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the border of being an ass. “Clearly you haven’t been paying attention.”
    If he heard her, he didn’t let it show. His words tripped over each other as he talked right past her. “I can only guess you want a wild ride and are looking to me to get you there. Strip you naked, maybe call in a friend to make the night extra special. That’s the expectation, right?”
    Something in his voice broke through her flashing anger. His eyes had turned as dark as his mood, but a note lingered. An emotion tripping around the edges that sounded oddly like pain.
    The realization sucked the anger, and some of the life, right out of her. “You’re not even close.”
    â€œYou have to know about my past.”
    It took three swallows for her to kick out a word. “Yes.”
    One of her hands dropped to her side and the other trailed down his firm chest, sliding along his tie, until he caught it in his. She noticed he didn’t let go. Instead, his fingers slipped through hers.
    â€œExactly my point.” The heat had left his voice but the husky vibration remained.
    â€œEveryone knows. Your ex-wife wrote a book.” Kyra almost hated to point out that fact, but it sat between them, so why not deal with it.
    â€œTwo.” He trailed his thumb along the back of her hand.
    Once, twice . . . all the blood left her head. “What?”
    â€œMy ex wrote a handbook on living a threesome lifestyle and then she wrote a novel where the couple happened to be in a threesome.” He held up two fingers. “Two books. One that ended nasty and rough.”
    Kyra could barely hear him over the thumping of her heartbeat echoing in her brain. “Right.”
    â€œThe latter is fiction. Most people miss that small but very important fact.”
    â€œThe husband in the novel is a dick.” Kyra regretted the comment as soon as it was out.
    â€œThat is the general consensus, yes,” Bast said as he lifted their joined hands.
    She knew from Jarrett this qualified as a sore subject for Bast, and the last five minutes highlighted that point. Jarrett insisted Bast treated his ex well and she crapped all over him, though the language Jarrett used was much more colorful.
    Her fingertips brushed along Bast’s chin. “The man described in the novel isn’t you.”
    Somehow she got the comment out. Through the rush in her ears and the thundering in her chest, she found the right words. That guy, the one people whispered about, the one who shoved his wife around and made sexual demands that scared her wasn’t real and couldn’t be Bast.
    Kyra didn’t trust many people, but for some reason she trusted Bast to be decent. Maybe it stemmed from his friendship with Jarrett and Wade, or how he acted in the club. She didn’t analyze her certainty. She just knew she wanted to show him not all women operated like his ex.
    â€œLena makes it clear in the acknowledgments the book is fiction and not a memoir, but I’m thinking readers skip those, at least that’s what my emails and disappointed calls from my father suggest.”
    Father, yeah, there was a subject sure to suck any sexuality out of the moment. And that is not what Kyra had planned for the next few minutes.
    Despite the detour, she needed to stop and make Bast understand one simple thing. “I didn’t.”
    His eyes narrowed. “What?”
    â€œSkip the acknowledgments.”
    His expression went blank. All emotion wiped clean and he stared at her with flat lips and dull eyes. “So, you really did read the whole book?”
    There was no use dodging now, and she was determined they would be honest with each other, no matter how much moments like these hurt. “Yes.”
    â€œRight.” He pushed off from the wall and stepped back. Two feet of warm summer heat pulsed between them. “Everyone else in town did, so why not you.”
    The shuttered expression, the