Dealing with Annie Read online

  Her eyes flared, her mouth opened just a little, both helpless actions making him moan. When he flicked open her bra, she lifted her hands but he caught them in his. “Let me look at you.” His voice sounded rough to his own ears, and he slid his lips over her skin, sucking on a patch of skin at her shoulder. “Mmm. Soft…” He opened his mouth on a full, creamy, beautiful breast, letting out another hoarse groan as one nipple filled his mouth, the other his palm.

  “Ian.” She gripped his arms tight, and her head fell back as she gasped for breath.

  “More?”

  “More.”

  He took her hands in his, sliding them down his abdomen.

  Their eyes caught.

  Connected.

  Her touch left a trail of heat in its wake, and he took their joined fingers farther, until they danced over the bulge in his jeans.

  Her touch ripped a rough sound from his throat. Annie’s gaze stayed on his, wide and dazed and so filled with desire she took his breath. She stroked him through the denim, and through a blinding sexual haze, he realized he’d been hard since their first kiss, and was even harder now. His hips arched, pushing himself into her hand, a primal, basic reaction. He was going to explode, but he planned on being inside her when he did. Had to be inside her. To that end, he flipped the button on her pants, slid the zipper down and assisted her clothing to the floor until she stood before him, gloriously nude. Her breasts were still wet from his mouth, glistening in the faint glow of the night, and when he slipped his fingers into her soft, sweet folds, her breath came in short, panting gasps against his shoulder.

  “Annie,” he whispered, and she let out a soft hum of pleasure, which turned into a cry when he rasped his thumb over her very center, increasing the pressure and rhythm in tune to her helpless gasps.

  He swallowed her breath when it came faster, kept up the teasing torment, and when her body went tight, then shuddered with her release, he was slow in retrieving his hand from between her legs, slow in lifting his mouth from hers, because he didn’t want to let go.

  She stood in front of him breathing hard, her eyes wide open in wonder, her breasts tight, nipples hard. Unsteady on her feet, she weaved, her eyes heavy and sleepy and sexy as hell. “My God…that hit me like a freight train.”

  “Just don’t fall asleep,” he begged, and scooped her into his arms.

  Fall asleep? Dizzy, deliciously languid, Annie clung to him, thinking she could easily do just that, if she didn’t want so much, much more. She yawned. Stretched. Felt like a cat with cream. “I’m not falling asleep—” She gasped as he tossed her onto the bed. Opening her eyes, she watched him pull his shirt over his head, take a condom out of his pants before tossing them aside. Oh, my. Oh my, oh my, was he magnificently built.

  Towering over her, he put a hand on either side of her hips. Eagerly, she ran her hands up his sinewy, tense arms, nearly purring. “I’m wide awake,” she promised, lifting her legs to cradle his hips.

  “Thank God.” He ran a hand up her thigh, urging her to spread her legs even wider.

  Outside, the sound of the wind in the trees was rhythmic, lulling, the same way the sound of Ian’s unsteady breath was. Annie could feel his heat, absorb his strength, and when he drew her closer, then sank into her, he dispelled the emptiness inside her, faded it away to nothing, replaced instead by a yearning, a tempestuous need she wouldn’t deny herself, or him.

  Between the wind outside and the storm brewing inside, reality had no place on her bed. There was nothing but masterful, intuitive, passionate lovemaking. The friction of his thrusts combined with the relentless greed of her own body had her mindless, tossing her head back and forth on the pillow, his name being torn from her lips with every soughing breath she gasped. He drove her higher, then higher still, and at the last minute slid a hand between their bodies, dancing his fingers right above where they were joined, until with a startled cry she broke into another orgasm. She was still caught in its grips when he found his own shattering climax.

  Stunned by the power of what had just happened, limp as a wet noodle, and completely incapable of moving a single muscle, Annie concentrated on drawing air into her lungs. She’d never experienced anything remotely as intimate, as fiery, as right, as this.

  “This” being falling in love.

  She didn’t fool herself, of course. Ian wasn’t a man who’d fall easily, and he certainly wouldn’t stay there. No, he needed danger and excitement and adventure. He needed to be wild and free.

  No regrets, she told her aching heart, and instead of thinking about it, dwelling on it, she concentrated on the here and now, concentrated on how it felt to have her arms and legs entwined with his, their hearts pounding against each other, their slick skin melding together.

  She could have happily stayed there forever.

  But all too soon, Ian lifted his head from where he’d had his face plastered to the side of her throat. Unable to help herself, she gave her feelings away by tightening her arms on him. Embarrassed at the neediness in the gesture, she forced herself to let go.

  But Ian didn’t move away at all. Apparently as content as she, he kissed her jaw, her ear, and eventually she stopped waiting for him to vanish, drifting off to a secure, deep and far more relaxed sleep than she’d had in a very long time.

  * * *

  IAN DREAMED. HE DREAMED he went back to New York, where he buried himself in his job. There was no Cooper’s Corner, no potbellied pigs, no Tubb’s Café, no Cooper’s Corner General Store, where everyone knew everyone’s name. There was no joy, no laughter.

  No Annie.

  That made him panic. She’d given him a glimpse of something bigger than sex, something more than a one-night quickie with a woman whose name he hardly knew. With Annie, he’d gotten a glimpse of what life could be, should be, filled with happiness and contentment.

  A glimpse, that’s all. There was no guarantee he’d even have next week, much less any kind of forever.

  Still, he woke with Annie’s name on his lips, and sat straight up, wanting her.

  She wasn’t warm, naked and next to him, as he’d hoped. Instead, she stood next to the bed wearing a blouse and dark blue trousers that showed off her curves and gorgeous legs. Her hair had been tamed into some shiny clip, her lips were all shiny and smelling like peaches.

  He wanted to gobble her up in one bite. As he looked her over, remembering how many times she’d cried out his name in the middle of the night while he’d been busy making her come undone in every way possible, she pulled back her hands and flushed guiltily.

  And he realized she’d been about to set a piece of paper on the nightstand. “Tell me you weren’t leaving me a Dear John note,” he said in a voice craggy from sleep and rough with what he could never admit was fear.

  Her short, mirthless laugh didn’t appease him in the least, and she let out a little sound of exasperation when he reached behind her and grabbed the note.

  Falling to his back, he unfolded the paper, his gut sinking like a ball of lead, effectively shriveling the most excellent morning hard-on he’d had. “Dear Ian,” he read out loud. “I’m running in to see Aunt Gerdie. Thank you for last night—”

  He looked over at her dryly. “‘Thank you’? You’re thanking me?”

  “Well…” When he just stared at her for a long moment, silently reminding her with every passing second exactly all the ways they’d pleasured each other in the night, her blush deepened. “I was trying to be polite.”

  “Polite?” He sat up, ignoring the way her eyes widened as the sheet fell away from his body. She’d already seen it all. Hell, she’d touched and kissed and licked every inch, but he was too frustrated, hurt, and yeah, pissed, to gently point that out. “Let’s forget polite. I’m not feeling particularly polite.”

  She put her hands on her hips and glared at him. Sure as he was breathing, he knew she hadn’t often been called to the mat on her feelings or emotions, if ever.

  Too bad.

  “