chapter Nine
“Tell me more about your childhood,” Jake invited.
“The way to my heart is through my psyche, Dr. Freud?”
“We have two hours to learn the most important things about each other,” he corrected. “Enough’s been said that I think our childhoods rank significantly in shaping who we are today.”
“So you start then.”
He nodded. “Ok. I have an older sister named Jenna. Our parents were older than the norm, back then anyway—thirty-three and thirty-seven when I was born. My father was a contractor. I don’t have any meaningful memories of him. Some feelings—like being excited when he was due home. Anticipating adventures, so I’m pretty sure he was an active dad when he was around.”
“What happened?”
“He was killed in an overseas bombing. He was one of the early contractors who traveled to Saudi Arabia to aid in the emerging. I was four years old.”
“I never knew my father,” Ivy admitted. “I have no memories of him, good or bad. I
guess I always thought of him as selfish. He left us. He had to know our mother was a drunk, that she couldn’t keep a job.” She felt herself falling back into memory. “She told us he went back to Mexico, where he was born. Holly thinks this part is true. My sister is two years older than me and has a few memories. But the way our mother remembered it, our father was supposed to return. Three months tops. Holly says he was as good as gone the minute he walked out the door.”
“Why does she say that?”
“They fought a lot, our parents. It wasn’t the first time our father walked out.”
“Where is Holly now?”
“Vegas.”
“She’s the reason we found each other.”
“I visit two weekends every month,” Ivy said. “I don’t miss it. Ever,” she underscored.
“Ok.”
“Those weekends are usually my only days off.” She sifted a hand through her hair. She’d let it out of the ponytail clip earlier and the wind off the ocean was sweeping it across her eyes. “She needs me right now.”
“Then you never miss a visit,” he agreed.
A frown pleated the skin between her eyebrows. “Has it really been two years since you’ve seen your sister?”
“Two years and two months,” he confirmed. “I need to be better about it. My nephews are growing up fast.”
“How old are they?”
“Ten and seven.” He ran a hand over his face and Ivy recognized it as a habit he indulged in to rub away tension. “I spoke to my sister last night,” he confided. “She and my brother-in-law have been going through a rough patch. Looks like they’re not going to make it.”
“She needs you right now.”
He nodded. “That’s one of the trips I mentioned. I thought I’d go at Thanksgiving. It will be their first holiday with the family split up and they’ll really need a distraction.”
Ivy thought about that. Jake was a compassionate man. Another quality that went into the positive column. She was beginning to wonder if he had any bad traits. She wasn’t sure if being too eager in relationships counted.
“Do you have plans for Thanksgiving?”
“I thought I did.” She explained about the upcoming conference and how important it was to Holly. She didn’t go into her sister’s injuries, not yet. “That takes place over Thanksgiving week.”
He nodded. “Do you ski?”
“As in snow?”
He nodded. “Downhill or cross-country. My sister lives in Montana and there’s bound to be a lot of snow at Thanksgiving.” He arched his eyebrows and let his sentence trail off as a
question.
“You’re asking me to come to Montana with you?”
“You said you have the time off.”
“Four days,” she said.
“Any chance you could stretch that into a week?”
“I don’t know.” She was slow to answer, reluctant to commit to something that was a long way off. “It’s hard to think about snow and turkey in the middle of August.”
“It’s hard to think about us in the snow and eating turkey,” he called it out, but his tone was thoughtful and not at all condemning.
“It’s scary,” she admitted, and added, only to herself, that she was afraid to want it. She knew that she did, and that the want could easily turn into a need as had her physical feelings for Jake.
“Ok, so for now we’ll leave it open.” He picked up his longneck and drank from it, eyeing Ivy over the bottle. “Our appetizer is here.”
The waiter set a platter on the table between them and the savory scent of lobster unfurled in ribbons of steam which Ivy was fast to inhale. She closed her eyes and let the seasonings of the sea tempt her.
“That smells heavenly.”
“Damn,” she heard him whisper and slowly opened her eyes. Jake was watching her and
she noticed that his skin had deepened in color.
“Do you always respond with all of your senses?”
“I like to enjoy experiences,” she said.
“I’ll give you something to enjoy,” he promised.
She allowed her gaze to remain locked with his for a long and heated moment. She didn’t give in to shyness or to fear and skitter away from the intimacy, but felt herself fall deeper into Jake’s eyes. A flush rose to the surface of her skin, her breath fluttered in her throat. “I don’t doubt it.”
Her words were barely a whisper, but he heard them and responded. Liquid fire seemed to jump in his eyes.
“I don’t want you to wait for this,” he said, and picked up the serving fork the waiter had left with the appetizer.
“I’ve waited long enough already,” she agreed.
Jake scooped a slice of the strudel, the lobster coated in a thin flaky phyllo dough and stuffed with caramelized onions and fresh bousin cheese, and slid it onto her plate. He did the same for himself.
Ivy brought a small bite of the delicacy to her lips and felt her mouth water, her eyelids drift shut as she took her first taste. She wasn’t deliberately baiting him, but she was aware that her approach to eating was unleashing in Jake a hunger that had nothing to do with caloric intake. The opposite, really. And she loved that. She listened to his breath thicken and wondered what was happening to other areas of his body. When she opened her eyes she found a visibly restrained Jake staring at her.
“This is costing you,” she said.
“I can’t decide if it would be easier on me if I helped you or if I just sat back and watched.”
“Let’s try it both ways,” she suggested. “You’ve watched, now let’s see what happens when you participate.”
Jake accepted the invitation, though his movements were slow. He never took his eyes off hers as he broke off a piece of the strudel and brought it to her lips. She noticed a slight tremor in his hand, that his skin had deepened further, and realized that discipline was deeply ingrained in him.
Ivy took the bite and when he tried to pull the fork back, she hung on a beat, two, and met his eyes in a firestorm of emotion.
He swore but it sounded more like a term of reverence.
“Two hours.” He spoke the words like they were an impossible feat.
“You have more discipline than me,” Ivy conceded. “More patience.”
“More experience,” he said. “And that means I’ve had more losses than wins. It’s enough to make me vigilant. It was enough…”
“So maybe you should go back to watching.”
He agreed, but said, “It wasn’t much better.”
“I could tie you to the chair.” She smiled, not so much at his discomfort, though she loved that she was the source of it, but at the image of a strong and sturdy Jake wrapped in coils of rope—and nothing else. Of course, not here in the restaurant, but she’d file the idea away for later use.
“Would you like that, Ivy?”
“Maybe.” She gave her next words careful consideration. “I think you’re used to being in charge and that may not work for me. Not all the time.”
Her words seemed to hit him like mortar. She waited for him to respond.
“I don’t have to be in the driver’s seat. Not all the time.” But he still wore a stunned expression.
“This is great—our ability to communicate so effectively.” A new spin on his words, but the sentiment was true. She loved that she was able to talk to Jake, to tell him how she felt, what she wanted, needed. And that he was so responsive. She had to remember to be as open to his needs. “What do you like, Jake?”
If he was fumbling on the edge of consciousness before, her new words were a knockout. She waited for him to gather his senses.
“What do I like?” he sought to clarify.
“Yes. What do you want from me?” She checked her watch. “In one hour and thirty-seven minutes.”
He didn’t need to think further. “I want you to respond to me as openly as you have here tonight.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem,” she assured him. “What’s your sweet spot?”
“My sweet spot?”
“We all have one, right? You know, ‘touch me there and I’ll go crazy.’ And give me something more than the obvious.”
“But I’m an all-American boy.” He smiled and it was full and wicked.
Ivy took another bite of her strudel and then touched her tongue to the corner of her lips to catch an errant morsel. His eyes followed the movement and his smile slowly faded as intent burned in his eyes.
“I’m asking for requests,” she tempted him, loving the word play. She loved what it was doing for both of them. “And, just so you know, I won’t be giving away any secrets until I have a few of yours.”
He shook his head. “No way. It’s one-for-one.” He sat forward and reached across the table where he smoothed a crumb off her lip. “And ladies first,” he invited.
“Good move.”
“It’s honorable.”
“And very convenient,” Ivy agreed. “But the woman is asking and it would be equally chivalrous to provide an accurate answer.”
His face turned thoughtful but his eyes level as he considered her request.
“One revelation a piece,” he suggested. “The rest on discovery.”
“Just enough direction to make sure we’re on the right track.” She could live with that.
“How do you feel about feet?”
“Feet?” She’d never considered them before. Not in the same thought as sex.
“Toes, in particular,” he went on.
“As in—“
“As in each one a lollipop.”
The shock must have shown on her face. There was a long pause between them.
“Is it a deal-breaker?” Jake asked.
“It never occurred to me,” she admitted. And thinking about it now, well, wasn’t at all appealing. She focused her gaze on her silverware, running her fingertips over the scalloped edges as she tried to figure out exactly how she felt about it, except uncomfortable. Really uncomfortable. She was just admitting to herself that maybe she wasn’t as adventurous as she’d thought, when she heard a rumbling from across the table. The rumble grew into short gasps and when she looked up she found Jake holding his stomach with one hand as he erupted into a full gale of laughter.
“Oh, that was good,” he said, when he was able to speak. “His hand clapped the table a few times. “You should have seen your face.”
“Funny.”
“You need to be ready for anything, with a question like that.”
“Yeah, but that’s not the only reason you did it.”
“We needed to break the tension,” he admitted. “But tell me the truth, you didn’t once doubt that I was serious, did you?”
“I didn’t get that far.”
“There are still some things we don’t know about each other,” he pointed out.
“Important things,” Ivy agreed.
“Did I change your mind?”
“About having sex with you? No. I was trying to come to terms with fetishes,” she admitted.
“I don’t have any,” he promised. The laughter left his eyes as he focused on her question. “Without stating the obvious,” he recapped, “my neck. That’s the general geography. You’ll have to find the trigger.”
Relief unraveled her breath. She felt her shoulders relax and her hand gave up the death grip she’d had on her fork. “I’ll enjoy the journey.”
“Now you,” he demanded. “What’s your sweet spot, Ivy?”
She thought about that. Neither of the men she’d been with had ever asked her what turned her on. They hadn’t bothered with much discovery either.
“I have a few,” she revealed, and tried to determine the most neglected, and the most needy, of the bunch. An area that was bound to be overlooked for the more obvious pleasure points. When she looked up, Jake was waiting to snare her in his gaze. The intensity in his eyes only deepened when she confided,
“My bellybutton.”