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“Dammit, Rye. You know what I mean.”

Turning away from him, I tried to calm down. He was right. What did it really matter? The whole point of fake dating was to convince everyone we were together. The gossip could probably help us.

But there was something intimate growing between Rye and me and knowing that everyone would be talking about it made me feel protective of him.

Just as I was about to turn back to him, his big hand warmed my hip. He held me in place, sliding the length of my hair over my shoulder and trailing a finger lazily between my shoulder blades. The warmth moved slowly up to my neck where he gripped and squeezed softly.

“So,” he whispered, “if I do this”—leaning down, he pressed his lips to my neck and placed a soft kiss there—“someone will talk about it?”

The instant his mouth touched me, tingling pressure began to build between my thighs.

I didn’t answer him. I couldn’t speak. The panic I’d been feeling about my body, about sex, and about being the focus of gossip dissipated. I wanted all my concentration on how Rye’s touch made me feel.

What the Pavlovian crap was that?

But whether he’d trained me to want him, toneedhim, or not, I did, and the wanting was making me shake, making breath come out of my mouth in shudders.

“Or this?” His other hand snaked under my arm, around my ribcage, and he cupped my breast in his hand, thumbing my nipple through my shirt.

“Or this?” Dropping that hand, he fit it over the warmth now quickly forming between my legs, rubbing with his thumb exactly where he knew I couldn’t ignore it.

Heat rushed around the inside of my body like an out-of-control wildfire. It didn’t know where to go, so it went everywhere. “Oh God.”

“Not God, Spitfire. I think what you meant to say was ‘Oh, Rye.’”

I was practically hyperventilating now as I remembered the last time he’d whispered in my ear and touched me there.

“Does the invitation to spend the night with you still stand?”

“Yes.”

“May I see you home then?”

“Yes.”

“Was there anything else you wanted to talk about before we go?” He paused for dramatic and annoying effect. “We still haven’t discussed our plan.”

“I don’t care,” I said, moaning and pushing back to better feel the rigid length of his cock grinding against my ass.

His hand still on the back of my neck applied strict pressure, and he guided me to look at him. When I did, his mouth came down over mine so fast, he gave me vertigo. But that didn’t matter, because he released his hand and turned me into his body, kissing me harder and holding me tightly.

My heart took flight inside my chest, and I opened for him, delving my tongue into his hot mouth.

Strong hands gripped my hips, and he lifted me. I wrapped my legs around his waist, locked my ankles together behind him, and ground myself against his erection through our clothes in an embarrassing display of need versus proper old-lady behavior. An orgasm had already begun to build deep inside.

It had been so long since I’d had a man’s body inside mine, and I was having a hard time imagining the sensation.

“Rye.”

“We ain’t makin’ it back to your place, are we?”

I shook my head wildly. “Here. Now.”

Into my mouth, he breathed, “You’re so needy, baby. I fuckin’ love it,” and he reached beneath me to pop his fly and unzip his jeans. “I want you up against that wall.” He nodded behind us. “And I’m gonna take you a second time from behind while you’re spread open for me over that desk.”

He looked to the right, to where my mom’s old writing desk had been sitting for years, piled with papers, receipts, and schedules I never bothered to look at. I pictured him sliding his arm across the mess, knocking it all to the floor so he could take me just like he said he would.

Somehow, seeing my storeroom in this new, erotic light felt like a dangerous adventure. It was so exciting to be wrapped up in this man, to be enticed and seduced by him in this plain, everyday place.