Breaking the kiss, I pull open the door, releasing a thick cloud of steam. I dive through it with Ian right behind me. I can feel him, even if I can’t see him through the warm eucalyptus-scented fog.
As our bodies part the thick swaths of steam, I watch his face as he smiles. “You’re so beautiful. I’m the luckiest bastard alive.”
The door slams shut, and Ian grabs me by the hips. Kissing me hard, he cups my backside and boosts me up. I twine my legs around his waist as he presses me against the slick tile wall. Steam whirls around us, and my skin prickles with wetness and anticipation. He breaks the kiss to run his hands down my sides.
“I love your body.”
Your body. Not you. That’s what you’re signing on for.
Still, he’s capable of love. Am I reading too much into this?
Ian’s eyes are hungry, his lashes fringed with droplets of water. His mouth finds mine, and I taste eucalyptus and ozone and desire. I tighten my hands around his back, memorizing the slick ripple of muscle, the moment of anticipation before he drives into me.
“Sarah,” he gasps as he breaks the kiss again, green eyes searching mine. “I don’t know how it’s possible.”
“What?”
“How I want you more every single time.”
I smile, wanting to hear the rest of the words. That he’s feeling the same way I am. “Same,” I murmur before his lips find mine again.
Something’s shifted between us, I’m sure of it. I can feel it in the way he drives into me. I can feel it in the clutch of his hands around my waist, in the low moan in the back of his throat.
I can tell by the way he groans my name as he gets closer, muscles tensing in his shoulders. I feel it in the way he rocks into me, sensing my climax and adding to it with his own.
As we crash together in gasps of pleasure and closeness, I’m more certain than I’ve ever been that Ian is getting there, too. That he’s starting to feel the same way I am.
Chapter 12
Ian
The following week is an odd blur of work with Wyeth Airways, meetings with lawyers to prepare marriage contract paperwork, and sex with Sarah.
Lots and lots of sex with Sarah.
It was hot as hell even before the whole condom-less thing, but I have to admit it’s fucking unreal now. I can’t get enough of her, of the feeling of sliding inside her with nothing between us.
Nothing but a bunch of legal paperwork, which we’re slowly working through. Cassie’s wedding is drawing closer, and so is our deadline to finalize this deal.
“I love that you included a whole section on pets.” Sarah taps her pen on the stack of papers in her lap, but I can’t see what she’s pointing to since I’m driving. “And that you expressed a preference for cats over dogs.”
I laugh, remembering the incident with the cat on the car roof. “I’m open to negotiation on that,” I tell her. “Seemed smart to discuss it up front in case one of us is strongly opposed to animals in the house.”
“I’m good with it,” she says, nibbling the end of her pen. “I’m not sure we need to specify the quantity of cats. Twelve might be too many, but beyond that, we can rely on common sense.”
“Works for me.”
She flips a page, and her hand brushes my elbow on the way down. “So section eight, the stuff about living arrangements,” she continues. “My attorney had a few questions.”
“Fire away.”
We’re en route to Central Oregon on an emergency errand run. The venue for Cassie and Simon’s rehearsal dinner fell through at the last second due to forest fires blazing around the area and a thick blanket of smoke covering the originally planned site. Sarah and I offered to scope out a few spots, since the area’s not far from my mother’s place. It’s a chance to see a part of the state that I haven’t visited for years. Not since right after Shane died.
“My attorney said for an arrangement like this, it might be worth considering some lifestyle clauses,” Sarah says.
“Lifestyle clauses?”
“Apparently they’re used a lot in celebrity prenups,” she says. “Stuff like, ‘the wife has to maintain a weight of one hundred and twenty pounds or she forfeits the rights to the ski house in Aspen.’ That sort of thing.”
