The long-awaited Part Nine! Thanks to my wonderful beta Teanni and everyone who reviewed!
Jon walked into Kat's house, looking around at the assorted décor.
"It's a lot different in the daytime, isn't it?" she joked with a grin, leading him through the foyer and into the living room. Unlike before, the spacious room was now lit by the sun streaming in from the large window overlooking the barn and trees on the back end of the property.
"Wow," he said.
"Yeah," she replied. "It's quite a view." All the leaves of the trees were colored in vibrant shades of red, orange and yellow, making the treetops look as though they were on fire. "There's only one other room in the house that has a better view than this."
"It gets better?" he asked incredulously. Kat nodded, leading him down a hallway and into another room.
She led Jon into her home office-slash-library and drew the curtains back from her window, revealing the view that showed off the entire property. Jon looked around the room a bit, his eyes stopping at some of the books on the shelves and a few of the things she had hanging on the walls.
"What is this place?"
"Well, it's my office. I basically use it to store all of the books and things that I either don't have room for in my office at Gratton or my parents didn't want in the house back in Illinois. It's a lot of history, basically." She looked around nostalgically. "I'm fairly certain eighty-five percent of my life could be found somewhere in this room, in one form or another."
Jon stood there for a moment, contemplating what she had just said. "So, you're telling me if I pointed to something in this room, there would be some part of your life connected to it."
"That's exactly what I'm saying," Kat replied. "In fact, pick something, anything in this room and I will give you the back-story. Consider it getting to know me," she finished the sentence with a cheeky grin that was just begging Jon to take her up on the challenge.
"Let's go basics first," he said, leaning on the edge of her desk, which by some miracle of God was not a disaster area like it normally was.
"On one condition," she rebutted. "You answer the same question you ask me. Deal?"
"Deal. Where'd you grow up?"
"Little town outside of Springfield, Illinois."
"Cincinnati, Ohio. Where's home?"
"It's a tie between here and Springfield," Kat answered honestly. "Mostly here."
"Vegas. When's your birthday?"
"January 17."
"December 7. Couldn't you just Google all of this?"
"Could have, but I chose not to. It felt wrong to take advantage of the fact that you have your own Wikipedia page. And I'm pretty sure that doesn't count as a question."
Jon was impressed. Kat was surprising him more and more. He glanced down at her desk top, his eyes being drawn to a framed photograph. "Your family?" he asked.
Kat nodded. "Yup. It's the four of us. Mom and Dad have been married about thirty-seven years now, I think." She picked up another picture, this one of her and a red-haired young woman in a police officer's dress uniform. "That's my sister Maria."
"You two get along?" he asked.
Kat made a sound that was somewhere between a chuckle and a sigh. "It depends on the day, honestly. We didn't used to. It got better when I left for my undergrad. For a little while, at least."
"Care to elaborate?"
Kat pressed her lips together, thinking for a moment. The issues she had with her sister weren't usually things she brought up this early in a friendship, regardless of how unorthodox this… whatever this was, was turning out to be.
"Remember Saturday night, when I said I didn't deal with conflict well?" Jon nodded. "Let's just say that despite the cookie-cutter appearance, everything wasn't exactly white-picket-fence Little House on the Prairie. Especially with me and my sister."
Jon straightened up a little bit and beckoned her over to where he was standing. "Hey, come here," he placed his hands on her shoulders and waited until her hazel eyes met his. "We all have some messed up things in our pasts, okay? We don't let it keep us down, right?" She nodded. "That's my girl."
She raised her eyebrows. "Your girl, huh?" she fought to keep a straight face as his mouth gaped open like a fish.
"Uhhh."
"Easy, tiger. Don't go having a coronary. I'm just giving you a hard time," she smirked, trying not to laugh at the look on his face.
He looked at her with a bit of disbelief. He hadn't been expecting that. She smiled as she bit her bottom lip, waiting for him to say something. He noticed a bit of uncertainty start to cloud her eyes. He frowned.
"What's bothering you, doll?" he asked.
She sighed, her shoulders slumping. How was she supposed to explain to him that she had no idea what the hell she was doing? She hadn't had a boyfriend since high school, and her last foray into personal intimacies had been her sophomore year of undergrad, which had been an unmitigated disaster. She had literally no idea how the dating scene worked now, especially in their situation.
"Kat?" he looked concerned. "Talk to me, sweets."
Now it was her turn to gape like a fish a little bit as she searched for the right words to explain her feelings about their situation. "Okay, fun fact: having a Ph.D at 27 doesn't really lend itself to having a lot of time to date, umm, dammit." She hated that she was stumbling over her words right now. Of all the times for her natural eloquence to fail her, it had to be right now! "Uh, what I'm basically trying to say is I have no fucking clue what the hell I'm doing. The last time I actually had a boyfriend was quite literally ten years ago. And now I'm gonna go hide somewhere." She turned to head out of her office and Jon grabbed her wrist.
"Hey, hey, calm down, okay?" he pulled her against his chest. "We don't have to complicate this any more than it already is. I like you, Kat. I like you a lot. But we don't need to go putting a label on anything right away. Does that work for you?"
Kat looked up at him. "Yeah, that works for me." She stood up on her tiptoes and pressed a gentle, chaste kiss to his lips. "So, you've seen my house. What do you want to do now?"
"What else is there to do?" he asked. He jumped as Moxie meowed from the doorway, not amused with being ignored.
Kat laughed. "Well, you can meet the other queen of the castle. That's Moxie, she's a bit of a diva, but she's nice. Or we can head to the stable and you can meet Riot, or we can watch movies."
"Wait," he said. "Moxie? Is that even a word?" he was teasing, and they both knew it, but he couldn't help it.
"Yes it is. It's in the dictionary." She cleared her throat dramatically before reciting (in a horrible British accent) "Moxie: noun: force of character, determination or nerve. Thank you very much."
Her face broke out into a smile watching Jon try not to laugh at her.
"Dare I ask how Riot got his name?" Jon asked. "Did someone die?"
Kat giggled. "No, but when I got him he looked really intimidating, so we thought it fit really well. It just stuck. He's just a big softie now. What's so funny about Mox's name to you?"
"That," he said, pointing a finger right at her nose. "When I was wrestling in the indies, I was doing it as Jon Moxley, some people called me Mox. Some people from the old days still call me Mox."
Kat smiled and tried not to laugh. She seemed to be laughing a lot more today than she had any other time in recent memory. "I can see where that could be confusing."
They ended up relocating to Kat's living room and flipping though her relatively large DVD collection, trying to find something to watch.
"Game of Thrones?" Kat suggested, holding up the Season One boxed set.
"Never seen it," Jon replied. She blinked at him a few times in shock before sliding the case out of its sleeve and putting the first DVD in.
"You've seriously never seen Game of Thrones?"
"Nope," he replied, shaking his head. "Why?"
"Just watch, you'll see." Kat said, hitting the play button on the remote to begin the first episode. Jon wrapped his arm around her, bringing her in close as the show opened.
"And that right there is a terrible decision," Kat spoke to the TV. Watching as Cersei Lannister gave some serious royal bitchface.
Jon looked down at her. "It is?"
Kat reached over and hit the pause button, freezing the people on the screen. "Oh, absolutely. See the entire premise of this show is that you can't trust anyone. Which is going to become painfully evident as time goes on, you do not want to piss off the blonde chick and her brother."
"I see," Jon said, amused by her commentary.
"Sorry, I commentate on everything. Which I think is why people hate watching movies with me unless we've all seen everything already."
"It's fine," he said, kissing her. "Cute, even." She smiled against his lips and deepened the kiss, lifting herself up a bit so she could bring her leg over to the other side of his, straddling him. He bit her bottom lip gently, bringing it into his mouth and sucking on it a bit before releasing it to capture her mouth again. His hands were on her hips, under her shirt, his thumbs briefly feeling her hipbones before starting to travel up her sides, teasing her porcelain skin. Both of her arms were around his neck, her hands tangled in his dark blond hair, her hips moving unconsciously against his groin, causing both of them to moan.
He grabbed the material of her shirt, pulling it upwards. Her arms went up so that it could be removed before they came back again, this time helping him to remove his own shirt. Her arms came back around his neck, and he moved sideways, turning them horizontal, with her beneath him. He held himself up above her, both of them breathing heavily; he admired how her breasts pressed against the teal colored fabric of her bra. She bit her lip, waiting to see what he was going to do next. He bent down, pressing his lips to her neck, then to her collarbone, the space between her breasts, making a line down to her navel.
"Jon?" she breathed, as his thumbs hooked both sides of her sweatpants.
"Yeah, doll," he replied. "Is something wrong?" He looked up at her, his chin resting right underneath her navel.
"It's just…" she paused, trying to collect her thoughts from her somewhat dazed brain. "It's been a while since anyone's done…that." Good God, she felt like she was a teenager, not even able to say what was about to take place.
"We don't have to do anything you're not comfortable with, doll. I swear to you. We will go as fast or as slow as you want." He sat up, offering her a hand up as well and pulling her into an embrace.
"I'm sorry," she said.
Jon looked at her in shock. "What the hell are you apologizing for?" he waited until he could see her eyes. "You have absolutely nothing to apologize for, okay?" He pulled her to him, relishing the skin on skin contact they were able to get, but not wanting to push her any further. There were some serious depths to this woman, and he was just barely sticking his toe in the water.
He found his shirt next to the couch and pulled it on, handing Kat hers before settling back on the couch again.
"So who all is going to be at this thing tomorrow?" he asked, wanting to fill the silence that was threatening to descend.
"Well, there's you and me. Janie, who you met briefly Saturday night, her husband Brent, their kids, Brent Junior, Raelynn and Christine, and Janie's parents Nessa and Todd. Everyone's really cool. Raelynn and Junior are twins; you met Rae on Saturday night. They're both four. Chrissy was born Sunday morning, so she's still really little. But everyone is really laid back. Nothing to worry about." She cuddled in a little closer to him as if to prove her point just a tiny bit more.
"If you say so," he replied, kissing the top of her head.
Thank you to everyone who has favorited, followed, reviewed and read this story! You guys are literally awesome and I can't wait to hear your thoughts on this installment!
