Bailey’s legs, folded into the same position for so long, protested when she tried to rise, as did her swollen ankle. She stumbled. Gasping, she clutched at him for balance.
Ian promptly swung her into his arms, high against his chest. “Do you have any idea,” he asked huskily, “how badly I’ve wanted to carry you to bed?”
“I know how badly I’ve wanted you to,” she answered candidly. “But, er, what about the front door? We can’t lock it. We can’t even close it.”
He kicked the bedroom door shut. “We can lock this one. Where’s the key?”
She reached down to depress the lock button. “It’s locked.”
He glanced at it doubtfully for a moment, then shrugged, making her cling more tightly to him. And then he strode toward the bed.
BAILEY WAS utterly fascinated by lan’s body. Only one word came to her mind to describe it. Perfection.
Kneeling beside him, she ran her hands down his warm, sleek chest. Her fingertips glided over brown nipples, well-defined muscles, his flat, hard stomach. “You’re so beautiful,” she breathed.
He lay on his back, his hands sliding upward to cup her breasts. “No. You’re the beautiful one.”
She leaned over to kiss him, tracing his firm lips with the tip of her tongue, and then shivered when his thumbs rotated lazily against her hardened nipples. “I…don’t think you have to worry about whether you’ve forgotten anything,” she managed to say as she sank onto him. “You haven’t.”
He rolled, pinning her beneath him. “We should make sure, don’t you think?”
He was hard and hot against her thigh, letting her know just how badly he wanted her. She arched against him. “Show me,” she demanded.
He kissed her deeply. Lingeringly. And then he moved lower, tasting her cheek, her jaw, her throat. Her breasts. She buried her fingers in his luxuriant dark hair, her eyes closing, her pulse racing. When his mouth moved lower still, she gasped and arched upward, her heels digging into the soft sheets.
If there was anything he’d forgotten, he proved very talented at improvising.
“Please,” she gasped, tugging at his hair. “I need you.”
He gathered her close. “I need you, too,” he admitted. “I’ve never needed anyone like this before.”
“I love you.”
“I love you,” he repeated, holding her eyes with his own as he slid slowly, deeply into her. “Forever, Bailey.”
She wrapped her legs around his hips, holding him tightly. “Forever,” she whispered. And then he began to move, and the power of speech left her completely.
SOME TIME LATER, Ian cradled Bailey against his heart and reflected that he had wasted much of his first twenty-five years on earth. He had never known what it was to truly live…until tonight.
Making love with Bailey had been like nothing he’d ever known before. True, his experiences had been rather limited, but he had no regrets about that. He’d been waiting for Bailey to show him what it was like to love. To be loved.
“This is what she meant,” he murmured.
Bailey lifted her head. “What who meant?” she asked drowsily.
“My mother. I told her once that I didn’t understand all the fuss about romance, why so many people seemed obsessed with it when there were so many more important things to think of. She just smiled and said that someday I would understand that there is nothing more important than love. Nothing in this life—or beyond.”
“She must have been thinking of your father when she said that,” Bailey murmured. “She loved him so much. She never really got over his death.”
“I know. She taught us to love him, too, even though we never had the chance to meet him.”
“She gave you this, you know.”
“What?”
“This.” Her hand pressed against his chest, over his steadily beating heart. “The night you were born, she made a wish that you wouldn’t leave the earth without finding love. I think that’s why you’re still here. Why you—and Anna—have been given a second chance.”
“Anna was waiting for Dean and I—I was waiting for you,” he murmured, struck by the possibility that she was right.