“Can you speak it?”
“I get by when I visit over there. Mom made sure of it.”
“Wow. Awesome. So…Brian can speak Italian?”
“I think he knows mostly cuss words. But he can get by too. He just gets laughed at more than I do. Evan, he’s fluent. He was always the star pupil.”
“He’s a lawyer, right?”
“Yep.”
He shook his head. “Too much school for me.”
“That’s us. Family of overachievers. Although it took Brian a while to get there.” She sipped the beer he’d gotten her from the fridge when they’d sat down. He’d taken one too. “What about your family? They’re in Dallas, you said?”
He shifted on his barstool. God, don’t let her dig too deep. “My mom is.”
“Are you close?”
“Not particularly. I mean, we speak. We’re cool. But not real close.”
“Well…that’s unfortunate. Not my business, of course, so I’ll shut up now.”
“It’s all right.” He’d tell her a little, then maybe she wouldn’t feel as if she’d pried. “My stepdad was a real dickhead, and that’s putting it mildly. From the time they got together when I was twelve, she and I had a major difference of opinion about how she should handle that situation.” He paused, the sight of the half-eaten sandwich in front of him suddenly making him nauseated. “He died a few years ago. So it’s not a problem anymore. But the damage was done.”
Even though it had been over ten years, he could swear the scar over his eye ached.
“Wow,” she said softly. “I’m sorry about that. It’s a disgrace when people choose a partner over their kids. Not that that’s what she was doing—”
“She was.”
“Your kids should come first. No matter what. And I’ll really shut up now.”
“Before you shut up, know that I agree with you. A hundred percent. Now, on to happier things.” He held up his beer bottle to toast. “To the Rangers.”
She laughed and clinked her bottle against his. “May they be ever victorious. Not going to happen, but we can dream.”
“Absolutely.” He took a deep breath. It felt like the first inhalation he’d accomplished since she brought up the subject of family. Appetite gone, he pushed his plate forward. “Want this?”
Gabby waved her hand. “Oh, no thanks.”
He stood and took their plates to the sink, dumping the rest of his sandwich in the trash along the way.
“How long have you lived here?” she asked.
“Three months.”
“And you like it?”
Shrugging, he leaned against the counter to face her, liking the way her eyes flickered over his shirtless body. Liking the way the white of his shirt lit up her skin. “I don’t hate it.”
“People usually move away from here, not to here. It’s pretty dead-end.”
“Like I said, Brian needed the help, I needed the change. So far, so good.”
“So you plan on staying awhile?”
“I don’t have plans at the moment.”
“That sounds…kind of nice.” She killed the rest of her beer. “To take life as it comes at you.”
“Haven’t you been doing that? Doesn’t everyone, whether they have plans or not?”
“Good point.”
“So how long were you with Mr. Wonderful?”
Her dark brows knit together; the corners of her mouth turned downward. He didn’t mean to cause her distress, but he was so f**king curious about the guy who let her go. Her fingers toyed with the bottle in front of her. “Almost a year.”
“And he was a doctor?”
“A cardiologist. Who doesn’t know jack shit about the heart, apparently. Nor does he seem to have one of his own.”
“Do you still talk to him?”
“I haven’t since I moved here. He tried to call me a few times before I left, but I wouldn’t talk to him. I guess he stopped caring once I was gone. He’s probably glad.”
“I don’t get it. You were planning a life together. I don’t see why he would bail at the last possible minute.”
“You and I both remain in the dark. I’d be lying if I said I never had a single doubt the entire time we were together, but I chalked it up to his schedule or his being tired. I figured he’d have the maturity to come to me if he had a problem.”
“Sure.”
“And to let my parents spend all that money… They wanted to pay for everything, you know, traditional. Everything was in place. And it all went to waste.” She raked her long hair back with one hand, and he thought he saw that hand shake a little. “Pathetic. So f**king pathetic.”
“You’ve seemed to handle it so well, though.” When she laughed humorlessly, he rushed on. “I mean it. I don’t know you well, but I could imagine an experience like that crushing a lesser woman. Making her not want to show her face. But you? Holy shit. You’re on fire.”
The unexpected breaking of a smile over her face was akin to sunshine breaking through storm clouds, as corny and clichéd as that sounded. “I’m on fire?”
“You’re the phoenix rising from the ashes. I’m honored I could be the one to let you express that.” He grinned. “In more ways than one.”
“With the way you’re looking at me right now, you’re making me want to express it again.”
“Yeah?”
He couldn’t take his eyes from her as he approached and turned her barstool all the way toward him. The intensity in her eyes as she watched him, the hitch of her breath as he stepped between her legs—it ignited his blood again in a way he wouldn’t have expected after she’d made him blow his top earlier.
But why not? She was without a doubt the most gorgeous woman he’d ever seen, and the more he looked at her, the more certain he became of that fact. She ran her hands over his bare chest and up over his shoulders. Long, lithe fingers he wanted to feel all over him again. He tugged the hem of the T-shirt from under her ass and lifted it over her head. She raised her arms so he could slip it off.
And now, br**sts bared, long hair drifting down around them, she was even more beautiful. Her skin… It shimmered. He wanted to eat her alive. There could be no doubt she knew her own beauty, but he couldn’t stop himself from telling her. He could never tell her enough. “So f**king beautiful, Gabriella.”
“Thank you,” she replied softly. She snaked her hands behind his neck again and pulled him in for a kiss. The second her full lips touched his, opened for his, he was lost. That she welcomed him into her glorious body in any way whatsoever was nothing less than a gift, and a miraculous one.
He slid her h*ps closer until she was snugged tight against his already hardening dick. As he’d suspected earlier, she hadn’t been wearing her panties. Still wet, swollen, flushed and fragrant from their earlier sex. Ian growled deep in his throat as he wrenched his jeans open to get closer to her. She let her head fall back and arched her body, presenting those perfect cinnamon-colored n**ples. He leaned in to flick the very tip of one with his tongue, and she sucked in a breath. “Ian…”
Once his c*ck protruded from his fly, straining to get inside her tight body again, she undulated against it, leaving a trail of wetness on the underside. Her cl*t was so plump and needy against him, he wanted to hit his knees and suck it for her all night. Make her come over and over and over again, until she couldn’t anymore. “Fuck, baby. You should’ve told me if you didn’t get enough.”
“I don’t know if I ever could.” The corner of her mouth kicked up in a mischievous smirk. “You walking around here all hot and hard.” Her hands skimmed over his shoulders as she spoke, traveling down the contours of his biceps. They came back up and joined over the center of his chest, where his heart thudded strong.
He rubbed the crown of his c*ck back and forth, savoring her delicious movements as she circled against him. The need to dip in and feel her slick and soft and tight around his throbbing dick almost overpowered everything else. He moved down enough to tease her entrance with his tip, and she gasped and clung to him but shook her head.
“I know,” he whispered. “You feel so good.”
“God, you’re making me wet.”
“So wet.” He dipped in and kissed her, giving her mouth one deep sweep with his tongue. She tried to keep him in, but he evaded her. “I want to taste it again.”
Gabby jerked against him, and he had to lock his f**king knees to keep from thrusting forward into her. He’d never seen anything so hot in his life as the sight of her bare, glistening p**sy lips separating on either side of the head of his dick. Never felt anything as sweet, either. “Yes, yes,” she whispered in a rush. “Oh yes, please.”
“I’m having fun right here, though.”
A dirty chuckle came from deep in her throat. “Make up your mind.” She pulled him down to say her next words into his ear, her breath a warm, sexy gust that raised the hairs at his nape. “I want to come into your mouth this time. Then I want to come again with you sunk as deep inside me as you can get.”
Sounded like a damn good plan to him. He might’ve gone down to his knees in obedience, or it might’ve been that her words knocked him off his feet. Either way, he had her here, spread open, bare, in full light.
And he’d thought she was hot only a moment ago. Maybe it was his imagination, maybe it was his own thundering pulse f**king with his vision, but he thought he could see her throbbing, see her clenching for him to fill her up. Flushed and wanton and gorgeous. “Please,” she said, voice ragged with her breathing. He glanced up to see her gazing at him with hooded emerald eyes that seemed twice as bright as they had earlier today.
The taste of her sent his eyes rolling back in his head. Even sweeter, somehow, than she’d been an hour ago. He rolled his tongue over her clit, around it, savoring that little bud. Gabby’s fingers clenched the back of his head, and he could tell she was holding herself back, trying not to grind into him. He was going to take that control away from her before it was over. He vowed it to himself.
He licked slowly until she whimpered. He tapped, and she gasped and jerked. “Ohhh my God, Ian. Oh God.”
That was what he liked. To give her pleasure. That was what any man in the world ought to feel honored to do for the rest of his f**king life. He was so hard that he hurt, and he clutched his dick in his fist to try to assuage the ache, but he’d gladly suffer that to make her feel good. He sucked her into his mouth, and she lost her hard-fought restraint, circling her h*ps on his mouth as he used the index and middle finger of his free hand to pull her lips apart. She cried out, thrashing her head. As her thighs begin to clamp on his ears, he released her, resuming slow, leisurely sweeps of his tongue.
“No!” she cried, then groaned pitifully. “Ian, make me come, pleeeease make me come.”