“I think you should call him F. Scott. He is named after F. Scott Fitzgerald, right? I saw you quoted him on your profile.”
I knew he must have seen that. I tried not to be embarrassed. I mean, I’d put it out there. “Yes, I named him after the author. But I’m not sure I could walk around calling my cat F. Scott. It sounds like I’m cussing him out all the time.” I felt bad just thinking about it. I leaned down and petted him again. “My sweet little pudgy wudge. I love you, Scottie.”
“Now I feel bad for even suggesting it.” Sean stripped off his sweatshirt and put it on my sofa. “It’s hot in here.”
“It’s the radiators. Or were you just saying that to have an excuse to take your shirt off?”
“No, it’s actually hot in here.” Sean gave me a look that curled my toes. “I don’t need an excuse to take my shirt off.”
“You really are ridiculously confident.”
“I’ve been accused of worse things.”
That made me laugh. “I doubt that. You’re not the horrible, awful man I originally thought you were.” I also thought that Sean’s confidence in himself might be because no one believed in him. He had to compensate for his family’s lack of support. I admired the hell out of his confidence now.
“You know how to stroke my ego. Glad you no longer think I’m horrible and awful.” He came toward me and cupped my cheek with his hand. The touch was light, gentle. “I don’t think you’re grumpy either. At least not all the time.”
“Only on Tuesdays,” I murmured, resting my hands on his waist. I wanted to touch him, feel him close against me.
“Why Tuesdays?”
“It’s the only day of the week I don’t see you.” Heat rose in my cheeks even as I said the words, but I hate not being honest more than I hate being vulnerable. It was the truth. Let him think whatever he wanted of it.
Sean seemed to like my words because his eyes darkened and he swore softly under his breath. “You know how to get me when I least expect it.” He brushed his lips over mine and it was a deep, aching kiss that made me shiver.
I was going to pull away, lead him to my bed, but he brushed my hair off my face and looked into my eyes. “I love her and it is the beginning of everything.”
His words were a raw murmur, strong and filled with emotion.
Everything inside me froze. It was the ending of the quote on my dating profile. I hadn’t included the last sentence. Sean must have gone and looked it up. It was the last line of what the author had written about his wife. That he loved her, the world be damned.
Sean was saying that he loved me.
In a really amazing and romantic way.
I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t even know for sure if I loved Sean, because I didn’t really know what loving a man felt like. I just knew that hearing him say that made me feel so special and cherished, and any words I would have wanted to say were locked inside of me, choked off by overwhelming emotion.
He didn’t seem to need a response. Instead, he just picked me up and carried me to the bed. When he lay me down on my back, I reached for his shirt, needing to feel his warm skin next to mine. I didn’t want to rush, but I wanted to explore him. He seemed to have the same idea in mind. He didn’t go straight for my jeans.
Instead, he kissed me repeatedly while I slipped a palm under his T-shirt to slide my fingers across the firm plane of his muscles. I liked to feel his strength, his heat over me. In my small apartment, he seemed to take up half the space. Sean eased down the neck of my shirt and kissed the swell of my breast while I lightly raked my fingernails over his abs.
When I undid the button on his jeans, he pulled back and peeled his shirt off over his head.
“When the hell do you find time to go to the gym?” I asked, dead serious, as I took in his very hard and very sexy chest. I felt like I had every ten minutes of free time every week, and yet he was way too built to claim it was because of good genetics.
“I moved into a building with a gym to make it more convenient. Usually at six in the morning.”
“Gross. I don’t even know what six in the morning looks like.” I didn’t. Mornings and I had a contentious relationship. “But I appreciate your dedication.” I ran my hands over his biceps. “Really, really appreciate it.”
Sean swore. “When you look at me like that… damn it, Isla. You’re killing me. I want to take it slow this time.”
“Are we really take it slow people?” I asked, curious. It didn’t seem to apply to either of us. I didn’t want to rush but I wasn’t exactly known for having the deepest well of patience.
“We should try.” He ran his finger along the edge of my bra. “We might like it.”
“You’ll have to sell me on this,” I said, even as I rubbed the palm of my hand across the front of his jeans, enjoying the feel of his hard cock beneath the denim.
Sean eased my shirt up and over my head. “I think actions speak louder than words.” He punctuated the point by carefully, slowly, torturously taking the straps of my bra down over my shoulders.
The electric feel of just the tip of his fingers shocked me. He was barely touching me, but he was making me breathless with the anticipation. He brushed down my arms, back up, and across the tops of my breasts. He touched my bottom lip and teased at my nipples over the satin of my bra. It was pure, sweet torture.
“I was supposed to be torturing you,” I murmured. “Not the other way around.”
“I’m torturing both of us,” he said, his eyes dark with desire. “But you’re so beautiful, Isla. You take my breath away.”
I was never one to fall for a line and I’d never thought of myself as particularly beautiful. I was too pragmatic to be soft and feminine and that was how I had been raised to think of beauty. But in that moment, staring up at Sean in my darkening apartment, I believed him. He thought I was beautiful for reasons that had nothing to do with my unwillingness to wear makeup or to dress in pink. He thought I was beautiful and he respected me. The real me. The stubborn, hard-working, tell-it-like-it-is me.
Maybe that’s why I had never fallen in love before. I had earned respect from colleagues but I didn’t think until then I’d ever dated someone who really liked and respected all the facets of me.
I realized right then that I did love Sean. I had fallen completely and totally in love with him. The only man who seemed to truly understand me.
Then I did the most un-Isla-like thing ever.
I started crying.
Not just liquid gathering in the corner of my eyes, blurring my vision. But real tears, hot damp tears, that flowed down my cheeks and rolled onto my shoulders.
For the first time in thirteen years, my emotions swelled and poured out and I cried.
Sean’s face almost made me laugh. He looked both horrified and terrified.
My throat felt constricted but I had to tell him what I was feeling.
I loved Sean.
Holy shit, I’d never made a woman cry with a compliment before. I had no idea why Isla had tears streaming down her face and I eased myself down onto the bed beside her, pulling her closer to me. Wanting to reassure her, comfort her.
“What’s wrong?” I asked her, wiping away first one tear, then the other.
“I love you,” she whispered. It sounded like she was going to choke on the words.
My first thought was elation that she felt the same way that I did, but then that still didn’t explain why she was crying. Her response was concerning and I didn’t want her to feel like she was obligated to say it back to me given what I had said to her earlier. I hadn’t said it directly, just in so many words, but maybe even that had freaked her out.
“You don’t have to say that if you don’t want to. You’re not obligated.” I trailed off, unsure of what to say or how she was feeling. I searched her face, stroking her hair. “I had no expectations or intention of pressuring you. I just wanted you to know how I feel.”
But she shook her head. “No. I do have to sa
y it. Because that’s how I feel too and for some reason that’s making me cry.” She blinked and took a deep breath. “I love you.”
Well, what do you know. Isla loved me. Me. The guy who never thought he’d find a happily ever after. Hell, even a happily for now. And to have it with a woman like Isla, who was strong as hell and knew her mind? That made it all the fucking better. “That’s amazing. You’ve made me really happy. And it’s okay to cry when you feel emotional, you know.”
“I haven’t cried since my parents’ funeral. Now today I have twice. This is humiliating.”
That made my gut tighten up. Damn. She really did love me. How the hell did I get so lucky?
“The first time didn’t count,” I told her, brushing my lips over her hair. “You just teared up, but you didn’t full-on cry.”
Isla gave a watery laugh. “Thanks, that’s very reassuring.”
I ran my fingers down her arm and found her hand, to entwine it with mine. “In all seriousness, I love you, too. I wasn’t looking to fall in love, and there you were, rolling your eyes at me and stomping your feet.”
“I have never once stomped my feet.” She rolled her eyes.
I smiled. “See? There it is. The eye-rolling I fell in love with. You challenge me, and I like that. I think we can be amazing together, Isla the Intimidator.”
She bit her bottom lip and gazed at me from under her eyelashes. Her rich brown eyes were filled with love and desire. “I think we can too.”
Then Isla being Isla, she unzipped my pants.
She’d just revealed a lot of herself to me. I knew her well enough to know she was going to need to retreat from that raw emotion just a little. She was in luck, because avoiding deep emotions was a skill I had honed to perfection over two decades. We could circle back to talking about what loving each other meant and where we went from here. Right now I sensed she needed me to lighten the mood.
“I see where you’re going with this,” I said. “You’re telling me you love me just to get in my pants.”
That made her laugh. “Exactly. Because it’s really, really hard work to get you to drop your pants for me.”
I shoved said pants down. “You’ve earned this.”
“Oh, my God, you arrogant jerk,” she said, with an insane amount of affection in her voice for someone who was insulting me.
But that was my Isla. My Isla. I loved the sound of that.
Reaching behind her back, I undid her bra as I bent down and kissed those lips I could never get enough of. I slipped a hand under the loosened bra and cupped her full flesh. She had such a great body, those hourglass curves designed to drive a man crazy. When I finally dropped my mouth onto her nipple, she moaned softly.
There was no sound better than hearing her pleasure. I teased her, flicking my tongue lightly, giving a quick suck, only to pull away and move to her other nipple.
“Sean…” she finally murmured, when I went back and forth a half a dozen times, never fully tasting her. “I need you.”
Nothing could be sweeter than hearing those words from Isla’s lips.
“I need you, too,” I told her, as I pulled her jeans down her thighs. “I need to taste you.”
Once I got her jeans and her panties stripped off, I kissed her inner thigh gently, enjoying the rise of goosebumps on her flesh. I steadily made my way up her leg, until I was buried between her thighs, breathing in her scent. Isla arched her back, impatient. But I wanted to draw the moment out, to burn these moments in my memory.
The moment when we knew that we loved each other.
That we had a future.
I moved my tongue over her slit, reveling in the way she jerked and grabbed at my head. Her fingers were tight in my hair, and she moved her hips, forcing me deeper inside her. Damn, she was everything, and I took my time, working her over thoroughly.
She was close to an orgasm, so I shifted away, blowing gently on her clit. She let out a hiss of exasperation and released her hold on my hair.
“I didn’t tell you to stop,” she said.
“I didn’t know you were in charge.” I got off the bed.
“Where are you going?” she asked, sounding panicked, like I might leave her on the verge of satisfaction and exit her apartment altogether.
“Nowhere.” I moved to the foot of the bed and gripped her calves. I tugged her down the length of the mattress, until her legs were dangling over the edge. Then I went down on my knees in front of her. “Here. This is where I’m going. And where you’re going to come.”
Kissing Isla’s inner thigh, I eased her ankles onto my shoulders. I wanted to see and taste her in the most intimate way possible. I wanted to have her fully open for me, physically and emotionally. I reached out and pressed the pad of my thumb into her damp pussy. It surprised me when Isla shifted, trying to draw her legs back together.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, running my lips across her thigh, teasing inside her with my thumb.
“I don’t know.”
I knew what was wrong. What was happening between us was overwhelming. I didn’t want her to hold back, pull back. I wasn’t going to let Isla build her walls back up between us.
“Let me look at you.” I massaged her inner thighs and buried myself in her scent, her sweet wet sex. I flicked my tongue over her clit. “You’re so wet. So turned on.”
“Sean.”
The sound of my name falling off her lips, desperate and rough, made my cock even harder, made me want to drive her over the edge. I pushed a finger inside her slickness, loving the little moan she gave, and covered her clit with my tongue, stroking both together in a heated rhythm.
Isla’s hip jerked and she tried to push me away. That only made me hold her thighs with an iron grip, wanting to feel her let go, wanting her to allow herself to be fully her, with me, in the moment.
I was relentless as she tried to shift away. “I can’t,” she said. “It’s too much.”
It was never too much. But I tested her, pulled back slightly.
“Don’t stop,” she demanded.
That was music to my eyes. I stroked inside her until she cried out in a sweet, tense orgasm.
Pulling back, I wiped my bottom lip and stared up at her.
“Now what?” she asked, shoving hair out her eyes as she breathed hard, her chest rising and falling rapidly, her cheeks pink.
That was a fantastic question. I didn’t know the answer for anything beyond today.
“This.” I stood, hauling her legs up so they rested on my hips.
Then I thrust inside her and took us both where we wanted to be.
Fourteen
“Thanks for meeting me,” I said to Martin, as I sat down across from him at a coffee shop. I’d been trying to stop myself from having this conversation for almost three weeks but we were only a week out from the cook-off and I wanted answers.
Sean thought I should leave it alone, but I couldn’t help it. I needed to look Martin in the eye and hear what his explanation was for betraying me.
“Sure,” he said, leaning casually back in his chair, a paper cup clutched in his hands, against his chest. “What can I do for you, Kowalski?”
He’d never called me by my last name before. That was weird. He also had always been a pale guy, but now he looked downright pasty. I wondered if he was sick or something.
“I want to know why you’re using my menu for the cook-off,” I said, because there was no point in beating around the bush.
“It was our menu,” he said. “Not yours exclusively.”
“Bullshit! Those were my ideas.” Man, this guy had balls.
“Prove it,” he said.
I just stared at Martin for a second. “Who the hell are you?” I asked him. “Because I thought you were a decent guy, not a subhuman prick.”
Martin sighed. But it wasn’t an indication he felt bad or was weary. It was more like he was annoyed with himself for wasting his time by agreeing to even see me. “You are really naive. No one is really
your friend in this business. Keep that in mind.”
That was an odd statement. “So you’re saying you pretended to like me for three years to steal one lousy menu from me? That’s a lot of pretending for a barbeque sauce.” None of it made any sense.
“You don’t know my reality,” he said.
Apparently not. “Your reality is fucked up,” I said. Because it was.
“You know what’s fucked up? You sleeping with every chef you’ve ever worked for.”
That made me laugh out loud in total disbelief. “What are you talking about? I worked with Chef Sucre for three years and I’ve never once seen him outside of the restaurant.”
“Then why was he always favoring you over me?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s because I’m a better chef, not because I was sucking his dick.” I was tempted to throw my coffee in Martin’s face, but I didn’t want to be sued for burning him. “You’re such a sexist douchebag.”
“So you’re going to deny that Kincaid is nailing you?”
I went very still. How the hell could he know that? “I have no idea what you’re talking about or why you would care who I’m involved with.”
“I did respect you. But not anymore. Not that I know you’re just another notch on Kincaid’s belt.”
I responded with a very emphatic, “Go screw yourself.” I stood up and grabbed my coffee cup. “See you at the cook-off when I crush you.”
Having an exit like that felt amazing.
“Do you think anyone about Bone knows about us?” I asked Sean for about the billionth time as we walked through the gates and got our badges for the cook-off.
I hated keeping secrets. I absolutely suck at it. All of my friends growing up knew they could never share any juicy gossip with me that they didn’t want to get out because I just never saw the point in pretending or hiding anything. I never could check myself before I accidentally blurted out the truth.
Who’s The Boss? Page 16