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Baxter plonked himself on the end of my bed. He leaned back on his elbows, head tipped back to maintain eye contact.

“That’s my bed.” As intelligent statements went, it wasn’t the best.

“It is,” he agreed, wriggling around to make himself more comfortable.

“You have a bed of your own down the hall.”

“I do.” His lips curled into a smile. “Do you have any idea how loud your thoughts have been tonight? About me. My eyes. My hair. My lips. My arse when I went to the toilet. Thanks for the compliments, by the way. No man would complain about a top-three bubble-butt ranking.”

Could a person spontaneously combust from embarrassment? Given the blazing heat in my cheeks, it felt entirely possible. Did the hotel have insurance for such an eventuality? What were their evacuation procedures like? I’d hate to think my embarrassment could endanger the lives of others.

“Spontaneous combustion,” Baxter said, barely holding back laughter. “That’s a new one.”

“Did you know the phenomenon dates all the way back to 1641?”

“I did not.”

“Although 1641 is misleading.”

“Uh-huh…”

“It’s misleading because that’s just the date when a Danish physician published a book of strange medical phenomena titled Historiarum Anatomicarum Rariorum. In it, he detailed the death of Polonius Vorstius. Vorstius was an Italian knight who, in 1470, drank some strong wine and began vomiting flames before bursting into fire. It’s the first recorded account. Of course, there’ve been many more since then—such as the famous incident in France in 1725, when a Parisian innkeeper was awoken by the smell of smoke and discovered that his wife had been reduced to ashes while sleeping on a straw pallet which had remained untouched by the flames.”

“And… we’re back in France again,” Baxter said. “You once told me you weren’t obsessed with France. You keep making me seriously doubt that statement.”

“And of course Charles Dickens used it to kill off one of his characters in Bleak House.”

“Of course he did.”

“It was controversial even for the nineteenth century, because many believed the phenomenon to be nothing more than superstition. The literary critic G.H. Lewes criticized Dickens for giving ‘currency to a vulgar error.’” I paused to take a much-needed breath. “And then there was—”

“You want to have sex with me,” Baxter said. It wasn’t a question. Then again, given he’d been reading my mind all night, it didn’t need to be. “That’s what you were hoping would happen if I took you up on the offer to paint the town red.”

“No!” The word almost burst out of me. Baxter raised an eyebrow. “Maybe.” He hitched it a little higher. “Yes.” His lips twitched. “It’s not funny.”

“Oh, I agree. The thought of you and me having sex is not funny at all.” He rose from the bed, his movements sinuous and purposeful enough that I instinctively stepped back as he approached. “Arousing. Delicious. Exhilarating. But not funny. Fun, hopefully—but not funny.”

I didn’t realize I’d been retreating until the wall at my back stopped me. I lifted a hand as he kept coming. “You’ve had an awful day. You’ve admitted yourself that you use sex as a coping mechanism, and that you don’t want to do that anymore.”

Baxter halted, close enough that I could feel the heat radiating from him. “Is that what you think this is? Me using you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you know what the only thing stopping me from kissing you right now is?”

“That I just talked about spontaneous combustion for five solid minutes?”

Baxter laughed. “Apart from that. You’re lucky I find it cute.”

Cute! He made me sound like a history-obsessed bunny rabbit. When words failed me, I shook my head.

Baxter stepped half a step closer, his chest brushing mine. “That we’ve been here before. The last time I kissed you, you pushed me away. Rejection was hard the first time. It’ll be even harder the second time.”

“I didn’t reject you.”

“It felt like it.”

I thought back to the night we met. In real terms, it had only been a couple of weeks ago, but it felt like a lifetime—like I’d been a different man. In some ways, I had been. I’d lived in a world where I didn’t know people could pluck every thought from your head, or that someone could be murdered and come back to life almost two decades later.

“We were both drunk,” I said. “You were upset about your suspension. I was upset because Carl ruined my date with Glenn. The timing was all wrong. It would have been a mistake.”

“And now?” The words were casual enough, but the watchfulness in Baxter’s blue gaze said otherwise. “If I kiss you now, what are you going to do?”