Almost Like Love

by Abigail Strom

  And quite a bit of glory it was.

  When she wrapped her hand around his erection, his whole body tensed.

  “You’re so big,” she whispered, and he groaned.

  Her hand tightened. “Do men really like to hear that?”

  “Hell, yes. We’re shallow that way.”

  “Then I should tell you that you’re the biggest man I’ve ever been with. Of course, I’ve only been with three other guys, so it’s not much of a sample group.”

  She began to move her hand up and down his length.

  His breath hissed through his teeth. “Doesn’t matter. Say it again.”

  She leaned close and whispered in his ear. “You’re. So. Big.”

  Her hand moved faster, and Ian groaned again.

  She felt a rush of confidence. Deciding to go with it, she slid down the bed and took him in her mouth.

  “Jesus,” he growled.

  Whenever she’d gone down on Chris, he’d been gentle and considerate, letting her set the pace. It wasn’t like that with Ian. He slid a hand into her hair and urged her to take him deeper, his voice and his touch hard and rough and demanding.

  Her body responded with a flash of heat and rush of moisture at her center.

  She wanted to make him come. She wanted it so much, she almost cried out in protest when he pulled away suddenly.

  “That feels too good,” he said, gasping for breath. “If you keep going I’ll come, and I don’t want to like that—not the first time. I want to be inside you.”

  His words made her shiver.

  He rolled to the edge of the bed and grabbed his jeans from the floor, pulling a condom out of his back pocket.

  Kate propped herself up on her elbows and watched him. “I see you came prepared.”

  His eyes were fierce and hot when he looked at her. “I told you I wanted this.”

  “I’m on the pill, if you—”

  He shook his head. “I feel better using a condom.”

  “Okay.”

  For a moment they just stared at each other. Kate’s body felt like a bowstring, taut and vibrating with anticipation. Ian’s face was flushed, his jaw muscles tense and his neck muscles corded. He breathed as if he’d been running.

  He kept his eyes on her as he ripped open the foil packet and rolled the condom over his shaft.

  Then he did the last thing she expected.

  He hesitated.

  “You’re sure you want this?” he asked, his voice low.

  Her answer was immediate. “I’ve never wanted anything more in my life.”

  The words seemed to ignite something in him. His eyes darkened, and he pushed her back against the pillows. He used his knee to part her thighs, and then he was looming over her, his arms on either side of her shoulders, his biceps bunching.

  His skin was hot, his muscles hard. For one instant he stayed like that, all coiled power and masculine intent. Then he found her center and pushed inside, just a few inches, and Kate arched her head back and cried out.

  He froze. “You’re tight,” he said gruffly. “Am I hurting you?”

  Was he insane? “Oh, God, Ian—I need more. Please, please . . .” She wrapped her legs around his waist and tried to urge him deeper.

  He didn’t need any more urging. He thrust inside her, the delicious friction sending shock waves through a thousand nerve endings. Again, and then again, while she made frantic, wordless cries and dug her nails into his shoulders. One more and he was all the way home, his ridged abdomen pressed against her belly and every inch of him buried inside her.

  She’d never been invaded so thoroughly. The burn of it ignited into a deeper flame, a pleasure more decadent than anything she’d ever felt. All of her awareness was centered between her legs, at the place Ian had taken for his own.

  “Open your eyes.”

  She hadn’t realized she’d closed them.

  Ian was gazing down at her like a barbarian king surveying a captive, his eyes dark and hooded.

  “You’re so beautiful,” he whispered.

  She slid her arms around his neck. “Kiss me.”

  He slanted his mouth onto hers, the slide of his tongue heart-poundingly erotic. Then he put his hands on her shoulders and rolled them over in one smooth motion.

  Being on top had always made her feel self-conscious. But now she put her hands on Ian’s chest and rode him with utter abandon, arching her back and gasping when he palmed her breasts.

  Why hadn’t she ever realized how incredible this position could be? With Ian’s hard body below her, she felt like a goddess riding a thunderbolt.

  So good. So good. If she shifted just a little, she’d—

  Oh, God.

  She’d never felt so sexy and powerful. She cried out as she came, waves of sensation making her body one fiery bolt of electricity.

  Her skin was still tingling when Ian flipped them over again, and now it was his turn to take what he wanted.

  He grabbed her wrists and pinned them above her head, and his thrusts inside her were deep and hard and almost savage.

  The aftershocks of her own orgasm made her body clench around his, and she could feel how much that excited him. She wrapped her legs around his waist, and he sank inside with one last thrust, throbbing deep within her as he came.

  His head dropped to her shoulder as he shuddered out his release.

  When it was over he collapsed on top of her, his head still cradled against her shoulder. For a moment there was just their breathing, harsh and labored, and the wild pounding of their hearts. Then he rolled them onto their sides and gathered her close.

  She could have stayed like that forever.

  Ian had never felt such a combination of sensations—ecstasy, excitement, comfort, peace. Pleasure pulsed through every nerve, and he couldn’t stop his hands from moving over Kate’s body, even though he could tell by her breathing that she was starting to fall asleep.

  How could she sleep after that? Of course, he was usually out like a light five minutes after he came, but this had been so goddamn intense . . .

  A delicate snore escaped her, and a rush of affection made him tighten his hold. God, she was adorable.

  Ian had enjoyed sex since he’d first experienced it at the age of sixteen. He always had a good time in bed, and he did his best to make sure his partner had a good time, too.

  But he’d decided a long time ago that the idea of soul-melding, heart-wrenching, mind-altering sex was just a fantasy. Sex felt great physically, and with a woman you liked it felt good emotionally, too. At its best, sex was fun and exciting and satisfying.

  But this had been more.

  As much as he’d wanted her, he’d never imagined it would be like that between them. Sweet, naive, inhibited Kate Meredith had been like fire, like lightning, like every fantasy he’d never thought could be true.

  And she was so damn beautiful. He’d thought about her hair so much in the last few weeks that it was a relief, now, to run his hands through it. When she’d gone down on him, the sight of that copper silk against his hips and thighs and abdomen had driven him crazy.

  He could never get tired of watching her. But, as impossible as it had seemed at first, the desire for sleep finally stole over him.

  He smoothed a palm over Kate’s curves one more time and pressed a kiss to her forehead. Then he closed his eyes and let himself drift.

  He must have rolled over at some point, because when he woke up he was on his stomach and Kate’s hands were on his back.

  He smiled into the pillow. “Hey,” he said, his voice rusty with sleep.

  Her hands stilled for a moment before they started to move again.

  “Hey, yourself,” she said softly. “I didn’t get a good look at this tattoo before. It’s beautiful.”

  She meant the hawk
that stretched across his back, its outstretched wings touching the tips of his shoulder blades.

  “Thanks,” he said, his voice still muffled by the pillow. He could have rolled over, but her touch felt so good he didn’t want her to stop.

  “So . . . can I hear the rest of the story now?” she asked.

  “The rest of the story?”

  “Yes. You only told me the first part that night on your terrace. Remember? You said I could hear part two some other time.”

  Part two of his life history wasn’t anything he liked to talk about. But he had sort of promised, and there was something about the intimacy of being here with Kate—the soft quiet of the room, the lateness of the hour, the feel of her fingertips tracing over his skin—that made it seem almost natural to tell her things he never told anyone.

  He rolled onto his side and rested his head on his bent arm. Kate lay down beside him and mirrored his position, smiling into his eyes.

  He’d forgotten how beautiful hers were. He reached out a hand to stroke her hair, then brushed the back of his knuckles over her cheek.

  “You’re sure you want to hear this?”

  “Of course.”

  “Okay, then. Well.” He thought about how to begin. “Right before I started high school, my mother was laid off. It had been hard to make ends meet even before that, and we had to leave our apartment in Brooklyn and move to a cheaper place in the Bronx. Mom started working two jobs, a call center during the day and waitressing at night.”

  “I take it your father was out of the picture.”

  “Yeah. He left when I was two, just after Tina was born. I don’t remember him, and Mom never talked about him. We didn’t have any other family, so it was just the three of us, and with my mom gone so much, it was my job to take care of my sister. We were living in a much rougher neighborhood than we’d grown up in, and I wanted to be sure I could protect her—not to mention myself. I’d gotten a lot bigger the year before, and I was a good athlete, which helped . . . but I also got in with a tough group of kids.”

  “A gang?”

  “No, but we got into plenty of trouble. Alcohol and fighting, mostly.”

  “Is that when you got the tattoos?”

  “Yeah.”

  “They really are beautiful,” she said. “And they’re sort of Dungeons & Dragons–y, aren’t they? The swords and the hawk and the mythical creatures, and all the Celtic knot work.”

  “Celtic tattoos were hot at the time, but yeah, it probably also reminded me of my Dungeons & Dragons days. And since the point of getting inked up was to make people think I was tough, it’s probably no accident that I chose warrior images.”

  She reached out and touched the phoenix on his chest. “If I were a guy with tattoos this gorgeous, I’d walk around shirtless from May to October.”

  That made him smile. “Not if you were a well-respected media executive.”

  “Well, maybe not. But that reminds me—I’m still missing a piece of your story. How did you go from tattooed troublemaker to well-respected media executive?”

  He picked up his narrative again.

  “The kids I hung out with got into trouble, like I said—but we usually managed to stay on the right side of the law. Then I fell in love with my best friend’s older sister.”

  “How old was she?”

  “Nineteen. I was seventeen, so I didn’t think I had a chance. But she agreed to go out with me, and we started dating.” He paused. “What I didn’t realize was that she was using me as cover with her parents, who thought I was a nice boy in spite of my best efforts to be a badass. And compared with the guy she was actually dating, I was a nice boy.”

  “She was dating somebody else?”

  “Yeah. A drug dealer who ran an underground fight club. Paula introduced me to him one night—of course without mentioning the fact that they’d been together for two years. He got me into fighting by telling me I could make good money. I thought if I earned enough I could take care of myself and help out at home.”

  “You picked a heck of a way to do it.”

  “No kidding. But at seventeen I was six foot four and cocky as hell—the perfect candidate for underground fighting. I did pretty well for myself . . . and for Paula’s boyfriend, Angel. I kept it up until I was eighteen and a senior in high school, when my mom had a heart attack and passed away.”

  Kate’s eyes filled with sympathy. “That must have been hard on you and your sister.”

  The truth was, he still didn’t like to think about that time in his life. One of the reasons he’d gotten into fighting was to lighten the load for his mother, but no amount of money could reverse years of stress and overwork on top of high blood pressure. “It was. I was all Tina had after Mom was gone, and I was afraid DSS would come and take her away. But I was making enough money to pay the rent, so I figured if I kept doing what I was doing, we’d manage all right. Until the night Angel told me to throw a fight.”

  “My God. That really happens?”

  “It happened to me. But because I was a teenager full of piss and vinegar, I didn’t do it. I won that fight, and ten minutes after it was over Angel and a few of his friends gave me a broken jaw, three broken ribs, and a punctured lung. Paula visited me in the hospital just long enough to spit in my face and tell me how things were with her and Angel.”

  Kate looked horrified. “Oh, Ian.”

  He shook his head. “Don’t waste any sympathy on me. I was stupid and I got what I deserved. It’s just dumb luck I didn’t end up in jail, or worse. Dumb luck, and a guidance counselor at school who convinced me not to throw my life away. He made sure I graduated, and then he hooked me up with a city scholarship program so I could go to college.” He shrugged. “I majored in business and communications, and the rest, as they say, is history.”

  There was silence between them for a moment. Then: “What happened to Tina?”

  “Tina did well. She went into foster care with a nice couple in Brooklyn, not far from where we’d grown up. She joined the Marines after she graduated from high school and flew helicopters in Iraq. She went to Afghanistan after that, where she met Jacob’s father. They got married the next time they were on leave, and when her enlistment was up she got out. She was six months pregnant when Joe was killed in action.”

  “So Jacob never knew his father.”

  “No. But he was a good man, a father to be proud of. Jacob will always have that.”

  There was a crease between Kate’s brows. Was she thinking that he hadn’t had a father to be proud of—or any father at all?

  He hoped not. He didn’t want Kate feeling sorry for him, especially since he didn’t merit any sympathy. He’d obviously done extremely well for himself, and he’d always viewed pity as a waste of time—whether for himself or for someone else.

  “How did Tina die?” she asked softly.

  “Drunk driver.” He shook his head. “Talk about irony. She made it through two wars without a scratch and ended up getting killed in White Plains by some guy running a red light.”

  When he realized his hands had clenched into fists, he forced himself to relax. A year had gone by since his sister’s death, but the loss still felt like an open wound.

  After she’d settled in White Plains, he’d gone over most Sundays to visit. Tina usually made lasagna for dinner—the comfort food of their childhood.

  He hadn’t eaten lasagna since the night she died.

  He didn’t want to talk about this anymore. Kate didn’t ask anything else, for which he was grateful. After a moment she put her hand on his arm and traced over the tattoos there.

  Her touch was soothing and exciting at the same time.

  “You could have had these removed,” she said after a while, and he was glad she was letting the subject of his sister drop. “Why didn’t you?”

  “I thought about
it, but I didn’t want to erase my past. I don’t talk about it and I don’t display the evidence, but that doesn’t mean I’m ashamed of it.”

  “Ashamed? You should be proud. I can’t believe what you accomplished, considering the odds stacked against you.”

  He shrugged off the compliment and changed the subject. “What about you? Any secrets in your past you’d care to reveal?”

  She shook her head. “I’d be embarrassed to tell you about my childhood after hearing about yours. It was so . . . ordinary.”

  “I don’t think any childhood is ordinary. And it’s hard to believe yours was, considering you’re one of the least ordinary people I’ve ever met.”

  In the light of the lamp they’d never bothered to turn off, he could see the blush that came into her cheeks.

  “Well, thanks. Maybe ordinary isn’t the right word, but it was comfortable. Although I was not born with a silver spoon in my mouth,” she added. “My parents are both teachers, so we were never rich—but we had everything we needed.”

  “Your grandparents must have been rich, though.”

  “Eventually. But my grandfather came from a poor family, and my grandmother’s family came to this country after World War II with nothing at all.”

  “Where was your grandmother during the war?”

  “In a concentration camp.”

  He stared at her. “Jesus. Now I really feel like a shit for that silver-spoon comment.”

  She smiled. “It’s okay. She met my grandfather here, and they fell in love and had a wonderful life together. They bought this place with the money my grandfather made as a civil engineer, and my grandmother had a successful career as a photographer.”

  “What was her name?”

  “Rachel Goldman.”

  His jaw dropped. “Are you kidding? Rachel Goldman was your grandmother?”

  She looked pleased. “You’ve heard of her?”

  “Of course I have. I saw her retrospective exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art.”

  “And here I thought you were a philistine.”