’d only seen the food writing shelves last time, but he had a plethora of other options. Ancient Dungeons & Dragons manuals from the 1970s. Comic books and graphic novels. Shelves of fat fantasy books with elves and goblins on them, including what appeared to be the full line of licensed Dark Avengers novels. I scanned for the first in the series—maybe it would give me the dirt on that coveted Blood Sword of Destiny and Fortitude.

I didn’t see it . . . oh! There was what looked like a thick fantasy novel on Bennett’s desk. I headed over to the sleek white piece of furniture stacked with neat piles of papers. Grabbing the book, which was indeed the first in the series, I took a moment to admire his pen collection. Would he notice if I borrowed the green tortoiseshell beauty? Forever?

That could come later. If there was a later. I turned, but before I stepped away, my eyes snagged on a printout on his desk. It looked as if it were an email.