Big Love Abroad (Big Girls Do It Book 11) Read online

  I focused on the feeling of Ian’s hand in mine, rather than on where we were going. I focused on not letting on to how tipsy I felt; the last beer was catching up to me something wicked. I’d felt good when we left, loose and happy and carefree and buzzed but not sloshed. But now, walking away from the bar, I realized I may have been a little more drunk than I’d thought.

  Ian just held my hand and walked with me, seemingly content to stroll down the sidewalk, breathing the London air, watching the black taxis with their yellow signs pass in serried ranks, looking at the Peugeots and other European cars I didn’t recognize. And then he was leading me up the stairs to the building where he’d dropped his luggage off that first day. I wondered if he’d even been by here since then. He was still wearing the same clothes, so I guessed not.

  Ian unlocked the front door and, sure enough, his two big black suitcases were sitting in the same place he’d left them. He ushered us through into the short, narrow hallway, and then gestured for me to go on in while he dragged his suitcases behind him. The hallway was so narrow there wasn’t room for Ian’s bulk plus both the suitcases, so he shoved one ahead of himself and pulled the other behind.

  “Can I help?” I asked, trying not to laugh as he struggled awkwardly with his luggage. The suitcases were obviously heavy, the hallway barely wide enough to stand in.

  He grunted in irritation. “No, I’ll manage. My room’s just up there. You can have a seat wherever, I’ll just be a moment.” He violently shoved the lead suitcase into motion, only to have it catch on the runner carpet and tip over.

  I took the handle from him and righted it, pulling it aside, and smiled at him. “Stubborn ass. Which room?”

  There were two doors on either side of a bathroom, both doors closed, with the kitchen and living room on the left. All told, the apartment was tiny, maybe five hundred square feet at most. Ian gestured at the right-hand door. I waited until he’d gotten his suitcase in, and then followed him, stopping in surprise.

  “Awesome, Dad. Thanks for cleaning the room up for me. Real helpful.” Ian let out a frustrated sigh.

  The room was a total disaster, piled high with boxes overflowing with books, tied-off black garbage bags labeled with tape and marker, stacks of folded clothing, open boxes of old dishes and others full of knickknacks, and a huge wardrobe box stuffed to the gills with what I assumed were cricket trophies. Somewhere under the mess was a bed and bureau, but it would take hours of sorting and re-stacking just to find it.

  “Dad swore he’d have the room ready for me. It’ll take days to clean this up. I don’t even know where all this shit will go.” Ian let out a string of curses under his breath, and then glanced at me. “Sorry, Nina. I was planning on us just crashing here, but it looks like I’ve got some work ahead of me.”

  I set the suitcase on end and grabbed Ian’s arm. “It’s late and we’ve both been drinking. Why don’t you just get some clean clothes from your bags and come back to my place?”

  Ian shook his head. “I can’t just—”

  “Sure you can,” I interrupted. “We can come back tomorrow and I’ll help you sort this out.”

  Ian hung his head and rubbed at his chin with a finger. “You’re sure that’s okay?”

  I grinned. “I expect to be well-rewarded.”

  His lips curled up in a smile. “Oh, I think we can arrange something.”

  * * *

  One backpack stuffed with a rolled-up pair of jeans, a T-shirt, underwear, socks, and a small leather toiletries bag, a twenty-five-minute cab ride across London, and we were stumbling through the doorway of my flat, my fingers buried in Ian’s hair, his hands on my ass, our legs tangling as I backed up and he pushed me forward, our lips slashing and slanting, tongues diving and tasting.

  We’d made it the entire cab ride without touching each other, but Ian had spent the twenty-five minutes whispering in my ear, describing in graphic, skin-shivering detail what he was going to do to me when we got back to my place.

  Now, we were back, and promises were about to become reality.

  Ian kicked the door shut behind him and fell backward against it, jerking me closer to himself, as if I could maybe climb inside him, or actually merge our bodies somehow. My hands scraped through his hair, messing it up, gripping it by the roots at the back of his head and keeping his mouth crushed against mine, desperation slamming through me, need, hunger, heat, all blazing like a fiery whirlwind inside me. I let go of his hair with my right hand and used it to shove his shirt up, breaking the kiss long enough to tug it off his head and toss it aside, then roaming his bare torso hungrily, devouring his hardness and warmth with my palms.

  Shoes, gone. Socks, awkwardly toed away. My shirt? Hanging off the arm of the couch. Bra? At my feet. Jeans? Tripped over, kicked away. Ian? Naked, a condom wrapper in his teeth, ripped open, rubber sheathed over his erection.

  I didn’t need any foreplay, didn’t need to be finger-fucked first; I was wet, aching, ready for him.

  Ian, however, had different ideas.

  He broke the kiss, took my face in his hands, brushed the tip of his nose across mine. “Turn around.”

  I hesitated a moment, and then slowly spun in place, turned my head to the side so I could look at him. “Ian?” He wasn’t touching me at all, wasn’t saying anything, and I was starting to get nervous.

  Would he spank me?

  Was I going to hell because I wanted him to?

  And then his hands were gripping my hips, pulling backward. I shuffled two steps backward toward him, but then his palm slid up from my hip to my spine, his fingers traced each ridge of bone one by one until he was at the base of my neck, and then he grabbed my ponytail and gently but inexorably bent me forward. His other hand left my hipbone as well, cradled my left wrist in an implacable circle of his strong fingers. He brought my hand up and placed my palm against the door. He traded hands, then grasping my ponytail, keeping me bent forward, he placed my right hand flat on the door.

  I felt his lips touch my back, my left shoulder, my right earlobe. His breath was hot on my ear. “Don’t move, Nina.”

  “Okay,” I breathed.

  I let him pull my hips backward yet more, so now I was bent at the waist, leaning forward, my ass presented to Ian. I wasn’t quite breathing, taking short, shallow, sharp gasps of anticipation.

  “Close your eyes.”

  I shut them. “Okay.”

  “Tell me what you want me to do right now.” His voice was a low murmur in my ear, his erection nestled between the globes of my ass.

  I pushed back against his ass; the words fuck me on the tip of my tongue. But then I realized I didn’t want that, just yet. I wanted something else.

  So I asked for it. A simple thing, but with an acquiescence new to me.

  “Spank me, Ian.”

  SMACK! “You like that, do you?”

  I lurched forward when his hand cracked across the left globe of my ass, leaving it tremoring and stinging. “Yeah, I do.”

  “Has anyone ever spanked you before, Nina?”

  “No. Only you, Ian.”

  SMACK! The right cheek, now. And then his fingers slid between my thighs, speared gently into my wet cleft and scissored within me. I gasped, and my knees buckled. Another loud slap to my left ass cheek, timed to a press of his fingers against my clit, and I fell forward so my forehead thunked against the door.

  I cried out in ecstasy, ready for the next smack to my right cheek. But when it came, it was on the same side, and was followed by a soft, gently smoothing circle of his palm, soothing the stinging flesh, and I let out a moan. Which was quickly turned into a shriek as Ian scissored his fingers deep inside me and slapped me on the right side, quick, hard, and unexpected. Again. A third time on the same side, and now my flesh there was really starting to smart and I was on the verge of asking him to stop, but then he gave me a third smack and drove his fingertips in and curled them, slid them in and out, creating wet suction sounds, and I felt like I was being
ripped in two, sliced open by a sudden rush of clenching heat made all the more delicious somehow for the sweet slight sting of pain on my rear. I let out a breathless moan and Ian switched to the other side, smacking my left globe and finger-fucking me in time with the SMACK—SMACK—SMACK of his big hard hand against my stinging, trembling skin.

  An orgasm of continental proportions tore through me, ripping a scream from my lungs, and as I came—knees buckling, breasts swaying and nipples tight, taut, and achingly hard—Ian plunged his cock into me and I lost my breath, lost my capacity to even scream.

  No warning, no guiding nudge of his fingers, just a sudden wrenching orgiastic fullness, split open and fucked silent. I shook all over, fought to remain upright. Ian’s hands gripped my hips and tugged me backward so I was nearly off balance now, bent completely in half at the waist, torso level with the floor, feet spread wide apart, hands scrabbling at the wood of the door for something to hold on to.

  I couldn’t move to push back, couldn’t breathe for the vise grip of the orgasm still clamped down on my body. I could only scream silently, breathless, as Ian buried himself into me.

  And then he pulled back, hesitated a beat, two, and then drove back in.

  The shearing wave of bliss as his thrust broke something open in me, and I was finally able to gasp for breath. I hung my head and planted a fist against the door, dragging in deep breaths and preparing for the next onslaught of slamming thrusts. A moment of equilibrium, and then he was plunging into me, knocking me forward and filling me until I felt close to rupturing.

  “Ian…Jesus, Ian!” I felt everything inside me tightening, clamping down. I was already taut and hard and aching, and as he thrust, thrust, thrust, flesh slapping against flesh, I tightened and hardened further, until I was a million points of diamond hardness, yet ready to fracture into countless scintillating fragments at a single touch.

  “Nina…oh god Nina, I’m coming…” Ian breathed. “Nina, love, god—I’m coming—so hard—so hard it hurts, Nina.”

  There it went. That was it. The one touch I needed to fly apart, to melt, to spasm, to fracture and fragment and detonate and lose all hold upon myself.

  It was his voice, that accent, that silky rumble. It was his hand, carving tenderly up my spine, pressing gently; it was his hand, gripping my creased hip and pulling me back into his desperate, faltering thrusts. It was the note of pleading in his voice, the way he sounded as if only I could make him come this hard, as if I possessed some magic, some inexorable control over him.

  It was that word, love, tossed out so casually, a slang word, not meant to declare undying commitment, just thrown out in the heat of the moment.

  That word was what undid me.

  Because, see, deep, deep down, I was desperate for love.

  My parents controlled me. They provided for me. They set rules and parameters to keep me safe, to keep me sheltered, to keep me set apart from the evils of the world. They sent me to college. They gave me so much, and I was grateful.

  But never once in my life had my father told me he loved me. I want what’s best for you, Nina, he’d say. You’re my daughter, he’d say, it’s my job to keep you safe. And boys like that, at that age, they’re just not safe. And he was right, I know that. Focus on school, Nina. Concentrate on your studies, Nina. Won’t you consider studying for the bar exam, Nina? You have such intelligence; it’s wasted on a literature degree.

  And Mom? The love you read about in your books, Nina…it doesn’t exist in real life. You must be practical. How will you find a job when all you do all day is read? How will you find a good, solid man when your nose is stuck in a book?

  Maria, my eldest sister: Boys are fun, Nina. But you can’t trust them. Look at me, I know from experience. Maria was a single mom, with a seven-year-old daughter and a baby-daddy who’d run off the moment Maria saw the blue cross on the pregnancy test.

  Protected, advised, sheltered, provided for?

  Yes.

  Hugged, kissed, encouraged? Loved?

  No.

  And I knew I wouldn’t find love by tumbling into bed with every guy that showed a bit of interest. I saw the consequences of that lived out in painful detail by my other sister, Luisa. He’s the ONE! she’d claim. And then, a few months later, she’d be crying on Mom’s shoulder, decrying all men as assholes because—surprise surprise!—she dated an asshole and, shockingly, he’d forget to stop being an asshole.

  And now, bent over at the front door of a rented flat in London, a gorgeous, kind, intelligent, successful man was standing behind me, fucking me with everything he had, calling me love…I wanted him to mean it. I wanted it to not be a throw-away word.

  All of these thoughts scoured through my brain in the space of a moment, leaving me off-kilter, feeling a ravenous desperation inside me, an imbalanced need to turn and wrap my arms around Ian and have him hold me and tell me what I meant to him. Maybe not declare undying love, but…something.

  And he was still inside me, still thrusting shallowly, milking the last of his orgasm, caressing my hips and my ass and my back with his palm. I was shattered, wrung out, strung out, weak in the knees and fucked in the head.

  Attached.

  Totally, irrevocably attached.

  I’d done what I promised myself I wouldn’t do. I’d had sex with a gorgeous, available guy. A somewhat reformed player, if I was reading between the lines correctly. A man with a recently broken heart in desperate need of soothing.

  I can soothe you! my heart said.

  Fuck me! Make love to me! Do every dirty thing you know to me! my body said.

  What the hell are you thinking, you hopeless idiot? He’s going to hurt you! my brain said.

  Ian pulled out of me, helped me stand up straight, and then caught me easily when my knees gave out. “Jesus Christ, Nina. What the hell do you do to me?”

  His arms went around my shoulders, he pulled me to his chest, and his sweaty, musky, manly scent filled my nostrils and his radiating heat enveloped me, and his hands feathered gently through my hair. And my heart flipped, flopped, opened, hoped.

  My body told me I could totally come another two or three times.

  And my brain told me not to get my hopes up, because life didn’t work that way. Not really. You don’t just meet sexy, hunky, intelligent men on airplanes and have a happily-ever-after with him start on day two of knowing him.

  Day three, now, because it was way after midnight.

  Three days is totally enough time to fall in love, right? I mean, that’s not Hollywood, smutty romance novel insta-love, is it?

  I felt myself being moved across the apartment to my darkened bedroom, felt myself drowsing. I let my eyes close; let the maelstrom of conflicting thoughts and emotions barrel through me unimpeded. I felt my bed under me, covers dragged over me, heard the faucet running as Ian cleaned himself. So clean. Clean men are sexy.

  A few moments of silence then, and my internal fears and desires and worries and needs all had a moment of clashing confusion. Did I expect him to leave? Did I want him to stay? I’d never lived with a man before, never shared an entire night of sleep in the same bed. Sex was always in a dorm room with co-ed curfews and no privacy. Always during a stolen afternoon when I should have been studying or writing a paper. An evening spent fucking when I should have been out with friends or visiting my family. None of my boyfriends had ever had their own place to take me, so we’d always had to finish our business and go our separate ways. Meet for dinner, find a quiet spot alone for a few minutes, get to it, get dressed, go about life.

  I was fading into sleep, but I couldn’t sense Ian’s presence. The faucet was off, the floorboards silent. Would I hear the door close as he decided to find a hotel rather than stay with me? Would I feel the bed dip as he slid in behind me?

  If he got into bed with me, was I supposed to turn into him and make conversation? Spoon with him? Pretend to be asleep and let him figure out his own position?

  But then I felt him nearby,
smelled the faint, leftover cologne, the soap from his recent ministrations, and the underlying scent of sex. The bed dipped, but near my knees, on my side. A hand rested on my thigh, near my hip.

  “I’m not quite sure what comes next, if I’m being totally honest.” His voice was pitched low, just above a whisper.

  “Me either.” I didn’t open my eyes, didn’t move.

  “What do you want to do?”

  I rolled a shoulder in a shrug. “I’ve never spent the night with a guy before. Not the whole night.”

  He made a noise in his throat, and I wasn’t sure how to interpret it. Noncommittal grunt? But then he stood up, crawled onto the bed. I had to open my eyes to watch that, because I had this mental image of Ian, naked and muscular and sexy, prowling across the bed toward me, like something out of a movie.

  Oh Jesus lord, yep. Shoulder muscles rippled, arms tensed and flexed, back was like a playground of angles and planes of definition, and there between his legs, his package swung and swayed. So much man. So much sexiness.

  I pinched the inside of my bicep hard enough to elicit a sharp nasal inhalation. And…yes, he was still real. I seemed to be awake. Me. Nina Herrera. Mexican-American Regency literature nerd. The girl with a bit of a roll at her waist, stretch marks on her tits because they’re so big, no gap between her thighs. Even my pussy had curves.

  And there was Ian, big and hard and predatory, a veritable sex god who could probably have and probably has had his pick of pixies and models and actresses and other socially accepted beauties. In my bed. Looking at me like he just couldn’t get enough of what I was rocking.

  Even though he’d literally just finished having me (from behind! I wasn’t ready to examine how elated I was to have broken that first-time barrier).

  I watched him crawl across the bed toward me, and even though it was a short distance, it felt like I watched it happen in slow-motion, as if my thoughts ran from lust to appreciation, to self-doubt, to awe, and back to lust, all in a few moments.