Take Me, Cowboy(26)

He ignored the little terror claws that wrapped themselves around his heart and squeezed, and focused instead on the heavy sensation in his gut. In his dick. He wanted her, and dammit, he was going to have her.

The image of her dancing in front of him in the shop...that would haunt him forever. And it was his goal to collect a few more images that would make his life miserable when their physical relationship ended.

That was normal.

He parked the truck, then got out, following Anna mutely up the steps. When they got to the door, Anna paused.

“I don’t...have anything with me. No porcupine pajamas.”

Some of the tension in his chest eased. “You won’t need pajamas in my bed,” he said, his voice low, almost unrecognizable even to himself.

Which was fair enough, since this whole damn situation was unrecognizable. Saying this kind of stuff to Anna. Seeing her like this. Wanting her like this.

She was a constant. She was stability. And he felt shaky as hell right now.

“I’ve never spent the night with anyone,” she blurted.

The words hit him hard in the chest. Along with the realization that this was a first for him, too. He knew it, logically. But for some reason it hadn’t seemed momentous when he’d issued the invitation. Because it was Anna and sleeping with her had seemed like the most natural thing on earth. He liked talking to her, liked kissing her, liked having sex with her, and he didn’t want her to leave. So the obvious choice was to ask her to stay the night.

Now it was hitting him, though. What that usually meant. Why he didn’t do it.

But it was too late to take the invitation back, and anyway, he didn’t know if he wanted to.

“I haven’t, either,” he said.

She blinked. “You...haven’t? I mean, I had a ten-minute roll in the hay—literally—with a loser in high school, so I know why I’ve never spent the night with anyone. But you...you do this a lot.”

“Are you calling me a slut?”

“Yes,” she said, deadpan. “No judgment, but yeah, you’re kind of slutty.”

“Well, you don’t have to spend the night with someone when you’re done with them. I guess that’s why I haven’t. Because I am kind of slutty, and it has nothing to do with liking the person I’m with. Just...”

Oblivion. The easiest, most painless connection on earth with no risk involved whatsoever.

But he wasn’t going to say that.

Anna wasn’t oblivion. Being with her was like...being inside his own skin, really in it, and feeling it, for the first time since he was sixteen.

Like driving eighty miles per hour on the same winding road that had killed his parents, daring it to come for him, too. He’d felt alive then. Alive and pushing up against the edge of mortality as hard as he could.

Then he’d backed way off the gas. And he’d backed way off ever since.

This was the closest thing to tasting that surge of adrenaline, that rush he’d felt since the day he’d basically begged the road to take him, too.

You’re a head case.

Yes, he was. But he’d always known that. Anna hadn’t, though.

“Just?” she asked, eyebrows shooting up. She wasn’t going to let that go, apparently.

“It’s just sex.”

“And what is this?” she asked, gesturing between the two of them.

“Friendship,” he said honestly. “With some more to it.”

“Those benefits.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Those.”

He shoved his hands in his pockets, feeling like he’d just failed at something, and he couldn’t quite figure out what. But his words were flat in the evening air. Just sort of dull and resting between them, wrong and weird, but he didn’t know what to do about it.

Because he didn’t know what else to say, either.

“Want to come inside?” he asked finally.

“That is where your bed is,” she said.

“It is.”

They made their way to the bedroom, and somehow it all felt different. He could easily remember when she’d been up here just last week, walking in those heels and that dress. When he’d been overwhelmed with the need to touch her, but wouldn’t allow himself to do so.

He could also remember being in here with her plenty of times before. Innocuous as sharing the space with any friend.

How? How had they ever existed in silences that weren’t loaded? In moments that weren’t wrapped in tension. In isolation that didn’t present the very tempting possibility of chasing pleasure together. Again and again.

This wasn’t friendship plus benefits. That implied the friendship remained untouched and the benefits were an add-on. Easy to stick there, easy to remove. But that wasn’t the case.

Everything was different. The air around them had changed. How the hell could he pretend the friendship was the same?

“I’m just—” She smiled sheepishly and pulled her shirt up over her head. “Sorry.” Then she unhooked her bra, tossing it onto the floor. He hadn’t had a chance to look at her breasts the last time they’d had sex. She’d kept them covered. Something that had added nicely to the tease back in the shop. But he was ready to drop to his knees and give thanks for their perfection now.

“Why are you apologizing for flashing me?”

“Because. In the absence of pajamas I need to get comfortable now.” She stripped her shorts off, and her underwear—those shocking black panties that he simply hadn’t seen coming, much like the rest of her—and then she flopped down onto his bed. He didn’t often bring women back here.

Sometimes, depending on the circumstances, but if they had a hotel room, or their own place available, that was his preference. So it was a pretty unusual sight in general. A naked woman in his room. Anna, in this familiar place—naked and warm and about as inviting as anything had ever been—was enough to make his head explode.

His head, and other places.

“You never have to apologize for being naked.” He stripped his shirt off, then continued to follow her lead, until he was wearing nothing.

He lay down beside her, not touching her, just looking at her. This was hella weird. If a woman was naked, he was usually having sex with her, bottom line. He didn’t lie next to one, simply looking at her. Right now, Anna was something like art and he just wanted to admire her. Well, that wasn’t all he wanted. But it was what he wanted right now. To watch the soft lamplight cast a warm glow over her curves, to examine every dip and hollow on the map of her figure. To memorize the rosy color of her nipples, the dark hair at the apex of her thighs. The sweet flare of her hips and the slight roundness of her stomach. She was incredible. She was Anna. Right now, she was his.

That thought made his stomach tighten. How long had it been since something was his?

This place would always be McCormack, through and through. The foundation of the forge and the business...it was built on his great-grandfather’s back, carried down by his grandfather, handed to their father.

And he and Sam carried it now.

This ranch would always be something they were bound to by blood, not by choice. Even if given the choice, he could probably never leave. Their family... It didn’t feel like their family anymore. It hadn’t for a lot of years.

It was two of them, him and Sam. Two of them trying so damn hard to push this legacy back to where it had been. To make their family extend beyond these walls, beyond these borders. To fulfill all of the promises he’d made to his dad, even though the old man had never actually heard them.

Even though Chase had made them too late.

And so there was something about that. Anna, this moment, being for him. Something that he chose, instead of something that he’d inherited.

“I like when you look at me like that,” she said, her voice hushed.

“I like when you take control like you did back in the shop. I like seeing you realize how beautiful you are,” he said. It was true. He was glad that she knew now. And pissed that she was going to take that knowledge and work her magic on some other man with her newfound power. He wanted to kill that man.

But he could never hope to take his place, so he wouldn’t.

“You’re the first person who has made me feel like it all fit. And maybe it’s because you’re my friend. Maybe it’s because you know me,” she said.

“I don’t follow.”

“I had to be tough,” she said, her tone demonstrating just that. “All my life I’ve had to be tough. My brothers raised me, and they did a damn good job, and I know you think they’re jerks, and honestly a lot of the time they are. But they were young boys who were put in charge of taking care of their kid sister. So they took care of me, but they tortured me in that way only brothers can. Probably because I tortured them in ways that most little sisters could never dream. They didn’t go out in high school. They had to make sure I was taken care of. They didn’t trust my dad to do it. He wasn’t stable enough. He would go out to the bar and get drunk, and he would call needing a ride home. They handled things so that I didn’t have to. And I never felt like I could make their lives more difficult by showing how hard it was for me.”

She shifted, sighing heavily before she continued. “And then there was my dad. He didn’t know what to do with a daughter. As pissed as he was that his wife left, I think in some ways he was relieved, because he didn’t have to figure out how to fit a woman into his life anymore. But then I kind of started becoming a woman. And he really didn’t know what to do. So I learned how to work on cars. I learned how to talk about sports. I learned how to fit. Even though it pushed me right out of fitting when it came to school. When it came to making friends.”