Slow Burn Cowboy(89)

He didn’t hate the ranch. He didn’t hate the business. He didn’t hate their name. He was their name, and damn him for being too young and stupid to see it then.

He was proving it now by pouring all of his blood, all of his sweat, all of his tears into it. By taking the little bit of business acumen he had once imagined might get him out of Copper Ridge and applying it to this place. To try to make it something bigger, something better. To honor all the work their parents had invested all those years.

To finish what they’d started.

He might not have ever made a commitment to a woman, but this ranch, McCormack Iron Works...was his life. That was forever.

It was the only forever he would ever have.

He closed those thoughts out, shut them down completely and focused on Anna. On the sweet scent of her as he lowered his head between her thighs and lapped at her, on the feel of her tight channel pulsing around his fingers as he stroked them in and out. And finally, on the tight, wet clasp of her around him as he slid home.

Home. That’s really what it was.

In a way that nowhere else had ever been. The ranch was a memorial to people long dead. A monument that he would spend the rest of his life building.

But she was home. She was his.

If he let her, she could become everything.

No.

That denial echoed in his mind, pushed against him as he continued to pound into her, hard, deep, seeking the oblivion that he had always associated with sex before her. But it wasn’t there. Instead, it was like a veil had been torn away and he could see all of his life, spreading out before him. Like he was standing on a ridge high in the mountains, able to survey everything. The past, the present, the future. So clear, so sharp it almost didn’t seem real.

Anna was in all of it. A part of everything.

And if she was ever taken away...

He closed his eyes, shutting out that thought, a wave of pleasure rolling over him, drowning out everything. He threw himself in. Harder than he ever had. Grateful as hell that Anna had found her own release, because he’d been too wrapped up in himself to consider her first.

Then he wrapped his arms around her, wrapped her up against him. Wrapped himself up in her. And he pushed every thought out of his mind and focused on the feeling of her body against his, the scent of her skin. Feminine and sweet with a faint trace of hay and engine grease.

No other woman smelled like Anna.

He pressed his face against her breasts and she sighed, a sound he didn’t think he’d ever get tired of. He let everything go blank. Because there was nothing in his past, or his future, that was as good as this.





CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHASE WOKE IN a cold sweat, his heart pounding so heavily he thought it would burst through his bone and flesh and straight out into the open. His bed was empty. He sat up, rubbing his hand over his face, then forking his fingers through his hair.

It felt wrong to have the bed empty. After spending only one night wrapped around Anna, it already felt wrong. Not having her... Waking up in the morning to find that she wasn’t there was... He hated it. It was unsettling. It reminded him of the holes that people left behind, of how devastating it was when you lost someone unexpectedly.

He banished the thought. She might still be here. But then, she didn’t have any clean clothes or anything, so if she had gone home, he couldn’t necessarily blame her. He went straight into the bathroom, took a shower, took care of all other morning practicalities. He resisted the urge to look at his phone, to call Anna’s phone or to go downstairs and see if maybe she was still around. He was going to get through all this, dammit, and he was not going to behave as though he were affected.

As though the past night had changed something fundamental, not just between them, but in him.

He scowled, throwing open the bedroom door and heading down the stairs.

He stopped dead when he saw her standing there in the kitchen. She was wearing his T-shirt, her long, slim legs bare. And he wondered if she was bare all the way up. His mouth dried, his heart squeezing tight.

She wasn’t missing. She wasn’t gone. She was cooking him breakfast. Like she belonged here. Like she belonged in his life. In his house. In his bed.

For one second it made him feel like he belonged. Like she’d been the missing piece to making this his, to making it more than McCormack.

He felt like he was standing in the middle of a dream. Standing there looking at somebody else’s life. At some wild, potential scenario that in reality he would never get to have.

Right in front of him was everything. And in the same moment he saw that, he imagined the hole that would be left behind if it was ever taken away. If he ever believed in this, fully, completely. If he reached out and embraced her now, there would be no words for how empty his arms would feel if he ever lost her.

“Don’t you have work?” he asked, leaning against the doorjamb.

She turned around and smiled, the kind of smile that lit him up inside, from his head, down his toes. He did his very best not to return the gesture. Did his best not to encourage it in any way.

And he cursed himself when the glow leached out of her face. “Good morning to you, too,” she said.

“You didn’t need to make breakfast.”

“Au contraire. I was hungry. So breakfast was needed.”

“You could’ve gone home.”

“Yes, Grumpy-Pants, I could have. But I decided to stay here and make you food. Which seemed like an adequate thank-you for the multiple orgasms I received yesterday.”

“Bacon? You’re trying to pay for your orgasms with bacon?”

“It seemed like a good idea at the time.” She crossed her arms beneath her breasts and revealed that she did not, in fact, have anything on beneath the shirt. “Bacon is a borderline orgasmic experience.”

“I have work. I don’t have time to eat breakfast.”

“Maybe if you had gotten up at a decent hour.”

“I don’t need you to lecture me on my sleeping habits,” he bit out. “Is there coffee?”

“It’s like you don’t know me at all.” She crossed the room and lifted a thermos off the counter. “I didn’t want to leave it sitting on the burner. That makes it taste gross.”

“I don’t really care how it tastes. That’s not the point.”

She rested her hand on the counter, then rapped her knuckles against the surface. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing.”

“Stop it, Chase. Maybe you can BS the other bimbos that you sleep with, but you can’t do it to me. I know you too well. This has nothing to do with waking up late.”

“This is a bad idea,” he said.

“What’s a bad idea? Eating bacon and drinking coffee with one of your oldest friends?”

“Sleeping with one of my oldest friends. It was stupid. We never should’ve done it.”

She just stood there, her expression growing waxen, and as the color drained from her face, he felt something even more critical being scraped from his chest, like he was being hollowed out.

“It’s a little late for that,” she pointed out.

“Well, it isn’t too late to start over.”

“Chase...”

“It was fun. But, honestly, we accomplished everything we needed to. There’s no reason to get dramatic about it. We agreed that we weren’t going to let it affect our friendship. And it...it just isn’t working for me.”

“It was working fine for you last night.”

“Well, that was last night, Anna. Don’t be so needy.”

She drew back as though she had been slapped and he wanted to punch his own face for saying such a thing. For hitting her where he knew it would hurt. And he waited. Waited for her to grow prickly. For her to retreat behind the walls. For her to get angry and start insulting him. For her to end all of this in fire and brimstone as she scorched the earth in an attempt to disguise the naked pain that was radiating from her right now.

He knew she would. Because that was how it went. If he pushed far enough, then she would retreat.

She closed the distance between them, cupping his face, meeting his eyes directly. And he waited for the blow. “But I feel needy. So what am I going to do about that?”

He couldn’t have been more shocked than if she had reached up and slapped him. “What?”

“I’m needy. Or maybe...wanty? I’m both.” She took a deep breath. “Yes, I’m both. I want more. Not less. And this is... This is the moment where we make decisions, right? Well, I’ve decided that I want to move forward with this. I don’t want to go back. I can’t go back.”

“Anna,” he said, her name scraping his throat raw.

“Chase,” she said, her own voice a whisper in response.

“We can’t do this,” he said.

He needed the Anna he knew to come to his rescue now. To laugh it all off. To break this tension. To say that it didn’t matter. To wave her hand and say it was all whatever and they could forget it. But she wasn’t doing that. She was looking at him, her green eyes completely earnest, vulnerability radiating from her face. “We need to do this. Because I love you.”

* * *

ANNA COULD TELL that her words had completely stunned Chase. Fair enough, they had shocked her just as much. She didn’t know where all of this was coming from. This strength. This bravery.

Except that last night’s conversation kept echoing in her mind. When she had told him about her mother. When she had told him about how she always regretted not closing the distance between them. Always regretted not taking the chance.