He looked up from my bare chest and grinned, a smile that reached all the way up into his sparkling dark eyes. “Yeah, it was.” He heaved a sigh and rolled off of me, pushing the covers away as he sat up. Even relaxed, his cock was long and thick against his thigh, and I couldn’t take my eyes away from it as he rolled off the bed and tugged his boxer shorts back on.
I could stare at him forever, I thought dreamily. Ink and muscles and long limbs and dark hair. To me, Ian was the handsomest man in the world.
Somehow, he managed to locate my panties and t-shirt, and tossed them onto the bed in front of me. I looked up and found him still smiling.
“C’mon,” he said. “If we have to get up, then at least let me make you breakfast.”
After I offered him my spare brand-new toothbrush (which he gratefully accepted), Ian headed downstairs while I took care of a few morning ablutions. My hair was a hopelessly snarled mess, and after I finally managed to brush out the tangles, I headed down the stairs to the kitchen, where I heard and smelled bacon crackling in a pan.
“Bacon with no shirt?” I asked as I pulled the coffee filters out of the cabinet and started brewing a pot. “That’s brave.”
“You’ve been checking me out since you got me naked last night,” he said with a grin. “Who would I be to deny you what you want?” He paused and poked at the crackling meat in the pan. “Now sit your cute ass down and let me work.”
I couldn’t argue with that. As the coffee percolated, I slid into a kitchen chair and watched idly as he cracked eggs and shoved bread into the toaster, pausing every so often to ask me where something was.
“When did you start getting tattoos?” I asked as he stirred a bowl of raw eggs.
“Eighteen,” he answered. “Horrible stick-and-poke that my buddy did. I covered it up about six months later, but I was already obsessed by then. I just…never stopped. I went to art school and I still paint, but tattoos will always be my favorite thing to do.”
“I’ve always wanted one,” I said idly. “But I’m too scared of needles.”
Ian tossed a smile over his shoulder. “Sweetheart, believe me, everyone can get a tattoo. Even if they’re scared of needles—I’ve worked on a ton of people with trypanophobia with no problems.”
I shuddered, stomach turning as I imagined fine needles pushing ink under my skin. “I’ll still pass,” I said. “Not for me.”
He set a plate in front of me—perfectly cooked scrambled eggs, crispy bacon and golden-brown toast—and settled into the seat across from mine. “It’s no problem if you don’t want one,” he said as he grabbed a napkin from the holder and spread it in his lap—an odd choice considering his bare chest, I thought, but consistent with what I knew about him. What’d I’d seen, the way he valued good table manners. “But if you change your mind, remember that you know a guy.” He winked at me.
I eyed his pectoral muscles, admiring the way the tattoos flowed with the lines of his body, his leanly fleshed frame. He chuckled at my scrutiny, flexing slightly as if to impress me, and for what felt like the millionth time since I met him, I felt my face redden.
“I love that blush,” he remarked as he scraped butter across his toast. “Can I…”
He trailed off as he leaned over and brushed his lips across my heated cheek, and when he pulled back, it was impossible to miss the satisfied smile on his face.
“I wanted to kiss you while you blushed,” he explained, his gaze still fastened to my pinkened face. “I wanted to see if it felt…warm.”
“Did it?” My hands shook as I reached for the jam and spooned it onto my toast.
He nodded as the corner of his mouth curled into a lopsided smile. “Yeah, it did. Just like I imagined it would.”
“Check again anytime,” I mumbled, and crunched down on my toast as he laughed.
Ian left not long after breakfast with a lingering kiss and a long hug, like he didn’t want to go, and I stood at the door for a few extra moments, even after his car disappeared down my leafy, quiet street.
“He’s the real deal, Marge,” I said to my dog as I turned away from the door, shutting it firmly behind me.
The wood floors creaked under my bare feet as I climbed the stairs again, and even with the click of Marge’s nails on the floorboards, the jingle of her collar as she heaved her body upstairs behind me, the house still felt lonely without his deep voice, his laugh, his presence. But bits and pieces still remained, like the mess we’d made of my bed and the faint clean scent he left behind on the pillows. Even the slight soreness between my legs—the gentle sting of soap and water in the shower against those sensitive parts reminded me of him.
I had just tightened the belt of my robe around my waist when my phone buzzed from my charging station on my nightstand. Thinking it must have been Ian, I nearly sprinted over to answer it.
It wasn’t Ian. It wasn’t any number I recognized, but I often received calls from unknown numbers for commissions, class requests or any number of business matters. I tapped ACCEPT and lifted the phone to my ear.
“This is Samantha Stanfield,” I said.
“Samantha,” an unfamiliar voice replied. “This is Rebecca Silverberg, from Puget Sound Arts. Is this a good time?”
Puget Sound Arts? Not the biggest gallery in Seattle, but respectable. Very respectable—bigger than anywhere I’d shown before. I sank down onto the mattress and folded my legs underneath me. At the foot of the bed, Marge laid her head down, quiet and patient for once. Like she knew that something big might be happening.
“Yes,” I said. Nerves and anxiety twisted my voice into something quiet and strained. I cleared my throat and pulled at my courage. “Yes, now is perfect.”
“I’ll lay it out—one of our associates saw some of your work at the Public Arts Festival two months ago and she was impressed. Really impressed,” Rebecca said, her voice cool and professional. “She found your website and she showed it to me recently when an artist canceled a show. It’s a little bit last-minute, but we would be interested in bringing you in as an artist. If you can accommodate us, that is.”
I did a quick mental inventory of my studio, of the custom orders I had to fill, of the finished pieces stacked in the empty bedroom I used for storage. It would be hard, I thought, but I could do it. And if I had a successful gallery show—I hardly dared to let myself think about what it might mean, to be able to teach less and focus more on my own work, to grow as an artist, to learn things that I’d always wanted to try.
Marge leaned against my leg, still silent as she waited for me to finish my call. She’d been my rock for so long—Marge and Annie, and now maybe, if I was very lucky, I could add Ian into the mix.
I had friends, I had a home, and I had something new and precious blossoming in my love life. And suddenly, the professional opportunity of a lifetime presented itself. Even my anxiety, the constant passenger that coiled itself in my gut and whispered terrible things to me, had gone silent for a few blessed seconds while I thought.
“Yes,” I said to Rebecca Silverberg. “My answer is yes.”