Prayer (15 page)

“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-rimmed 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?

“Katrynn?” John’s brow furrowed; she was ruining this moment.

“I…I don’t want this to be a one-night thing. I want more.” She thought she might break out in a sweat, but she’d gotten the words out.

He smiled. “So do I. I’ve liked you a long time. I hoped someday our timing would work out so I could tell you that, and you’d be glad.”

He’d said almost those exact words on New Year’s Eve. On that night, they had shocked and thrilled her. They’d made her teeter on the edge. What he and she had done after had made her fall right over it.

“You said that to me that night,” she whispered.

“I meant it. Then and now.” His smile faded, and he brushed loose hair from her face. “I hate that I fucked it up. These weeks might have been a lot different.” He brought his head to hers and kissed her; with his lips on hers, he breathed, “I want to try to make it up to you now.”

Her heart pounding and her belly fluttering, Katrynn nodded. Then John closed her in his arms and rolled them both, tucking her between his body and the back of the sofa. As he came in to kiss her again, she raised her head to meet him, wrapping her arms around his neck. This kiss double-timed its way from sweet to sexy, and she slid her thigh between his until she was in firm contact with his erection. He grunted and rocked against her. They picked up a rhythm together, their mouths twisting, their bodies rocking in tandem.

Then, as she was pulling up on the back of his shirt, he turned out of the kiss and leaned his head on the arm of the sofa, next to her cheek. His breath was loud and uneven, mirroring hers. “I don’t want to fuck you half-dressed in your living room. Can we go to your bed?”

At her nod, he stood, moving gracefully to his feet, and held out his hand to help her up. When she was on her feet before him, he brought her close and kissed her again, sliding his hands into the back of her pajama bottoms, into her panties, until he had full hold of her ass.

“Your skin is so soft,” he breathed on her lips.

His hands were not; they were callused and a little rough, like the fine side of an emery board. No other man she’d been with had hands like his. She liked it, liked the contrast of that roughness touching her so gently.

She wanted them everywhere on her. So she stepped back and reached around to take his hands from her pajamas. Then she kept hold of them and led him to her bedroom.

Lennie and George had moved onto her bed at some point in the evening; when she flipped the switch that turned on the little red-shaded lamp at her bedside, they both blinked at the humans, then stood, stretched and sauntered off. George rubbed against her ankle and gave her a flip of his tail on his way by.

All night, Katrynn had felt ridiculous in her Snoopy pajamas and slouchy socks, so she put her back to John and busied herself getting out of her clothes in the hopes that she might possibly look sexier naked. Seriously—pigtails, even? Ugh. She scuffed her feet along the rug, which dragged her loose socks right off, and yanked the elastics from her hair and pulled them onto her wrist in a habit made over years. Then she slid her fingers into the braids to unweave them.

As she started to unbutton her top, John’s hands came onto her shoulders, and he turned her around. “I want to do that.”

While she’d fussed with her socks and her hair, he had stripped to his jeans. He had a wonderful body—not brawny, like his brother Luca’s, but long and lean and sculpted. His shoulders were broad and his hips narrow, and he had dark hair in exactly the right places: a light coverage over his chest, and that happy trail. He had undone his belt, and it dangled open, drawing her attention to the place where the trail disappeared into his jeans.

And the bulge below that.

Katrynn realized then that parts of New Year’s Eve were a little fuzzy around the edges for her, too, because she’d remembered that he had a good body, but she had not remembered that he was basically Michelangelo’s David, except with the endowment that such beauty deserved.

“You like what you see?”

Words failed her as she realized she’d been gaping at his body. Not even his face. She’d been completely objectifying him, literally turning him into a work of art. She swallowed and nodded.

“Good. I’d like to see you, too.” He took hold of her top and began to work the buttons. She stood and watched those big, rough hands, those long fingers, and she moaned at the thought that they would be on her soon, touching her most tender places. She moaned again at the memory of how good he would feel.

He wore two bracelets on his left wrist. One was a leather strap—just a piece of weather-beaten leather, a knot closing it around his wrist—and, more strange, what seemed to be nothing but a piece of yarn. Like a Kabbalah string, except he was Catholic, and the yarn wasn’t red. It was grey, but Katrynn thought it might once have been blue. She’d never asked about them, but now, watching his hands so intently as he opened her top, she laid her hand on his wrist, just as he arrived at the last button.

He stopped and met her eyes.

“What are these?”

His grin surprised her. “The leather is from Trey. My nephew? He made them for all us boys one summer when he was like seven, I think, when Pop let him ‘help out’ in the garage. Pop, Carlo, Luca, me, Joey, Trey—we all got one, and I think everybody but Trey and Pop is still wearing it.”

“When he was seven? He’s in middle school now, isn’t he?”

“Yeah. Eighth grade. He’ll be fourteen this year.”

He was still wearing a strap of leather his nephew had ‘made’ for him almost seven years ago. “What’s the yarn?”

“Christmas present from Teresa a few years ago. It used to have macaroni on it, but…well. Uncooked pasta’s kind of brittle.”

She stroked the faded string. “You are amazing. Your whole family is amazing.”

He shrugged. “It’s a good family, yeah. But I don’t want to talk about them right now.” He finished unbuttoning her top and drew it off her shoulders. He let it drop at her feet, then trailed his sandpaper fingers lightly over her shoulders, along her collarbones, and down her chest. When he got to her breasts, he cupped them in his hands.

Katrynn wasn’t self-conscious about her body; she knew it was pretty good. She wasn’t super muscular or firm; she didn’t much like to work out, so most of her exercise came from walking. She liked the ocean and played around in the water in the summer, she did some skiing in the winter when she could afford the time and expense, and she and her mom hiked in the little woods around Welcome occasionally. But she didn’t have what could be called a fitness routine.

Also, she liked cheese. And bread. And chocolate. And wine. And Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey.

She was tall, however, and had a decent metabolism, and good genes, and she didn’t really overindulge in anything very often. Not skinny, not gym-rat fit, but not overweight, she had what she thought of as a nice but not spectacular shape. Nothing to be ashamed of. Her boobs were on the small side, but perky. One of the benefits of not being stacked: gravity wasn’t much of a factor.

Right now, those small boobs were extremely perky. Her nipples had tightened almost painfully at John’s mere touch, and when he skimmed his thumbs over them, she gasped and jumped.

He smiled, and then dipped his head down and took one into his mouth. Pleasure exploded inward from that one spot and filled her body with electric spasms. She hooked her arms around his head, and he wrapped his around her waist, the pressure of his mouth and his arms pushing her backward until she was draped over his hold.

Then he moved to the other breast and paid it the same attention. Katrynn heard herself panting and moaning, almost whining, but she couldn’t stop. Even when her arousal was so intense that it nearly hurt, she clutched her fingers in his hair and held him closer rather than pulling him away.

Abruptly, he let her go and left her reeling. Catching the waistband of her bottoms in his fingers, he yanked them and her panties down in one sweep.

He straightened and kissed her, grabbing her face in his hands and holding her firmly while his mouth claimed hers—still gently at first, but then fervent and demanding. When she hooked her arms around his neck again, he dropped his hands to her hips and lifted her straight off the ground. That was a heady surprise; it was rare that a man was tall enough to lift her off her feet.

This was different from New Year’s Eve. That night had been sweet and beautiful; he’d been tender and attentive in a way that had been new to her, and he had brought her to heights she’d never known before. But he—and she—had been drunk, and there was an unavoidable slackness around the edges of that perfection. Now, both of them sober and in full control of their faculties, there was more between them. It was deeper. Better. He was tender and attentive, but he was also powerful and vibrant. And they were both more focused.

He laid her on top of her comforter and loomed over her, smiling. He kissed her quickly, then broke away and began to make a trail from her mouth down, pausing to attend to the pulse point at the side of her neck, to each breast, to her navel, and on downward.

She took hold of his hair and closed her eyes, feeling every bit of it. His mouth lingered at each spot, tasting her, caressing her with lips and tongue and breath. She felt more than attended to. She felt worshipped.

When he had skimmed his mouth and tongue down to the bottom of her belly, though, she didn’t want what he meant to do.

Not because she didn’t like that—she really, really did—and she had every confidence that John would make it wonderful. But it felt wrong for this moment. He was too far away, and she felt lonely alone at the head of her bed.

She could feel her mind, and her body, ready itself to make the best out of a situation she didn’t want. It would be good; of course it would be good. He hadn’t done it before, but every way he touched her told her that he would bring her pleasure going down on her.

But she wanted him up with her. She wanted to feel him inside her. She wanted to be sharing this moment.