Steve Sheldon.

Gracie Terrence stared through her windshield at the man who starred in every torrid late-night fantasy she’d had in the past two years. Tight ass always in blue jeans that fit like a glove. Rock-hard chest. Biceps that could squeeze the stuffing out of her. He sat on the porch of their duplex in one of her wrought iron chairs, his feet propped on the wooden railing.

Even with the car windows up, she could hear the steady thump thump of the music blaring from his side of the house. Another firemen party, she figured. Almost weekly he had a night of loud music and even louder men at his place.

She didn’t mind the parties in the summer when they hung out in the backyard. Inevitably their shirts came off, their sweaty, muscled bodies flexing in the sunlight as they played kamikaze volleyball. But these winter parties royally pissed her off. Especially when she had a stack of midterm papers to grade before returning to school by seven-fifteen the next morning.

She hadn’t left work until nearly nine tonight. Her body lacked food and her head still pounded after hours of forcing herself to read page after page of adolescent bullshit on the meaning of Romeo and Juliet. She gripped the steering wheel with her chilled hands and bonked her forehead against her fists. The pizza sitting on the passenger seat in its cardboard box was undoubtedly cold and congealed by now.

Gracie drew in a calming breath. She’d simply ask Steve to turn down the music. She’d let him know she needed some sleep, and feeling the bass vibrations from his half of the house was not going to help her accomplish that.

The porch light illuminated him as his raised a bottle to his mouth. As he tossed back a swig of beer, she focused on the strong column of his throat. Steve. Her pussy tingled at the thought of seeing him, speaking to him, hearing that deep voice. She squeezed her thighs together, making the sensation last a second longer. She’d wanted him since the day he moved in two years ago.

And then there was the memory of what she’d glimpsed for a few precious moments last summer, a sight burned into her brain so deep it would never leave—the sight of him magnificently naked.

She’d returned early from a teacher’s conference and had caught him playing in the backyard. Stretched out on a lawn lounger only a few feet from her kitchen window, he’d been...