‘It has been a while,’ I agreed, sighing happily as he began to dust kisses down my neck again.

His lips moved over my breasts, down my stomach, and his hands followed, squeezing my breasts gently before skimming down to my waist. He rested on his knees and I gazed down at him, breathless with anticipation as he sweetly kissed my belly before kissing his way to the edge of my panties. His lips pressed against the silk fabric and I whimpered, flattening my palms to the wall as my body took over, my legs parting. Nate continued to kiss me over the fabric of my lingerie, his hands curled around my thighs. It was a torment, a tease, my body vibrating with need.

My breath stuttered as I felt his tongue push the fabric against my clit. ‘Nate,’ I whimpered, my right hand moving to curl in his soft hair. ‘Please …’

He relented, leaning back to remove the panties. I tried to help, but my legs were shaking. After he peeled them off, Nate slid his hands around both my calves and glided his fingers upward. ‘You’ve got fantastic legs,’ he told me quietly. ‘I remember one night while we were watching a movie and you were wearing leggings. It was the first time I’d seen you in anything that showed the shape of them.’ He kissed the inside of my knee and looked back up at me with a fierceness that made me throb. ‘You stretched them out, feet up on the coffee table, and I couldn’t stop staring. I couldn’t believe you’d been hiding those long, gorgeous legs. I dreamt of your legs that night, Liv. I dreamt they were wrapped around my back while I fucked your brains out.’

Need flipped in my belly at his admission. ‘God … Nate …’

‘That’s right, babe,’ he murmured as he lifted my right leg over his shoulder and parted me. ‘I’m taking you straight to heaven.’

‘Heaven. Hell,’ I panted, my fingers raking the wall. ‘Who cares as long as I ride there on an orgasm.’

It was a strange but not unpleasant sensation to feel the huff of his laughter on my sex.

I smiled.

And then I cried out in relief when his tongue slid inside me at the same time his thumb pressed against my clit.

He worked me expertly. I came quick and hard.

Barely conscious I slumped against the wall as Nate got to his feet.

‘Damn,’ I finally whispered as he undressed. ‘Your mouth should be illegal.’

His answer was a deep, soulful kiss that had me swaying against him. When he pulled back, my bra went with him and he threw it over his shoulder. ‘Any other day I’d probably just screw you against the wall, but I think we’ll ease you into this with the bed.’

‘I’m fine with the wall.’ I patted it lazily, still high on my orgasm.

Nate shook his head, his lips twitching. ‘This might be a bit uncomfortable for you, Liv. We’ll take it slow.’ Gently he gripped my hand in his and I found myself smiling giddily as we walked naked through my apartment. Nate glanced over his shoulder at me and caught the look. ‘What?’

‘We’re naked.’ I grinned.

He gave a short bark of laughter and turned, tugging me against him so our bodies collided. He wrapped his arms around my waist and I gripped his shoulders tightly to stop myself from falling over with the sudden movement. Nate rendered that a fruitless action by spinning us quickly and pushing me down on the bed, falling with me but bracing his body over mine so he didn’t crush me.

‘Shit,’ he murmured, getting back to his knees.

‘What? Where are you going?’

‘The condoms are in my wallet. I still haven’t been checked yet.’ He got off the bed before I could say anything and cool air wafted over my skin as he left the room.

I lay there, staring at my ceiling, feeling his mouth under my ear again and his soft murmur, ‘Sweet spot.’

We’d started this because of my inexperience, but even to me, the inexperienced, this felt like a seduction, not an education in seduction. I bit my lip and stared at the doorway waiting for him to come back. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe this was what it was: all part of building my sexual confidence and experience.

I dreamt of your legs that night. I dreamt they were wrapped around my back while I fucked your brains out.

Or maybe it was an excuse to give in to the attraction that had always been there? Attraction we denied because of our friendship.

Nate appeared back in the doorway, his eyes devouring every inch of me as he prowled toward me.

Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.

As he crawled up my body, ripped the condom wrapper with his teeth and rolled one onto his impressive hard-on, I forcefully shoved the maybes to the bottom of my pit of denial. Right then I didn’t care why we were doing this. I just cared that we were doing it.

His hand coasted up my torso and I arched my back into his touch, a blaze of heat lighting me up from the inside out as he rubbed his thumb over my nipple while his other hand slid between my legs. While he coaxed my clit to attention with his thumb, his erection strained, and I couldn’t stop looking at it.

‘Now.’ I tilted my hips against his touch. ‘Nate, come inside me. Please.’

He groaned at my invitation, gently pushing my legs farther apart before bracing himself over me. His kiss was long and deep.

I felt him brush against me and to my surprise I tensed.

The last time a guy shoved inside of me it had hurt.

‘Ssh,’ he whispered across my lips, his hand slipping between our bodies again, his thumb finding my clit. ‘Babe, it’ll be okay. Just keep looking at me.’

I relaxed, my eyes locked with his. And then he was pushing inside of me, hands on the mattress at the side of my head to hold himself up. His eyes darkened as he pressed through the tight resistance of my body, my muscles squeezing around him. I stifled a whimper. It was uncomfortable. Not painful like last time, but I wasn’t sure if it was pleasant either.

Nate shut his eyes for a second, panting. His arms shook a little.

‘Nate?’ I rested my hands on his waist.

‘I just …’ His lids fluttered open and my inner muscles squeezed him again in response to the sexual heat I saw in his eyes. ‘You feel … amazing,’ he breathed, eyes gleaming. ‘So tight. I’m trying to go gentle, but you feel fucking amazing.’

Pleased, I caressed his back soothingly and realized that the discomfort was beginning to dissipate. I was suddenly eager to learn more. My hips automatically lifted, seeking movement, and Nate growled, pulling back out of me. Instead of pulling all the way out like I thought he was going to, he thrust back in. I cried out as I felt the stirring of a beautiful tension.

My eyes were locked on his face, mesmerized by his expression, by the mixture of lust and gentleness in his eyes, by the tautness of his jaw that told me he was clinging to his control.

And he did that for me.

He was slow and tender, his hands gripping my thighs lightly as he slid in and out of me, every stroke a gradual climb toward climax.

His eyes drank me in, watching me pant beneath him, watching my breasts quiver gently against his thrusts, and suddenly he was pushing that little bit harder, moving that little bit faster. ‘Liv, come for me, babe,’ he commanded, his voice guttural. ‘You’ve got to come for me.’

‘I am,’ I promised, lifting my hips against the pumping of his, the coil tightening, tightening, tightening –

Nate’s thumb pressed down on my clit.

I shattered. Loudly. My eyes fluttered behind their lids as my lower body shuddered uncontrollably, jerking hard against Nate as he gripped my hips tightly to his and followed me into climax.

When I finally stopped coming, my muscles relaxed to jelly. I think I melted into my mattress, just barely able to lift my arm and curl a hand around Nate’s nape as he collapsed over me, his head buried in the crook of my neck.

I delighted in the feel of his chest rising and falling quickly against mine, of his warm breath puffing against my skin. We were both slick with sweat and I didn’t care. It felt wonderful.

‘So that’s what real sex is like,’ I breathed, in awe of it and in awe of the pleasure he’d elicited from my barely tried body.

Nate’s lips pressed against my damp neck before he raised his head and pushed himself up. Our eyes met and I stilled. There was something stirring to life in his gaze, something important, possibly profound. Other than when he spoke of Alana, I’d never seen him look so serious. So grave. He stared at me a long moment until … his head jerked back as if I’d said something.

‘Nate?’

His Adam’s apple moved with a hard swallow before he kissed me quickly and rolled off of me.

I couldn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say.

Instead I lay there as he walked out of the room. I listened as I heard the water running in the bathroom and then the toilet flushing. There was rustling in the living room and I heard a thump, like a boot against my wooden floor.

That got me up.

I tugged on my sheet, hauled it off the bed and wrapped it around me.

Wandering out of the bedroom, I found him shrugging his jacket on.

‘Nate?’

He smiled at me, but there was something false in it and my heart immediately began beating faster.

‘Nate?’

‘I’ll, eh … have to text you when I’m free again.’

Something strange, solid and cold, settled in my stomach, but I attempted not to let it show as I shuffled in my sheet over to the glass bowl I kept my keys in. I lifted my spare and held it out to him. ‘To make things easier. For our lessons,’ I emphasized.

He gazed at it a moment and then eventually, just as my hand was beginning to tremble, he strode over to take it. He kissed me quickly on the cheek as though he might get burned if he lingered.

‘ ’Night, babe.’

Watching him hurry out of my apartment, I couldn’t force a reply past the lump of apprehension in my throat.

I’d been worried all day. Worried something had happened in my room last night that had made Nate rethink this whole lesson thing. Or worse, our whole friendship thing. When he didn’t text in the morning, I gnawed my lip. When he didn’t text in the afternoon, I snapped at a boorish student who somehow blamed me for his fifty-pound fine, and when Nate didn’t text as I was walking home from work I began to despair that I’d seriously effed up our friendship.

The joy I should have felt after our first lesson, the relief of realizing that I’d feared sex only to discover how easy and natural it felt, was overwhelmed by the regret that waited in the wings just ready to be prompted to center stage by Nate’s prolonged absence.

I ignored a text from Ellie and didn’t answer a call from Jo as I picked at dinner, changed into an overlarge T-shirt that I wore to bed when the weather got a little warmer, and sat down in front of the television to not take in a word of the movie that was playing.

It was a total surprise then when a key turned in my lock and the door opened to reveal Nate carrying a DVD, notebook, and pen.

I didn’t know what to make of it.

He smiled at me, a real smile this time, as if nothing had happened last night, and he strode forward, dumping his stuff on the coffee table.

I had my feet on the couch, my arms clasped around my bent knees.

Nate’s gaze flickered over my bare legs as he took off his jacket. Our eyes met. And held.

He cleared his throat. ‘Lesson first and then I have a movie to review.’

Part of me really wanted to question him and his weird, erratic behavior. But a bigger part of me was afraid of the answers. Or the consequences. ‘Tonight’s lesson?’

He kicked off his shoes. ‘Tonight’s about confidence. Taking control.’

And just like that I realized I was mad at him for the way he’d walked out last night. Really effing mad.

It took over me, turning me into someone else.

Dropping my feet to the floor, I reached out and grabbed his belt, hauling him closer to me. ‘Sit down,’ I demanded, my voice cold even to my ears.