“Right,” I nodded, screwing up my eyes in frustration. Hmm. That was actually even better. I couldn’t see him, and now I couldn’t see anything. Much better. I reached out, catching hold of a wooden slat, rough under my fingertips, yet grounding somehow. “Here’s the thing, Oscar,” I repeated. “You’re fucking incredible to look at, and when I see you, I turn stupid. Weirdly, oddly stupid, because normally I can talk to any guy. But with you, it’s like all I can say is what I always say. Oh. Yes. Which believe me, I’ve thought about all the different ways that I could say that. And obviously your cheese is amazing, but it’s not all about the cheese for me. What I mean to say, is . . .” I bit down on my lower lip. Should I just come out with it? “I think about you all the time, naked all the time, with me, and I’m naked and I’m doing things to you, and holy shit are you doing things to me, and it’s so very very good, and if you were any other guy we’d already be doing the naked very good things, but you’re not, it’s like you’ve got some kind of mysterious hold over me—speaking of which, I’ve thought about you over me, and under me, and behind me.” I laughed out loud, realizing that my brain had clearly decided to just come out with it. “So—I needed to say this, and you needed to hear this, and now maybe I can be in the same room with you and actually have eye contact and not turn stupid anymore, because it’s out there now. We’re both aware of it, and now when I come to see you in the city and you ring up my order, you’ll know and I’ll know that while I definitely want your Brie, I’m also imagining banging the ever-loving fuck out of you.”

There.

Said it.

And he wasn’t saying anything. Not good.

“You know who I am, right?”

Still nothing from his side of the stall.

I climbed up one rung, then the second. Was he still there? I made it to the top, peered over—but the stall was empty.

“I know exactly who you are,” a deep voice said behind me.

I startled, then realized Oscar was exactly where I wanted him to be. Behind me, getting a great view of my exceptional—

“You’re the Brie girl with the great big ass.”

I turned slowly on my precarious perch, a slow burn building toward the top of my head.

As I turned, his eyes flickered up from my ass to my face, and he blinked in surprise when he saw my expression. Springing lightly to the ground—a feat I’m sure someone with all this great big ballast wasn’t supposed to be able to do—I poked him squarely in the chest and looked him dead in those beautiful gray-blue eyes. “You want to say that again? To my face?”

A slow grin spread across his face. “Which part?”

“You know exactly which part.”

He moved closer. “Oh, the part about your great big ass?”

I blinked in total surprise. “I can’t believe you have the balls to say that out loud.”

“What, that you’ve got a great ass?”

“Come again?” I asked, confused.

He took a step closer to me. Which made me take a step backward from him. “Seeing you standing in my line is the second-best part of my Saturday,” he said, taking another step.

I was up against the wooden wall with nowhere to go. “What’s the first-best part?”

“Watching you walk away.” He placed his hands on either side of my head and leaned in. “I love watching your great big ass.”

“Hold up,” I said, placing one hand on his chest and slowing his roll. “Are you saying great big ass? Or great comma big ass?”

He looked at me quizzically. “Great comma big ass?”

This was going to be harder than I thought. “Okay, I’m confused. So you’re not saying that I have a great big . . . ass, you’re saying that I have a great . . . big ass. Meaning—”

“Your ass is big. And it’s great.” He dipped down to bring his face to within inches of mine. “How is that confusing?”

“You’re not supposed to say something like that to a woman,” I said, narrowing my eyes and trying not to notice that he’d just licked his lips, making them look even more delicious. I lifted my chin. “Luckily for you, I’m aware that it’s a great ass. And yes, it’s big.”

He studied me. “You sure talk a lot. If you’re going to talk this much, say more about the naked stuff you want us doing.”

“Oh, you mean like the—”

Oscar grabbed me by my hips, his giant hands wrapping around my look-how-tiny-he-makes-it-look waist, and pulled me against him. Before I could even take a breath, he kissed me. Intense heat burned against my lips, crushing, twisting, slanting this way and that as he consumed me.

My breasts were pressed against his chest as he moved impossibly closer, and I slid my hands up his arms and around his neck, tangling into the hair that I’d been dying to touch. I wrapped my fingers around the thick, coarse strands as I tugged his head down toward mine while he kissed me again and again. My feet slipped on the hay, but he held me against the stall with the strength of his body.

From the back of his throat came a rumbling sound halfway between a groan and a moan, and I reveled in the knowledge that he was as lost as I was. But just as his tongue swept out to lick my lips and scramble the very last part of my brain, he pulled away abruptly, leaving both of us panting.

He ran his hands through the hair mussed by my roving hands, then scrubbed at his face as though trying to get his bearings. His eyes burned as he took me in again, messy and still glued to the back of the stall, wondering where all the heat had gone. He reached out to run one thumb across my swollen lips, which I quickly took into my mouth ever so slightly and nipped.

There was the heat again, flaring in his eyes, and I could see him weighing his options of whether to pursue once more (yes yes and a little more yes) or back away and save some for later (also a fan of this).

“Those naked very good times you mentioned?”

I dropped a kiss on his thumb. “Mm-hmm?”

His eyes raked over me, thrilling every inch. When those eyes focused once more on mine, I was on fire. “I’m in.”

And then I heard a metal triangle being clanged, and Roxie’s voice calling that lunch was ready.

Now what?

I smoothed my shirt, shaking out my hair and trying to make myself look like I hadn’t just mouth-fucked a god.