“That’s not what I meant. This is a place you could move on from quickly if you had to.”
He must have heard the unease in her voice because he turned toward her and said, “Just because I can doesn’t mean I will.”
He showed her the bedroom next. In addition to the king-size bed, there was a dresser and nightstand with a lamp. The sunken tub in the attached bathroom dwarfed the one in Kate’s apartment, and the large walk-in shower had two showerheads. Those two rooms were also devoid of anything not meant for function.
Lastly, he showed her the kitchen. She ran her hand along the granite countertop, upon which sat a high-end coffeemaker, and admired the shiny stainless steel appliances.
“The Batcave is gorgeous, if a little unfinished.”
“Most everything I rent ends up looking like this. I never take the time to do much to the apartments. I work, sleep, use the gym, and order in.”
Kate looked at the glass-front cupboards. Other than a few coffee cups, they were empty. She opened a drawer, but instead of silverware she found the plastic-wrapped forks and spoons that accompanied a takeout order. There was no knife block or fruit bowl or toaster to be found.
“All you have in your kitchen is a coffeemaker.” She hopped up on the counter.
“Well, now I have a coffeemaker and a beautiful woman. What more do I need?”
He stood between her legs, and she wrapped them around him. Looking into his eyes, she kissed him softly. Then she rubbed her cheek against his scruff, which was long enough not to hurt but short enough to provide the most arousing friction, especially when he dragged it along her inner thigh. “I love the way this feels on my skin.”
“Bet I know where you love it the most.”
“Bet you’re right.”
After pulling off his sweatshirt, she ran her hands along his shoulders and then leaned forward, kissing and nibbling and sucking her way down the side of his neck.
“I do so enjoy it when a woman makes the first move.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. However, you seldom allow me enough time to make one before you swoop in with one of your own.”
“It’s because I find you so irresistible.”
“Aren’t you a charmer?”
He leaned forward to catch her earlobe between his teeth and whispered, “You know it.”
She shrieked when he put his hands on her lower back and pulled her forward, sliding her off the counter. “Don’t drop me,” she said, tightening her arms and legs around him.
He laughed, and with his hands underneath her, he boosted her higher and headed for the bedroom. “I’m not going to drop you.”
Maybe he didn’t drop her in the kitchen or while walking down the hallway, but when he reached the bedroom, he leaned over his bed and let go. Kate landed on her back with a bounce. He took off his jeans. The room was dark except for the light coming in from the hallway. It was the perfect amount, romantic but not too bright.
“Oh yes,” Kate said. She propped herself up on her elbows and let out a wolf whistle. “Look at you. Bravo. Bravo.”
“And I’m not even done yet.”
“Take it all off, you gorgeous man.”
While he was removing his underwear, Kate inched her way to the edge of the bed so that she was right in front of Ian.
Deliciously naked Ian.
And his very impressive erection.
Which Kate decided she simply had to put in her mouth.
“Oh, Jesus,” Ian said. He plunged his hands into Kate’s hair.
When she flicked her gaze upward a few minutes later, his eyes were wide open and he was watching her every movement. His groans and his ragged breathing made her never want to stop doing this to him.
A few minutes after that, he put his hands on her head to still her. “Kate.”
“Are you sure?” she asked, pausing to look up at him.
“Rain check. Very, very soon,” he said, pulling her shirt over her head and reaching around to unhook her bra.
Kate lay back on the bed, and Ian tugged off her jeans, socks, and underwear. He kissed her hungrily, his mouth moving from her lips to her neck to her breasts, and when he put his hand between her legs, she moaned.
Turning onto his back, he pulled her into a sitting position on top of him. They had explored many positions in the days since they’d first slept together, and she’d discovered this was one of Ian’s favorites.
He held on to her so she wouldn’t topple off, and he reached over to get a condom from the nightstand. “I really hate these things. I’ll take whatever test you want me to take if we can stop using them.”
“Deal,” she said. Kate was already on the pill, and if he was willing to jump through a few hoops in order to ditch the condoms, so was she.
After he rolled it on, she took him in hand and prepared to guide him into her.
“Not yet, sweetness.” He lay back and put his hands on her hips, lifting and pulling her forward until she was hovering over him.
Oh.
Oh.
He tucked his arms under her thighs and brought her down onto his face.
“Ahhhhh.” She balanced on her knees, gripping the headboard as his tongue probed and swirled.
He pressed her tighter to his mouth, and it felt so good that she let go of her inhibitions and stopped worrying about whether he could breathe. It was easily the most erotic thing she’d ever experienced, and his enthusiasm only made it better.
Gripping the headboard tighter, she murmured a series of encouraging sounds to let him know how close she was. She cried out his name a moment later, and she was still riding the endless waves of her orgasm when he grabbed her roughly by the hips and moved her down his body, frantic in his need. She sank down onto him, and now she understood why he’d put the condom on first. He looked directly into her eyes, and when she held his gaze they shared a moment that was more intense than anything she’d ever felt with him. It made her want to give him things he hadn’t asked for yet.
Cupping her breasts, he began to stroke her nipples with his thumbs, which shot an electric current directly between her legs. She moved faster, grinding against him as he held her hips tight.
“God, Kate. Yes.”
Their rhythm and his roaming hands felt incredible, and she came for the second time—passionately, breathlessly. Not long after that, so did he. She collapsed onto his chest, her heart beating fast, feeling him pulsing inside her.
“How can it be this good every single time?” She’d wondered if the fireworks she’d experienced when they slept together the first time had been a fluke, but she’d discovered that sex with Ian had only gotten better. They were gasoline and fire, and he made her feel uninhibited in a way Stuart never had.
He smoothed the hair back from her damp temple and kissed her. “Maybe it’s us.”
Us.
“Maybe it is,” she said, trying to catch her breath. Whatever the reason, she never wanted it to stop.
Ian ducked into the bathroom, and when he slipped back into bed, he held her tight, her head on his chest and his arms wrapped around her, their legs entwined. Ian spooned her when they slept, but this was the way he held her after sex. She could feel his heart beating under her cheek, and at that moment she thought she could easily spend the rest of her life in his arms.
“How many cities have you lived in?” she asked.
“Too many to count.”
“A girl in every port, right?”
“There have been women in some ports. But never more than one at a time. And now only you.”
“And when it’s time to go, you move on? From the town and from them?”
“In the past ten years, I’ve asked two of them to come with me. They both declined. My lifestyle is not for everyone.”
Kate remained silent. If he were to ask, would she be willing to follow him wherever it was he wanted her to go?
“It doesn’t mean I love any less fiercely,” he said.
Her he
art fluttered at the mention of love. How would it feel to be loved by Ian? To hear him utter those words to her?
“You said you didn’t really have any family to speak of. What happened to them?”
“I don’t have a lot of contact with my mom. She’s not really interested in my whereabouts and doesn’t know much about my adult life. She’s always been somewhat distant. I’m an only child, so I guess she never really took to parenting.”
“What about your dad?”
“My dad was wonderful. He was as warm as she was cold. He worked long hours at an office job so my mom could stay home with me, but she left me to my own devices most of the time, and once I started school she disengaged even more. She never showed up for things a parent was supposed to show up for, but my dad always did. He’d take off work and would be sitting right in the front row of my school program or award ceremony. When I got a little older and started playing sports, he never missed a game.”
Kate’s heart broke for him. Her parents had always been there for her and Chad, cheering on their accomplishments and showing their support. Her mother had taken things one step further, acting as homeroom mother several years in a row for both her and Chad. Diane was the kind of parent who volunteered to bake five dozen cupcakes for the bake sale or sew costumes for the school play.
“My dad’s the one who introduced me to computers. He was fairly technical and had always been interested in programming. He had an old Commodore computer in the basement, and he used a textbook to show me how to write programs for it. I was only twelve, but it didn’t take long before I’d surpassed everything he taught me, and he was amazed at what I could make that computer do. I was fourteen when we started accessing the Internet from home via dial-up, and my dad and I spent hours online. It was like a whole new world had opened up for me. For him too, although in a vastly different way.”
Ian seemed lost in thought for a moment. “As I got older, I realized he hated his job and that the thing he wanted most was to be independently wealthy. My mom rode him pretty hard—nothing he did was ever good enough—and it was no secret that he didn’t like his boss. He wanted desperately to be a self-made man, but he could never figure out how to make it happen. Though he should have been, he wasn’t suspicious about the financial opportunities he found on the Internet, and he fell victim to an online pyramid scheme. It was fairly sophisticated and nearly impossible to identify it as a scam, and he lost everything he had. But worse than that was the blow to his pride. I remember hearing my parents fight, massive screaming arguments, my mom yelling about how foolish he’d been. They argued all the time after that, especially about money. About six months later, when I was at school and my mom was out, he came home from work and left the car running when he shut the garage door.”
Kate’s eyes filled with tears. “I don’t know what to say, Ian. I’m so sorry. It sounds like he was a wonderful person.”
“It’s okay, sweetness,” he said soothingly. “The story ends well, I promise. After my dad died, my mom had to get a job and she was just so angry all the time. She couldn’t stand the sight of me on that computer, so I moved it into my bedroom and the two of us went our separate ways even though we lived under the same roof. I was lucky though, because I had an advisor in high school who’d picked up on the fact that I didn’t have any parental involvement when it came to planning for college. She’s the one I credit for helping me gain admission to MIT, which is not an easy thing to achieve even when you’re a 4.0 student like I was. I’d always shown a strong aptitude for math and science, so she made sure that everything I did from tenth grade on would benefit me during the admission process, whether it was encouraging me to sign up for extracurricular activities or asking my teachers for letters of recommendation. She knew I had no money for college but assured me that MIT had a great financial-aid program and that if I got in, she’d help me with the paperwork. I took every AP class available and several at the local community college so I could start earning credit while I was still in high school. When it came time to write my admissions essay, I made sure it would pull on the heartstrings of every person who read it. I spared no detail about my dad because I’d already figured out that playing upon the sympathies of the admissions board was just another way of identifying their weakness and using it to my advantage. No one was more excited when I got into MIT than my advisor.”
“Do you stay in touch?”
“I send her an e-mail every now and then. I wonder sometimes if she’s ever figured out where the extra money in her bank account comes from.”
“You put money in her bank account?” Kate loved that.
“I can tell by her average balance that she needs it, so a few times a year I make a deposit and make sure it can’t be traced back to me.”
“Your dad would be so proud of who you’ve become and the things you’ve accomplished.”
“I think he would,” Ian said, stroking her hair. “After I graduated and left for college, I never looked back. MIT was a perfect fit for me. It’s where I came alive, Kate. I met other students who were every bit as driven as I was, and it was like being reborn. To everyone else, I was this computer whiz kid from Amarillo who was desperately trying to lose his accent, but I knew I could be anyone I wanted to be. They knew nothing about my history, and I spent my first year of college trying my best to forget where I’d come from. One day I realized I could use my growing skills to go anyplace I wanted. I hung around with other computer science majors, and we spent hours in our dorm rooms trying to one-up each other, competing to see what systems we could hack into. It took me a while to track down the man who’d cheated my dad, but I’m very patient and eventually I found him. Then I made his life a living hell by crippling every single scam website he attempted to launch and corrupting every computer he ever tried to use. Eventually I learned how to steal from people like him.”
“What about your mom? Do you ever talk to her?”
“She’s remarried now. I keep track of her, out of curiosity more than anything. I call and leave a message once or twice a year. She doesn’t call back. I don’t give her money. I would if she asked for it, but she can’t be bothered to learn enough about me to know I have it. So I give it to others, people who are more deserving. It makes me feel good.”
He grew quiet then. Kate shifted her body so she was lying on top of him. She pressed her lips tenderly to his and said, “I think you’re amazing.”
She kissed him again, slowly, softly, gently. His body stirred underneath her, and she responded with her touch because at that moment there was nothing she wanted more than to share that closeness with him again.
Maybe she didn’t know how it would feel to be loved by Ian, but she knew how it would feel to love him because that night, in his bed after hearing his story, Kate’s heart felt like it would burst and she fell hard.
The next morning when she awakened wrapped in Ian’s arms, he nuzzled his face in her hair and asked if she’d accept his donation.
“Yes,” she said. She could no sooner deny his request than she could the hungry people who walked into her food pantry, and he probably knew it. “But I’d like it to be my Christmas gift from you, and I’d rather it came from you personally. I don’t care that you take money from cyberthieves, but there’s no justifiable reason for you to do it on my behalf.”
“Whatever you want,” he said, and both of them were happy.
A few days later, she and Ian met at Target after work. If he was going to donate the money, she wanted him to see what he was paying for. They worked from the list Kate had brought, making sure to buy toys in a variety of age ranges that any child would enjoy, regardless if it was a boy or a girl. By the time they were done, neither of their SUVs could hold anything more. Because Ian was providing the toys, the organizations she was partnering with were able to put the money they’d raised toward the holiday meal, and everything was set for Christmas Eve.
Afterward, Kate insisted on taking Ian out for dinne
r and to Nicollet Mall where they walked hand in hand, looking at lights and checking out the Christmas Market. Then, when they were sipping mulled wine and watching the winter fireworks, he squeezed her hand and said, “I am falling so hard for you.”
She smiled up at him because his words filled her with joy. Kate wanted to tell him she’d already fallen. She wanted to tell him that when she woke up in his arms she wondered what it would be like to wake up in them for the rest of her life. She wanted to tell him that his babies were the ones she’d been thinking about lately. But she worried it was too early to say any of those things, so she squeezed back and said, “Me too.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Ian was sitting on Kate’s couch with his laptop. When she walked into the room, he set the computer on the coffee table, took off his glasses, and said, “C’mere, sweetness. I’ve got a number six for you.”
“I love the number six.” She sat down on his lap, and he cupped her face and pulled her in for a kiss.
“When do you need to leave?” he asked, sliding his hands under her sweater so that his warm palms rested on her bare skin.
Kate was meeting some friends from college for a Timberwolves game. She wasn’t a huge basketball fan, but the group had been going once or twice a season for years and used the outings as a way to stay in touch.
“Soon.”
“You don’t sound very excited.”
“It’s hard to get excited when it’s so cold outside and so warm and cozy in here.” Though Kate enjoyed getting together with her old friends, she was tired and really didn’t feel like venturing out on such a bitterly cold night right before Christmas. But the tickets had already been purchased, so she was going.
“I know a little something about hard and excited,” Ian said, a devilish smile on his face.
She smiled back. “Do you ever.” Kate gave him a long, warm, soft kiss, relishing the way it made him groan. “Will you stay? Wait here for me until I get back?” Though she couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept at his place, Kate didn’t want Ian to think he had to go home just because she was leaving. She wanted him to still be on her couch when she returned from the game.