Flustered, she touched her overly hot cheek with cool fingertips, tucked a poof of hair behind one ear, and then licked her lips. Okay, let’s see how he likes to be thrown off guard.

Knowing him, he’d probably relish every moment.

She pretended to read from her legal pad. “Rumor has it that anatomically correct robot prototypes have been crafted in the images of each member of Exodus End,” she said in her most professional voice. “Can you explain why there is so little going on in the pants of the Logan Schmidt model?”

He blinked and gaped at the wall.

“Uh, they ran out of android-making materials trying to generate a life-sized rendition of my love hammer,” he said.

Toni managed not to snort at his ridiculous euphemism, but just barely. “That’s not what I heard.”

“What did you hear? If you’ve forgotten the size of my pool noodle, I’d be happy to offer it up for your journalistic inspection.”

At this rate, she’d never keep her composure. But she was going to try.

She stared into his eyes and said, “I heard engineers feared that life as we know it would come to a standstill as all under-sexed women on the planet became addicted to your life-sized mechanical beaver cleaver—”

His bark of laughter startled her to silence. “Did you seriously just call it a beaver cleaver?”

“I’m sorry. Do you prefer yogurt cannon?” She tilted her head to peer at him over the top of the rim of her glasses. “Got it. Logan’s . . . yogurt . . . cannon,” she said as she wrote the words in the margin.

She waited until he stopped laughing before she continued.

“I also heard somewhere that you were the original lead singer for Exodus End; care to sing me a few lines?” She stared at him hopefully, her heart fluttering in her chest with romantic anticipation. She was dying to hear his singing voice.

“And who told you that? Was it Max? Because he seems to think understating his vocal talent earns him more compliments or something. I can’t sing. Never could. I have the harmonics of a drunken crow.”

“Prove it.”

He squawked out a few lines of their first-ever hit, “Rebel in You,” and he did indeed sound like a drunken crow. She was pretty sure he was singing horribly on purpose, but that didn’t stop her from cringing and covering her ears with both hands.

“So you see,” Logan said, “we needed Max whether I liked it or not.”

She blinked at him. “You didn’t want Max in the band?”

“I thought we were just fine with three members. I was fortunately outvoted by the other two, and we sought an additional band member.”

“Fortunately outvoted?”

“I was devastated at the time, but you’ve heard me sing. Do you think we would have been at all successful with me as a front man?”

She shrugged. There was no way to know for sure.

“There are those occasional instances in your life when you’re glad you’re proven wrong. I was wrong. We needed Max to make us a better band. But never tell him I said that.” He winked at her, and she smiled before glancing down at her notes. It was time for her to get a little silly just for fun.

“Are you ready for more questions?”

He recrossed his legs so his ankle rested on the opposite knee and leaned back against the cushions to get comfortable. “Shoot.”

“What’s your favorite color?”

He lifted an eyebrow at her. “Seriously?”

She nodded, feigning extreme interest in his answer by holding her pen at the ready and staring at him as if on the edge of her seat.

“Pink,” he said.

She dropped her pen. “Pink?”

“It’s the color of your nipples.”

“Are you thinking about my boobs again?”

“I’m always thinking about your boobs.”

She slipped her hand under the sofa and pulled out what she expected to be her dropped pen, but what she'd grabbed was a lot longer, made of some flexible purple material, and slightly enlarged at one end.

“What is this?” She drew it toward her face for closer inspection.

Logan chuckled. “It’s a magic wand. I’m pretty sure it’s been in someone’s ass, so you might not want to put it too close to your nose.”

With a shriek, she tossed it. It skittered across the gleaming white coffee table and landed on the carpet on the opposite side.

“We’ll add toys to your lessons at the hotel,” Logan said, not looking the least bit concerned that she’d touched that thing. “We should be there in a couple hours.”

That bit of knowledge made her squirm with desire and feel a bit queasy with nerves at the same time. She was pretty sure her lessons up to this point had been relatively tame, and she wasn’t sure if she was ready to step it up to the next level. She wiped her hand on her skirt—as if that would sanitize her skin after touching a used ass wand.

“Was that yours?” she asked, eyeing the end of the “magic wand” just visible on the other side of the table.

“I plead the fifth.” He grinned. “But if I’d known it was hiding under there, I’d have given you a demonstration of the magic it works when I had you bent over the sofa arm last night.”

She crinkled her nose in disgust. “Eww. Even though you know where it’s been?”

“I would have cleaned it first.”

That didn’t make her feel any better.

“Promise me that any toys you use on my body are new. There are some things I’m not willing to compromise on and that is one of them.”

He was grinning entirely too wolfishly for her peace of mind.

“Logan!”

“I promise to use dozens of brand new toys on your body—singly and in combination.”

“That’s not what I said.”

“I would never have touched you with someone else’s toy, Toni. I just love how cute you look when you get all freaked out.”

“Well, who wouldn’t freak out about something like that? It’s gross.”

“Would you still think it’s gross if I admitted that the ass tormented by that thing was mine?”

Had she been holding her pen, she would have dropped it. “You’re messing with me again.”

He lifted his eyebrows and shook his head. “I wouldn’t mess with you about something as important as explosive orgasms.”

Toni sat up straighter so she could take another look at the toy she’d tossed. “I could use toys on you too?”

“I’d prefer if we made it a requirement.”

She turned her head to catch his gaze, not sure if he was trying to throw her off guard again. He was so good at duping her that she was starting to suspect him of it at all times.

“It sounds like playing with toys should be an imperative part of my lessons,” she said.

“I agree.”

“Can we get back to my questions now?”

“Hey, you’re the one throwing magic wands around.”

“What’s your favorite food?”

He shook his head at her in disbelief. “Are these really the questions you want to ask?”

“The other band members answered them without belittling their importance.”

“Tacos.” He scratched his ear. “Fish tacos. Preferably clean shaven.”

Another innuendo?

“What would it take to convince you to shave your muff?” he asked.

She glanced down at her lap. “A huge diamond,” she teased.

“Done.”

She’d already been convinced to shave her muff; she didn’t need a diamond. “Are fish tacos really your favorite food?”

“Your fish taco is my favor—”

“Logan, is it really so hard for you to take my job seriously?”

“It is when you use words like hard.”

She glared at him, and he sighed.

“I don’t know what it is about you that keeps me in a constant state of arousal,” he said. “Maybe after I fuck you twenty or thirty times over the next couple of days, I’ll be able to remember what my favorite food is.”

Twenty or thirty times? Was he insane?

He snapped his fingers unexpectedly. “Macaroni and cheese.”

She’d had a hard enough time figuring out the fish taco reference—what could he possibly mean by macaroni and cheese? She was still puzzling over it when he tilted his head at her.