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“A little.”
“C’mon.” He wrapped his arm around her and tucked her against him. “Let’s go get you warm.” They started walking. “We can come back at Christmastime when the zoo is all lit up, would you like that?”
Katie smiled up at him. “Yeah.”
They got in his silver ’Vette and he cranked up the heat. It was a cool car, probably as old as her, though she didn’t think it prudent to point that out, so Katie said nothing as she rubbed her hands together in front of the warm air blowing from the vent. Brendan took her cold hands and squeezed them between his own. Then he brought her hands to his lips and kissed them.
She didn’t want the day to end. Brendan drove past First Avenue and Katie wondered where he was taking her. Then he turned onto Third. The back end of Coventry Park whirred by the window, and he slowed the car to a complete stop. A gate swung open.
“Where are we?”
“Park Place.” He smiled at her from the driver’s seat. The gate closed behind them. “I live here.”
It was a dead-end street with five magnificent three-flat buildings on either side. Katie could see the edge of the park beyond.
“Wait…is that Chloe?”
Chloe and Jesse were coming through a small gate from the park with two big dogs. She turned in her seat to look at Brendan.
He shrugged with a grin. “We all live here, actually.” He pointed to the buildings on the left. “That’s me, Chloe, Jesse, and Taylor, Kit, Sloan, and Monica and Danielle.” Then he pointed to their right. “Office/recording studio, Linnea and Kyan, Dillon, Matt, and Bo.”
Holy shit.
“Those aren’t apartments?”
He winked. “Not anymore.” Then he turned into the alley on the left side and pulled into his detached garage.
They entered the house from the brick-paved patio into the kitchen. Katie’s jaw dropped. Dark-stained wood floors. Black quartz countertops. White cabinetry. Old combined with new. All the modern conveniences with a vintage aesthetic, and it was magazine-worthy gorgeous.
Brendan’s arms came around her waist from behind her. He bent his head and kissed her neck. “I’ve imagined doing exactly this from the moment I met you.”
She turned in his arms. “Doing what?”
And standing in the middle of his kitchen he kissed her. “That.”
“Oh.” She smiled. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” He took her hand. “ This is a first for me, you know. C’mon. Let me show you around the house.”
Five bedrooms and she didn’t count how many bathrooms later, they were back downstairs where they started. Katie followed Brendan into the family room off the kitchen. They got comfortable on the sofa and he flipped on the television. Neither one of them looked at it, though.
“You said this is a first for you.” Katie glanced up at him from under his arm. “What did you mean? What’s a first for you?”
“You.” He pulled her onto his lap. “Us. All of this.”
Katie rested her hands on his broad shoulders. She still wasn’t sure what he meant. His hands moved up and down her back, over the silk and beneath her sweater. Her hands slid from his shoulders and down his back, pulling him closer, until their lips were just a breath apart.
“I want to kiss you again,” she breathed.
He softly took her lips with his. “And I want to do more than kiss you.”
That was quite evident. The erection in his jeans wedged against her bottom as she straddled his lap. Katie already knew that this was the man she’d give her virginity to one day. She’d known it the very first time she kissed him. But was she ready for it to be today?
“I never planned on you.” He held her to him tightly, his lips in her hair. “Yet here you are. And I’m keeping you.”
If ever there was a moment when a kiss wasn’t just a kiss, it was this one. In a tenderly given gesture of force, Brendan gripped her hair in his fingers, and with an arm secured around her waist, captured her lips with his. His tongue took control of her mouth and Katie heard him speak a thousand words without having to say a thing. Want. Need. Craving. Desire. It seared into her core like a hot brand. And in that moment he claimed ownership of her but she’d never felt more free.
He couldn’t sleep.
