by Sara Rider
When Fergus finally emerged from the kitchen, Julia had lost all track of time and space.
“You finished the edges?”
She put down the piece she’d been holding with a sheepish expression. “Sorry, I couldn’t help myself.”
He looked at her like she’d just strangled a puppy, but masked his true feelings quickly with a polite smile. “No problem. I should have cleaned up better.” He set two plates piled high with pasta on the small, round dining room table. “I hope you like spaghetti.”
“I love it.”
He let out a breath, then ran back to the kitchen for cutlery and wine glasses. Next, he rummaged in a nearby cabinet for a candle. It was all so very sweet and proper—it made her wonder if he hadn’t done some research into how to host the perfect dinner date. It was the kind of thing Julia should have loved—the attention to the detail, the ceremony, the effort—but she couldn’t help feeling unsettled. She’d been at his place for the better part of half an hour and they’d barely spoken.
She took her seat while he lit the candle with a wooden match, and sipped the wine. It was good, and clearly he hadn’t scrimped at all on that front. From her time planning weddings, she’d learned all there was to know about quality wine, just like she could ramble off everything there was to know about beer since working at the Holy Grale despite never having drank it much before. She soaked up knowledge like a hungry, sentient sponge, so that she was always prepared for any circumstance.
But nothing would have prepared her for her first attempt at tasting her dinner. The spaghetti wasn’t just burned, it was clumped together in a rock solid mound that her fork had no hope of penetrating. She tried first with the tines, then with the edge of her fork, and finally she reached for the butter knife. Nothing worked. She’d sat through bad home-cooked meals before, always with a polite smile on her face, but never quite this bad.
She looked up, realizing he was watching her.
“Sorry. I’m not much of a chef.”
“That’s okay.” She dipped her fork into the sauce, stealing a little taste. It was nearly as awful as the spaghetti.
“No, it’s not.” He sounded so grumpy, she wasn’t sure if it was better to just agree with him or disagree.
“I guess your mom didn’t give you the best cooking advice.”
He frowned. “My mom?”
“On the phone earlier,” she said.
“That wasn’t my mom.”
“Oh. Who was it?”
“My ex.”
Julia let her fork drop to the table. “You called your ex-girlfriend for dating advice?”
“Ex-wife.”
Julia mouth fell open. “You were married?”
“Yeah.” He didn’t offer more.
Regret crept over her skin like a chill. She hadn’t meant to sound so shocked. She knew next to nothing about this man, other than the fact she was desperately attracted to him. She wanted to reach across the table and pull him to her, erasing all the awkwardness with a kiss.
But that was what got her into this problem in the first place. Acting on lust when she knew next to nothing about him was the problem. She didn’t have the heart for casual sex, no matter how good it was. She wanted to find someone who loved her and cared for her. Someone who made her smile and laugh, and held her when she cried. She had no idea if Fergus could be that person when they could barely have a conversation that didn’t involve bickering or tearing off each other’s clothes.
She needed to do something. She got up from the table and retrieved her phone, then came back to the table. She didn’t say anything as she typed. It was only when she hit send, causing his phone to ding, that she looked up at him.
He gave her a curious look as he pulled his own phone out of his pocket. “What do you call a fake noodle?”
She raised an eyebrow in challenge. When he didn’t answer, she typed another text.
Im-pasta.
He looked down at his phone and laughed, deep and throaty. It was such a sensual, masculine sound that lit every part of her on fire.
He typed a message back.
Why did the lettuce blush?
Because it saw the salad dressing.
A grin spread across her lips. This was the man she wanted to get to know. The one who’d gotten under her skin and filled her thoughts for the past week. “How do you feel about ordering Thai food?”
“Green curry or red?”
“Both.”
“My kind of woman,” he said, making every inch of her skin tingle. He called in the order—something he was clearly accustomed to doing since he hadn’t needed to look up the number or the menu before ordering. When he finished, he stood up and held his hand out to her, leading her to the couch. “I probably should have warned you I don’t really know how to cook.”
She laughed. “Then why did you want to cook dinner for me instead of letting me cook for you?”
Still holding her hand, he brushed his thumb over her knuckles. “Because you’ve got enough on your plate right now and I wanted to take care of you.”
She might have unraveled right there on the couch if he wasn’t holding on to her. “I’m not used to letting people take care of me.”
“I know. But you trusted me to help you the other day. I hoped you would let me again.”
“So what do we do now?”
His eyes locked on hers, smoldering with heat and desire. Before she could take a breath, his lips were on hers. He kissed with a hunger that consumed her, pulling her close and holding her like he would never let her go. His demanding lips sparked every part of her body to life. With a soft tug at her hips, he pulled her onto his lap, her legs straddling his huge thighs. His erection was full and straining against her. She pressed herself into him, riding against the hard length. His hands were everywhere—her waist, her hair, her breasts. This was how they made sense. This was how they fit.
And that was the problem.
She pulled back and dropped her forehead to his, their chests rising and falling in a frantic harmony.
“Want me to stop?”
She pressed her palm to his cheek. “No, but we should. At least for now. We should talk instead.” It took all of her strength not to nibble on his full bottom lip in that moment or relieve the ache between her thighs with a roll of the hips. Painful as it was, she climbed off him.
He dropped his head back and scrubbed a hand over his face. His erection still strained against his jeans and she started to question her life choices for leaving them both in this state, but he didn’t complain. “So, what do we talk about?”
“How about the fact you were married?”
He didn’t stiffen or scowl or bristle or react in any way she expected him to. He just shrugged. “We got married in college. Divorced after eight years.”
“That’s a long time to be with someone. Do you miss her?”
He took so long to answer, she wasn’t sure if he was even going to. He ran his hands along his thighs. “Sometimes. Mostly I miss the life we had. But we’re better as friends.”
“Really?”
He laughed. “Yeah. Really.”
“That must be nice. I can’t say I’m friends with any of my exes.”
“Why not?”
She tucked her legs under her and thought about her answer. “Because they weren’t people I would have been friends with in the first place. I haven’t always made decisions with my head or my heart when it came to my love life.”
“So that’s why you want to slow things down?”
She nodded, though it pained her. “We barely know each other. I want to make sure we don’t jump into something we’re going to regret. I want to get to know what’s going on in your head as much as under your clothes.”
“What happens when you find out I’m not that interesting?”
“Says the guy who posed for a romance novel cover?” He winced and she realized it was the wrong thing to say. “Sorry. I guess you don’t like talking
about it.”
“I’m not ashamed of it. Well, maybe a little bit about the third arm and the loincloth. It was something I did for money a long time ago. It’s not a part of me or who I am now.”
“It means a lot that you shared it with me. It’s nice to have something to remember my mom by.”
“I’m glad, but I’d rather you don’t tell anyone about the cover, okay?”
“Sure. No problem.” The instant she said it, she remembered that she’d given the book to Nora to clean up. She was going to have to talk to Nora and Clem and swear them both to secrecy. “So what else do I need to know about you?”
He gave her a sheepish grin. “I can’t cook worth a damn.”
She laughed. “I figured that one out already. But I appreciate the effort.”
“I also know that you like puzzles as much as I do.” He picked up a piece and fitted it into an empty spot in the bottom right corner.
Her fingers longed to do the same. She looked to him and he nodded in permission. She got to work examining the pieces and the board, assembling a wheel rim with impressive speed. As they assembled piece after piece, the conversation started to flow so much easier, despite her distraction. He was a tactile person, she realized. His thoughts seemed to come cleaner and smoother when he was holding something. A pencil. A puzzle piece. Her.
She’d been telling him about the headache of the Kiesselburger event when he asked her, “So why do you have a side business when your work at the Holy Grale is full time?”
It was an interesting question, not because it was difficult to answer, but because no one had actually asked her before. Everyone assumed it was because she was bossy by nature—which, admittedly, she was—and the side business was simply another venue for that need for control. The truth was, it wasn’t about needing control over others, it was about needing more control over herself. Idle time made her feel lonely, like she was slipping away from the world.
“I need to matter.”
Fergus set down the puzzle piece he’d been holding and took her hands, enveloping her with the warmth of his huge palms. “You already do.”
How many ways could this man send her heart somersaulting in her chest? She could lose herself so easily in him, but she needed to be careful. She needed to protect her heart until she was sure, but it was like paddling up a waterfall when he said things like that—things so pure and raw and kind that her defenses stripped away like falling leaves. Her gaze dropped to his lips.
The doorbell chimed, saving her from herself.
Fergus paid for the food and they ate on the couch, working away at the puzzle until she lost track of time all over again. Unsurprisingly, the conversation had turned to books and she found herself fascinated to hear him talk about the novels he’d recently read and loved. There was truly nothing sexier than a librarian talking about books. He was a fan of nearly everything, from horror to science fiction to literary classics. When he said he read romances, too, and Julia discovered they shared a favorite author, her heart took another nosedive into his web.
The sky outside had darkened to an even deeper shade of black. Tiredness pulled at her shoulders. She yawned, which set off a chorus of yawns between the pair of them.
“Do you want me to drive you home?”
Saying yes would have been the right thing to do, but she couldn’t. “No.”
He laughed when he realized she was looking at the puzzle, not him. They were so close to finishing it—only twenty or so identically black pieces left. “Let’s see how fast we can do this.”
She tried to keep up, but her brain was turning to fog. It was late, probably well past midnight, and sleep was coming at her like a roaring wave. Still, they carried on until there was one final piece left.
He held it out to her. “You want to do it?”
“It’s your puzzle. You should do it.”
“Yeah, but it’s going to drive you crazy if you don’t.”
He was right. She took the piece and set it in place. “There.”
“Damn, that’s beautiful,” he said reverently.
“The car?” For her money, she would rather have a picture full of bright, colorful gardens, but there was something so unbearably erotic about the way he looked at the car with such adoration.
She kissed his jaw. Then his neck.
His arm came around her waist, pulling her tight. “I thought you wanted to go slow.”
She placed another unhurried kiss on his throat. “This is slow. Very, very slow.”
He caught her lips in a sensuous kiss. She savored his taste. And then she yawned—a yawn so big and loud and overwhelming that she had to duck her head into his chest.
He laughed and pulled her against him so that he was lying with her on his chest. “Close your eyes.”
The feeling of his arms around her was so comforting, so right, that she let the promise of sleep carry away all her worries and tensions, if only for that night.
14
Even before Julia opened her eyes to the morning light, the world felt a little off-kilter. She was warm, but the blanket draped over her back was too thin to be her down-filled duvet. Her position was wrong, too. She never slept on her stomach. Only her side. And then there was the scent of pumpkin spice filling her nose.
Fergus.
She inhaled deeply before finally opening her eyes. Vaguely, she remembered falling asleep on the couch the night before. She didn’t know if he was fully awake, but his hand stroked down her back and she could feel the rise and fall of his chest beneath her. This wasn’t supposed to happen again. They were supposed to have a nice dinner where they spent time getting to know each other better and then she was supposed to go home.
But this—falling asleep in a tangle of limbs with their clothes still on—was more intimate than anything else they’d done. Instead of slowing down, they’d leapfrogged ahead to a level of intimacy she wasn’t ready for.
But maybe that wasn’t such a problem. This man was kind and thoughtful and made her laugh like no one else had. Maybe it was time to put aside all those fears and inhibitions that had been holding her back. Maybe it was time to take a chance. Maybe this could be something real.
Her arm had fallen asleep beneath her and she tried to ease off of him. He woke fully, wrapping his arms around her back and locking her close. “Sleep okay?” he mumbled into her hair.
“Not bad.”
“Sounded like you had a nightmare.”
She stiffened. “Why do you say that?”
He traced a finger down the side of her face, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. “You were whimpering most of the night.”
“Maybe it was a sex dream.” She said it too flippantly, caught up in the embarrassment of it all.
“You did the same thing last week.”
She rolled off him with infinitely less grace than she’d intended. “Like I said, just a sex dream.” She’d never told anyone about the nightmares that came to her nearly every night, reminding her of how fragile her hold was on everything she loved dear. The ones that left her exhausted in the mornings. The ones that scared her too much to talk about.
He reached for his glasses on the coffee table, then stood up and leveled an inscrutable look at her while she attempted to right her skirt with one hand. He grabbed her hips with both hands, pulling her skirt around to face the right direction. “If you’re plagued by sex dreams, I can help with that.”
The bedhead. The morning breath. Her resolution to be good. All of these perfectly rational thoughts flew out of her mind like birds let free from their cages. She tilted her head up to look at him. “Even with my broken arm?”
“I’ve got a whole catalogue of solutions.”
Heat exploded inside her. She trailed her fingers along his chest, all too aware of his growing erection. “I could be a good student if you want to teach me your wise ways.”
“I thought you wanted to slow things down.”
“I did. I mean, I do. But i
t’s more of a yellow light than a red one. Proceed with caution.”
The hungry smile that spread across his lips was devastating. She was ready to surrender to his every whim. “Would you like to see the catalogue or would you prefer a live demonstration?”
“I—” Julia frowned, hand still splayed across his chest. “Wait, you have an actual catalogue of sex positions?”
He nodded. “Research and cataloguing are what librarians do best.”
She laughed at the absurdity of what he was confessing. “So you watched a lot of porn? For the record, I have no problem with that at all, but it’s a funny thing to brag about in a moment like this.”
“There’s actually a fair amount of literature and resources on supportive positions for people with injuries and disabilities. Back when I worked at an academic library, I supported a research project on the topic.”
She didn’t think anything could have distracted her from her heady, wild lust, but curiosity had sunken its claws into her. “Okay. Let me see it.”
He let her go and disappeared into his bedroom. He came out a moment later with a notepad filled with sketches in blue ink. They were simpler than the other ones he’d done, but undoubtedly of her and Fergus in various positions. Her on top. Her on her back. Creative uses of props and gravity. One position that she had to turn the notepad upside down to make sense of.
“Okay, I see how this would spare my arm, but I’m pretty sure it would break my neck and probably a few of my ribs.”
“I admit that one’s a little ambitious, but if it doesn’t work for you, there’s always this.” He flipped to another page.
“This is just a picture of you going down on me. It’s hardly fair to you.”