First Time: Ian's Story (First Time (Ian) Book 1) by Abigail Barnette Page A

certainly the only one I knew of.
    “ You have a cat?” Her eyes
lit up. “I love cats!” Her expression immediately fell. “Which is
probably the exact reaction ‘don’t talk about pets’ was warning you
about.”
    “ Ambrose is a great cat. And
I’m not just saying that. He’s never once peed in my shoes.” I
looked down at my shirt self-consciously and picked a long gray
hair from it, hopefully surreptitiously. “Except for the shedding.
I could do without all the fucking shedding.”
    “ Hey, you used the f-word!”
She sounded like she was congratulating me for overcoming some kind
of obstacle.
    Still, I felt the need to apologize. “I’m
sorry. I do curse a lot. It’s something I should work on.”
    “ No, it’s fine! I think it’s
a sign that you’re loosening up. Maybe all the taboo topics did you
some good.” She dropped her phone to the blanket. She took another
bite from her nectarine and sucked some juice off the tip of her
middle finger. God, she had to know she was doing that, didn’t she?
There was no way she could walk around without knowing how
stunningly sexy she was when she did things like that. “So. Do you
feel any better, now that we’ve made all the mistakes?”
    Considering what I’d learned about her… “I
do. Honestly, I don’t know why they say not to talk about these
things on first dates. It would get a lot out of the way right at
the start.”
    “ But imagine if we’d had
this conversation on our first date.” She arched an eyebrow. “At
the restaurant. Where you wanted to kill an octopus.”
    “ The octopus was probably
already dead. I didn’t realize you were so passionate about them. I
didn’t realize anyone was that passionate about them.” The memory
of her tattoo confession came to the front of my brain and lodged
there. Since we’d already talked about God and sex, tattoos weren’t
likely to be off-limits, were they? “Speaking of which… I have to
know where the tattoo is.”
    “ You don’t have to know,”
she countered dryly. “But if you want to know…”
    She smoothed her skirt, her other hand still
occupied with the nectarine. I took the free hand and held it
between my own. Her chest rose with a quick breath, and her pupils
dilated a little as we made deep eye contact. Her lips parted.
    “ Penny,” I said, struggling
to keep a straight face. “May I please know where the octopus
tattoo is?”
    She laughed and pushed my hands away. “Yes,
fine. It’s on my right hip, in front. And it’s about the size of a
fifty-cent piece.”
    Now that I could somewhat imagine it, I
wished I hadn’t asked. All I could think about was the shadow of a
little octopus tattoo peeking above the line of a pair of white
cotton panties. I mentally revised them to pink lace, to lessen the
perversion factor, and it still didn’t stop me from imagining
dragging those panties down and kissing the illustration on her
hipbone before heading farther south, while her back arched and her
belly quivered…
    “ Do you have any tattoos?”
she asked, tilting her head as she regarded me. “You seem like the
type.”
    “ There’s a type?” I hated to
disappoint her. “No, no tattoos. I’ve never felt the
urge.”
    “ Here I was, imagining that
under your suits and ties you were hiding some sexy bad boy past.”
She took a last, dainty bite from the nectarine and wadded a napkin
around the stone.
    “ The extent of my sexy bad
boy past are some very stupid pranks I pulled in college.” And
forty years of sexual deviance. Probably better not to bring that
up.
    She leaned back on her hands and looked up
at the sky. “This was a perfect idea. Even if it’s a little
crowded.”
    “ Is it?” I looked around us.
Another couple sat on the grass not far from us, drawing Belvedere
Castle in their sketchbooks. On the other side, two young
mothers—or nannies, you could never tell in New York—helped their
babies stand on the grass. Paths were crowded with cyclists