Before I could protest that I was fine, Ian was pulling me down a narrow hallway, with Roxanne trailing behind. I got a fleeting glimpse of what looked like a cozy library with an armchair and a fireplace through one doorway, and a spacious dining room to the right, before we reached a small, warm kitchen.
The walls were a faded buttery yellow. Copper pots and pans hung from a rack over a wooden butcher-block island. The window over the sink looked out into the back garden, which appeared to be strung with lights hung from the enclosing brick walls. A scarred round table shoved into the corner made a haphazard but inviting nook where Ian clearly spent a lot of his time. The papers and books scattered over its surface gave it a lived-in feel that made me instantly comfortable.
Ian pulled out the lone chair and urged me into it before turning to put the kettle on. He opened a low cupboard that had Roxanne dancing with excitement, and tipped a healthy portion of kibble into the waiting bowl set beneath the butcher block. I propped my elbow on the table and leaned my head into my hand to watch him.
His motions were the graceful, automatic movements of a man who had lived alone and taken care of himself for a long time.
“This is nothing like what I expected,” I said thoughtlessly, then cringed a little. “I mean, it’s so homey and nice!”
“What were you picturing?” His curious grin flashed as he hitched his narrow hips up to sit on the counter, long legs dangling. “Some sterile bachelor penthouse in Mayfair? A sprawling Georgian terrace in Richmond?”
“Something like that,” I admitted. “Not that this isn’t fancy! It’s really nice! But it’s so . . . well, look at you.”
“What about me?”
“You’re sitting on your kitchen counter,” I pointed out, “because there’s only one chair at this table.”
He studied me silently for a moment. “I’m around people all day, most days. Either at the gym with my trainers, or on set. This place . . . it’s my refuge. I only need the one chair because I never bring anyone here.”
The hairs on my arms lifted as a sweet thrill coursed through me. “You brought me here.”
Ian’s gaze sharpened on my face, frustration cutting deep lines in his forehead. “Mallory. Sweet. I’ve been trying to tell you . . . you’re not just anyone.”
My heart thundered in my ears as I slowly, deliberately rose and crossed the kitchen until I stood between Ian’s spread knees. Peering up into the shadowed planes of his fallen-angel features, I said, “If you don’t take me to bed right this minute, I’m leaving.”
Ian cupped my upturned face in his big, warm palms, brushing the pads of his thumbs over the fragile skin beneath my eyes and sending shivers all the way through me.
“Baby, don’t leave me,” he whispered. “Please don’t go.”
And then he kissed me, and I knew this time there was no turning back.
Chapter Eight
We barely made it up the stairs, pausing to kiss hungrily every few steps and clinging to the balustrade and each other for balance. My weak knees wanted me to just lie down on the landing and do it then and there, but after all this buildup, we needed to do this right.
Besides, it was kind of bright out here on the staircase. And I might be ready to believe that Ian Hale was truly, deeply, and epically attracted to me, but that didn’t mean I was ready to give up the chance at flattering lighting when I got naked for the first time.
These thoughts were barely a buzz at the back of my brain though. Most of my consciousness was taken up with the living, breathing reality of the man in my arms, and the way he made me feel.
At the moment? The way he made me feel was hot. Ready.
Desperate.
It would have been frightening, if he hadn’t been right there with me, just as needful and hungry.
“Your mouth,” he groaned against my lips before angling his head the other way and kissing me again. The wainscoting on the wall dug into my lower back as he pressed against me, full length. I clutched at his shoulders and drowned in the salt-smoke taste of him.
We dragged each other up the last remaining stairs, and Ian apparently didn't want to let go of me even long enough to use a door handle because he kicked open the first door we came to and tugged me inside. In the next heartbeat, we were sprawled sideways across a huge bed.
His eyes gleamed in the darkness as he rose over me and, involuntarily, I arched against the thick, tufted comforter. My greedy hands went to the hem of his T-shirt, pawing at it ineffectually until he crossed his arms and pulled it over his head. It took all my self-control to hold in a moan at the sight of his broad, muscled chest and perfectly sculpted abs. He was ridiculous. I’d always assumed the camera somehow added fifty pounds of muscle, because obviously this could never exist in real life.
And yet here we were.
"You've seen it all before, I know." He ducked his head a little. "On-screen and that. Hope the flesh and blood version doesn't disappoint."
My heart clenched on a swell of tenderness. I leaned up to get my hands around his shoulders and pull him down. He resisted, ever so slightly, the stiffness of his muscles telling me more than words ever could that he knew, intimately, what it felt like to be a stranger in his own skin. I persisted, enfolding him in my arms and holding him tighter and tighter until his big body relaxed into me and he dropped his forehead to rest against mine.
"I could never be disappointed in you," I whispered. "The reality of Ian Hale, the person you are—that's so much better than any silver screen fantasy or action hero character you play. If you're worried that I think I'm in bed with one of the gods of Mount Olympus, don't be. I know who you are. I see you."
His hands spasmed and he groaned deep in his chest, a growl that reverberated through my whole body. "You're the one who is a fantasy. I can't believe you're real."
Heart pounding and breath shortening, I squirmed to get my hands down to the hem of my sweater and yank it off before I lost my nerve. "Believe it, Ian. This is really happening."
"God," he muttered, staring down at my lacy bra which was barely containing my heaving breasts. "You're so fucking lush. You're perfect, Mallory."
And when he skimmed one callused palm reverently down the midline of my body, mapping a line from the base of my throat through the valley of my cleavage and over the quivering softness of my belly, I felt perfect.
This man could have anyone in the world in his bed. And he wanted me.
I spread my legs in an instinctive gesture of invitation, letting our hips slot together more closely and making both of us gasp at the hard press of his denim-clad bulge into the welcoming heat between my thighs. From there, it was a race to see which of us could get our clothes off the fastest, fumbling clumsily and laughing helplessly into each other's mouths as we traded kisses back and forth. I'd never been so eager to get naked in my life. The relief, once we were skin to skin at long last, was immense. Except instead of a release, the tension in my core coiled harder and harder.
We surged together that first time, desire making us impatient and rough. Hot, sucking kisses with a hint of teeth, sweaty and frantic and good.
Hands grasping and stroking and shaping to muscles and curves.
Skin slipping and sliding and sticking.
Ian was a man of his word. Every single thing he’d said to me at the British Museum private reading room, he did to me in his bed that night. And when I was boneless with pleasure and breathless from coming on his fingers and tongue, he gently laid me back on his pillows and settled between my trembling thighs. The sound of the foil condom wrapper ripping open made me clench in anticipation.
His chest heaved as he fought for control, while I did my best to unravel it by reaching down to grasp his hips and pull him into me. The wide head of his cock nudged at my slick lips and made me ache with a sharp emptiness only Ian could fill. I caught my breath at the stretch as he slowly wedged himself into the tight clasp of my pussy. He paused with just the first inch or two inside, gaspi
ng for breath and watching me in the darkness. He was as hungry for my reactions as he was for my body.
Heat and pressure and a restless need for friction, for sensation, for more.
I threw my head back and crossed my ankles behind his ass, urging him on. The hot, deep press of his cock undid me and remade me, all at once. Ian filled every corner of my being, touching places that had never been touched and making space for himself.
And when that first slow, inexorable push bottomed out, we both shuddered. My walls fluttered around the steely length of him, clenching rhythmically in sweet pulses that brought tears to the corners of my eyes.
“Are you okay?” he rasped. “Is it too much?”
I smiled even as I felt a tear escape my lashes and run down my temple. “I’ve never felt better in my life.”
He breathed out a harsh, shuddering breath, muscles locked in fraught tension above me and around me. I could tell he was still trying to hold back, and I wasn’t having it.
Scoring my short nails up the small of his back, I nestled my breasts against his chest and crooned, “Move, Ian. Feel that? You won’t break me. We’re a perfect fit.”
“Perfect,” he echoed, deep and rumbly, and that big, thick body started to move. Pleasure seized me and wrung me tight as his hips worked that huge cock in and out of my drenched core. Every deep, plunging thrust electrified me. My eyes wanted to squeeze shut in tormented bliss, but I forced them open to see his gorgeous face set in rigid lines of ecstatic fury.
I’d never felt so full, so taken—or so powerful. I lost all control and all inhibitions. We clung to each other in the midst of the storm of sensation crashing over and through us, and when the wave crested, I broke. For a full minute, I was blind and helpless as Ian fucked me through the aftershocks and drew the rapture out excruciatingly. Ian cried out, grinding his throbbing cock in me to the hilt and setting off another small explosion that wrung me finally and completely dry.
I hung there in the soft, enfolding darkness of his room, anchored to reality only by the bruising width of his cock searing me open. He was still hard, even after coming.
My limp arms fell wide as my aching thighs unclenched and allowed my legs to drop to the bed. Ian shifted inside me, a tiny movement that made me purr exhaustedly before he carefully reached down to deal with the condom as he withdrew.
I stared, unseeing, up at the dim ceiling while Ian flopped down beside me. Searching in the darkness, my hand found his and grabbed on. We lay there in silence, waiting for our heart rates to slow and our overheated bodies to cool. I was so sated, I hardly recognized myself—and yet I’d never felt more completely present in my own skin than I did at that moment, in bed, with Ian a lithe line of muscle along my side.
There were things I wanted to say, wild and tender words I might regret once my brain came back online, but it didn’t matter. My body had been through a thing. Sleep reached up and pulled me under without warning.
I woke to sunshine streaming in through the huge arched window, filtering through the gauzy green drapes to bathe the bed in hazy morning light, and Ian sitting propped against the headboard with a packet of spiral-bound papers and a stub of a pencil tucked behind one ear.
As I watched, he got a little frown of concentration between his dark-gold brows at whatever he was reading and grabbed the pencil to make a note. Maybe that was a weird thing to get fluttery over, but what could I say? I was a nerd, and he had never looked more delectable.
“If this is a dream,” I said lazily, “don’t wake me up. I want to enjoy it a little longer.”
A slow smile spread over his face as he slanted me a glance. “Go back to sleep, if you like. I’m surprised you’re awake, actually, after the way you passed out last night.”
I laughed and half buried my face in the pillow. “Well. Someone wore me out.”
“How do you feel now?”
Taking stock of my well-used body, I stretched like a cat and all but purred, “I feel like a million bucks. How about you?”
“I feel,” he said slowly, tossing aside the papers and turning on his side so we were lying face to face, “as if the day I first saw you on Primrose Hill was the luckiest day of my life. And I’ve always been a lucky bastard.”
My heart swelled even as my ears and cheeks got hot with embarrassed pleasure. “That’s funny, that day I fell down in the mud in front of you, I thought I must be the unluckiest woman alive.”
“Oh, that wasn’t the first day I saw you.”
He said it absently while reaching out to brush the curls back from my face, but his hand froze in midair when I sat up straight, suddenly alert. “What do you mean? When did you see me before that?”
“Ah, bollocks,” Ian said, covering his face with that big hand. “Bobby was right. I’m not slick at all.”
Delighted, I pulled the sheets to cover my naked breasts. I didn’t want any distractions from this conversation. “Ian. Tell me.”
He flopped onto his back and glared up at the ceiling. “Mallory. I live three blocks from Primrose Hill. Do you honestly think this week is the first time I ever walked my dog there?”
“But I’ve been taking Pilot there every morning pretty much since I arrived in London a month ago,” I protested.
“I know,” he said simply, and all the breath left my lungs in a whoosh.
All I could do was stare at him in open-mouthed surprise, but he didn’t notice. He was lost in thought, his gaze still on the ceiling above us.
“One day I looked up and there you were. You were wearing red, and your hair was knotted up on top of your head but with little spirals of curls poking out, and you were laughing at something your dog was doing. A game with a stick. He’d get it in his mouth and somehow throw it . . .”
“Reverse fetch,” I said, nearly strangling on my embarrassment. “Oh, God.”
“Right. He’d throw, and you’d run after it and bring it back, laughing the whole time. For an hour, you played with your dog, and laughed in the sun, as if there was nothing more important to you than making him feel as happy as you were. And I wanted to go up and talk to you, so badly, but . . .”
I swallowed hard, my pulse thundering. “Why didn’t you?”
Ian shook his head, a mocking twist to his handsome mouth. “Before you, do you know how long it’s been since I arranged a date for myself, with a woman I actually wanted to spend time with? Years.”
“But all those models and starlets,” I said, feeling stupid and slow.
“They were nice enough, most of them.” He shrugged slightly. “Usually they’re other clients of my agent, women who need a little PR boost. And they get it, because anyone who goes out with me gets papped.”
A little chill ran down my spine at the detached, deadened quality of his voice. “Is that all it ever was? I mean, you didn’t actually like any of them?”
“I didn’t know any of them,” he said quietly, turning his head to spear me with a look. “And they didn’t know me. And that’s how I preferred it. Until you. I came back to the park every day at the same time when I’d first seen you, and I watched you play with Pilot and talk to him, and I realize that makes me sound like a creepy, sad bastard, but you were so full of life. Alone, always alone like me, and sometimes you seemed sad, and I wanted to know why, but most of the time . . . you smiled. And every day I saw that smile was a good day.”
My mind whirled. I couldn’t look away from him. I wanted to shake him by the shoulders and ask why he hadn’t ever approached me. But how could I, when the only time in my life I’d ever been the one to do the asking, the experience had pushed me so deeply into my shell that I had yet to fully find my way out again?
“I would have said yes,” I told him, my throat tight. “I would have said yes to you, to anything you asked me, every one of those days.”
Something fierce and aching lit his blue eyes, and when he reached for me, I showed him that “yes” with every inch of myself. He pulled me over him and I braced my
hands against the headboard while he buried his face between my legs and devoured me with a hunger that sent me spinning. And when I couldn’t stand it for another second, I tore myself away and grabbed a condom from the bedside table. In two seconds, he had himself covered and I knelt over his hips and took him in.
The angle was different, the press of him deeper and more totally claiming, for all that I was the one on top and supposedly in control. His long-fingered hands were tight on my ass, urging me on, and I churned my hips wildly, almost bruising my clit against the hard jut of his pelvis where we were sealed together.
The combination of thick fullness inside, the press of him against my throbbing inner walls, and the scorching friction on my clit was too much. I came, keening, exploding, and he shot up to reverse our positions. His last few powerful thrusts shoved me up the bed and I hung on for dear life while the pounding, shivery, powerful orgasm went on and on and on.
Afterward, when we were finally dragging ourselves out of bed to go in search of caffeinated morning beverages, I winced and said, “Ouch!”
Instantly contrite, Ian reached for me. “Mallory! Was that too much?”
“Your pencil poked me,” I complained.
Ian paused. “I’ve never had it called that before.”
“What?” I looked up, confused, then laughed at the expression on his face. Holding up the pencil he’d been using to make notes, I said, “Not that one, this one. I’m afraid we might’ve gotten . . . effluvia on your papers too. Sorry.”
“Effluvia. Good word. You should be a writer.”
“Thanks.” I found the spiral-bound pages and tried to smooth where they were crumpled. “What is this, anyway? It looks like . . . a script?”
Ian’s tension was a sudden, obvious presence in the room, even though he never stopped smiling and his posture remained loose and open. “Nah, it’s nothing. Just a bit of light reading.”
It was definitely not nothing. “It doesn’t look like a Mount Olympus movie,” I observed, flipping through the pages and skimming the names of the characters.
Naughty Brits: An Anthology Page 32