by Debra Webb
Riley wasn’t her father or her friend. He was her brother.
And sometimes, like now, that was exactly what a sister needed.
Chapter Six
HEATH PACED. CURSED. He figured this much debate hadn’t gone into some battle plans, but a battle plan would have been easier than trying to figure out what to do about Anna.
Or better yet what to do with Anna.
If he went to her room, sex would happen. Then tomorrow he would leave—just as he’d done nine and a half years ago. That hadn’t turned out so well, what with all the crying and her brothers wanting to shovel him.
If he didn’t go to her room, sex wouldn’t happen. But then he would have to leave things unsettled between them—again—as he’d apparently done before.
He was screwed either way, so Heath decided he might as well go for it. He threw open the door and nearly smacked right into some idiot wearing a hoodie and an army-green vinyl poncho.
Except this was no idiot. It was Anna, and in addition to the garb, she was also carrying a blue sock.
She practically pushed him back into his room and shut the door. “Shhh,” she said. “Della and Stella’s book club is meeting tonight.”
He was still wrapping his mind around the fact that Anna was there, that she had come to him, and maybe that’s why Heath couldn’t quite wrap his mind around the book club or the poncho.
“There are six of them in the living room, and I had to sneak past them,” Anna added when he gave her a blank look.
When Heath kept that blank look, Anna pulled off the poncho, and he saw the hoodie. No pants. No shoes.
Just a pair of really tiny devil-red panties.
He was sure his blank look disappeared because his mouth dropped open. This was the best kind of surprise.
“I didn’t have a robe here at the ranch, and the plastic poncho felt sticky against my skin so I put on the hoodie,” she explained. Then she unzipped it.
No top. No bra. Just the Be My heart locket dangling between her breasts. Heath thought maybe his tongue was doing some dangling, too.
“And the sock?” he asked.
She smiled and emptied the contents onto the bed. Condoms. At least a dozen of them.
“I took them from Lucky’s bathroom,” Anna explained. She was still whispering, but it had a giddiness to it. “The poncho and hoodie didn’t have pockets so I put them in the sock. I only brought the normal-looking ones. Some had pictures on them and some were glow in the dark.” Anna looked at him. “Why would a man need that?”
Heath didn’t have a clue. He didn’t need any illumination to find anything on Anna’s body. His most vital organ agreed. In fact, it wanted to go on that particular search mission right now.
But there was a problem.
“You got my text saying I was leaving, right?” he asked.
She nodded. “Tomorrow. That’s why I didn’t want to wait until after the book club left. Sometimes they hang around until midnight if Della breaks out the tequila, and we don’t have much time.”
Not if they were planning on using all those condoms, they didn’t, but Heath had to make sure that Anna was sure. She stripped off the hoodie, and he was sure she was sure.
At least he wanted her to be.
He wanted that even more when she slipped into his arms and kissed him. Heath was stupid and weak so it took him a moment to break the kiss.
“Anna, I don’t want you hurt,” he said.
She frowned. “I think that ship’s sailed. I’ll be hurt, but I’ll get over it. And tonight you’ll give me some really good memories to help me get over it, right?”
Yeah.
Whether they had sex or not, Anna would be hurt. Or at least she would be sad to see him go. Ditto for him being sad to leave her. But at least this way they’d have new memories, and they didn’t need glow-in-the-dark condoms to do it.
Now that he had a clearly defined mission, Heath pulled her back to him to kiss her. One of those kisses that reached scorch level pretty darn fast. But Anna was aiming for fast, too, and not with just the kisses. She was already going after his zipper.
“We’re going to play that scale-of-one-to-ten game,” she insisted.
Maybe. But the way she was tugging at his zipper, it was possible she was also trying to finish this all way too fast. Tonight, he didn’t want the kissing game, and he didn’t want fast.
Heath stopped what she was doing by catching on to her wrists and putting her against the wall. He liked walls because it gave him some control...
Damn.
He had no control. Anna ground herself against him, sliding her leg up the outside of his so that the millimeter of red lace was right against his crotch. Apparently, the orgasm she’d had earlier in the barn hadn’t done anything to take the edge off because she was going for another one very quickly.
Again, Heath tried to slow things down. With her leg still cradling his, he turned her, intending to put her against the dresser, but he tripped over the poncho and fell onto the bed.
With Anna on top of him.
“Let’s play a game,” she said. Definitely not a virginal tone or look. “I’ll use just my tongue to find all your special spots. You don’t have to give it a number rating. Just a grunt for pleasure. A groan for find another special spot that’s more special.”
“Men only have one special spot,” he told her. Heath took her hand and put it over his sex.
She laughed. Not a humor kind of laugh but the sound of a woman who’d come to play. Or maybe give a little payback for the things he’d done to her in the tack room. Well, Heath wanted to play, too. After all, he had a nearly naked Anna straddling him, and her breasts were making his mouth water.
He managed a quick sample of her left nipple before she moved away. Anna didn’t waste any time. With her hand still on his special spot, she went in search of others. His earlobe.
He grunted, but Heath didn’t know if that was because, at the same time, she started lowering his zipper.
“That wasn’t a loud enough grunt,” she said and went after his neck.
Heath grunted. Again, mainly because she lowered the zipper, and when she did that, her breasts got closer to his mouth again. She didn’t grunt when he kissed her there, but she did make that silky sound of pleasure that Heath would never tire of hearing.
He would have kept on kissing her breasts, but apparently it was special-spot search time again because she scooted lower and ran her tongue over his own left nipple.
Oh, yeah. He grunted.
Grunted some more when she circled his navel with her tongue. All that tonguing and circling though didn’t stop her from getting his zipper all the way down, and as he had done to her earlier, she shimmied his jeans lower.
“You really do go commando,” she said.
“Yep—”
He might have added more. Something clever or at least coherent, but her hands were on him. The condom, too. Heath wasn’t sure when she’d opened one of the packets. Nor did he care. The woman had clever hands after all—
Hell.
He grunted loud enough to trigger an earthquake when she dropped down onto him. That’s when he figured out really, really fast that the panties were crotchless and that he was in her warm and tight special place all the way to the hilt.
“That’s not your tongue,” he said through the grunts.
“So, I cheated.”
The woman was evil. And damn good. Heath usually liked to be the alpha when it came to sex, but even more than that, he liked taking turns with Anna. Apparently, she was going to make the most of her turn, too. She had the whole ride ‘em, cowgirl motion going on. So fast that Heath knew this would all end too soon.
Of course, sixteen hours was going to be too soon.
/> As if she’d read his mind, she slowed. Anna put her palm on his chest and, still moving against his erection, leaned down and kissed him.
“After this,” she said, “I want you all the way naked.”
Heath thought that was a stellar idea. He wanted those panties off her, too, even though they fell into the why bother category of women’s undergarments.
The locket whacked him in the face, but even that didn’t put a damper on the moment. Heath just pushed the locket aside, gathered her close and let his cowgirl screw his brains out.
Chapter Seven
ANNA WISHED THERE were some kind of anticry shot she could take. Even one that worked for just an hour or so would do. She figured she’d do plenty of crying after Heath had left, but she didn’t want any tears shed in front of him.
Or in front of her brothers.
She wanted Heath to remember her smiling. Or maybe naked, since that’s how he’d seen her for a good portion of the night. It was certainly how she wanted to remember him.
With that reminder/pep talk still fresh in her mind, Anna left her bedroom and went in search of Heath so she could give him that smiling goodbye she’d practiced in the mirror. But he wasn’t in his bedroom. Or the living room. Or the kitchen. In fact no one was, and she figured they’d all cleared out to give her a chance to have a private goodbye with Heath.
Or maybe they’d cleared out because Heath was already gone. She had several moments of panic when she sprinted to the back porch to make sure his rental car was still there.
It was.
And so was Heath.
He was at the fence pasture, looking at some cows that’d been delivered that morning. He made a picture standing there with his foot on the bottom rung of the fence, his cream-colored cowboy hat slung low on his face.
He must have heard her approaching because he turned, smiling. It looked about as genuine as the one she was trying to keep on her face. Until he reached out, pulled her to him and kissed her.
Then the smiles were real.
“How soon before you leave?” she asked.
“Soon.”
That reminder made her smile waver. Anna wasn’t sure how far to push this part of the conversation, but there was something she had to know. “Are you feeling any better about the instructor job?”
“I’ve accepted it. Sometimes, that’s the best you can do with crappy lemonade. Sorry,” Heath added when she frowned. “It was just something Riley said. An analogy of sorts.”
Riley not only needed a new threat, he needed new analogies, as well.
Since their time together was about to end, Anna reached into her pocket and took out the “gift” she’d gotten him on her shopping trip the day before. She hadn’t wanted it to be a big gift because that would have made this goodbye seem, well, big.
Which it was.
But she didn’t want it to feel big to him.
She took his hand and dropped the smashed penny in it. “It reminded me of your dog tags, and it’s supposed to be good luck.”
He stared at it, gave a slight smile. “Thanks.”
“I was going to give you the red panties,” she added, “but I thought it would look strange if the TSA went through your luggage.”
Now she got the reaction she wanted. A bigger smile. A bigger kiss, too.
“I have something for you,” he said. He took out a silver heart locket. It was similar to the other one he’d given her nine and a half years ago. Very similar.
Right down to the Be My engraving.
Anna checked to make sure she had on the original one. She did. And she was shaking her head until Heath opened it, and she saw what was inside. Not pictures of him and her.
But of her parents. Her dad on one side of the heart. Her mother on the other.
“Della got the pictures for me,” he explained. “You said sometimes you forget their faces, and this way you won’t forget.”
Oh, God.
She was going to cry.
No matter how hard she blinked, the tears came, and they just kept coming.
“I’m sorry.” Heath pulled her back in his arms. “I didn’t know it would upset you.”
“It doesn’t,” she said, sobbing. “It’s a good kind of upset.” Still sobbing. “Thank you, Heath, thank you.”
He held her while she sobbed, and it took Anna several long moments to stop.
“I got you something else,” he added.
Anna couldn’t imagine getting anything better than the second locket. It was even more precious to her than the first one. But Heath must have thought “the more the better” because he took out a wad of lockets from his coat pocket.
“I went to the jewelry store this morning and bought every locket they had.”
She had no doubts about that—none. There was another silver one, one gold and another in the shape of a cat’s head.
“They’re, uh, beautiful.” Though she couldn’t imagine needing that many lockets. Or the ugly one with the cat’s head.
“I had them engraved,” he added, “and this time I watched to make sure they did it right. You can choose which one you want.”
It took her a second to realize he’d finished his sentence. Not “which one you want to wear.” Not “which one you want to keep.” Not “which one you want to remember me by.”
Heath turned over one of the silver ones, and she saw the engraving there. One word.
Lover.
He put the Be My locket next to it, and she got the message then. Be my lover.
She laughed. “Does this mean you want to see more of me?”
“Well, I’ve already seen more, but I’d like to see more of you more often.”
That dried any remnants of her tears, and she blurted out an idea she’d been toying with for days. “I could look into transferring to a law school in Florida.” And she held her breath.
No smile from him. “I don’t want you to sacrifice going to a school that maybe doesn’t have as good of a reputation as the one you’re in now.”
“No sacrifice. There are a couple of really good ones. And besides, I was transferring anyway. Might as well transfer so you can—” she held up the two lockets to finish that thought “—Be My Lover.”
Anna tested his neck again with a kiss. And her tongue.
“Keep that up, and you’ll be my lover again right now,” he grumbled.
“If that’s supposed to make me behave, then it won’t work. Not with the hayloft so close. How much time do you have before you need to leave for your flight?”
“Not enough time for the hayloft.”
She kissed him again, and he seemed to change his mind about that. He started leading her in that direction.
“Not enough time for the hayloft unless we hurry,” Heath amended.
Good. The kisses were working.
Since she’d already put her heart on the line, Anna put the rest of herself out there, too. “I don’t want a fling.”
“Good. Flings are overrated.” He kissed her again. “And temporary.”
She released the breath she didn’t even know she’d been holding. Heath didn’t want temporary. Nor a fling. He wanted sex.
That was a solid start since she wanted that, too.
“I’m not done,” he said. “Remember, you pick the locket you want.” He held up the next one, the gold one, and it also had a single word engraved on it.
Woman.
As in Be My Woman.
Yes, they were so going to that hayloft, and then she was going to the university to start that transfer to Florida.
“Can I wear both the Lover and Woman?” she asked. Because she wanted both.
“You haven’t seen the third one yet.”
And she probably couldn’t see it before the next kiss crossed her eyes. Along with singeing her eyelashes.
Still, he put the locket in her hand just as her butt landed against the ladder. Anna backed up one step at a time, which wasn’t easy to do with Heath kissing her like that. And he kept on kissing her until they made it all the way to the top of the hayloft.
But Anna froze when she saw what was engraved on the tacky cat’s head locket.
Love.
“Be My Love,” she said, putting the words together.
Putting everything together.
“The L word?” she asked.
Heath nodded. “Sometimes it’s the only word that works. What about you? Does the L word work for you?”
Anna had to catch her breath just so she could speak. “It works perfectly for me.” She kissed him. “Does this mean we’re going steady?”
“Oh, yeah,” Heath confirmed. “That, and a whole lot more.”
* * * * *
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