Iain groaned and dropped his head back to stare up at the ceiling while she continued stroking him. “Fuck, that feels fantastic.” He blew out a long breath, thankful he hadn’t misremembered how talented Naomi was with her hands.
“Then this will feel even better.” She slid down the length of him to land on her knees, lowering his clothes as she went.
Iain’s head fell forward when she wrapped her slender fingers around his cock and angled it toward her mouth, her eyes trained on him the entire time. She licked him from root to tip, and with a hum of approval, swirled her tongue around his crown like it was a Teddy’s 99 on a hot, summer day. He’d never look at ice cream cones the same way again. “Christ, woman.”
Naomi flashed him a wicked grin and then took him deep. Those were the last words out of his mouth until he came with a shout.
With his hands flattened against the door and his chest heaving in and out, he stared down at the beautiful woman on her knees in front of him. “You’re fucking perfect.”
“I know.” Naomi pushed to her feet, then grabbed his hand and led him through the foyer, past the eclectically-decorated living room, and into a darkened room dominated by a wrought iron four poster bed. She kicked off her shoes, yanked her pale blue blouse off over her head, slid her trousers down her long legs, and then climbed naked on top of the fluffy white duvet.
Iain eyed her greedily as she rested against the enormous pile of pillows at her back. Then she trailed her fingers down the expanse of her creamy white skin until she reached the small slope of her belly. He watched with rapt attention as she traced a light pattern over the flesh there until goosebumps sprouted.
And then they coasted lower … and lower … and lower.“And now you’re going to return the favor.”
Hell yeah, he was.
7
So maybe it was a two-night stand. Naomi rolled over lazily and stared at Iain, who was sleeping peacefully in her giant bed, his limbs sprawled loosely as he lay in the same position he’d collapsed in after their last round. His breathing was slow and even, the hair of his beard underneath his bottom lip waving gently with each exhale. Her thighs had felt that same hair a few times last night, and she reached down to lightly stroke the reddened skin.
Two nights with the same man probably weren’t going to kill her, unless it was death by orgasm. A distinct possibility, given the events of the night before. She grinned. She probably shouldn’t have issued that little ultimatum at Frankie’s, but she didn’t see how she could work with Iain and sleep with him. And given a choice between the two, she was glad he’d picked the second one. She was sorry he’d have to find another designer, but she had the gig redesigning Max’s menu to generate some extra income.
She thought of her studio upstairs and the work she had to complete in order to claim payment from the gallery. Instead of the dragging weariness she’d been feeling for the last several days, she felt… excited. Creative. Interested.
Could it be?
“Yessss,” she hissed to herself. She glanced at Iain again. He was still sleeping peacefully. Maybe all she’d needed to get her artistic mojo back was some rest and relaxation. Emphasis on the relaxation part—not so much the rest, given how little she’d slept last night. She flexed her fingers. Her muscles felt loose and warm. She let one leg dangle over the edge of the bed, then scooted over an inch. No response from the sleeping collection of muscles next to her. She slid further toward the edge, then out of the bed entirely when his breathing didn’t change.
She found a pair of yoga pants and a tank top lying in a pile next to her dresser and pulled them on as silently as she could manage. A quick trip to the bathroom, then to the kitchen to pull out the cold-brewed coffee in the fridge, mixing it with almond milk. She left an empty glass out on the counter in case Iain wanted some. Finally, she headed upstairs.
As she opened the door at the top of the stairs, she felt her whole body start to tingle with excitement. It was going to be a good day; she could feel it in her fingertips. Forgetting completely about the man sleeping in her bed downstairs, she set her coffee down on her work table and headed to the clay cabinet to pull out her materials.
When she’d bought this house, it had been in need of some serious renovation. The downstairs work had been simple: refinish the floors, fix some plaster, and replace the sink in the bathroom. She’d kept the vintage kitchen, though she’d replaced the countertops. Upstairs was a different story. There had been three small bedrooms, a bizarrely large landing at the top of the stairs, and a bathroom tucked under the eaves of the roof. After conferring with her contractors and paying an architect an exorbitant amount of money to make sure it was safe, she’d knocked down every single wall. The entire upstairs was now a bright, airy studio. She’d kept the bathroom, though she’d replaced everything about it and switched the tub to a small walk-in shower to save space. She wasn’t bathing up here, but it was nice to be able to get clay dust out of her hair occasionally.
Her brother had come out to see it when the renovations were complete, bringing some of her old pieces of sculpture from their parents’ storage unit. He’d muttered darkly about resale value. Nobody would want to buy a house with only one bedroom, but she didn’t care. She’d fallen in love with River Hill the second she’d visited the town, back when Noah had bought his vineyard here more than ten years ago.
When she’d finally decided to settle down—stop roving up and down the coast as an artist-in-residence anywhere that would take her—the choice of where to live had been obvious. River Hill was close enough to San Francisco to easily get back for the events her parents insisted she attend, but far enough away to keep her family at bay otherwise. Plus, she’d gotten a great deal on this house, and she was pretty sure her property values went up every time Max got nominated for a James Beard award or Noah’s wine won yet another award.
She chuckled. Property values! If her mother could hear her now.
She hummed quietly as she worked the clay to loosen it. She felt warm, relaxed, creative. Like she could finally see the images in the clay again, the ones hidden inside screaming to be let out by her hands and her tools. With the ease of long practice, she slid a second brick of clay onto her table and began to alternate her kneading. When the two chunks were flexible enough, she’d combine them. This piece was going to be big. She would shape the basic form of the sculpture first—a large egg-like thing built around a stability rod with some assistance from structural wire—then let it dry. Later, she’d move on to the carving portion of the proceedings: her favorite. She loved scraping away tiny layers of clay to find the art underneath.
Two hours later, she sat back from the table with a satisfied sigh. “There.” She narrowed her eyes. “Wait.” She leaned forward and used the back edge of her hand to create a shallow, curving divot along the length of the shape. “Much better.”
“What is it?” Iain’s voice came from the doorway.
She whipped around and discovered him leaning against the doorframe, clad in the same clothes he’d worn yesterday, but with hair visibly wet from a shower. He raised the glass she’d left out for him. “Thanks for the coffee.”
“Oh. Um, you’re welcome.” She blinked at him, trying to bring herself back to the real world.
“Did I interrupt? I’m sorry.”
“No, I—” She frowned at him. “Wait, how long have you been there?”
He grinned. “Not too long. About twenty minutes. You seemed busy, so I watched.”
She didn’t usually let people come up here at all, let alone watch her work. But she hadn’t even noticed him. Either she’d been in some kind of creative trance or he’d been incredibly quiet. Maybe both.
She moved automatically to clean up her mess, gathering the plastic wrap and the boxes the clay had come in, as well as a few stray, drying crumbs of the stuff, before tossing them all into a large garbage can in the corner. “I, um, didn’t want to wake you.”
Aside from Noah, she’d n
ever had sex in River Hill. It was her sanctuary, the place she did her most creative work. Even he’d only been in her house a few times, and only in her bed once—on a night they’d had too much wine to go anywhere else. And he’d had the courtesy to creep out silently in the morning before she got up, since he generally woke at some bizarre early hour of the morning to go and do farm-like things at the vineyard.
But here was Iain. In her house. In her studio! He’d slept in her bed! What was she doing? He was watching her steadily as she cleaned, sipping his coffee slowly but not making any move to approach her.
She folded up the faded canvas she used to cover her work table and told herself to relax. It was just Iain. He was nice, he did extremely good work with his hands, and he wasn’t staying. He’d need to go looking for another designer for his labels, for one thing.
She pasted a smile on her face and turned to him. “All done.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You never answered me.”
“What?”
He nodded toward her piece, now drying on the rack next to the work table. “What is it?”
“Oh.” She stared at it, feeling awkward. Nobody had come to look at her work in progress since she’d been an artist-in-residence and it had been part of the requirements of the position to allow studio tours. She’d never done her best work that way. But the rent had been free. “I’m actually not entirely sure yet.” She smiled fondly at the blank shape as it sat there, waiting for her to sharpen its edges. “But it’s going to be good.”
She shooed Iain back downstairs before he could ask any more questions, not wanting to disrupt the bubbling creative energy she could feel still lurking in the studio. The clay would need at least a day to dry before she could touch it, and she didn’t want whatever mojo she’d finally gotten back to disappear again.
She froze at the bottom of the stairs, one foot in midair, as a new thought occurred to her. Was Iain her lucky charm? She winced internally even as she thought it. He was Irish; he probably wouldn’t appreciate the phrasing. She shook her head. It was impossible, anyway. That sort of thing wasn’t real. Art came from inside the artist, taking inspiration from the world around them. It didn’t come from sex. If it did, she’d have produced a lot more sculptures by now. She grinned as she bounced down the last step.
“So what’s next?” Iain met her in the kitchen.
“Breakfast?” Naomi was starving. “I didn’t have anything but coffee before I went up.” Breakfast with somebody she’d slept with! She was trying all kinds of new things today. Maybe she was finally growing as a person like her family wanted her to.
“I meant with your sculpture,” he said, waving his arm vaguely towards the ceiling. “But I could eat.” His grin made laugh lines appear in his cheeks around his beard. She liked it.
“Oh!” She laughed. “The clay has to dry for a day or so. Then I’ll carve it.”
“And you don’t know what you’ll be carving it into?”
She shrugged. “I’ve got a vague idea. But the details are inside the clay.” She moved to the pantry. “I’ve got, um, granola. And some of those breakfast cracker things.”
“Not a bacon and eggs type of girl?” He tilted his head towards her fridge.
She reached back to pull it open to show him its contents. “More like orange juice and an occasional yogurt. Sorry.” If she wasn’t working in the studio in the mornings, she was usually practicing yoga. And nobody liked doing yoga on a full stomach.
“I’ll trouble you for a bowl of granola,” he said. “And then I’m afraid I’ve got to be on my way.”
She let out a long, slow breath. There it was. She wasn’t sure whether to be glad or annoyed that he was as ready to scamper out of her house as she was to toss him. Breakfast with a guy was broadening her horizons enough. She was already starting to get anxious about when he would start demanding more of her time. She had art to create. Hopefully, he had plenty of his own work to do.
“Got a lot on your plate today?” She handed him the box of granola.
“A conference call with my father and the CEO—also known as my brother.” He winced. “I was going to tell them I’d found a designer to work with, but ....” He poured himself a bowl, then peered up at her with wide puppy-dog eyes. “Don’t suppose you’d—”
She held up a hand. “You picked, my friend.”
He snorted. “I’ll wear you down.”
She smiled at him sweetly. “I’ll give you some names.” She didn’t need the money enough to break her rules. She’d made them for good reasons. And she wasn’t about to tempt herself by letting him hang around. “Eat your granola.”
“Mmm. Crunchy.”
She let out a huff of laughter and dug into her own cereal.
After Iain left, with a couple of kisses and a few more hints about hiring her, she settled down at her computer, an old workhorse of a Mac that was taking longer and longer to fire up the layout and design software she used. She sighed. Maybe she should do Iain’s labels. She really did need a new computer.
She shook her head. There were other ways to make money. There was a request in her inbox now, actually, from a local beauty blogger who wanted a new logo designed. And of course there was Max’s new menus. Which she should really focus on, instead of thinking about last night and the way Iain had moved with her, under her, over her, and inside her. She shivered. Best to get it out of your system, girl.
She’d had two nights with him. That would be enough. Wouldn’t it?
8
There were no words to describe how mind blowing his night with Naomi had been, but as Iain stared at his laptop, he briefly wondered if all those orgasms had been worth his sanity. Because even though he’d been explicit about what he was looking for from the graphic designer he’d spoken with after returning from Naomi’s, yet another watercolor wheat chaff was on his screen. At this rate, he’d be showing up at his next sales call like some snake oil salesman, pulling an unlabeled bottle out of his leather satchel and trying to convince his potential buyer it wasn’t complete swill.
With a defeated sigh, he pushed the laptop away and raised his eyes to the ceiling. He’d gone without a cigarette for almost a year, but now he craved one—desperately. Instead, he reached blindly for the bottle of bourbon on the table next to him and raised it to his lips. Since he’d begun hanging out with Max and Noah, he’d taken to drinking the stuff. His father would probably foam at the mouth if he knew Iain hadn’t had a drop of Irish whiskey in days, but that was just too damn bad.
As if that thought conjured the old man himself, Iain’s phone rang, a picture of his father alerting him to an incoming video call. Before answering, he scanned the room to make sure it was clean and presentable and that the bottle he’d been drinking from was hidden from view.
“Iain.” His father leaned forward, his eyes squinted as if inspecting his son for some flaw. His jaw ticked, and he settled back in his office chair, crossing his arms over his chest.
Clearly, he’d found something about his son’s appearance he didn’t approve of. Inwardly, Iain made a bet with himself. If his dad complained about his beard, he’d finish off the bourbon and order takeout. If, instead, he focused on Iain’s charming, albeit small, room at The Oakwell Inn, he’d head over to Frankie’s for a plate of tacos. Either way, he’d end the night on a positive note.
“Your beard is too long,” the other man barked as Iain’s hands itched to reach for the bourbon. “No one’s going to take you seriously if you look like a hippie.” Iain bit his tongue—literally—as his father continued. “It’s sloppy.”
Cathal Brennan had never worn a beard a day in his life and didn’t understand why his youngest son chose to. Aside from not liking how it looked, Iain’s father also frequently remarked on how aggravating it must be always having things caught in it. Iain’s eating abilities were somewhat beyond that of a toddler, and he wasn’t carting around bits of his lunch on his face all the damn time, but it wasn’t worth ar
guing. At first, he’d let his fashionable stubble grow into a neatly trimmed beard as part of a small rebellion against the tyranny of his father’s rules, but once he’d become accustomed to it, he’d decided to keep it.
Now, he ran his hand over the bristles, testing its length and softness. He’d found a new clove-scented beard oil in a shop down the street from Frankie’s and liked how it made the hair on his face both feel and smell. “I’ll take that under advisement. In the meantime, to what do I owe the pleasure?”
“I told you I’d call this week to discuss where you’re at with lining up customers for Brennan’s Small Batch.”
Iain chose to ignore the name his father had given Maeve’s whiskey. They’d discussed it at length, and he knew until his sister and he wrestled control of the whiskey from the hands of their brothers and father, the man wouldn’t budge. Instead, he focused on the timing of the call. “You said you’d call on Thursday; today is Tuesday.”
“No, I said Tuesday. You need to do a better job remembering your commitments. You should write them down instead of relying on that phone of yours to keep your schedule.”
For a split second Iain contemplated ending the call without saying goodbye. There was only so much abuse a man could take, and he was quickly reaching the end of his rope. If it wouldn’t destroy his mother, he sometimes considered severing all ties with the old man. Iain knew his father loved him, but he didn’t think the man actually liked him that much.
Iain pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes. “What did you want to discuss?”
“How many customers have you lined up since our last conversation?”
Iain blew out a breath and fixed his gaze on the swirls and dips of the purple silk curtains that framed a view of the vine-covered hillside beyond. “Ten.” Which was about twenty less than he’d been aiming for this month. The overall goal had been to secure one hundred bars and restaurants that would be willing to serve Whitman’s Revival—the name he and Maeve had agreed on—by the time his six months in the U.S. were up, but so far Iain had fallen well short of that target, and the realization stung.
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