“Ian?” she asked. “You okay?”
He shook his head.
“No? You aren’t okay?” she asked.
He looked up from the cradle of his hands and smiled.
“I hate everything forever,” he said. “On earth. Right now. This second.”
“Welcome to my life.”
“I told Dad I thought the black-tie anniversary party was a waste of money and a bad idea. I said we should have a company barbecue. Something everyone could come to without feeling like they had to drop a ton of money on formal attire. He said every Asher event was a campaign fundraiser whether we wanted it to be or not. Fat cats don’t go on picnics, and we needed the fat cats on our side. I lose a lot of these arguments.”
“I’m glad you tried, though,” she said.
Ian leaned his head back against the edge of the hot tub and exhaled so hard a whole cloud of smoke billowed from his mouth and nose and up into the night sky.
“I feel like I’m always apologizing to you,” he said. “And here I’m doing it again. I’m sorry. That was a horrible thing to do to you and say to you and I would have put Russell in the hospital if I’d known what was going on.”
“I know it wasn’t your fault. I know you would have let me in the party. It’s not you. It’s just...nobody wants to see the captain of the football team with the weird Goth girl at school. They want to see him with the head cheerleader. I’m not a cheerleader, Ian. I eat cheerleaders.”
“Literally or in a sexual way?”
“Both,” she said. “I’m a bisexual cannibal and proud of it.”
“You’re wrong, by the way.”
“About what?” she demanded. “I’m never wrong.”
“About the football captain and the weird Goth girl. You said nobody wants to see them together. I want to see them together.”
“What about your grandparents? What about your dad’s business partners? What about your friends?”
“I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care. And they shouldn’t, either.”
“What if your grandmother says something to you about my tattoos?”
“Never too early for the old folks’ home, Grandma.”
“Oh, my God, you’re ridiculous. Can you not be serious for three seconds?”
“I can’t help it,” he said with that grin again, that gorgeous grin. “I’m too happy.” He put his hands on her waist and gently drew him to her.
“You’re cute when you’re happy,” she said. “Why are you so happy?”
“Because two days ago I thought you were walking out of my life—forever. And now you’re my girlfriend. Why wouldn’t I be happy? I’m stoned to the gills on hormones. Aren’t you?”
“Stoned?”
“Happy?”
“I’m—” she settled onto his lap again, straddling his thighs and resting her chin on his shoulder “—cautiously optimistic.”
“It’s a good start.” He kissed her cheek, her forehead, her lips. “I want you to be happy, though. You make me very happy.”
“I know I do,” she said, and pushed her hips into his erection. He was back at stage three again.
“Not that kind of happy. I mean, also that kind of happy. But also the regular nonerect kind of happy. My dream girl now my girlfriend. Why wouldn’t I be happy?”
Flash raised her eyebrow?
“I’m your dream girl? Really?”
“Apparently I have a thing for women with ink, short hair and very bad attitudes. Maybe it’s an opposites attract thing. Maybe it’s a fetish. I don’t know and I don’t care, but you’re the sexiest woman on earth, you’re terrifyingly talented and you get me off like nobody’s business. And you’re also nearly impossible to read, impossible to please and impossible to impress. So when I do read you, please you or impress you, it means something. I like that you make me work harder than I usually have to,” he said. “Most women smile all the time because they’re told they’re supposed to smile. I love that you don’t smile except when you mean it. When I make you smile I feel like I won a contest—first prize.”
Flash smiled.
He cupped her chin in his hand. “Yeah, just like that. I’m a winner.”
“What should I give you for a prize?” she asked.
“You,” he said. “You’re all I want.”
“Then you can have me.”
He took her in his arms and turned her, pressing her back to the side of the hot tub. Her legs were wrapped around his hips and his arms around her lower back. He lifted her up so that her breasts were out of the water, and as soon as the cold winter’s night air touched her skin, her nipples hardened. Ian lowered his head and licked the water off the center of her chest. His took both her breasts in his hands and lightly squeezed them as his tongue tickled the sensitive skin of her neck and chest. She was warm from the waist down and covered in delicious goose bumps from the waist up. When he took one of her nipples in his hot mouth, she flinched from the shock of pleasure. Her breasts were so sensitive in the cool air and every touch and every lick she felt all the way to her back and down into her hips. Weightless as she was in the water, it was easy to lie back with her legs around Ian and her back arched to the sky as he sucked her nipples and rolled his tongue around them. First one, then the other, then back again. Over and over he lavished them with attention with his mouth and his tongue. He caught her mouth in a sudden hard kiss. He cupped her with his large hands again, squeezing them harder this time, pinching her nipples, rolling them between his fingers and thumbs while she moaned into his mouth. His cock was brutally hard against her thigh. She wanted it inside her so much her pussy throbbed.
“I need to be inside you,” he said, pressing his chest to her breasts. She loved his chest, his hard flat stomach. She would never get enough of his body.
“Then come inside me.”
“Can I?”
“You know you can.”
“You know what I mean.” He licked her from the tip of her shoulder to her ear, nibbling her sensitive skin with his teeth. “You’re my girlfriend now. We’re committed. I want to act like it.”
“You want to come in me.”
“Will you let me?”
“Have you been tested recently?” she asked, putting her hands on his shoulders. She needed breathing room.
“Yes. You?”
“Right after we slept together,” she said. Ian raised his eyebrow at her. “What? Don’t take it personally. You can’t be too careful.”
“I’ll try not to. What do you say?”
“You’re in charge,” she said.
“Not with something like this. You tell me.”
Having sex without a condom was serious relationship business. She had an IUD and wasn’t worried about getting pregnant. And if Ian was okay and she knew she was...
“If it’s too soon,” he said, “no pressure. It’s just, condoms and hot tubs don’t really mix. Not that I’ve tried.”
“You’ve tried,” she said. Ian nodded. “Is that why you want to?”
“No,” he said. “That’s not why.”
“Why?”
“You never make anything easy, do you?”
“No, I don’t. Tell me why.”
Ian rested his forehead against hers. His hands held her by the waist. They were so close they were breathing the same air.
“Because I want to, because I want to be closer to you, because I want you to feel like I’m serious about being with you. And because I don’t want anything standing between us and you seem to think there is. I promise, nothing’s going to come between us except what you want between us.”
Flash shivered and it wasn’t from the cool night air.
“I don’t want anything between us,” she said. She lifted her wet hands and slicked his hair back from his face. She wanted to see his eyes. They were burning blue like the hottest part of a flame. His lips were slightly parted. He was breathing hard and so was she.
“Neither do I. But if it’s
too soon—”
“It’s not too soon.”
“Because if it is too soon—”
“I’m in love with you, Ian, and I have been for a long time. It’s not too soon.”
Ian’s eyes flashed with surprise.
“You’re what?”
“I’m in love with you and I have been for a long time.”
“How long?” He sounded so surprised she almost laughed except now wasn’t the time for that. “I know you said you wanted me from the day I started at work, but that’s not...that’s not love.”
“Since that night in June. Six months. That’s why—”
“That’s why it hurt you so much when I had to break it off with you.”
“That’s why,” she said. “I had a crush on you at work, that’s all. You were sexy and I liked you, wanted you. But I didn’t let myself have strong feelings for you until that night. I hadn’t planned on it. I wasn’t gunning for you. I never thought in a million years anything would really happen with us other than work flirting. We went back to your place and we had crazy sex and then you asked me to spend the night, which I didn’t expect. I woke up at about 4:00 am and thought I should probably just sneak out. I tried and you woke up and caught me. You remember?”
“I remember.”
“And you pulled me back into bed with you and you kissed me senseless and then you got on top of me and got inside me again and when you pushed in you said my name. You said—”
“Veronica.”
She closed her eyes and remembered that moment he entered her, the way her name had fallen from his lips like he’d been holding his breath, and when he exhaled, it was her name that he breathed. He’d never said her name before—only Flash, never Veronica. She’d forgotten he’d known her real name and then to hear him say it in that breathless desperate way while he was penetrating her, it was like he’d cut her open all the way to her heart.
“The way you said it like it was a magic word or something, like you were asking me for something or begging me for something or praying for something, but it got to me. It was just about sex before then. And when you said my name, my real name, then it was real.”
“It was real,” Ian said. “It was the most real night I’d ever spent with anyone.”
“I’m telling you this because you said you didn’t want anything between us. Now that I’ve told you there’s one less thing between us.”
Ian ran his hands up and down her sides, over her breasts, over her chest, over her neck and up to her face.
“Veronica...” he whispered.
“I’m here.”
“I wasn’t saying it to you,” he said. “I was saying it for me.”
“I love you, Ian.”
“Flash—”
“I want you to take me to bed and do everything you want to do to me,” she said. “And I don’t want anything between us. Okay?”
Ian kissed her forehead and it hurt almost as much as when he called her by her name.
“Okay, Veronica. Nothing between us. Not ever again.”
9
FLASH WAITED IN the hot tub while Ian found towels for them both. She nearly screamed in shock when her hot bare foot touched ice cold snow, but she managed to make it into the house without passing out from sudden-onset hypothermia. Ian toweled himself off quickly and roughly, then wrapped the towel around his waist. Then he helped her dry off, rubbing the soft white towel up and down her naked legs while she dried her hair. When they were in the house again, warm and mostly dry, he kissed her once on the lips and said, “I have to cover the tub and turn it off. You go up to my bed and warm up. I’ll be there soon.”
“Anything you say, boss,” she said as she pulled the towel tight around her and headed up to his third-floor bedroom.
She sat on the edge of his bed and waited. It made her smile to see that he’d lit the first and second candle in his menorah earlier this evening. The flame had gone out but she could tell from the solidified white wax that he’d let them burn a long time. Ian was a good man. Only a good man would light that candle because lighting that candle honored both her, since she’d made the menorah, and his mother, since that was who Flash had made it for. She hadn’t been here at sunset. Ian had done it alone, on his own initiative. It meant everything to her that he’d lit that candle. She wasn’t even Jewish, and she felt blessed by it.
And now he knew she was in love with him. She couldn’t quite believe she’d told him. She hadn’t planned to tell him, not unless or until he’d told her first. But she could tell it hadn’t been easy for him to ask if he could be inside her without a condom. He’d taken a risk by doing that. She couldn’t let him be the only person in this relationship willing to take a risk. Now she’d done it. He hadn’t said he loved her back and that was fine. She didn’t want him to, not yet, not until she was sure she’d believe him when he said it. But she knew it was okay. He’d been surprised to learn she loved him but not angry or apologetic. She didn’t need him to say it back to her, not when he said her name like that.
“Veronica?”
Yes, just like that.
She looked up and saw Ian standing in the doorway, still wearing the towel wrapped around his waist.
“I’m here,” she said. He stepped into the dark room illuminated by nothing but the little bit of moonlight reflecting off the snow in the evergreen branches.
“You warm yet?” He stepped in front of her and she leaned against him, her cheek against his stomach.
“Getting there. This helps,” she said as he ran his hands all over her back and shoulders.
“What else would help?” he asked as he ran one hand through her hair, slicking it back. She’d never dated a guy who had the same length hair she did. Maybe they could go to the same barber. The thought made her smile. Ian made her smile. She smiled now as he took his towel off and tossed it to the corner of the room.
“That helps,” she said, looking up at him. “That definitely helps.”
“What about this?” He moved to stand between her knees, nudging her thighs apart with his legs. Then he dropped to his knees and pulled her hips to the edge of the bed.
“Warmer,” she said.
He kissed her neck.
“Warmer...” She sighed.
He licked her right nipple.
“Warmer...”
He sucked her nipple into his mouth, gently but deeply.
“Very warm...”
He pressed a long kiss onto her quivering stomach. Then he turned his attention to her left hip where he bit into her lightly and sucked her skin for a long time. When he pulled back he’d left a love bite the size of a quarter on her body.
“Marking my territory,” he said. She held on to his shoulders as he did it again on her right hip and again on the soft underside of her left breast. He left another red and purple bite on her chest under her collarbone and a last one on her right thigh as big as two quarters. The bites hurt and she loved it, loved to watch him leave imprints of his mouth all over her.
“How warm are you now?” he asked.
“Not warm,” she said. “Hot.”
“Hot is good. Burning up is better.” He pushed her onto her back and dragged her legs over his shoulders. He opened her up with his fingers, spreading her folds wide. He licked her slowly from the base of her vagina to her clitoris and Flash shivered and moaned. He did it again, even slower this time, even deeper. She could feel her body opening up to him, growing wet inside, growing hotter. She needed him inside her—the sooner, the better.
“Ian?”
“Yes?” He flicked his tongue over her clitoris again.
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