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And then he’ll end it, which will be awful because my heart would be involved, and I don’t need to be dealing with a broken one on top of everything else. Better to deny myself now, while I don’t know what I’m missing, than let it drag on. Because he’s absolutely right – there is more than fucking between us. No matter how much I try to deny it, the way my heart flip-flops when I see him is not normal.

Worse, I think he feels the same way.

Which is, of course, preposterous and will be ignored. I don’t have time for a flip-floppy heart and I’m really good at denial. Even if just sitting here thinking about him has my nipples hard as bullets and an ache as jagged as the Rocky Mountains between my legs.

I have two precious days off, and I’m supposed to be studying. There are papers and open textbooks strewn across the coffee table. But all I can think about is Danny pounding me against the wall at work, me all but naked, and him all but clothed.

A sudden knock on my door startles me so much I actually jump a little. My pulse instantly accelerates. Danny? Could it be him? Maybe the cloud of oestrogen hanging around my apartment has finally reached him on the sixth floor, and he’s decided to pay me a visit? To stop waiting for me to make the first move?

Eep!

Despite my resolve, I’m not sure I can resist another overture on his behalf and my pulse trips, and my legs tremble as I rise from the couch and head to the door. When I reach for the knob, my hand shakes. It’s ridiculous how my body quakes, but it refuses to be quelled because it’s him. I don’t need to look through the peephole.

It’s him. I know it is.

‘Hey,’ he says as the door swings open, cool and calm as you please, looking better than any man has a right to in jeans that cup and mould, in a sweater that clings and moulds, his dirty blond hair looking like it did after I’d twisted it all up when he was fucking me in the storeroom at work.

Sex hair.

My face warms thinking about how wanton I’d been. Was it only five nights ago? ‘Hey.’ My hey is far less cool and calm, my pulse tripping.

Shoving his shoulder casually into the jamb, his eyes rove over me like I’m wearing a string bikini instead of baggy track pants and an NYU T-shirt that is old and sloppy and faded and is currently sporting a coffee stain over the left boob area.

Of course.

Unperturbed, he holds up a grocery bag dangling from his fingers. ‘Hungry?’

I have no idea what’s in the bag and I hadn’t been particularly hungry, but with him in my doorway I am suddenly ravenous. And not necessarily for food.

This is not good.

‘I’m studying.’ Must. Not. Get. Distracted. By. Hot. Drummer. With. Sex. Hair.

He shrugs, a smile lifting the corners of his mouth. ‘Gotta eat though, right? Some carbs and protein to help you concentrate. And it’s lunch time.’

‘I… wasn’t going to stop.’ There’s a bag of Cheetos with my name on it in the cupboard.

‘No need to. You keep going – I’ll cook. I’ll plate up, I’ll clean the kitchen and leave you to it. You won’t even know I’m here.’

A smile plays on his mouth and I barely suppress my eyeroll. Like that was even remotely possible. ‘You and I both know that if you cross this threshold there will be sex.’

He grins then, his blue gaze smug. So sure of himself. So cocky. The man is so damn easy in his skin it takes my breath away. He looks like he’s never doubted himself in his life where I constantly overthink everything.

‘Nope.’ He shakes his head. ‘This is the getting-to-know-you phase of our relationship. We’re not doing sex.’

I blink at his bold pronouncement. Also… relationship?

His grin broadens. ‘Don’t look so disappointed, Doc. I’ll start to think you only want me for my body.’ Then he eases off the jamb and brushes past me into the apartment, the aroma of basil, bread and body – brash, swaggering, buff body – filling my senses.

‘Chicken pesto pasta work for you?’ he calls over his shoulder. ‘Any allergies?’

My tummy rumbles as I stare at the space Danny had filled seconds prior, the empty corridor the only thing in my line of vision now. Sighing, I resign myself to the torture of him in my apartment, cooking for me, and shut the door.

Danny is hard to ignore as sizzling onions spice the air. The table from which I am working is only a few feet from where he slices and dices, my tea towel slung casually over his shoulder, which is hot in ways I wouldn’t have thought possible.

He’s as good as his word, not saying anything, just shuffling around, finding what he needs, dragging out pots and setting water to boil on the stove top, concentrating on the job at hand. But that doesn’t mean he’s not distracting as all giddy up.I’m supposed to be reviewing an anatomy subject, but Danny Colton’s anatomy is far more interesting.

I wonder if I asked, would he strip off his clothes so I can study the flex and glide of what I know to be perfectly delineated muscles?