“I am not high risk. I just have old eggs, but this egg was fine. You just saw. Fine.”
“I heard the lady,” Harlan said. “You’re high risk.”
“So high risk that you want to have anal sex with me! Way to tell me! How about buying me dinner first?”
He grinned, and she did, too. How could you help it? Then she started to laugh, and he joined in. They stood there in the middle of the parking lot and laughed until she was staggering against him, clutching his shoulders for support. “Most …” she managed to get out. “Most embarrassing moment of my life. Including the time my period soaked through my shorts in P.E. No, wait, that’s still the worst. But second worst. Second best. Kind of like … like … Harvard. How come my doctor didn’t go to the number one school? Also, she wears leather pants.”
“Yep,” he said. “Too stylish for Portland. Notice she wasn’t fazed by the ring, though. Did I mention I want to buy you new jewelry? Because oh, yeah, I want to do that.”
Somehow, his arms were around her waist, and he was kissing her. Yes, in the parking lot. Looking exactly like Harlan Kristiansen. Long, lean-muscled legs in jeans that fit just fine, broad shoulders in a T-shirt that showed off the depth of that Viking chest, blue eyes, famous face. The works. She said, “Uh … jewelry? You mean, for there?”
He laughed again, and he kissed her again, too. “You got that piercing, but you won’t say the name. I kind of love that. Yeah, baby. For there. What do you think about a little barbell, the curved kind? I was looking, and … yeah. Even more barbaric-looking than a ring. That little barbell could get me excited. If I put a diamond in it …”
She shouldn’t be getting aroused by this. She was in the parking lot. It was an elevated moment. They’d just seen their baby. She nuzzled his neck and said, hearing her voice go breathy and deciding that worked just fine, “It could be hard for me to change it out. Hard to see, especially with the belly. I could need … help.”
He went still. He also went hard. She happened to be close enough to feel it. “Yeah,” he said, and the word came out strangled. “Yeah. I could do that. Lay you back on the bed and change out that piercing, nice and slow. And, hey.” He didn’t stand back far. Just far enough to see her face. “Just because I asked her for all the information doesn’t mean we have to use all the information. Up to you. I just figured, given that you’re enjoying being adventurous, and this is the new you and all, we might want to keep our options open.”
“Uh-huh. So you haven’t been thinking about bending me over the kitchen table.”
“No,” he said, and she thought, No? “I’ve been thinking about bending you over a sex pillow. More comfortable. I’m holding your wrists, though, in this scenario, if that helps.”
That sent a jolt straight through her. Whether it was pregnancy, the piercing, or Harlan, she wasn’t sure, but here she went again. She shuddered, and she could tell he felt it.
“Yeah,” he said. “Might have to dress you up a little for that, though. The way you look in those black things of yours … Tell me. What are your feelings about stockings?”
Right. That was enough of that. Time to do the other stuff. The important stuff. Exactly because he wanted to stay in the Fun Zone—that was why he needed not to. He said, “So. That was fun. Want to go have a snack, though? Cup of tea? Something like that? I’d say go home, but … Dyma and Annabelle. Maybe we don’t want to share this right yet.”
“Oh.” She stilled against him, then stepped back and said, “Sure.”
“Wait.” He grabbed her hand and pulled her in again. “What?”
“Oh, just …” She was turning pink again. He’d never realized what a turn-on it would be to see every bit of a woman’s sweet embarrassment, right there on her face. “That I thought …”
“Jennifer.” He made it a little stern, and she jumped.
Oh, yeah.
He said, “Are you telling me you want to go home and let me have kinky sex with you, instead of having a tender moment? Also, you didn’t tell me your birthday was in four days. Dyma’s graduation day, huh. Let me guess—putting her first. That’s pretty naughty, though, don’t you think, not to even give me a chance to buy you a present?”
She glowered at him. “Me? I didn’t do this! I wasn’t the one asking all those questions! Or … or saying all that!”
He laughed. He also kicked the tender moment to the curb. They’d have the tender moment later. Right now, he had a woman who needed kinky sex. Starting with getting herself undressed by a pair of hands that knew how.
Nice and slow.
He’d promised to take care of her, after all. And he was a man of his word.
57
Thirty-Five
So. A few things were happening. For one thing, she was officially thirty-five years old. “Also,” she’d told Harlan this morning, “four years older than you.”
“Good thing we don’t play by no rules,” he’d said, and slapped her butt. It was accessible, because she’d been lying half on top of him at the time. Still dressed in black lingerie, because let’s just say it was the kind you didn’t have to take off.
Wait. She wasn’t going to think about that now. That was distracting. That memory was dessert.
Where was she? Oh, yeah. It was Friday, it was her birthday, and she was on her way to Wild Horse, because her baby—her first baby—was graduating from high school. They were all on their way, because Harlan, of course, had chartered a jet. They hadn’t picked Owen up this time, though. Owen had flown up on his own and was meeting them at the school, and afterwards, they were going out to dinner. On the lake, the same place Harlan had taken her that night when he’d shown up and bossed her around about moving. And had kissed her hard up against her hotel door, and she’d nearly lost her resolve.
Ahem. So, yes. They were going to graduation, and then to dinner. She and her grandpa, and Harlan and Annabelle, and Dyma and Owen.
Which, yes, brought her to the third thing. She was coming back to Wild Horse, to a public event in Wild Horse, at the high school in Wild Horse, as an unmarried, pregnant woman. Again. But with a major difference.
The difference, of course, was Harlan. Should she not feel good about that? Was that unfeminist of her? Unevolved? Petty? Too bad. She was showing up with Harlan, and they were staying overnight at the resort. She was wearing the most beautiful dress, too, with a knot front and a soft watercolor print of purple and green flowers, made of the kind of knit fabric that made you sigh from pure comfort. She was wearing that dress with the prettiest pair of white sling-back pumps decorated with leather bows, and, yes, they were Louboutin.
“Because,” Harlan had said when she’d objected, “they’ve got those red soles. You know you want to flash every single person in that auditorium with those red soles. All those women are going to know what brand that is.”
“You know too much about me,” she’d said, and he’d grinned and said, “I know. Isn’t it great?” Which had made her laugh, and had also made her want them more. And when he’d come home with not just the shoes, but also with the most beautiful bag she’d ever seen, in snow-white calfskin with metallic embellishments … well, she hadn’t exactly saved the receipt. In fact, that bag was next to her seat right now.