The Magical Christmas Cat

"Then why are you doing it?" she asked.



Bree had put the cat down finally, and she was facing him. Her hair was sliding across her cheek and sticking to her moist, crimson lips. Ian reached out and pulled the hair free and tucked it behind her ear, reveling in the satin slide across his fingertips. It had been a while since he had touched a woman, and there was a paradoxical quality to Bree that he loved. She was strong and bold, yet wonderfully feminine and vulnerable at the same time.



"Because I can't stop myself." And he ignored the fact that he had just told her she could sneak off and brush her teeth before a kiss, and he went for one anyway. A hand on the back of her neck, Ian leaned forward and pressed his lips to hers, lightly. They fit together well, comfortably, and he felt her acquiescence, felt her lean toward him to meet his mouth.



Ian forced himself to keep it short, to just linger for a fleeting moment, then pull back. He didn't want to go any faster than he already was and have her balk on him. Bree gave a delicious sigh when he stepped away from her, her eyes dark and mysterious, her lips shiny. Wiping away the lip gloss that had transferred from her lips to his, Ian said, "I'm ready for my tour of the house. Starting with . . ."



Her eyebrows rose in censure as if she clearly expected him to say the bedroom.



"The living room. I'd like to see the fireplace." He smiled broadly.



They'd get to the bedroom eventually.



Bree watched Ian carefully. She wasn't used to men like him at all. Her ex-boyfriends had all been profuse in their attentions and loud about their neediness.



None had been smooth or charming. Ian was both, and she was having trouble seeing what was coming around the corner with him. He kept startling her, and it was starting to annoy her that she constantly felt off-kilter, out of control. The advantage to the men in her past had been that she had always been the strong one, not vice versa. Ian and she were more evenly matched, and she didn't know quite what to do with it.



So she sucked in a breath, gathered her resolve— because she was now determined to have sex with Ian Carrington on her own terms—and said, "Sure. I assumed the fireplace was the first thing you'd want to see."



He laughed as he followed her, Akasha trotting along beside him.



So much for feline loyalty. It obviously didn't exist because Akasha, who to that point had never tolerated a man in her house, was clearly smitten with Ian.



Bree stopped just inside the main living area on the first floor, the room her grandmother had always referred to as the parlor. It was a large room, with two stained-glass windows and a fireplace with a very ornate carved mantel from which Abby had hung three sprigs of mistletoe. Bree said, "The house was built in 1888. All the woodwork is original, and so is the fireplace, though we can't burn wood in it. It's not up to code."



Though she had to admit she burned her Yule log there every Winter Solstice and so far no one had seemed to notice, and she hadn't burned the house down. But she wasn't really willing to take a chance on a roaring fire.



Ian had wandered into the middle of the room and stopped, turning a full 360 slowly. He looked puzzled, and Bree waited for a response, content just to look at him. He was so freaking good-looking, oozing confidence and success. His hair was very short yet somehow still managed to convey a sense of style, the front sticking up slightly. He was dressed more casually than the day before, his jeans distressed in all the right places, his shoes well-worn leather. He still had his coat on, but she could see his wine-colored button-up shirt with a subtle stripe, untucked, casual, but not the slightest bit sloppy. Bree had never been to Chicago, but she could picture him there, living in a high-rise apartment, walking down busy streets at a fast clip, talking on his cell phone.



"Wow," he said.



"Wow what?" The room wasn't that exciting. Bree was well aware the furniture was old and worn and that the overcast December sky lent a gloomy aspect to the room despite its being midafternoon.



"I'm having a serious case of deja vu." Ian moved to the fireplace and fingered one of the mistletoe bunches hanging there.



Bree fought the urge to smack his hand away.



Mistletoe, with all its sexual implications, was not what either of them needed at the moment. Or maybe it was.



"I don't believe in deja vu," she said. "I think it's really that our sixth sense sometimes glimpses pieces of our future, then when we see them in actuality we recognize them as familiar, as if they're part of the past. But they're really our recognition of what our subconscious already told us was going to occur."



She expected him to disagree, since Ian didn't seem like he believed in anything but the present, but he surprised her.



"That's an interesting theory. But for me, this is deja vu because I've seen this room in a dream. Right down to the three sprigs of mistletoe over this very fireplace mantel." He touched the grapevines that had been carved in the wood. "These grapevines. It's unreal how clearly I saw it all."



Bree sucked in her breath. "You saw this room in a dream? With mistletoe?" What the hell did that mean?



"Yes." Ian turned and looked at her, and those dark eyes studied her. "I don't believe in anything but logic, but I can't explain this. I've been dreaming about this room, not once, not twice, but over and over."



"For how long?"



"A year. And it always looked just like this, decorated for Christmas. The tree, the mistletoe."



A shiver raced up Bree's spine. It had been a year since they had met. "We just hung the mistletoe yesterday."



"That's really weird," he said, his voice thoughtful, his mouth turning down in a frown. He peeled off his jacket and tossed it on the sofa, moving around the room, studying all angles, all objects.



It was clear he wanted an explanation, and Bree had none to give him. "What happens in the dreams?"



But Ian just shook his head. "It's personal."



Whatever the hell that meant.



His hand was on an ornament on her tree, an innocuous sparrow that had no particular meaning to Bree other than it was meant to represent the power of nature in the smallest things, and he pulled it forward, stroking the faux feathers. Recognition hit Bree in a powerful wave, and she couldn't prevent a gasp from escaping her mouth



"Ohmigod," she whispered.



"What?" He glanced back at her.



Now it was her turn to shake her head. She couldn't say it out loud. She couldn't admit that this was in fact her recurring dream as well, that it always started with the back of a man's head bent over her Christmas tree. That he always turned, his face in shadow so she couldn't see his features, and he came over to her and did delicious things to her body. That he shattered her with orgasm after orgasm, and she always woke up frustrated and aching with want for the reality of her dream.



"This is an unusual tree," he said, touching a pinecone ornament. "It's very natural-looking. I like it."



"It's a family tradition, based on witchcraft. You fill the tree with ornaments that appreciate nature, but also with ornaments that represent all your hopes and aspirations for the upcoming year. You fill it with symbols of that which you want to bring into your life." Bree swallowed hard, still reeling from the realization that it had in fact been Ian that she had been dreaming about so intensely. It had to be him. He was doing just what the man in her dreams did, and her body was already poised, anticipating a touch.



He murmured, "Really? That's very cool. I like that.



What does this one mean?"



Bree squinted to focus, not really caring about conversation but striving to find normalcy in the situation. Ian was pointing to a diploma ornament.



"That's Abby's. She's graduating this year and hopefully heading off to college. She's incredibly book smart and I think she'll do well in college."



"And this one?" Ian fingered a baby carriage.



Bree touched her throat, a sudden tightness forcing her to breathe deeply. "That one's Charlotte's. She and Will would like to have a baby."



"I hope they're successful."



"Thank you. Me, too. They'll be fabulous parents."



Akasha came over to Bree and rubbed against her leg, dropping something from her mouth. Bree bent over absently and picked it up, unnerved by the surreal quality of being there with Ian, knowing that in her dreams she had felt him inside her, known the slide of his tongue over her most intimate places. It wasn't until she was standing again that she realized she had retrieved the battered mistletoe that Akasha had been dragging around.



Of course.



Ian turned to her. "Which ornament is yours? What is it that you want to bring into your life in the new year?"



"I didn't have any specific needs or wants," she whispered, clutching the mistletoe to her chest. "I just wanted contentment, and personal growth." She would never admit that she had wanted a man, a partner, a fulfilling and satisfying relationship with someone who simply wanted her but didn't need her.



Ian looked at the mistletoe she was fondling desperately for lack of anything better to do with her hands.



He shook his head. "Damn it, Bree, this is unreal . . ."



"What do you mean?"



"That's what you do in my dream."



"In your dream?" she asked stupidly, well aware that he was now walking toward her, and she was equal parts aroused and terrified. "I'm in your dream?"



"Yes." Ian stopped in front of her and ran his fingers down the side of her hair. "You hold that mistletoe, just like that, right before we make love, right here, in this room, in front of that fireplace."



Whoa. That was the way her dream always went.



"Ian . . ." She had no idea what to say, and her tongue suddenly felt six sizes too big for her mouth. How the hell could they, virtual strangers, hundreds of miles apart, have been having the same dream?



"Bree."



He kissed her, not like before, but with passion and purpose. It took her breath away, the feel of his hands in her hair, his body warm and close to hers, his mouth taking without hesitation, with delicious skill and a definite knowledge. He knew her mouth and she knew his. They fit together, as though their lips had pleasured each other many times before, and deep inside Bree, she felt the burning of desire, knowing that in some way they had. They knew each other from their dreams, and this wasn't new, but was destiny.