“Are you sure?” He had to ask – had to. Because what she was saying was almost too good to be true, and not making sure it was really, truly what she wanted most would’ve been selfish.
She laughed softly. “You almost sound like you want to get rid of me, Jed. You’re not going to force me onto a one-way flight back to New York, are you?”
“No. I just need to make sure that you’re telling me the truth – that you’re not just saying all this because we’ve been seeing each other.” It seemed kind of egotistical to say it out loud, but if the attraction she felt to him was anything like what he felt for her … well, it was a powerful fucking thing.
She looked directly into his eyes, unblinking. “Pittsburgh – my life and my work here – is really what I want. I’m not being dishonest. Not even a little bit. And maybe if we’d been seeing each other a little longer, you’d know me well enough to realize that if I was lying, I’d be blushing really badly right now. I don’t have a poker face, Jed, so I usually don’t even try to deceive people.” She grinned.
He drummed his fingertips on the table, mulling the situation over, mentally exploring every facet as best he could. He wanted to stand up and sweep her right off her feet, but only if he wouldn’t be pulling her future out from under her by doing so. “Okay.” What she’d said was pretty thorough, and if that was what she wanted, who was he to tell her what to do?
“Okay as in you’re not going to try to force me into fashion photography?” Her grin stretched a little wider. “Okay as in we can pick up where we left off before I went to New York, and you’ll stop looking like you’re waiting for me to give you a good, sharp kick in the shin?”
His lips twitched at the corners, bowing to an involuntary smile. “Is that what I look like?”
“Pretty much. But for the record, I’ve never seen someone look so sexy while anticipating being hurt.”
“Thanks.” He stood, reaching for her, placing his hands on her hips and pulling her close.
“Did you really think I was going to want to stay in New York? For good?” She leaned into him, her breath warming his chest, even through his t-shirt.
“Yeah.” He wrapped his arms around her waist. “How was I supposed to know you’re the one woman in the world who’d rather photograph tattoos in Pittsburgh than designer wedding dresses in New York?”
He could still hardly believe it. Maybe he was just being stupid – Karen wasn’t the average woman; he’d already known that. She was the first woman he’d been genuinely interested in since Alice, the first woman who’d inspired him to look to the future instead of the past.
She tipped her head, her eyes flickering toward the back wall, which bore at least a dozen different framed prints. “The pictures should’ve been a clue.”
“Guess you could say I was distracted by other things whenever I was in here.” He ran a hand down her back, letting his fingertips skim the little valley above her hips before he reached below and grasped one round, perfect half of her ass.
She arched against him, slipping her arms around his sides and tipping her head back to look up at him. “You feel distracted right now.”
Yeah, he did – his dick was hard, pressing against the front of his jeans, against her belly. Expectation rippled through his veins like an electric current as he flexed his hips, letting his stiffness press a little harder against her, swelling further beneath the brief friction.
She sucked in a hard breath, then exhaled, letting it rush out against his ear. It tickled, and heat blazed a trail down his spine and into his groin. “Missed you,” she whispered.
He swept her off her feet, just as he’d imagined seconds ago. Briefly, he held her, and then he lowered her onto the kitchen table, barely pausing before popping her jeans button through its hole and making short work of the zipper.
She raised her hips, making it easy for him to shimmy the pants down over her thighs, eventually pulling them free and tossing them aside.
Her panties were wet. A faint shadow of dampness was visible just below her mound, beneath the little bump of her clit. The sight of it made his dick throb and sent a wave of regret washing through him. Peeling off her panties as quickly as he could, he discarded them, afterward sliding his hands up the insides of her thighs and spreading them apart.
She looked, smelled and tasted just like he’d remembered so vividly while she’d been gone. The flavor of her slick skin sparked a burst of bone-deep want inside him, and he applied his tongue to the small swell of her clit with all the fervor he’d kept bottled up during the past several days. When she sighed and a wave of motion raced through her hips, making them buck against the table top, he gripped her thighs more firmly and refused to relent.