by Peggy Jaeger
He heard her rummaging in her home office and then she came back with her work laptop in her hands. She sat back down facing him this time.
“I haven’t shown these to anyone, just like I promised, which is a crying shame because they’re some of the best work I’ve ever done.”
“Gemma?”
She shook her head and booted up the laptop. After signing in with her password she turned the device to him.
An oath spewed from him before he could rein it in.
“That’s the word you curse in Greek when you’re either surprised or upset. I’m really hoping this time it’s because you’re surprised.”
“Is that…me?”
He pulled the device onto his lap and continued to stare at the photo she’d cropped for her screen saver.
She’d blown up the image in black and white so that it started at his neck and went all the way down to where one thigh was peeking out from under the sheet tossed over his groin. His medallion glittered from a spark of errant light, giving the depression where it sat between his pecs an even more defined and toned appearance. Half lying, half sitting against the pillows, one arm was flung carelessly next to him on the bed, as if beckoning a lover to come back to him, the other braced on top of the sheet, casually covering his arousal. The curved, deeply corrugated rows of his abdominal muscles were contracted and taut, each muscular duo perfectly positioned atop, and next to, the other.
The sheet barely concealed him, and it didn’t take any imagination at all to visualize the bulge under the strategically placed piece of material. One thigh was bent outward, a simple fold and pull of the same sheet allowing a small, almost imperceptible glimpse under it.
“It’s the most erotic picture I’ve ever taken,” Gemma said. “I’ve filmed hundreds of people who were totally nude and they didn’t look this sexy. This is tasteful, doesn’t show a thing that could be considered pornographic, and if I wasn’t the one who took it, I’d say it looks like a high-class art piece.”
Ky’s gaze bounced from the screen to her face, then back to the screen a few times. His mouth opened, closed, opened, and then slammed shut as he gave his attention to the picture before him.
“This is really me?”
“Have you glanced at a mirror lately?” she asked. “Don’t you know what you look like?”
“Not like this, that’s for sure. What did you do to the picture? Photoshop it?”
He knew he’d hit a chord when her back went straight up against the couch. He expected a tongue-lashing but was floored when she took a breath and said, “I didn’t do a thing to the photo except copy it in black and white and blow it up so your head wasn’t shown.” She pushed the keyboard to scroll through the others in the series to show him the originals.
“Here, this proves it’s you.”
The pictures showed up in a grid of four on the screen, each one untouched, in color, and with his face on display.
“I’ve said this before, you’re an amazing photographer.” He reached out for her hand and, bringing it to his lips, kissed it. “But I never realized what a true artist you are, Gemma.”
She shrugged off the compliment, but her eyes softened when she looked across at him.
“You really don’t know this is how you look? What I see every time I look at you?”
He shook his head.
He turned his attention to the photos with his face not cropped out. As he’d known her to do before, she’d snapped a half dozen within a few seconds to, as she’d told him, capture the perfect expression. He may not be an expert on technique, but in every shot he saw the same thing: a man looking at the woman he loved.
Truth in art.
“I want to use the one without your head for my portfolio on my website,” she said.
“No.”
“No one will know it’s you, Ky. Ever.”
“No.”
“I promise. Without a face, it’s just a gorgeous torso. It could be any guy.”
“The medallion is a dead giveaway.”
“I’ll edit it out,” she said quickly.
“It’s not gonna show up in one of your books somewhere in the future?”
She grinned and slid over to him. Taking the laptop, she put it down on the coffee table and took its place on his lap, straddling him. With her hands twined around his neck she told him, “I promise I’ll only do books of faces, famous people, or buildings for any future publications.”
“Why don’t I believe you?” He tugged her shirt from the waistband of her skirt, slipped his hands under the silk.
“Because you’re a federal officer, trained to be highly skeptical and disbelieving. Oh!”
He smiled at her reaction to his hands teasing and pinching her nipples through her thin lace bra.
“Speaking of jobs,” he said, slipping his hands under the band and unhooking the clasp, “your brother-in-law cornered me at the party.” He cupped each of her now freed breasts and squeezed.
Gemma threw back her head, effectively pushing her breasts closer to him. “O-Oh? What did he want?”
The tiny panting breaths she pushed through her lips as he circled her now pebbled nipples with his thumbs had the zipper on his pants straining against him.
Ky lifted her shirt up and tossed it over his shoulder, her bra following. Naked to the waist now before him, he feasted on her beautiful breasts. He pulled one of the tight peaks into his mouth, bit down with just the right amount of pressure and grinned when her body vibrated against him.
“Somehow he found out that I’ve been thinking about not going back to work,” he said against her warm soft flesh.
Gemma fisted her now shaking hands in his hair. “I might have mentioned…something when I met Kandy for lunch the other day. About you being disillusioned by…everything that happened. Oh, sweet Jesus! Don’t stop that. Please don’t stop that.”
God, he loved how he could seduce her. The way she responded to his touch each and every time was a marvel. She’d begun gliding slowly, rhythmically, back and forth across his erection, and even through their clothes he could feel how wet she was.
He ran his tongue across her nipple, blew on it and then drew the other one into his mouth to suckle.
“Hmmm.” While slowly making love to her breast, Ky dragged down the zipper on her skirt, shoved through the waistband of her panties and filled his hands with her firm butt cheeks.
“He offered me a job.”
Gemma kept moving across him, when suddenly his words penetrated. She stopped, pulled back, her hands still in his hair and peered down at him, her perfectly sculpted brows disappearing under her bangs.
“He what?!”
“He told me if I was looking to leave the FBI he could use someone with my skills. Apparently, he’s been more busy than ever lately, and with just Bannerman and him to cover it all, he’s been considering taking someone new on.”
She stared down at him, her expression watchful. A minute ago her body had been humming with arousal against him. Now, she was as tight as a well-tuned piano string.
“Baby, breathe.” He pulled his hands from her skirt and rubbed them along her thighs. He wasn’t quite sure how she felt about this news. In truth, he’d been hoping she’d be overjoyed. But she didn’t look joyful at the moment, she looked…anxious and apprehensive.
Of what, though?
Once she did as he commanded and took a deep breath, her shoulders were still tense as she asked, “What did you tell him?”
“That I had to talk to you about it first.”
“Me? Why? It’s your decision to make.”
Ah. There was the reason for the nerves.
Ky gripped her hips and shifted their positions until she was flat on the couch with him hovering over her. He pushed her knees open with his own and made a nice resting place for hi
mself between her thighs, their bodies touching from waist to toes.
With her cheeks palmed in his hands, he smiled down at her. How to tell her without causing her to bolt up and run from him? He measured his response as he would when dealing with an interrogation: calmly, laying out the facts, and guiding her to the logical conclusion.
“Because every decision I make from now on concerns you.”
“It does?”
“Yes, Gemma, it does.”
When she bit down on the inside of her cheek he knew she was beginning to understand.
“I can hear your brain running around like a wild, mad dervish,” he said with a smile.
“Ky, I—”
“No, baby. Let me say this before you blurt out what I know you’re thinking.”
She squinted, a perfect pout forming on her lips. “What are you now, a mind reader?”
He dropped one soft kiss on the corner of her mouth. Instantly, the pout disappeared.
“No. A Gemma Laine reader.”
Her response to that was a quick snort.
Ky waited a beat. “The reason I told Josh I needed to talk to you first was because I wanted you to know the real reason I’m considering it.”
“You are? Considering it, I mean?”
“Yes. Seriously. And it’s not just because of my changing feelings about the FBI,” he said quickly when she opened her mouth. When she shut it again, he continued.
“Gemma, until recently I thought my job was all I needed. Jon Winters wasn’t kidding when he joked I was married to it. I’ve always thought I’d have a real family one day, but one day kept getting pushed back because there was another investigation or another case that needed to be completed first. I knew I could wait a while before I found the woman I wanted to share my life with.”
He kissed the tip of her nose.
“Then, about a little over a month ago, all that changed.”
The sound of her throat bobbing up and down filled the space between them. “It did?”
He nodded. “The day I met you. The circumstances couldn’t have been worse, I’ll give you that.” He chuckled. “But however we met, whatever we went through, one good thing to come of it is that I fell in love with you. And every day we’ve been together, everything we’ve gone through, has shown me that one day is now. And I can see the terror jumping on your face when I say that.”
“Ky, please—” Her eyes grew moist.
“I know you’re scared Gemma. I know all about your feelings concerning your father’s abandonment, and how it’s hard for you trust. To commit. Hard to trust that love will last, that it’s real. But this is real, baby. What we have, well, it’s what I’ve always wished for.”
She cupped his cheek with her palm. “Ky.”
“I know you need time to get used to this. I’m not asking for you to marry me tomorrow—”
“Marry?”
Ky’s eyes narrowed, then relaxed. “I really should be pissed off that you sound so horrified about the possibility, but I’m not.” He pressed his lips against her palm in the softest, gentlest of caresses. “We’re practically living together as it is, you know, and you haven’t said boo about it.”
“No, I—”
He wasn’t going to give her any room for an argument. “You’ve let me in, Gemma, to your home and your heart, something I don’t think you’ve ever done before. I just want you to know, to realize and believe, I won’t be walking out of either. Ever. I love you. I want to make a life with you. I want you to believe when we go out the door in the morning we’ll be walking back through it that night and every night after, together.”
Emotions gamboled across her face. He knew she was conflicted. Who wouldn’t be with her scarred childhood history? But he hoped—wished—she could get over the doubt and see what he was saying was the truth.
“Can I speak now?”
He grinned at her piqued tone. He’d never known until he’d met her what a turn-on annoyance could be.
With a nod, he said, “The floor is yours. Or, more accurately, the couch.”
She did her darndest to fight the grin, but he saw it peek through.
With her hands still on his cheeks, she lifted and kissed him on the lips.
“I like the way you talk,” he told her.
She pinched his cheek and laughed when he cried out, “Ow!”
Then her mouth turned serious, the glaze in her eyes intense.
“It’s no lie I have trust issues with men.”
“Given your past, it’s understandable.”
“I thought it was my turn to speak?”
“Sorry.” He pressed his lips together.
She waited a second before saying, “I’ve always protected myself from falling in love. I never let any man get close enough that he could hurt me. Until you.”
He wanted to tell her he’d never hurt her, but kept quiet, as she’d asked.
“Maybe it was because we were forced to be together, to depend on one another, to trust one another completely, to just…be with one another. I don’t know. But what I do know is that despite all my efforts not to, I wound up falling in love with you, too. Totally.”
She pulled his head down until it lay on her chest.
“I started to think maybe I was the kind of girl who could have her own happily ever after. A family. A life with a partner. I’d never pretended those things were possible for me before.”
She stroked his back with the tips of her fingers, as he stayed silent.
“Those five days I didn’t hear from you after I got back were worse than when I was confined to the safe house and not allowed to work. Everything you’d said to me ran through my head in an unending loop, assuring me you cared for me. But your actions, or inactions, were starting to prove you didn’t. And that hurt, Ky. More than any hurt could have, because all I could think was I’d given you my heart and you’d left it. Abandoned it. Just like my father.”
Ky hugged his arms around her waist and kissed her neck.
“When you came back, I thought, okay, he does care. I’ll just enjoy the time we have together, knowing it won’t last, but happy he’s here for the time being. I won’t let myself think about the future again. I won’t let myself hope.”
When she choked on the last word, Ky lifted up to see tears falling down her cheeks.
He swiped at them with the pads of his thumbs as he held her gaze in his.
“But when you told me you loved me—me—and then practically moved in—”
“No practically about it,” he said.
“—I allowed that hope to worm its way back in. It’s taken root and buried itself deep, deep down.”
“Gemma? Baby, what are you saying? I need to hear the words.”
She pulled him back until their lips were touching lightly. Against them, she said, “I want the same things you do. A future together, children, shared memories. Marriage, tomorrow, next week, or next year, if you want it—”
“I do.”
They both laughed.
“I want it all and I want it with you, Ky.”
She pulled him down so their lips were firmly pressed against one another now.
When they came up for air, he squinted down at her and asked, “You’re sure?”
Her lips pulled into the wicked, heart-stopping grin he loved beyond all else. “I’m sure.” She kissed him, hard and fast. “Trust me.”
Recipes
Grandma Sophie’s Creamy Tomato Soup
Grandma knew the benefit of using plant-based products way before they became the current rage. Adding unsweetened almond milk to this delicious soup instead of a heavy cream not only makes the soup more nutritious, it eliminates a ton of excess calories as well! Grandma used her own tomato sauce, canned from her garden tomatoes, but you can use commerc
ially canned tomato sauce if you don’t garden.
Ingredients: Serves 8
½ stick (¼ cup) unsalted butter at room temperature
1 small onion, peeled and chopped
2 cloves of garlic, peeled and chopped fine
¼ cup tomato paste—any commercial brand will do
2 quarts home-canned tomato sauce OR 2-28 ounce cans commercial sauce, plain and unflavored
2 tablespoons sugar, divided
8 cups warm water
¾ cup unsweetened almond milk at room temperature
½ teaspoon Kosher salt
Parsley flakes to garnish—to taste, if so desired.
Preparation:
Melt the butter in a heavy, large stockpot over medium heat. Do not let it burn. Once melted, add the onion and the garlic and cook until the onion is soft and translucent—about 10–11 minutes. Add the tomato paste and cook, stirring often, until the paste begins to caramelize—about 5–7 minutes. Do not let it burn.
Add the tomato sauce, 1 tablespoon of the sugar, and 8 cups of warm water to the pot. Increase the heat level to high and bring the liquids to a simmer. Once it simmers, reduce the heat and continue simmering, uncovered, until the soup reduces to about 2 quarts, total (8 cups). This will take one hour, to one hour and ten minutes.
After that time, remove the soup from the heat and let it cool for approximately 15 minutes. Then, in batches of two cups at a time, add the liquids to a blender or processer, and puree until smooth. Return the pureed soup to the stockpot. Add the remaining sugar, stir in the cream, and simmer for 15–20 minutes again, uncovered.
Once the flavors are all melded together, add the salt, stir, and serve.
Garnish with parsley flakes, if you so desire.
YiaYia’s Lemon Chicken
You can serve this with roasted potatoes or couscous.
Ingredients: Serves 4
2 teaspoons lemon zest
¼ cup lemon juice
2 tablespoons olive oil
4–5 minced garlic cloves
1 tablespoon oregano
¾ teaspoon Kosher salt
¼ teaspoon black pepper
