When her moans were trailing off, her breathing and arousal so intense that her voice was raspy and losing projection, her thighs trembling, her eyes closed, arms slack against her sides, head turning restlessly from side to side as he ate at her, Ian knew it was time. Shucking his boxers, he used one hand to stroke her and the other to clumsily unroll the condom.

Then as he poised over her, he spoke the only words he ever remembered saying in his dreams.

"Open your eyes, Bree. Look at me."

She did, her eyes a midnight blue, darkened with desire, glassy and bright in the waning afternoon light.

"Ian," she said, voice husky.

Something about the way she said his name, the way she looked up at him, with trust and desire, twisted things inside Ian, and he felt a wave of possessiveness roll over him. This wasn't about just now, this was about him and Bree, being together, starting something powerful and intimate and sensual.

He wanted her, in all the ways that mattered.

And it was real.

Bree's breath caught at the look on Ian's face. He looked fierce, a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead and upper lip, his biceps taut from holding himself over her. He had a sense of power about him, a control, a primal warrior quality about him. She never would have thought that, but now that she saw him, knew him on an intimate level, she knew it made perfect sense. He was successful because of those qualities, and right at the moment he was dedicated to driving her insane with want.

She didn't know how, or maybe she did in its unbelievable way, but he knew her body, understood what she liked without her speaking a word, and he had her primed and on the edge. If he had let her, she would have come six times already, but he had pulled back, kept her from an orgasm over and over, so that her body felt oversensitive, her mind liquid puree.

When he pushed inside her with a hard thrust, Bree knew it was over, that she couldn't stop it any longer, and she shattered, her back arching, her body clenching around him. He lengthened her orgasm by stroking in and out at the perfect pace, not too fast, not too slow, so that she could close her eyes and enjoy the pulsing ecstasy on and on, until she was fairly certain she had stopped breathing, had died, and had risen above her body to another plane of existence.

Could someone say holy shit? Bree pried her dry eyes open and stared up at Ian, her body jellied and slack on the quilt, his erection still hard and intimate inside of her, sparking little postorgasmic tremors. He was biting his lip, which she found endearing, and because he had done so right by her, Bree spread her legs farther and tipped her hips, so that he would go deeper.

In appreciation for her efforts, he gave her a low moan, then thrust harder, sliding her backwards on the quilt. She knew when he was going to come, saw it on his face, felt it in his pause inside her, understood that for whatever reason, she knew this man sexually, had a connection that was raw and intense and loaded with passion. When he collapsed on her chest, she welcomed his weight, enjoying the way he panted in her ear, and stroked her hair back from her face.

He stayed inside her while they both fought for air, and Bree tried to restore her heart rate to something less than a hummingbird's. She had no idea what to say, but the silence didn't feel uncomfortable. She could actually feel his smile, even without looking. It was there on his face, and she could feel it and hear it, and it made her smile in return.

It was three in the afternoon, and she was naked on the hardwood floor in front of her Christmas tree with a man she barely knew, and she felt nothing but contentment and a sensual satisfaction.

"Ow," Ian said, pulling out of her:

"Ow? Don't tell me that hurts."

"Well, it does, figuratively, but the reason I said 'ow' is because your cat just walked across my ass, claws out."

"Are you serious?" Bree tried to glance around Ian's shoulders for Akasha. "I didn't feel anything."

"That's because she walked on my ass, not yours."

Ian kissed Bree's forehead and rolled onto his back next to her with a sigh.

Bree spotted her cat then, down by Ian's feet, looking up at her calmly, the mistletoe in her mouth.

"Oh. She wanted what has become her new favorite chew toy."

"She definitely has a thing for mistletoe."

"I think I do now, too." Bree grinned at Ian. "It seems to be working for me."

He grinned back. "It's doing really positive things for me as well."

Bree would have been content to just lie naked with him for a while, but it was December, and she lived in a drafty old house. A wicked breeze was whistling in from the nonfunctioning fireplace and rushing over her flushed skin, making her shiver. The quilt was no protection since she couldn't pull it fully over them or they'd wind up on the bare floor. She was about to give in to the inevitable and tell Ian they needed clothes or a bed or a hot shower, when he spoke first.

"I'm sorry, you're cold, aren't you? Here, stand up, and we'll wrap you in the quilt." Ian stood up, giving her a hell of a view of his tight butt, and reached his hand out to help her up.

It was such a small thing. Such an obvious thing.

He knew she was cold, felt her shiver, wanted to fix it.

No big deal. Common courtesy, the sign of an

observant man. It was no big deal. Yet Bree could count on one hand the number of times the men she had dated had paid attention to her needs or wants on that level. It just showed her that her baby sister was right—she had definitely been dating the wrong sorts of men, and no matter what happened with Ian, he had shown her that she was done fixing broken men.

She wanted a partnership, a mutual respect in a relationship.

"Thanks." Before she could even consider the fact that she was standing naked in front of him and her giant picture window facing Main Street, Ian had her bundled up in the quilt papoose style, disregarding his own lack of clothes.

"Should we finish my tour of the house or do you want to go get that late lunch I promised you?"

He was holding the front of the quilt closed and dusting little kisses on the side of her mouth. Bree felt herself warming up, from the inside out. He was seriously cute, and she liked that he wasn't trying to run out on her now that they'd had sex. She was hungry, but somehow the idea of leaving her house with Ian, going out in public minutes after they'd touched each other in such intimacy, made her feel weird.

Which meant she needed to get a grip and just do it. She was a grown woman, and dating—if they could call it that—a lawyer from Chicago was not a dirty little secret. "Food is good."

"You're good." Ian gave her a searing kiss, the tangy taste of sex still in his mouth.

Bree freed her hands from the blanket and placed them directly on his bare butt. Nice and tight. She squeezed lightly, and he bumped forward against her.

"Can I pick up some stuff and spend the night here?" he asked. "Do you mind?"

Hell no. "I'd like that."

"Good. Now get off my ass or we'll never get out of here."

Bree pulled her hands away with a grin. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Sure you don't." Ian turned and reached for his boxer shorts. He was holding them in his hand when he glanced back at her. "Hey, Bree?"

"Yeah?" She had no idea what he was going to say, but she wasn't worried. She trusted Ian, for whatever reason. "How do your dreams end?"

"They always end right before, well, right before I have an orgasm." She refused to blush.

He studied her for a second, then nodded. "Mine too. So I guess we're on our own from here on out."

"Guess so." The reality of being with him felt too satisfying to worry about it though, and it was so much better than dreaming.

"Reality is definitely more satisfying than dreaming."

Bree felt that shiver run up her spine again as his words echoed her thoughts. She didn't understand what had happened, was happening, but she was too much a believer in signs to deny it or back down.

This, whatever this was, was meant to happen.

"Yes, it is. Infinitely more satisfying."

Ian pulled the condom off of himself with a wince.

"Though messier."

Bree laughed. "True. But I'm willing to get a little messy if you are."

"I am. I absolutely am."

The look in his eyes was so fierce and sensual that Bree stepped back before they got messy all over again. She would spontaneously combust if he touched her again without a recovery period.

"Good."

And hopefully that one word would convey everything she was feeling, confused and mysterious and overwhelming as it was.

Chapter 5

Ian wasn't sure why he had ordered eggs and hash browns at four o'clock, but it just seemed like the appropriate thing to eat at a place called the Busy Bee Diner. The booth was sticky, the portions huge, and the waitresses sassy and efficient. He drank his coffee black and smiled across the table at Bree.

She still had a tousled look to her, her cheeks flushed and her hair erratic. He liked to see her this way, liked knowing he had satisfied her.

"This isn't exactly the fine dining you get in Chicago," she said, glancing around the restaurant.

"No. But I grew up in a town like Cuttersville, so I'm comfortable here."

Bree looked at him in amazement. "You did? I have a hard time picturing that."

That's because he had tried so damn hard to shed the dust of Prairie, Illinois, from his feet. Too hard.

"Yep. I was the town poor kid who never fit in because we didn't live by the rules of a small farming community. We had a farmhouse but had no acreage.

My mother had two kids by two different men

without ever being married. She was an eighties hippie, growing our own food and living off welfare.

None of those things were particularly acceptable to the locals."

"I can see that." Bree gripped her coffee cup. "I'm sorry, Ian. It doesn't sound like an easy way to grow up."

He shrugged. "It was fine. My mother loved us, and she taught us how to survive on our own. I owe a lot of my success to her lessons in tenacity." He really didn't look back on his childhood negatively, despite the poverty and the disapproval from adults toward his mother. If anything, he had been a cosseted town favorite because people had felt sorry for his lack of a normal life, as they deemed it. Ironically, though, his mother had been a better mother than any of them could have ever grasped. "In fact, in some ways I think I'm still a small-town boy at heart. I've tried to convince myself I love the city, but I get claustro-phobic. I was actually thinking about buying a house in the suburbs and commuting downtown just to have some space to myself."