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naked on a hotel bedspread, with God knows what kind of ground-in awfulness rubbing against my skin.
    “The bedspread,” I said, choking on the words and hating myself for not holding them in, for not being a wanton sex kitten who could make whoopie on a filthy unwashed hotel comforter and think nothing of it. He was going to think I was an even bigger disaster than he already did.
    But he laughed.
    “I’m sorry,” I blurted out.
    “Damn, Katie, I’ve missed you.”
    He pulled the bedspread back, then the top sheet. I rolled onto the bottom sheet and he pulled the offending linens underneath him and tossed them to the floor.
    “No bedbugs now. Are we good?”
    “I swear that’s it,” I said, and I could feel the blush in my cheeks. I knew I needed therapy, and a lot of it, but that was a problem for another day. Now, I was here, and I was not going to screw this moment up any further. I channeled my inner sex goddess. “Come ravage me senseless.”
    He lowered his lips to mine and I could still feel the smile on his lips when he kissed me. A happy warmth caught fire somewhere above my feet and below my head, somewhere nice.
    “You have to hold perfectly still now while I get to know you,” he said.
    I wriggled my toes and the warmth grew. “Hi, Nick, I’m Katie,” I said, and he cut me off with a kiss so deep I felt like I was falling backwards into a cloud. And then he kept his word and explored all of me, slowly, bit by bit and part by part, finally surfing his olive-skinned body up the length of mine until I shivered and bit into his shoulder. My wriggling spread from my toes up my body, and he seemed to like it.
    “OK, you can move now,” he said.
    An explosion went off in my brain, and I transformed into someone I had never been before, someone carnal and sensual, someone brazen. “I can’t believe how gorgeous you—” I started to say, but I never finished my thought, as Nick’s hand found just the right spot. I managed a gasp, and then his mouth was on mine, rough and urgent this time, and mine was, too. I began to touch him again, and his entire body stiffened.
    “What about, you know,” he managed to say.
    “I’ve got it covered.”
    “Thank God.”
    And he was inside me, and it was simply everything. It was everything, and everything else was nothing, nothing but the two of us in that bed. It was tender, then barely restrained, then desperate, wild, and needful. And it was us, together, and we knew, we both knew, that this was not the way it was for the rest of the world. This was for us alone. The world stopped spinning and hung suspended in the sky while we came, together, long, and hard. How could sex be this?
    In the trembling moments afterward, joined together and holding on as tightly as we could, I spoke first.
    “That was . . . different . . . better . . . remarkable. Oh God, I sound like an idiot who’s never had sex before. Not that I have sex all the time. But I have had sex, of course, and, oh, I think I’ll shut up now.” I held my breath as he pressed his nose against mine, his lips against mine, and all the rest of him against me as well.
    “That was the most amazing thing ever. Ev-er,” he said. He pulled his head back and I could see the shine of his eyes even in the dark.
    “You are awfully good at this,” I said.
    He kissed me on the tip of the nose. “We are. We are awfully good at this together.”
    “Imagine if we practiced.”
    “Oh, I plan for us to practice. A lot.”
    I really, really liked the sound of that.

Chapter Nine
    I tingled and jangled my way out of sleep, my body reliving the night before, and opened my eyes to find Nick looking at me.
    “Hello, beautiful.”
    “Good morning.” My voice rasped as it tried to wake up.
    “I watched you sleep half the night.”
    “I hope I didn’t snore,” I said. I had gotten up once to go to the bathroom, and I remembered that he had snored, but in an unguarded way that was kind of nice.
    “Un