Burned by Love

by Erin Wright

“So, does everyone in Sawyer know that you stutter?” His shouted response from earlier – they all know why – still stung a little. Everyone had been in on this secret. Everyone except Penny. Did they all just assume she knew? Or were they watching her, to see how long it took her before she figured it out…if she ever did.

  “Hell no,” Troy said, and she could tell he was shocked that she thought that. She felt…slightly better to hear it. Not so ignorant. “My mom, dad, aunt, uncle, and three cousins. No one else knows. At least, they’ve never said anything if they have.”

  “You have three cousins?” She didn’t know why she was surprised by that. He was allowed to have relatives. She just hadn’t heard him mention them before.

  Which brought her right back to what had caused their fight to begin with. The list of things she didn’t know about him was probably longer than the list of things that she did.

  “They’re like siblings to me since I don’t have any siblings of my own, and because I’ve lived with their parents since junior high. But they’ve all moved away. None of them love it here like I do. That’s why Uncle Horvath is giving me the mill instead of to his own boys. Neither of his boys want a damn thing to do with it. One’s moved back East and the other’s in the Air Force. Actually, Bryce should be getting out soon, or at least he’s at the re-up-or-get-out point. I should ask Aunt and Uncle Horvath if they know what he’s gonna do. And their daughter, Jessie, is down in Texas right now. Working for a small mom-and-pop oil company, doing their books. She never really worked at the mill; my uncle is old school and it wasn’t a place for women in his mind. I think if a woman ever joined the volunteer fire department, Uncle Horvath would have a heart attack on the spot.”

  “Why does your uncle care if a woman is on the fire department?” Penny asked, confused.

  “He used to be the…” He hesitated, and Penny remembered then.

  “Fire chief,” she supplied.

  “Yeah,” he said, and flashed her a grateful smile for not forcing him to say “chief.”

  “Damn, if you can’t say chief without stuttering and your uncle used to be the chief, that must’ve been awkward.”

  “Not really,” Troy said cheerfully. “I got away with calling him Uncle Horvath and no one blinked at it.”

  Penny bust up laughing. “You are sure creative,” she said admiringly, stroking his stubble-roughened cheek with her thumb. “You have to think and rethink through every word you say, and do it all without missing a beat.”

  “You’ll notice I don’t say a lot,” he pointed out. “That’s on purpose. It’s tiring to talk. Words don’t flow. They get st-st-stuck between here,” he pointed to his brain, “and here,” he pointed to his mouth. “It’s easier to not say anything at all.”

  “Thank you for talking to me,” she whispered, staring him straight in the eye. She wanted him to feel how grateful she was. “It means a lot to me. I don’t expect you to become Mr. Congeniality, but l do need some give from you.”

  “Aunt Horvath wants you to come over for Sunday dinner,” Troy said, apropos of absolutely nothing. “She’s dying to meet you. You two can discuss my failings in depth. She is always telling me that I need to talk more.”

  Ah. That’s where the connection was at.

  “It sounds like we can commiserate together.” Penny flashed him a teasing smile and he rolled his eyes.

  “Here’s something you can commiserate about,” he said with a wicked gleam in his eye, and scooped her up in his arms and began carrying her towards the lake.

  “Troy, put me down!” Penny half-yelled, pounding at his shoulders…

  But not very effectively as she was saying it all through bouts of laughter. She really needed to work on being more convincing.

  “Oh, sorry,” he said, totally not sorry, and pretended to drop her.

  She squealed and threw her arms around his neck. “Troy!!” she yelled.

  “Shh…you’re gonna dist-st-sturb the squirrels,” he said as he waded into the shallow water.

  “It’s freezing in there, isn’t it?” she asked, ignoring the stutter. The sooner he realized that it wasn’t a big deal, the sooner they could move on with their lives.

  “May-ay-ay-be,” he finally got out around chattering teeth.

  “Hey, I thought you stuttered on ch and st,” she teased him. “When did you start stuttering on ay?”

  He mock-glared down at her. “I’ve got you-ou in my ar-arms,” he said through the chattering. “I’d be ni-ice if I were you-ou.”

  “Shore’s that way,” she informed him blandly, pointing back towards the shoreline. “You know you can get out, right?”

  “And lo-ose m-my manly card st-st-status?” he asked, aghast. “I worked ha-hard for th-that.”

  “I won’t tell anyone, I swear. It’ll just be between you, me, and the squirrels. Maybe an eagle or two.”

  “But I wa-was gonna dr-drop you in!” he protested.

  “All the more reason for you to carry me back to shore.” She settled in against his chest, accidentally pulling his t-shirt down his chest a little, and instantly decided to use that to her advantage. “After all,” she murmured, leaning in and kissing his exposed collarbone, “I have much…warmer activities in mind.”

  He let out a growl of frustration. “You’re ki-killing me,” he moaned. She swirled her tongue over the collarbone and then breathed lightly on the damp spot, sending another shiver through him, but this time she didn’t think it was from the cold.

  With a groan that seemed torn from his throat, he splashed back towards the shore, Sparky barking and running along the shoreline, thrilled at the game they were playing. Her antics faded away as Troy let Penny slide down the front of him, one torturous inch at a time, finally depositing her in the warm, dry sand.

  “I wasn’t gonna—” He broke off, a pain-filled groan emanating from him as he covered her mouth and began kissing her as if his life depended upon it.

  Wasn’t going to what?

  Which was the last coherent thought she had for quite a while.

  Chapter 17

  Troy

  Dammit, this wasn’t part of the plan. He was gonna make her fall in love with him, so irrevocably and totally that she would never dream of leaving him for the big city, and then he could make her his. He wasn’t gonna let himself touch her before then.

  Except right now, he was quite sure he would die if he didn’t.

  As he yanked his shirt off with abandon, tossing it to the side, he told himself that even if this wasn’t part of the plan, it was still okay to do it. If he believed for one minute that she couldn’t possibly be happy in Long Valley, in Sawyer there with him, he’d let her go. More than anything in the world, he just wanted her to be happy. That was all that mattered to him.

  So if he could bind her to him through sex, then all the better. It was just another form of persuasion, right?

  He felt a smidge bit of guilt at that – it seemed…underhanded, somehow, to use sexual desire to get what he wanted from her – but then Penny groaned as she threaded her fingers into his hair and pulled his lips down to hers. “Please, please, please,” she panted against his lips, and he wondered if she even knew what she was pleading for, or if it had simply become a mindless chant. He wanted to tease her by asking, but that would require too much breath, too much thinking, and quite frankly, there just wasn’t enough blood north of the belt line for something like that.

  He managed to lean over long enough to shuck off his jeans and then his hands were on her, stripping her bare to his gaze. A tiny part of his brain – really, almost too small to contain a whole thought – brought up the vague idea that there was something wrong here but as his hands stroked down over her lithe, slim body, it was hard to bring that thought into focus.

  Outside.

  The single word finally reappeared in his vocabulary, and he knew then that’s what he was struggling with.

  “We’re…outside…” he murmured between kisses down
the side of her neck, collarbone, and then to her small, pert, perfectly proportioned breasts. Their pink tips were begging to be suckled and who was he to say no? His tongue swirled across the tiny bumps and the proud nipple on one and then the other breast, and he was quite sure that he’d never in his life tasted something as delicious as this. He sunk ever farther into the abyss of desire, losing track of the world around them.

  “We are,” Penny confirmed, a hint of laughter in her voice, but he didn’t know what she was agreeing to, or why she was laughing.

  “We are what?” he finally managed to make himself ask as he pulled himself away from her body long enough to find the blanket he’d packed away in his backpack. He’d planned on them using it to sit on during their picnic, but…change of plans.

  “We are outside,” Penny said, and this time the laughter wasn’t simply a hint in her voice but had become full throated.

  Outside.

  The word had reappeared in his vocabulary again. Right. They were outside.

  He felt thick, miles thick, and his hands trembled with lust as he laid the blanket out on the ground. He stood and stroked his hands down her gently curving sides, the feel of her setting him on fire. It had been so damn long since he’d had any attention that wasn’t self-ministered, he was a little terrified he was gonna unman himself in front of her like a randy teenage boy.

  Hell, he was a randy teenage boy in that moment. His driver’s license might put his age at 36, but his dick was saying he was at least two decades younger than that.

  He made himself step back for just a moment, pulling his hands away from the softest, smoothest skin he’d ever felt, and focus. It was literally painful and he felt like he could use his dick to pound through concrete just then, but he made himself do it anyway.

  “Penny,” he said, looking her straight in the eye, her blonde hair tousled and wild around her face, her lips swollen from their rough kisses, and his resolve came within a hair breadths of dissolving into nothingness. In that moment, every word was a painful chore that he had to force out before his self control completely disappeared. “We’re outside. Someone could come along at any minute and find us. If you want to go back, we can.”

  Please, please, please don’t ask me to do that.

  At that moment, he wouldn’t even be able to zip up his jeans over the hard-on he was sporting, let alone walk with any sort of ease, but he would do it if she wanted to. He loved her that much, which was something he would not, could not tell her. Not yet. He could see it in her eyes – she didn’t feel the same way. Not yet. She felt lust. She felt attraction.

  But she didn’t feel love.

  And God help him, he was trying to use that lust and attraction to his advantage, so he could hurry along the process of love.

  Which probably made him the biggest bastard to ever walk the earth, something he should totally feel guilty about, but didn’t. Not just then, anyway.

  Penny hesitated, nibbling on her bruised bottom lip, and Troy prayed harder than he’d ever prayed for anything in his life. Please God…

  Finally, she shrugged. “No one’s been up here since we started hiking the trail,” she pointed out. “I think we’re safe.”

  Thank you, God.

  He swept her up into his arms and carried her the few steps over to the blanket, not wanting to waste a moment, not wanting to give her a chance to change her mind.

  He was a good guy; he wasn’t a saint.

  He’d done the right thing. He’d asked her if she wanted to turn back. He wouldn’t ask again.

  What followed was a blur of lust and legs and lips, and the perfect harmony of their personalities. She shouted and whispered and moaned, babbling about what she wanted and how much she wanted him, or simply chanting his name over and over again.

  He, on the other hand, didn’t say a word but instead let his lips – dancing across her skin – say everything he felt. Words were difficult in the best of times; they were impossible now.

  He followed the line of her body down to her tiny waist and perfectly flat stomach, kissing his way across her cashmere skin – soft and smooth and pale pink – and to her innie belly button that begged for a tongue swirl across it. “Troy,” Penny panted. “Please, Troy.”

  He knew what she wanted. Even though this was their first horizontal dance together, he felt connected to her in a way that he hadn’t felt with other women, even after sleeping with them dozens of times. This connection with Penny was primal and deep and way beyond words or understanding. It just was.

  But he didn’t settle himself between her thighs and push his way inside like he knew she wanted. Instead, he moved further down her gorgeous body, to the apex of her thighs. He was surprised to find that she kept herself perfectly shaved and plucked to a billiard’s cube of baldness. The previous girlfriends he’d had, had only trimmed their pubic hair short. It was a completely different sensation and feel to run his tongue across the supple skin, without a hair to get in the way.

  Her eyes closed and she began panting. “Troy, Troy, Troy,” she said, begging him for more. “Plleeaassseee…” she moaned, as he began to stroke up inside the folds of her and across her clit. Her hips were raising up in the air now, and she was pushing, arching, begging, and he couldn’t hold back anymore. His self-control crumbled and he slid inside of her in one swift motion, her soft, warm body welcoming him and it was then that all thoughts, all reasoning, disappeared and he was only feelings and desire and an overwhelming drive to make her his.

  He came then, his back arching and his whole body tensing and the world disappearing, and it was only the two of them and no one and nothing else existed…

  He didn’t know how long it was before he finally drifted back to reality. He was cuddled up to Penny, his arm wrapped tightly around her and as the world came into focus again, he realized he was probably smothering her. He pulled back to give her some breathing room, but she clutched at his arm, holding him in place. “Not yet,” she whispered, and he pulled her tighter against him with a smile. He’d happily hold her all day long.

  Chapter 18

  Penny

  With a big stretch of relief, Penny headed out to her Civic. It was Friday after work, and she fully planned on celebrating by…

  Well, by checking in on her mother. Because she was a party animal like that.

  It’d been a crazy week at work for her and based on the few texts she’d managed to trade with Troy, it had been just as crazy at the mill. Apparently, the very beginning of harvest was starting to hit, so they were ramping up to get ready for the fall. He’d already warned her that when harvest hit full swing, he’d be pretty much MIA for at least two months.

  Well, I’ll probably be gone by that point anyway. Somebody somewhere is going to need a graphic artist with more skill than experience. I just haven’t found them yet.

  She ignored the stab of pain at the idea of leaving. This was what she wanted. She didn’t want to work at the newspaper for the rest of her life, chasing down leads on who said what at the chili cook-off. She had bigger dreams than this town could hold. She couldn’t let herself forget that, no matter how sexy Troy looked in bed.

  Actually, it wasn’t just in bed that Troy was looking sexy. She grinned a little to herself as she took a left and headed towards her mom’s.

  There was their first time, out in the wilds of Idaho, of course – she still couldn’t believe she’d done that and even more amazingly, no one had walked up that trail and caught them – but after that, they’d done it on the couch, over the railing of the mezzanine of his house, in the backseat of her car, and that time in his backyard under the stars.

  Ooohhh yyeeaaahhhh…

  Now that was something she’d never forget, even if she was 92 and couldn’t name what year it was. There are some things that were quite literally unforgettable, and that night was permanently a part of that list.

  After that first whoopsie where they’d both lost their minds and had forgotten to use a co
ndom, they’d been careful ever since. She was not going to get trapped in this town. No how, no way. Hell, pulling into her mom’s subdivision just now made shivers go down her spine, and not in a good way. Every house in the Moose Run subdivision was a cookie-cutter version of its neighbor, with the occasional resident getting especially creative and painting their front door a dark red instead of leaving it as treated wood.

  Walking on the wild side.

  This neighborhood represented everything she didn’t want in life, and driving through it was a damn good reminder that no matter how sexy Troy was, this was not the world for her.

  She opened the front door to her mom’s house after a cursory knock. “Hey, Mom!” she called out, pulling the door closed behind her. “How’s it going today?”

  “Good, good,” came her mom’s muffled reply. “Be right there.”

  It sounded like her mother was rooting around in the attic or something. Penny sighed as she headed into the kitchen to find something to eat. Her mother was a self-described “organized hoarder,” which just meant that all of the stuff stacked to the ceiling in the attic and spare bedroom was in neatly labeled boxes, rather than in open piles or garbage bags or something.

  Someday, in the far distant future when her mother passed away, it would be Penny’s job to wade through all of it and decide what to do. Honestly, a lighter and a can of gasoline had seemed like a perfectly valid plan to her, but when she’d jokingly mentioned that to her mom one time, her mom’d had a meltdown.

  She’d never mentioned it again.

  Penny pulled out the makings for a sandwich from the fridge and quickly slapped one together. She’d been so busy pouring over the proposed budget for the city of Franklin for the next fiscal year that she hadn’t taken a break for lunch. She’d been trying to make sense out of it so she could report her findings in a coherent article that said more than, “Much money will be spent,” which was what her first instinct had told her to do. Her stomach was audibly growling in anticipation by the time she took the first bite of her sandwich.