Page 29 of Saving Ian Pope

“No. I could stay here forever. Are you?”

“You’re a lightweight, Tink, like a feather that floated down and settled on my body. I’m still inside you.”

“Mmm.”

He put his hands around my waist and slid me off to his side. I immediately clung to him, resting my head on his chest, my hand covering his heart, and he trailed his fingers through my tangled hair. He said, “You feel it, too.”

“I feel a lot of things, baby.” I swirled my fingers around his brown nipple.

“It’s like no matter how physically close I am to you—we could be pressed against each other along every line of our bodies, your legs tangled with mine, my arm around your waist, I could even be inside you, and it always feels like I can never get close enough.” He pulled me tight as if to emphasize his point.

“I do feel it.” I reached up and dug my fingers into his scalp. “What’s it gonna take? Brain meld?”

With the palm of his hand, he rubbed a circle on my backside. “Maybe something happened that day with Fabio.”

“Excuse me?” I dug my chin into his hard pec to look into his face.

“I have a confession.” At his words, my heart skipped a beat. “I didn’t know who the hell Fabio was. I had to look him up, later.”

When my heartbeat returned to normal, I raised one eyebrow. “Maybe you looked up the wrong Fabio because he’s not a magician or a spellcaster, throwing around love potions. In fact, he did a commercial for fake butter a while back.”

A look of confusion arched across Ian’s expressive face, but he decided not to go there. “No, but according to Wikipedia he was the cover model god of romance novels back in the day. Maybe that power put some kind of charm on us. Was it high noon or something when we met? Lightning strike? Venus crossing over the Sun?”

“It was eleven twenty-one and sixteen seconds, not that I took notice or anything. The sky was blue, and I think that transit of Venus is very rare.”

“Then I guess it was just very, very good luck that we met each other, after a very, very long string of bad luck for me.”

“Me, too.” I kissed the scruff on his chin.

“Can we go out for dinner tonight? Someplace nice for everything you did for me.”

“Can we not? I didn’t do anything special, and besides, we need to strategize with Chloe, you need to keep working on that song, and I need to write a few thousand words on my book tonight.”

“Yeah, yeah. Those are all good excuses, but you really don’t want to go out with me, do you?” He tugged on my hair.

“I don’t like all that...” I waved my hands in the air “—paparazzi stuff. It looks terrifying.”

“I think we can find a nice place for dinner, even a trendy place without running into the paps.” He ran the pad of his finger along my jaw. “You know how it works? Photographers are not usually hanging around celebrity hotspots all day and night. Someone who needs the press or needs to be seen with a particular person will tell his or her manager or PR team to call the paparazzi with their location and time, looking their best, and getting the desired photo in the tabloids.”

“That makes sense, but my excuses are still valid. We have our own PR campaign to launch.” I had to make a move, or I’d want to lie all night next to him on this bed, talking silly, falling fast and hard. I sat up and swung my legs over the side of the mattress, planting my feet on the hardwood floor.

“Does this PR campaign mean your further research convinced you that the dick pics aren’t me?”

Tilting my head, I tapped my chin. “I don’t know, baby. Your package is substantial.”

He crawled on the bed behind me, lifted my hair and kissed the back of my neck. “Porn star substantial?”

“Okay, maybe not, but that’s what’s gonna save your incredibly sexy ass.” I hopped off the bed before his kisses could lure me to stay because he might not be as well-hung as Johnny Pornstar, but he had something much more habit-forming...and I was hooked.

***

After we ate our pizza and with the heavy scent of garlic in the air, Chloe and I sat on the loveseat, heads together, while Ian reclined in the chair across from us on his laptop, working on his new song.

It had taken a little more effort to convince Chloe that Ian never took or sent those photos to his fans and after a grudging apology to him, she agreed to help with the rescue effort.

Chloe pulled her own computer onto her lap, sharing the screen with me. “This should be a piece of cake—that’s cake, not cock.” She snorted at her own joke while Ian caught my eye and winked at me. It warmed me down to my toes, and I smiled back at him.

Chloe saw the exchange and jabbed me in the side with a sharp elbow. “Pay attention. “I’ll just download the image to my computer and do a reverse image lookup. I’m surprised nobody’s done it, yet.”

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