Page 16

Dinner was something called spelt soup with onion and cheese bread. Joe didn’t actually know what spelt was but learned all about it from Isabel. One of the oldest cereals known to man. Mentioned in the Bible, older than wheat. Isabel said that some specialty microbreweries made beer from spelt and promised to find some for him. She said it had a special nutty flavor.

God.

He’d never eaten like this in someone’s home. Home for him meant takeout or something scrounged from someone else and put in the freezer for a rainy day. Lots of rainy days in Portland.

Metal was a decent cook and Joe loved eating over at his place, but it was nothing like this.

“So. You ran a food blog?” Joe pointed his spoon at Isabel.

She smiled sadly. “ Ran is the operative word. I haven’t posted anything since…” She swallowed, kept her voice even. “Since the Massacre. I haven’t even looked at it since then. I’ll have lost all my readers.”

“How many readers did you say you had again?”

“About a million and a half.”

Fuck. “Your readership was more than the number of active personnel in the US military. That’s a lot. Literally an army of foodies.”

She’d been tracing a pattern in the tablecloth with the tines of her fork and looked up. “Yeah. I guess so.”

There was something in her voice.

“You ever think about starting it up again?”

Isabel sighed. “Off and on. And only in the past few weeks. But it would be like starting over and it took years of very hard work to get to where I was. I don’t think I have that kind of energy anymore. And I did a lot of research and sometimes I traveled to get local recipes and pictures.”

“I don’t think you’d have to work that hard,” Joe protested. “I mean these things go viral, don’t they? As soon as word gets around that you’re starting up again, readers will flock back.”

“Maybe.”

“And, well, if you can hold off for when I’m free, I’ll accompany you on your trips. We could do it on weekends. Don’t know anything about food but I can carry your bags for you. Prime bag-carrier, top tier. And I work cheap. For food.”

That brought a smile to her face, a little less sad. “Yeah?”

“Oh yeah.” Joe put certainty in his voice. Very aware of the fact that this was the first time any kind of future was mentioned between them. It was going to keep cropping up because he had no intention of leaving her side. Did she want to go to Tallahassee to research chitlins? Joe was right there. “Is it still online?”

Isabel’s eyes widened. “Do you know—I don’t know. Isn’t that crazy? I haven’t looked at it once since…since the Massacre. It probably is.”

It wasn’t crazy. Joe was firmly of the suck-it-up-and-move-on school. Her life had come to a standstill and she’d just dropped everything. But Isabel loved what she did. It had given her joy and maybe it could give her joy again.

“Lately, even before the Massacre, I’d eased up because I had another project.”

Her eyes had gone back down to the tablecloth.

“Which was?”

“Well, I was taking notes for a book. I wanted it to be a big book, full of beautiful illustrations. Full of information and recipes. A celebration of food. A book you can dip into and always find something interesting. An agent was interested.”

Joe put his hand over hers. “That sounds fantastic. I’m sure it would be a great book, a bestseller. Do you still have those notes?”

“Oh yes,” she breathed. Joe looked into those beautiful eyes and saw something that made his heart thump hard in his chest.

Hope.

Isabel had hope again. She was coming back and she would be stronger than before, because that was the way it worked. If you were broken and came back, you were stronger in the broken places.

He squeezed her hand gently. “Sounds like writing a book is going to be in your immediate future. And picking up the blog again too. Can I see it?”

“The blog?” Isabel rose and Joe noticed that she seemed to be moving more easily, too. He was beginning to see the magnificent woman she must have been and would be again. Beautiful beyond words, graceful, smart, knowledgeable. Capable of moving millions of people with her own passion. “Sure. If it’s still there.”

She went to her desk and clicked a key to turn the monitor on. In a second she’d pulled up a home page. She turned the screen so Joe could see better. He pulled up a chair and sat down and was instantly lost.

The blog was beautiful to look at. Across the top a carousel of brightly colored photos floated from left to right. Aged, agile brown hands kneading bread, a smiling farmer holding a bushel of small intensely red apples, two women in hairnets pulling on mozzarella in a vat, making knots, another woman rolling rice inside a grape leaf…the images went on and on. The quality was exquisite, many of the images were in sunlight and all of them celebrated the joys of the products of the earth.

“You’ve got a great photographer.”

She was watching the screen with him, the colors so intense they reflected off her pale skin. “Thanks. I took most of those.”

Astounded, Joe watched more images march across the header. His first impression was right. The photographer was inspired. And the photographer was Isabel.

“These are incredible images. Makes you want to reach into the screen and pull something to eat out.”

“Thanks. I’ve traveled a lot and I like to take photos. I had a whole bunch in my archive so when I started the blog I put together a slide show of some of the photos I’d taken. It was just a question of balancing out the color palette and making sure there was a flow from one photo to the next.”

“Huh,” Joe grunted. He’d never have thought of that for a blog header, not in a million years. The blogs he read had to do with geopolitics and gear. But now that he was paying attention, he saw that from photo to photo there was a slow continuity of color, an intensely pleasing sense of balance.

He scrolled down and saw that the blog was dated two days before the Massacre.

“I didn’t have time to update the blog at all,” Isabel said quietly. “My father was preparing to announce his candidacy and everything was in an uproar. My next blog was going to be a three-parter—celebratory foods throughout the world.” She huffed out a breath. “Because I thought we’d all be celebrating.”

No, they didn’t celebrate. They were all dead.

Joe scrolled down, read the last entry. “The Humble Chickpea . ” He read for half an hour, fascinated. The history of the chickpea dating back to the Bronze Age, its nutritional value, the use of chickpea flour, different ways of making hummus. She’d even unearthed some poems praising the chickpea, translated from Lebanese Arabic. At the end of the post were four recipes arranged according to difficulty, which even he, ignorant as he was, saw was smart. The blog appealed to beginners and sophisticated cooks alike.

He scrolled quickly down and saw feature after feature on various foodstuffs, giving the history, interesting factoids, the same scale of recipes. All lavishly, beautifully illustrated.

He couldn’t imagine the amount of work that went into it, the vast research behind the highly readable and entertaining articles. Toggling left, he saw that the archives could be accessed by foodstuff, by recipes, by ethnic cuisine.

“This is amazing, Isabel,” he said seriously. Joe was ashamed of himself. When he’d heard Isabel had run a food blog he’d thought— how cute . This wasn’t “cute”. It was a very serious labor of love that a lot of people would find useful. She was an expert in the very thing that kept humans alive. Food.

They had that in common. It just so happened that he was an expert, too, on one of the other things that kept humans alive. Weaponry.

“You need to bring this blog back to life. And you need to write your book. Promise me you’ll at least think about it.”

She looked him full in the eyes, this incredibly talented woman. This incredibly beautiful and talented woman who was his . The smile reached her eyes. “I promise.”

She was coming back to life right in front of his eyes. Putting herself back together again, picking up her life where it had been blown up.

He knew all about that. He’d picked himself up, too. The difference was he’d had a lot of help along the way.

“It’s late. Are you tired?” Startled, Isabel checked her wristwatch.

Joe didn’t bother checking his watch, he had a perfectly functional one in his head. It was 10:35 p.m., give or take a minute. He didn’t give a fuck what time it was, though. All he knew was that it was time .

“Because I’m tired,” he said, rising. He cupped his hand under Isabel’s elbow and she rose, too. “I think it’s time for bed.” Either he took her to bed or his dick was going to explode.

Right now Isabel was absolutely impossible to resist. The Isabel he’d met had been like a wounded bird. He’d wanted to touch her, kiss her, bed her, but also curl himself around her and protect her. But there was another Isabel inside, not wounded, a confident woman, talented and worldly. Incredibly sexy. Like she was the woman sex had been invented for.

Joe softened his hands. He wanted to hold her tight, kiss her hard, but he had big strong hands and he had to watch himself. To make sure he didn’t clutch her too hard, he placed his open palm against her back and kept it open as he moved her toward the bedroom.

She looked up at him in amusement. “So, it’s like that, is it?”

He wanted to smile but it was hard to do when he was shaking with lust, trying to control himself. “Exactly like that.”

In the bedroom, Isabel immediately veered for the bathroom. Yeah. Okay. Chicks wanted to be all fresh before they had sex. Joe didn’t need that. He’d want her if she just came off a marathon. He wouldn’t care.

He sniffed his armpits just to see if they were rank, but they weren’t. Let’s hear it for twenty-first century deodorant. Inside of five seconds he was naked and under the covers. He was boiling hot but he had the blankets up over his crotch because his cock looked almost inflamed, and it felt harder than it had ever felt before.

It almost scared him and it was his cock. So he didn’t want her to see it and run screaming. He wanted her to scream all right, but not that way.

He sat up against the headboard, hands behind his head, waiting. She was doing something in the bathroom. He heard running water, then silence. Oh God, she was naked in there. He shut his eyes because his cock had given a painful pulse. He didn’t think it could become harder than it already was, but it did.

Because Joe knew what she looked like naked. She was designed specifically to drive a man wild. Soft skin, full breasts with pretty pale pink nipples, only the very tips became cherry red when she was aroused. All that honey blonde hair—enough for six women—fluttering around her shoulders. Those long slender legs, a pale little cloud between them, groomed and neat, pink-and-red folds peeking through.

The folds glistened when she was excited.

Oh yeah.

God, please make her come out now or he was going to spill all over her bed and wouldn’t that be fucking embarrassing? The sheets were soft and crisp at the same time. He’d read somewhere that sheets were graded on a thread count, the higher the count the higher the quality. These sheets probably had a billion thread count. And covering the bed was a huge thick comforter patterned with rosebuds, feminine overkill.

It was certainly killing him.

He waited and waited and waited. Though the clock in his head said that about a quarter of an hour had gone by, it felt like days, weeks, months. He had to clench his abdomen a couple of times to keep from ejaculating. He recited the Ranger Creed in his head. He wasn’t a Ranger but they had the coolest creed of all the armed services.

He was running through the driest of the SEAL exams—mechanical comprehension—when the bathroom door opened and all thoughts flew out of his head. Straight out of his head. He was reduced to a sack of oversensitive skin, an aching dick and a hammering heart.

Look at her. She didn’t have on that pretty woolly nightgown that had been secretly sexy. Now she had on a nightgown that was openly sexy. Full-length. Cream-colored, thin straps, showing every outline of her body. The full breasts with the hard nipples, the tiny waist, the gently curving hips…

She wasn’t wearing anything at all underneath.

Joe blew out a breath, hard.

She was swaying as she walked, eyes on his, smiling. She knew the effect she was having on him. Though she couldn’t see his dick, he was sure it was sending out signals.

He held his hand up. “Stop.”

She stopped, pretty feet gripping the floor. She cocked her head. “Joe?” Her voice was low and husky. She could see how worked up he was. Her stopping wasn’t in the program.

“Pull your nightgown up.” His voice was hoarse, strangled.

Her eyebrows shot up, but she obeyed, bunching that soft, creamy material in her fists and raising the hem to her shins.

Fuck. Those feet and ankles were so damn pretty. He was going to suck her toes…his cock surged, grew slick. He couldn’t afford to think of sucking her toes.

“Higher.”

Isabel studied him, trying to figure out what his deal was.

Well, tell her.

“I’m…a little worked up. As you can probably tell.” Joe manfully refrained from looking down at his lap. “So this is about the only foreplay you’re going to get. You’re going to have to do it yourself.”

“DIY foreplay?”

“Yep.” He was glad she seemed to have a sense of humor about this because it was actually not in the seduction playbook—to tell the lady that she wasn’t going to get any foreplay, she was going to have to do it herself. But he didn’t have a choice here. “When I get my hands on you it won’t be slow and it won’t be gentle.”

Her eyes opened wider.

“So pull that nightgown up.”

Isabel didn’t feel his urgency, otherwise she would have pulled that fucking nightgown over her head in a flash and run to the bed. But she didn’t. She was having fun. The hem of the gown inched up a little higher. Not much.

“More.” Joe was reduced to words of one syllable.

Isabel smiled. Raised the hem another inch.

“More.” Joe rubbed a hand over his chest. He was sweating slightly.

Another inch.

“More.”

Isabel swayed slightly, tilting her head, studying him. She gave that Mona Lisa smile only beautiful women manage, because she had his number. He was dead meat here, fragged, bagged and tagged. She lifted her hem higher, to the tops of her long smooth thighs.

Ah Jesus…

“What are you feeling?” He hoped against hope she felt a fraction of what he did. Like jumping out of his skin. Like being radioactive.

“Hot,” she whispered. “In every sense.”

“Show me.” Joe’s voice was urgent.

“What?”

“Show me you’re hot. Show me you’re ready. Show me now.”

Goddamn, why was he pushing this?

Because he was hanging on to control with two shaking hands and it was slipping from his grasp by the second.

With one hand, Isabel bunched the nightgown in her fist, lifting the folds of material up and to the side, baring her body from the waist down, pubic hair neatly shaped around her sex. The hair on her mound was a light ash brown, the same color as her eyebrows, a shade darker than the hair on her head. Her skin was so pale it looked silvery in the light from the bathroom.

She looked for a moment almost otherworldly, a dream of a woman instead of flesh and blood. Insubstantial, as if she could float right away at any moment. But she wasn’t insubstantial. Joe had been inside her. He’d kissed almost every inch of her and if there were a few square inches left unkissed he had every intention of making up for it tonight.

“Show me,” he said again, his voice insistent.

“How?”

He took in a deep breath. “Open your legs.”

Watching him, she widened her stance. At some point in her life she must have taken ballet lessons because she lifted one foot, pointed her toes, then gracefully placed it back on the ground.

“I know how to show you,” she said, her voice a breathless whisper in the quiet darkness. With her free hand, she reached down and opened herself, to show how she glistened. She was wet. For him.

Reaching with her index finger, she slid it between the folds, then lifted it so he could see. Even in the semidarkness, he could see that her finger was coated with moisture.

The hand that held her bunched nightgown moved upward and she pulled the gown over her head and tossed it to one side. The gesture lifted her honey hair and it settled back down around her shoulders, crackling with electricity.

It was time. Isabel recognized that as she stepped to the bed. At the last minute, when she was ready to climb in beside him, Joe lifted her up and over him, settling her down on top of him.

He’d run out of time.

Feeling her against him nearly set him off. She smelled and felt so damned good. Instinctively she’d opened her legs, kneeling along his thighs, her sex open and hot over his dick.

Joe groaned. He brought her face down to his with a hand cupped over the back of her head and opened her up with the fingers of his other hand. Feeling himself at her rim was simply too much. He kissed her hard as he thrust up into her, seating himself fully inside her with a grunt.

He felt her cry against his mouth and pulled her head back half an inch. “Did I hurt you?” he said, his voice guttural. It seemed to come from his stomach instead of his throat.

Isabel opened her eyes, stared down into his. She was panting, her breath washing across his face in hot waves. Her face—he couldn’t read that expression. It was pained, but not pain. All of a sudden it was as if she turned inward, frowning, her shoulders turned inward and he was about to pull out when she gave a cry and fell forward onto his chest, fingers digging in deep, writhing around him.

She was coming.

Her sex was milking him hard. There was absolutely nothing in him that could resist her. Lunging upward hard, he came, too, in long painful spurts so intense they almost made him black out. He didn’t even thrust, just kept himself deep inside her as she moved against him, clutching him with her arms and thighs.

Finally, finally he stopped, completely wrung out, holding her tightly to him. He was breathing hard, bathed in sweat that plastered them together. Isabel’s hair fell in tumbling curls over his shoulder, caught on his stubble, a lock crossed his forehead. He shifted it away, savoring the softness, that subtle smell of a sweet shampoo.

Was he hurting her? Was he holding on to her too tightly? Probably. He gave his arms the command to let go but there was a kind of communications breakdown and his arms remained tightly wound around her. He had to give himself orders, like an instructor to a trainee, a newb.

Right arm, pull away.

Except his right arm was comfortable and happy where it was, arm crossing Isabel’s back, hand resting lightly on her firm butt.

Right arm, pull away NOW!!

With a sigh, Joe obeyed himself. He didn’t exactly pull it away so much as loosen his grip. Because not being in touch with all that soft satiny skin seemed insane. Why would he do that?

Because you might be hurting Isabel, fuckhead , was the reply.

He loosened his left arm, too, just a little. He was embracing her now, not clutching her. He wanted to be on her good side because, well…he tested her. Moving his dick in her gently, thrusting maybe an inch in and out.

Oh man. His juices and hers. She was soft and completely welcoming. Oh yeah. Because in a minute or two, Joe was going to be ready for round two. Or, considering that round one hadn’t exactly been a masterwork of style, technique and stamina, round one and a half. At the thought of sex with her again, he hardened.

This was going to be better than the last time. She was a little less tight, softer, wetter. Joe nudged inside her again. Oh man…

But she wasn’t responding. She was lying on him, breathing calmly. Joe couldn’t breathe calmly, not while in Isabel. Then he heard a weird sound coming from her. He pulled his head back, swiped her hair away from her face and grinned.

She was fast asleep. Out cold, actually. Not even a flicker of those thick eyelashes. That luscious mouth was slightly open and a ladylike little snore escaped from it.

So. No more sex. Not right now, anyway. He couldn’t bear the thought of disturbing her sleep. She’d often said that she had trouble sleeping.

Carefully, carefully, Joe withdrew from her body, edged her gently over so she was nestled against him, head on his shoulder, and pulled the covers up over her shoulders.

He lay back and studied the dark ceiling, wondering how far gone he was when lying in bed next to a woman he wanted more than his next breath, with a hard-on that could hammer nails, developing blue balls—and just holding her was better than sex with any other woman.

* * *