Dreaming of Love (7 page)

“Relationships? Is that based on opinion or personal experience?”

She leaned her hip against the wall and searched his eyes with a look that gave nothing away.

“You tell me.” She hooked her finger in his front pocket. “Now that my brain is properly functioning, I remember you saying something about not wanting a fling.”

“So, your mind wasn’t functioning when you kissed me? Should I chalk up our one and only kiss to bad judgment? Because if that’s your bad-judgment kiss, I’d give my left arm to experience a dedicated I-want-you-so-badly-I-can’t-think-straight kiss.” He loved playing with her, leaving her wondering what the hell he was really all about. That’s what he knew, what he did best. It was easier than talking his way out of flings. Women didn’t usually appreciate him turning them down for a quick roll in the hay. He’d had to adapt a defense in order to stay true to himself. With Emily he had the urge to shed that camouflage and just be himself.

“That was my testing-the-possibilities kiss.” Her lips quirked up in a smile again, and she poked him in his chest. “Nice try, by the way. You’re not getting off that easily. Is your desire to not have a fling with me based on personal history or…?”

“Or?” He couldn’t help but grin.

“
Tsk!
I don’t know. Or something else. Ugh. You are maddening. You know exactly what I mean.”

She turned away, and he spun her around and pulled her close—losing the battle to keep his camouflage in place. One look into her trusting eyes and he was a goner. The truth spilled from his lips like a waterfall.

“I know what you mean. The reason I don’t want a fling with you is that you’re not
fling
material.” He didn’t
do
flings anyway, but if he did, she definitely wouldn’t be fling material.

“What…?”

He touched his forehead to hers and breathed deeply. “It means that the way I feel when I’m with you is like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. It means that I have a feeling that if we were to get together,
really
get together, that I may not be able to walk away without leaving a piece of me behind.”

“Oh.” She dropped her eyes and twirled her hair around her finger.

Jesus, why did he get turned on every time she did that? “You kill me when you do that.”

“When I do what?” Her hands splayed across his chest as she gazed up at him.

“When you do that adorable, sexy thing you do. Your
oh
s make me wonder what your bigger, sexier,
O
s will sound like.” He held her gaze, hoping he didn’t scare her off but unable to restrain himself from telling her what he was feeling.

She fisted her fingers in his shirt. “Oh.”

“Em…”

“Oh.” Her eyes widened, as if she couldn’t even believe she’d said it again. “No, no, no. Oh God.” She banged her forehead against his chest with the cutest little groan.

He folded her in his arms and knew he was in big trouble. Like a fish on a line, everything she did reeled him farther in.

THEY PASSED THE poppy fields on the way back to the villa, and Emily couldn’t believe it had been only a few hours since they had danced through them. It felt like they’d been gone a week. She stole a glance at Dae as he drove down the tree-lined road toward the villa. He really did have striking features from every angle. She wondered what he would look like when she was lying beneath him. How it would feel to have his naked, muscular body on top of hers, his hip nestled against hers. She shifted in her seat with the emotions that were becoming more familiar with every minute she spent with him. She looked out the window. She couldn’t even pretend that these were feelings of a crush or infatuation. They were too all consuming, too powerful, too different. Never before had she turned every glance into something sexual. What was it about him that had her brain scrambling to remain unfettered from dirty thoughts?

Dae reached across the console and squeezed her thigh. “Tell me something I don’t know about you.”

Something you don’t know? Her mind raced, searching for something fun, sexy, or even interesting to tell him. She wasn’t exciting enough to have secrets. Darn it, why didn’t that slinky new side of her show up a month ago and gather some secrets? “Gosh, like what?”

He narrowed his eyes and smiled. “I don’t know. What were you like as a little girl?”

A little girl?
Had she ever been a little girl? It seemed like she’d been a grown-up forever. “What I think I was like and what I was really like are probably two very different things. I think I was a normal kid, but my dad left us when I was a baby, which is probably why my brothers are overprotective and why I’m a little protective of them and maybe a little headstrong.” She had never been particularly bothered by people knowing her father had abandoned them, but it wasn’t something she typically offered up out of the blue. For some reason, she hadn’t even thought about keeping it from Dae.

His eyes filled with compassion. “I’m sorry, Em. I didn’t realize your father left you.”

“He didn’t leave me. He left our family.” She saw him flinch. She didn’t mean to sound like she had a chip on her shoulder. She didn’t, did she? She’d dealt with her father’s leaving years ago. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I reacted so strongly.”

“It’s okay. I understand. It probably still hurts.”

“It really doesn’t, except when I think of my mom. I mean, I didn’t really know my father. But I know my mom loved him, and I guess it makes me sad, and apparently angry, to think of her being hurt.”

“Is she remarried?” Dae parked beneath the umbrella of a tree in the parking lot and turned off the car, waiting for Emily’s answer. Moonlight filtered in through the windows, and when he turned in his seat to face her, he brought her hand to his lips and kissed the back of it.

“She’s not, but she’s happy. She’s not the kind of woman who needs a man in her life.” Emily loved the way his entire focus was on her. He wasn’t rushing her to get out of the car, or trying to make a move despite the seriousness of their conversation. He wasn’t trying to avoid the uncomfortable subject, and if his eyes were as honest as they appeared, he seemed sincere in caring about her answers.

“I get the feeling that you’re not the type of woman who needs a man in her life, either.”

Emily opened her mouth to answer and realized that she didn’t know how to respond. Was she the type of woman who needed a man? She certainly had been hoping to find love for a long time. But did she
need
a man? No, surely she didn’t. She looked away, and Dae reached over and gently brought her face back toward him.

“I don’t know you that well, but I get the feeling there’s a lot going on in that beautiful head of yours. All day I’ve wondered what you were thinking, and right this very second you have a look that makes me want to pull you into my lap and hold you.”

Yes, please. That would feel so nice
.

“If you want to share your thoughts, I’d really like to hear them.”

She couldn’t form a response, overwhelmed by what she was just now realizing, much less admit it to a man she’d known only a day, but the longer she stared at him, the clearer the sincerity in his eyes became. They drew her words from her heart.

“I haven’t ever felt like I needed a man in my life. But lately I’ve felt like something was missing. Or like I was missing out on something, I guess. Maybe it’s because my brothers have all recently fallen in love, and I haven’t. They were dead set against relationships whereas I was completely open to one. I don’t really know why I feel like something’s been missing. Maybe I’m too wrapped up in work. Maybe, like you said, I need to grab the happy moments when I can and enjoy life a little more. I don’t really know. But if you want to know what’s going through my mind right now, this very second, I’m wondering why today—why
right now
—I feel like I’m not missing a darn thing.”

Dae placed his hands on her cheeks and lowered his forehead to hers. “Because you may not need a man in your life, Emily Braden, but sometimes it sure is nice to find someone who makes each day a little better.” He sealed his lips over hers and took her in a deep, mind-numbing kiss. When their lips finally parted, he ran his thumb over her lower lip and gazed into her eyes.

“Yeah.” It came out in one long breath. Her lips tingled, and she felt dizzy with desire. “That must be why.”

“Or maybe it’s because you got to see the places you’ve been dreaming about and eat Italian gelato while looking out over the Arno River.” He stepped from the car, and when he came around to her side, he reached for her hand.

She grabbed her purse with a grin she had no hope of restraining. “I think it was that first thing you mentioned.”

He slid his arm around her waist, and they followed a slate path toward the two-story villa. The porch was illuminated by yellow lights on either side of the large arched windows, highlighting the dips and grooves of the rough stone walls. Set against the backdrop of the midnight-blue sky, broken only by the branches and foliage of large trees set off to the west, the villa looked like it belonged on the cover of a romance novel.

Dae pulled her closer. “Smells like Adelina and Serafina have been busy baking.”

Emily was so focused on Dae that she hadn’t noticed the smell of fresh-baked bread. “I love that they bake together. Are you close to your parents?” She didn’t want the night to end. She wanted to walk a million miles by Dae’s side, feeling the strength of his grip and hearing his deep, sexy voice as they got to know each other better.

“I am.”

They sat on a wooden bench on the porch. It felt natural for Emily to snuggle beneath the crook of his arm, and with the realization came surprise. Emily mulled over that surprise, dissected it, turned it until she began to see herself with a little less reservation. The part of her that had been pushing her in ways that were new and scary, but also sensually exciting, somehow knew that being with Dae felt right in all the best ways. And now she knew it, too, which took away some of that fear but left all of the good stuff.

“My parents adopted me when I was a baby. My birth mom is Korean, and my father was American. He was in Korea on business, and well…Then came me.” He ran his hand through his hair and shrugged, a there-you-have-it shrug.

“That’s how you got that dangerous sex appeal. Your looks are so intriguing. It must be the combination of Korean and American heritage. I bet your parents were both very beautiful. Now I know your secret.”

“
Dangerous
, huh?” He kissed her temple.

“That’s what you picked up on? Yes, dangerous enough to make me fumble for words, and I
never
fumble for words. Do you know your birth mom?” She ran her finger along the seam of his jeans, wanting to be closer to him but also wanting to get to know him better first.

“I have access to who she is and I can reach out to her, but from what I’ve been told, she isn’t really interested in meeting me. She was shamed by the pregnancy. Her family actually shunned her for months.” The muscles in his leg tensed beneath her touch.

“Oh, that’s horrible.” She couldn’t imagine being shunned by her family, but worse, she wondered what it did to Dae to know it was because she had conceived him.

“Yeah. I was pretty mad when I found out, and then I went through this guilty phase. Like I’d ruined her life or something. But my family helped me realize that I didn’t ruin her life. I was just the product of her emotions. I mean, people have sex; women get pregnant. You can’t blame the child for that. Human emotions are what they are. My biological father and my birth mother’s family are the ones who made her feel bad about getting pregnant, which is really sort of sick and definitely mean.”

Emily curled her legs up beneath her on the bench and turned her body toward him. “I can’t imagine what she must have gone through.”

“People can be assholes.” He tucked Emily’s hair behind her ear, and in return, she ran her fingers through his, brushing it away from his face. Her hand came to rest on the back of his neck, and she felt him tense a little under her touch.

She wondered if it was from her touch or the topic of his parents.

“I’ve been wanting to do that since last night,” she admitted.

“I’ve wanted you to do that since last night.”

“Oh.”

His lips quirked up in a half smile.

She remembered what he’d said about her saying “Oh” and pressed her lips together. She’d never been with a man who had been so open about how she made him feel, and knowing that a simple word could have such an effect on him made her happy and confident and nervous all at once.

He cupped her cheek and pressed a kiss to her lips. “What am I going to do with you, sweet Emily?”

She shrugged and answered by bringing her lips to his again, kissing him softly at first, then matching his desire as he deepened the kiss. He buried his hand in her hair and held on tight. His other hand lifted her legs over his so she was sitting half on his lap. His hand came to rest on her thigh.

“I like what you’re doing with me right now.” She brushed the back of his neck with her thumb, and his eyes darkened.

“You do, do you?” He kissed her again, and the heat of his hand spread up her thighs and between her legs. Until last night, it had been a very long time since she’d felt the tug of desire. She couldn’t remember ever longing to be touched and tasted as she was with every stroke of Dae’s tongue. She’d never had the urge to kiss every inch of a man’s body. Those were things she’d talked about with girlfriends as if she’d felt them, too, even though the mere act of pretending had made her feel like she was missing out. Her girlfriends probably really did have those urges. Heck, according to them, they’d had them since they were teenagers, while Emily had played along so she didn’t feel left out. She’d never really understood what she was missing until now. She’d never felt the avalanche of lust that was breaking down every barrier she never even realized she’d constructed.

This is it
. This was what had plagued her these last few months. Something in her heart must have known she was missing this. Needing this. Needing him.
Dae
. Heat filled her veins as Dae’s lips slid to the corner of her mouth, then trailed kisses down her neck to the crest of her shoulder. A moan escaped her lips, and she closed her eyes against it. She desperately wanted to give in to this feeling, to let her body get swept away and devoured. But something in the back of her mind nagged at her. It was these feelings that had caused Dae’s birth mother to experience such heartache. These overwhelming desires could drive her to make bad decisions.