She put out the cheese and crackers and sliced apples onto a plate while he finished getting the meatloaf ready to go into the oven. After washing his hands, Ian came over to the couch, where she was already curled up under a blanket and the opening credits of the movie had begun.

It felt so good, so easy, so right, when he wrapped his arms around her and she tucked her head against his chest while they watched. The story was simple, about a small-town rock band, the funny guy getting the pretty girl, and good triumphing over evil. And, much to her delight, it turned out that Ian knew all the words from when he was a teenager, especially the part where they went into a long string of “she’s a babe” jokes.

Her stomach growled just as the timer on the oven dinged. Putting the movie on pause, they headed back into the kitchen to eat their simple meal. She’d found a candle and matches on a shelf and placed it, lit, in the center of the small pine table.

“Have you ever thought about being in a movie like that?”

“Casting directors have always seen me more as the dramatic type.”

“You’re great in the dramas,” he said, “but you’d be great in a comedy, too.”

“You really think I could be the slinky guitar-playing heroine?” She vamped a line from the movie, putting on her best sexy attitude.

He blinked, clearly stunned for a minute. “Wow, that was good. So, yeah, you could totally play that part. Though I was thinking more about you killing it as the goofy lead singer with the cable show in the basement.”

She laughed, barely covering her mouthful of meatloaf in time. “You know,” she said a few moments later, “now that you mention it, it would be fun to do a comedy. Although I have a feeling that if I’m going to get one, I’ll have to show those casting directors a thing or two they don’t expect.”

“If anyone can do it, it’s you, Tatiana. You’re extraordinarily good at what you do.”

“Thank you.” She suddenly felt shy. “So are you. Actually, I wanted to ask you something.”

“Of course you do,” he teased her.

For a moment, she hesitated. Neither of them wanted to let the real world intrude on their day any more than it already had in the grocery store, but now that they’d spoken about her career, she had another question for him about his. And since it hadn’t felt weird to bring up her job in the midst of having fun, she hoped it wouldn’t be strange to talk about his, either.

“When Flynn was walking you through his new idea, he talked to you like you were a tech guy, rather than just some guy in a suit.”

“I drive my tech guys crazy,” he admitted with a cute smile. “They’re always telling me to stop breaking their toys.”

“Actually,” she said in a teasing voice as they took their empty plates over to the sink, “I could see you as the geeky guy down in the basement downing Red Bull and pulling a pen out of his pocket protector.”

Laughing, he tugged her back under the blanket on the couch to finish watching the movie. But Tatiana was listening so carefully to every beat of his heart as she lay against his chest that she barely heard another word of dialogue in the film.

She didn’t know who started kissing whom first, but it didn’t matter this time. All that mattered was that it was so good, so sweet. Being with Ian was everything she’d ever wanted, everything she’d ever dreamed of. Soon, they had each other’s clothes off, and she was lying naked on the couch with his wonderfully heavy weight pressing her deeper into the cushions.

She loved the sweetness, the softness, he was giving her, at the same time that wild hunger vibrated between them the way it had from the very first moment she’d kissed him. He’d been slow, gentle, this morning when he’d put his mouth on her and taken her over the edge again and again. She was unabashedly greedy for all of it, for everything she could experience with Ian, for every new sensation.

“More.”

Just one word spoken so softly against his lips, but he immediately stilled, his lips against hers.

“Show me more, Ian.” It was what she’d asked for their first night together, and she remembered what it had done to him...and then what he’d done with her. “I love all the different sides of you. Gentle and sweet. Rough and wild. I don’t want you to hold anything back when you’re with me.”

Since she was the one doing the asking, she should have been prepared for what Ian did next, but he had his hands on her hips to spin her around so fast that she was momentarily disoriented when she realized she was on her knees.

The couch cushions, warm from the heat of their bodies, crumpled in her fisting hands as she tried to ground herself. But how could she do anything but fly wild and free when Ian was running his hands over her, shoulders to hips, br**sts to the vee between her legs, with hungry abandon? He wasn’t gentle anymore, was simply taking everything she had offered to him by asking, by begging, for more. She loved it, loved every second of his hands, his mouth, the heat of his naked skin against hers.

Again, he moved fast, giving her no warning as he gripped her hips to plunge into her.

“Oh.” She heard the wonder in her voice, couldn’t have held it in even if she’d wanted to. “Do that again. Please, just like that.”

His answering groan sounded as raw and as desperate as she felt, her name at the center of it. And when he went impossibly deep into her again, his hips slamming into hers, she gasped with pleasure.

So much pleasure that she could hardly believe she’d lived this long without knowing it was there.

“I like it when you do that. I like it so much. So, so much.”

“I do too, sweetheart.” To her ears, his words spoke not just to sex, but to trust, and to a depth of emotion between them she’d never shared with anyone else. “I do, too.”

She trembled, shook, knew she was going to shatter any second. And in the end that was all it took, one more slip, one more slide of his fingers over her br**sts, between her legs, for her to completely break apart, with Ian only moments behind her.

With no breath, or brain cells, left for words, all that existed in their little room above the barn was pleasure, and a connection that was twining deeper and deeper with every laugh they shared, every orgasm that exploded between their bodies…and later, when passion had temporarily run its course and he tucked them both into bed, every quiet moment in each other’s arms.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX