“Do you want to come in?”
She stepped back as she asked, and he came forward, into her apartment. She closed the door, and he turned to face her again.
Then they just stared at each other. John didn’t know what to say; that apology seemed wrong now, like the topic had changed between them, though they hadn’t exchanged even ten words.
Katrynn’s eyes hadn’t lost their wariness. What he wanted was to give her some ease. But when he took a step toward her, she pressed her back to the door.
“Katrynn. I don’t want to hurt you.”
Her eyes lost some of that blunt defense, and she frowned. “What do you want?”
He answered with the truth, the thing he wanted most in that moment. “I want to kiss you.”
As he said it, he took another step, and this time, she didn’t shrink back. Rather, she took another deep breath and let it out as he put his hand on the door and bent his head toward hers.
“John…” she whispered just before their lips touched.
“Shhh.” He pushed her glasses to the top of her head and kissed her.
And that felt familiar, in a potent, enthralling way. Like a dream he’d had and didn’t remember had left a trace in his mind somewhere, and the taste of her had stirred it up. Which was pretty much exactly what had happened, wasn’t it?
He pressed his tongue to her lips until she opened for him, and then she hummed a quiet, hesitant little moan and set her hands on his chest. At first, he thought she meant to push him away, but her fingers curled into his coat and pulled.
On that encouragement, John let his mind loose, and his body, too. He grabbed her, pulling her body hard to his, wrapping his arms around her, sliding his hands under the back of her girlish pajama top so that he could feel the warm satin of her skin. He opened his mouth wider, making hers open with him, and tasted all of her, wanting that familiarity to become a memory.
He had missed something, forgetting that night. Holding her now, tasting her, he felt more than regret for hurting her. He felt loss.
She kissed him back with enthusiasm, humming those tiny moans into his mouth, making his tongue buzz. And then, without warning, she broke away and pushed him back.
“Wait. Wait,” she gasped. “Wait.”
He waited, his breath coming in heaves. He was so hard he ached.
She put her hand on his mouth, her fingers tracing over his lips. “You’re so good at that.”
He kissed her fingers and took her hand in his. “So are you. Why’d we stop?”
“I need…I need to slow down. I feel spun.”
He took a breath to gain some equilibrium and stood back, letting go of her hand. “Okay. Whatever you need. I should go, then.”
Wrong thing to say. Her brown eyes, nearly black with arousal, got somehow darker as she scowled at him. “So you just came over for another hump-n-dump?”
“Please? No!” He pointed to the window. “The snow. They’re saying maybe two feet by morning. If I don’t leave soon, then I might not be able to leave at all.”
She looked out the window. “Oh. Oh. Sorry. I just—okay.” When she turned back to him, her expression was sweet and shy. Almost, but not quite, a smile. “Would that be so bad?”
John felt pretty spun by the events of the night as well. He couldn’t keep up with her. “I thought you needed to slow down.”
“I do. I need to sort out where this night has landed. I was about to make myself a grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup for dinner. I could make it for two, and we could…I don’t know. Talk or hang out. Watch a movie.”
He grinned. “Dinner and a movie sounds like a date. Do you have an answer for me, then?”
She grinned back. “Yeah, I do. Okay. Come on in, and I’ll make us dinner.” Frowning down at her pajamas she added, “God. I’ll change.”
“Please don’t.” He took hold of her hands. “I love the way you look right now.”
Though she gave him a look that suggested she thought he was nuts, she nodded and walked away from the door.
As she led him farther into her apartment, he wanted what he saw to be familiar. It wasn’t. He could call up a good memory of her bathroom, and her bedroom might ring a bell, from the morning after, but he’d been caught that morning in a vertiginous loop of hangover, lingering drunkenness, and panic, and he barely remembered anything else but her front door.
Her place was cute, though. The building had been renovated, and whoever had done it—not Pagano & Sons—had done a good job of keeping the period details and upgrading the systems. Katrynn’s taste in furnishings and décor seemed a lot like her taste in clothes: girly without being fussy. A brown leather sofa against one wall had a pile of colorful small pillows on one corner. One of the cats he recognized was perched on the pile. The other cat was stretched across the back. A fluffy purple blanket was tossed over the other side of the sofa, like Katrynn had been wrapped up in it when he’d knocked.
Another wall was lined with three identical bookcases, the kind you assemble yourself. They were all stuffed full with books, more than they could neatly contain. On top of the one nearest the window was a plant with vines the trailed along the side. At the other side of the window, tucked between the window and a gas fireplace, was a puffy armchair with another fluffy blanket folded over its back. An old-fashioned rocking chair served as the rest of the seating in the room.
The sofa faced an armoire painted with yellow crackle paint. Its doors were open, showing a medium-sized television and a Blu-ray player. The television was on, the screen showing a paused picture. He recognized the movie she’d been watching.
“Dirty Dancing?”
She’d been walking toward a brightly-lit doorway that he assumed was her kitchen; now she stopped and picked up a remote of the coffee table. She turned off the television. “I had myself set up to have a night of self-indulgence. There’s also a pint of Chunky Monkey in the freezer, but I wasn’t that far along in the cliché yet. It’s your fault, so don’t judge.”
“I wasn’t going to judge.”
She cocked her head. “You a fan of Johnny Castle?”
“No,” he laughed. “But I know the movie. I have sisters, remember. Carmen loves it.”
“Carmen?”
“Yep. She played the shit out of the VHS tape when we were kids. She even dressed up as Baby for Halloween one year.”
Katrynn laughed. She had a great laugh—full-throated, melodic, and deep. “That’s awesome. I wouldn’t have guessed that of her.”
“She has layers, my big sister.”
“Apparently. You want a beer?”
“Sounds great.”
~oOo~
Katrynn wouldn’t let him help, protesting that her small galley kitchen was barely big enough for one person to cook, so while she made dinner, John occupied himself exploring her living room.
There was whimsy in her style. Scattered here and there around the room were strange little pieces, some of them sweet, like a thick frame full of dried flowers, obviously old, hanging on the wall, and others a bit macabre, like a vicious-looking ceramic gargoyle resting on top of a stack of books in a bookcase. Some were both at once: on her coffee table was a bedazzled skull, covered in rhinestones, with red stones for eyes. It was a candle holder and held a thick red taper, half burned.
She liked Christmas lights—the miniature clear ones. They were draped over the bookcases, and over the door and window frames, and in her kitchen he’d seen a shelf lined with wine bottles, all of them empty of wine and filled with the strands of lights.
Slid into the space between two bookcases was an electronic keyboard. He set his beer down and pulled it out. It was a good model—performance quality—and deserved to be treated better than to be stuck between a couple of cheap bookcases.
“You play the keyboard?” he called out.
She came to the door with a spatula in her hand. “Hmmm?”
In her silly flannel pajamas, pigtails, and horn-rimm
ed glasses, she looked so goddamn adorable John could barely stand it, and he grinned.
Casting him a suspicious look, she put a point to her question. “What?!”
“I was just thinking how pretty you are. But what I asked was do you play?”
She blushed. “Yeah. I don’t like that box much, though. I paid way more than I could afford, but it still sounds fake. A real piano is so much better, but that’s even farther out of my reach. Do you play the keyboard, too?”
“No, just guitar. I know the keys, so I can plink out a tune, but no.” He had an image then of playing with her, singing to each other, and his dick, which had calmed down since their kiss, surged awake again, so quickly it made him grunt.
The sensual appeal of a duet seemed not to have occurred to Katrynn, however. She turned back to her task in the kitchen, and John, feeling disappointed, slid the keyboard back into its place.
He stood and studied her crammed bookcases. She had a little bit of everything: volumes that were obviously textbooks, like Victorian Poetry: An Annotated Anthology, several shelves of classics in English (which included three copies of Mrs. Dalloway and several other books by the same author, Virginia Woolf), American, and possibly Spanish literature, shelves of poetry, one shelf that seemed to be plays, and a whole case of pulp paperbacks—horror, romance, mystery, science fiction, fantasy, international intrigue, just about every genre that existed.
John himself wasn’t much of a reader. He liked stories, but he got restless sitting still for long, so he listened to a lot of audiobooks, while he worked, especially while he was on the road, and when he worked out at the gym. Books sucked for running, he needed music to keep his pace up, but they were great to ease the monotony of weight training.
He didn’t know if audiobooks counted as reading, but he knew a lot of the books on her suspense and horror shelves.
“Hey.”
She was standing at his side, and John noticed that the air smelled great—not just like grilled cheese, but rich with herbs and warm bread. Warm sourdough bread. His stomach rumbled.
“Hey. Smells delicious. You like to cook?”
She shook her head. “Not really. But I love cheese, and I make a mean grilled cheese sandwich. I’m sorry to say that the soup is just canned, but I spiced it up a little. I hope that’s okay.”
“I’ve lived alone for a long time. Canned soup is a staple. I like it.”
Her pigtails were bound at their ends with pink elastics, and John picked one up by that girly wrapping and pulled gently on it. She gave him a bashful look and a lopsided smile.
“Okay, good. Um, I don’t actually have a dining room. I usually eat at the coffee table, but I have a little folding table and chairs in the coat closet. We can set them up in here, if you’d rather.”
“No need. We can sit on the sofa and watch your chick flick.”
“Oh no. You are not ruining my comfort movie with your brotastic eyerolling. We will watch something else. We can stream something, or there are discs in the bottom of the armoire.”
While Katrynn brought in the food and laid it out prettily on the coffee table, John went through her movie collection. She had the complete set of Fast and Furious movies. He picked Fast Five, set it up, and joined her on the sofa.
Her cats hadn’t moved since he’d arrived, and they were taking up the spot on the sofa that was left for him. “Hey, guy,” he said, and lifted the brown-faced one from the pillows. The cat purred right away, and John scratched him between the ears. “Mind if I take your seat?”
He set the cat on the floor. When he moved the pillows and set them on a chair, the grey-faced cat stood up on the back of the sofa, stretched, and jumped down. John sat and reached for his sandwich.
Katrynn was watching him, her expression intent. “What?” he asked.
“Nothing. Don’t let your sandwich get cold.”
~oOo~
She hadn’t oversold her skill with grilled cheese. The sandwich was delicious, with several different soft, tangy cheeses mingled with herbs and spices on sourdough bread toasted perfectly.
They ate, and then John cleared the dishes, stacking them by the sink. When he sat again on the sofa, bringing them each a fresh beer, he pulled her close and tucked her under his arm, and they watched the movie. Except for talking occasionally to the characters or commenting on the action and chase scenes, they didn’t converse.
About halfway through, Katrynn pulled that fluffy blanket over her legs and then laced her fingers with his.
“Are you getting tired?” he asked, squeezing her hand. If she was, he’d sleep on her sofa and leave her be. The snow was still falling heavily, so he wasn’t going anywhere, but he was absolutely not going to presume anything about what would happen between them for the rest of this night.
“No. I’m just cozy. This is a good night. I didn’t think it would be.”
He kissed the top of her head. Her shampoo smelled sweet and a little spicy, and he lingered and breathed it in. “I’m so sorry, Katrynn. For everything.”
She turned in his arms, leaning up so she could meet his eyes. “I know. It’s okay now.”
Before she could settle again on his chest, John caught her, curling his hand lightly around her neck, covering the place that had been so bruised. Her glasses reflected the images from the television, obscuring her eyes, so with his other hand he eased them from her face and set them on the back of the couch. She didn’t stop him.
Then he could really see her, and she was beautiful. The puffiness had left her eyes long ago, and she looked young and fresh and lovely. Her expression had no guard at all; for the first time since New Year’s, she was comfortable with him.
A potent charge went through him as he understood that—that he had regained her trust—and as he understood how important it was to him that he had. He’d been borderline obsessed with her, and with what had happened, what he couldn’t remember and what he could, since he’d been back from Italy. She’d dominated his thoughts and haunted his dreams. He’d thought it was primarily because he’d been so afraid that he’d done something terrible to her.
Now he knew that he hadn’t, and also that he had. But he understood something deeper than that now, too. It had been so important to him not only because he hadn’t wanted to hurt her, or because he never wanted to be a man who could ever do the things he’d feared he’d done, or even because he liked her, was interested in her.
It was more than that. What he felt for her was more than interest. His whole life had been shaking under his feet, and with the return of her trust, everything in him steadied.
He swept his thumb along the line of her jaw. “You matter,” he murmured.
~ 10 ~
Katrynn was cuddled on her sofa with the John she wanted.
He bent his head to hers and kissed her lightly. God, he was so very good at kissing. Even a kiss that became wild and passionate started out like this: a gentle caress. His tongue sought her mouth, and she opened and let him in. Each sweep and slide of their tongues made her belly cramp with lust.
Moaning, she shifted in his hold and slid her hand under his thermal t-shirt. She wanted to touch him, to feel his skin. When she did, brushing her fingers up his firm belly, through his happy trail, he groaned and pulled back from the kiss. As he did so, he caught her bottom lip between his teeth—gently, not hurting. Like he couldn’t stand to lose contact.
This was what he didn’t remember. Maybe he was simply always like this, with every woman, and it wasn’t noteworthy to him. But Katrynn had never been with another man who’d paid such attention to her, who seemed to be with her not to get off, but to be with her.
With the kiss broken, she opened her eyes. He was staring at her, his eyes lively with light and focus. “Is this okay?” he asked.
She flexed her fingers over his skin, and he groaned and put his hand over hers.
“Oh yes. But…”
“Yeah?”
Her throat clamped down on
the words she wanted to say. Fuck, she hated that she did this, went practically mute when she had a chance to say what she wanted. This could be something, there was something between them, she could feel it. God, she could practically see, smell, taste, hear it. But if she withdrew into her stupid shell, hiding from the true intimacy of vulnerability, then what this was would never have a chance to grow.
She had to be herself; she had to say what she wanted. She had to. If she let him dictate everything and just hoped for the best, then he would sour on her, or she would sour on him, and this would die like all the others. Why, with men, could she not be assertive? Not demanding, just expressive. Why couldn’t she just be honest and open?
Prayer (The Pagano Family Book 5) Page 14