Chapter 30
I had a whole speech prepared. It was a good one too.
Practiced it as I drove back from the restaurant, and the moment Ian got out of his car, his eyes burning into mine, every single thought fled from my brain like I’d never had the ability to string words together.
Behind my ribs, the thrashing of my heart was the only thing that kept me grounded in the moment.
Ian didn’t join me on the porch, not right away, crossing his arms and leaning his trim hips against the front of his truck while he studied my face.
“Quick dinner.”
My chin rose. “Never made it to the restaurant.”
His brow flattened, his mouth opening slightly in surprise. “Why not?”
The rough edge to his voice had me standing because it set off such a wild burst of energy under my skin that I couldn’t stay still anymore.
The delicate tension in the air felt close to shattering. I kinda wanted it to.
“Couldn’t get out of the car once I was in the parking lot.” My brows rose fractionally. “So I called Scott and had a little heart-to-heart about his dinner meeting.”
Ian didn’t ask what kind. He just continued watching me with a slightly wary, very intense look in his eyes.
“I asked him if he was hoping for our dinner meeting to turn into a date. Or the opportunity to ask for one.” I shrugged one shoulder, an oh-so-casual gesture that didn’t match the riot of nerves zapping through my veins. One would think I had conversations like this all the time, but I sort of felt like I was walking on a tightrope over the Grand fucking Canyon, my heart clutched in my hands so that I could offer it to him when I got to the other side. “To the surprise of no one, he was hoping for a romantic development.”
The change on Ian’s face was immediate, and it sent a white-hot thrill through me because stoic and brooding and thoughtful turned heated in an instant. Where his arms were crossed over his chest, there was a shift and tightening in the muscles.
“And?” he asked in a growly tone that had my lips twitching as I fought a smile.
“My turn for a question, I think.”
His brow arched.
“Where did you go?”
Instead of an answer, I got a tight clench of his jaw, and his gaze fixed on an unremarkable spot on the ground. “What did you say to Scott?” he asked.
I exhaled a quiet laugh. “Stubborn man,” I murmured, my eyes tracing his face.
Ian pushed off the truck, my pulse skyrocketing with that one simple movement.
“What did you say to Scott?” he asked again.
The dinner meeting was a moot point the moment I couldn’t drag myself bodily from the car. I damn well knew that the man waiting at the table wanted it to be more, and I couldn’t do it. Because this man in front of me had me so twisted up, so heartsick from wanting him that I couldn’t suffer through a single meal without coming back here to talk to him.
“I don’t want to talk about him.” My chin rose, courage gathering in a tight coil as I took a step closer to Ian. His eyes flared. “But I do want to ask you another question.”
“We gonna do this all fucking night? Ask each other shit because we can’t say the things we need to say?”
Frantically, I realized that none of this was going how I thought it would.
“What is it?” he asked. He pointed in the general direction of my forehead. “You’re getting that face thing that happens when you’re frustrated.”
“I had a speech,” I blurted out. “I practiced in the car and knew exactly how this would go.” My fingers twisted together in front of me. “Did you think about what you’d say to me when I got home?”
“No, because I thought I’d have plenty of time, but someone ditched her dinner meeting.” I exhaled a quiet laugh, and he took a step closer. His hand came up, his thumb touching my chin lightly. “Tell me your speech, sparky. I want to hear it.”
My pulse was racing, my fingers trembling, because with that one touch, the control of this scene flipped firmly into Ian’s hands.
“I had all these questions,” I told him, lifting my chin in a dare for him to argue. He did nothing but watch me with a slight smile on his face.
“Any examples you want to share?”
My tongue darted out, wetting my bottom lip, and his eyes tracked the movement hungrily. “I was going to start small. Why did you kiss me? Why did you apologize? Because I know you weren’t sorry.”
“I wasn’t,” he said roughly.
My heart stuttered over that one moment of naked honesty, hope rushing immediately in its wake. A herd of naked football players could’ve stampeded through that front yard, and I wouldn’t have been able to tear my gaze from Ian’s. “Okay, so that would’ve derailed me because I didn’t think you’d answer, so I had this very emotional and dramatic plan. Lots of searing eye contact,” I said. “You’d say something like, those aren’t simple questions.”
At the deep pitch of my voice, his brows lowered. “That’s not how I sound.”
I ignored him, my heart swelling at his nearness. “And when you got all broody and frustrated, I’d walk up to you and lay my hand right here,” I said quietly, erasing the last few steps between us to place my palm over his chest. And it was just like I imagined—the thrashing of his heart under all that warm skin and muscle.
“Does your brain conjure scenarios like this often? I’m not sure I was prepared.”
My lips curved into a smile. “And then I’d ask you why you can’t answer my simple little questions when you look at me like you do.”
Ian’s hand ghosted over the line of my arm until he wrapped his big hand around my wrist. “And how do I look at you, Harlow?” he asked, his voice pitching deep and low in his chest as he pressed his body closer to mine, his nose dropping into the crown of my hair. The desperate way he pulled air into his lungs had my knees going weak. “Tell me.”
Helplessly, hopelessly, my fingers curled into a fist in the material of his shirt, and with a shaky inhale, I forgot what I was going to say.
Ian brushed his nose along the shell of my ear, and I melted further into him.
“Tell me, Harlow.” The whispered demand had my blood turning in a slow boil.
Dazedly, I pulled back so I could see him. “You look at me like I’m your whole world,” I admitted quietly. “Like it almost hurts to feel something this big for someone and not know if it’s just you.” I sucked in a fortifying breath, my pulse spreading in a giant throbbing beat over my skin. “It’s probably the same way I look at you.”
Ian’s mouth was on mine before a single heartbeat passed, and wrapped tight in his arms, I let the absolute certainty behind that kiss melt away any fears or doubts or inhibitions. Everything we’d experienced—the days and weeks and years that led to this moment—was the crucible that our friendship needed to burn away everything except this.
He was mine. And I was his. Maybe I always had been, and we were just waiting for the perfect time. Or, I had to admit to myself, maybe there wasn’t such a thing as a perfect time for anything. This story always ended with us together, no matter when it happened. But as Ian slid his tongue against mine with a groan yanked deep from his chest, his hands clutching me in a breathtakingly tight hold, I didn’t care much about the maybes or the what might have beens or what-ifs.
I tilted my head, allowing the angle of the kiss to change, and I pressed up on tiptoes because I couldn’t get close enough, couldn’t kiss him deep enough, couldn’t feel enough of his body against mine.
Just as quickly, he tore his mouth away, his breath ragged and panting against my lips.
“I didn’t practice anything. I didn’t know what to say or how to tell you that the thought of fucking this up was the scariest thing I’ve ever faced,” he said, a growling edge to his voice that had me shivering. He kissed me again, a hard, fast kiss. “But I love you. I love you. I love you.”
With a short sob, I cupped his face in my hands and brushed my lips over his, luxuriating this time in the feel of his mouth and the heat of his skin. In the soft slide of his tongue when he wound it around my own, and the scratch of his short beard against my palms as we kissed and kissed and kissed.
The strength of his arms banded around my body was a heady thing, and he turned us so that I was braced against the truck. Ian’s hands skirted my waist and hips, the side of my breasts, and up over my shoulders, his fingers digging into my hair with a goose bump-pulling groan that I wanted to hear on a loop for the rest of eternity.
He broke away, eyes searing into mine as our chests heaved. “Say it.” A smile ghosted over my lips, and he stared down at them like he was delirious from need. “I want to hear you say it, Harlow,” he commanded.
There was a moment where I wanted to tease him. To edge this moment out to its breaking point with something flirty and sweet, with my fingers tracing the hard muscles underneath his shirt because I desperately wanted to do that too.
But I couldn’t.
My heart was pressed to the seams with love for him. Knowing that he loved me back, and we were going to do this together left no other choice than naked honesty.
His knuckles brushed down the side of my cheek, and I clutched his hands in mine, dragging my nose over the line of his fingers while he touched my jaw and my lips.
“You are the love of my life, Ian Wilder,” I said, tears filling my eyes. “And there is nothing to be scared of. Not when we’re together.” The first tear fell as I kissed him sweetly. He pulled back, his own eyes glossy too. With the pad of his thumb, he brushed the tear away. “My heart has been yours since we were five years old, and I don’t ever want it back.”
There were moments in life like this one—when your entire universe goes crystal clear, blindingly bright with the kind of hope that hurts. I’d only ever experienced it once, with Sage’s first ear-splitting cry, when they set her on my chest—covered in goo and the most perfect thing I’d ever seen.
And now, I saw it in Ian’s eyes and felt it the way my heart beat his name over and over and over. It was the kind of love I’d never be able to write down, the kind of perfect acceptance and understanding that made it hard to form words.
The sky above us was soft blues and oranges and pinks as the sun disappeared, stars hadn’t quite appeared in their sparkling blanket yet, but I knew they were there. And as he bent again, his hands coasting down my back while he took my mouth in another deep, seeking kiss, I wanted to stamp every detail into the most important part of my brain.
This was what perfect felt like.
The callouses on his hands as they skated underneath my shirt and dragged over the skin on my back. The way his tongue swept into my mouth as he pressed me backward from the force of his kiss. The way he held me tight against his chest and pushed between my hips when I wrenched my thigh against his side.
And it was knowing that we weren’t stealing a moment, that this feeling was ours to bottle up and relive every single day for the rest of our lives.
Ian dragged kisses along the edge of my jaw, and I stared up at that beautiful, dark sky, a pleasing warmth curling under my skin when I realized we had the entire night to ourselves. He tugged on the lobe of my ear, and I sucked in a hissing breath, my fingers sliding underneath his shirt and mapping the thin line of hair that bisected his flat, muscular stomach.
With a deep groan, he slanted his mouth over mine again, his hands clutching at my backside over my jeans. The hard, unyielding shape of him pressed against me tugged a mewling sound from my throat. Oh, this was going to be so good.
Ian wrenched his mouth away and stared down at me, his pupils huge in his eyes.
“What?” I whispered.
“Did you eat dinner?”
The lightning-quick subject change left me blinking stupidly up into his ridiculously handsome face. “What?” I said again.
He grinned, quick and heated and so adoring that I felt my knees tremble. Ian leaned down and kissed the tip of my nose. “I think I should feed you, if you skipped out on dinner.”
“Wh—”
“I know asking what three times in a row was not on your list of questions, sparky.”
My eyes narrowed, and I curled my fingers around his belt. “No, but my questions are in direct relation to you, and you are making no sense. If we’re going inside, I want to have sex,” I said crisply. “With you. Preferably more than once because we have no one to interrupt us for the entire night.”
He cocked an eyebrow and pressed me back against the truck again, ducking down to whisper against the shell of my ear. “Don’t you remember what I said?”
As he said it, his hand pushed underneath my shirt, the edge of his thumb circling my belly button before he dragged the back of his knuckles along my ribs. My breath was coming in embarrassing pants. I could hardly think, let alone answer.
Ian kept his hands there, brushing back and forth and back and forth while he waited for me.
“Umm, you’ve said a lot of things,” I said breathily. “You’ll have to be more specific.”
He dragged his nose along my cheekbone, his lips ghosting mine, but pulled away just as I tried to kiss him again. “What does a man do when he wants a woman?”
“Hopefully has sex with her while her daughter is at a sleepover all night,” I snapped.
He grinned, teeth straight and white. His smile did such incredible things to my heart, probably because he showed it so rarely. I traced the edge of his lips and hummed.
“He asks her to dinner,” I whispered.
“Ahh, she does listen.”
I gave him a narrow-eyed look.
Then he reeled me closer to whisper against my mouth. “I have a very sturdy bed frame, Keaton. Built it myself. I think we should have our energy up when we test it out. And from what you said at the bar, it’s been a long time for you. It’s been a long time for me too.” He traced his tongue lightly along my bottom lip, ghosting a kiss over my lips. “We’re going to test it out a lot tonight.”
As I pressed my thighs together, I had a feeling that getting railed by Ian Wilder was going to rearrange the way I defined sexual chemistry. He was so big, so undeniably strong. Just a quick glance at the bulge in the front of his work jeans had me swallowing hard.
“Oh,” I said weakly. “That sounds … reasonable.”
The sight of his wide smile had my insides melting. The thick weight of building attraction was relentless, so thick that I could hardly breathe through it.
“I’m a very reasonable man.” Then he kissed me, lingering over my bottom lip as the tip of his tongue teased mine. When he pulled away, I swayed forward. “Dinner first?”
“Cereal,” I said immediately. “It’s fastest.”
“Eggs and toast, at least.” His brows rose. “You’re going to need some protein, sparky.”
“No way. I’ll give you five minutes tops for prep.” I snuck my hands under the hem of his T-shirt, a wicked grin curling my lips when his eyes fluttered closed as I raked my fingernails over the hard muscles of his stomach. Then I leaned up and licked lightly at the seam of his lips. “For every thirty seconds past that, I start losing clothes in the kitchen. You think you can hold out if I’m stark-ass naked eating those scrambled eggs?”
Ian growled against my lips, slanting his mouth over mine for a hot, hard kiss that had my head spinning. I pulled back, grabbing the bottom of my sweater to whip it off.
“What the hell are you doing?” he said, voice scraping goose bumps up along my arms. “It’s freezing out here.”
“Just getting started,” I said, daring him with a raise of my chin. “I think that means your five minutes start now.”
Underneath was a white lace bra. His pupils were blown wide, his tongue darting out to lick at his bottom lip. His eyes narrowed, and I smiled when I knew I’d win this round.
Ian dipped down, lifting me over his shoulder in one smooth movement. I laughed breathlessly, hooking my hands into his belt as he marched toward the house.