by Anna Sugden
“Condom,” she said resolutely. Because moving things forward would solve everything.
“I—I d-don’t have—”
She hopped out of bed. “No, I do. In my purse. Give me a second, and whatever you do, do not change your mind.”
She scrambled into the kitchen where she’d dropped her bag and grabbed the required items. She scampered back to the room, determined to make this easy. It was going to be fine. They were going to be fine. She could walk him through this. He just needed a little guidance.
Who would trust you with guiding?
She pushed the nasty voice in her head away and forced a bounce into her step and a smile on her face as she reentered the room.
Wes was sitting on the bed, completely naked. Scowly resting face and all. Hummina, hummina. He really was a work of art.
“Got it,” she said with a grin, sauntering over to the bed. He watched her so intently, she was kind of sure, even if this was a disappointment, it wouldn’t feel that way. Wes might be nervous and new, but there was an attention he paid her. None of the guys she’d slept with had ever looked at her like that.
It might get kind of addictive.
Don’t be stupid, Pruitt.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
WES HAD A beautiful naked woman on his bed. Wanting to have sex with him.
Maybe he’d died. Or maybe, for once in his life, the good-luck stick was pointing his way. Whatever it was, however he’d gotten here, he wasn’t going to miss the chance.
If he could figure out where to look. He wanted to look everywhere. Memorize every inch of her tanned skin, swaths of pale skin that never saw the light. Freckles. How did he...?
“Wes.” She took his face between her hands. “You can talk, you know. Ask things. Ask for things. Everything is okay. This is an okay zone.”
“I wasn’t sure where to look.” Christ, he sounded ridiculous. It wasn’t like he’d never seen a naked woman before. He just couldn’t quite get over the little voice in the back of his mind.
“Look wherever you want.” She flipped her hair over her shoulder. “I’m kind of fabulous.”
He shook his head. “Not kind of.”
She smiled, not the sexy, seductive little grin, but a pleased smile. As if his compliment meant something. Then she crawled on to his legs, ripping open the condom packet. “Just for that, Mr. Stone, you are going to get yourself some.”
She pulled the condom out of the packet and rolled it on him.
She grabbed his chin, forcing him to look at her. He blinked, trying to focus, trying to think. But all he could feel was Cara’s other hand still around him.
“If something is wrong, if you don’t like something, speak up,” she instructed, and the firm way she said it helped center the moment. Yes, he was good at taking orders. He’d excelled at that. “And if you do something I don’t like, I’ll tell you, and it won’t be a big thing. So don’t worry about messing up. You won’t. You can’t.”
Somehow those words mattered. A lot. They eased the tension that had been curling in his gut. The bad tension. So all that was left was uncertainty, but he could deal with uncertainty. He could deal with anything with Cara. Which might have been a scarier thought if he’d had any more room in his brain.
“Why are you doing this for me?” It felt like some kind of gift, only he didn’t know what he’d ever done to deserve it.
“Oh, honey, it’s not just for you.” She grasped him and slowly enveloped him in soft heat, an amazing sensation.
He hissed out a breath, some mumble of sounds that didn’t sound like words to his own ears.
He had to press his forehead to her shoulder to keep himself from shaking or saying something stupid. Like, you’re amazing and perfect.
“If you get a little nervous, just do whatever I’m doing to you.” She kissed his neck, his shoulder. She ran her hands over his arms, and then after a few seconds she began to move.
She felt good. Everything about her. Every inch of skin. There was only good.
His hands roamed her body, the same way her hands roamed his. Wherever, sometimes lingering, sometimes brushing over. He dragged his palms down the smooth curve of her back.
“Mmm, calluses.”
She leaned her chest closer to his face, and this was happening. And he wasn’t losing it. No, he was enjoying it. So he ignored the nerves.
Her pace quickened. Her breathing got more rapid, and she leaned in, her mouth to his. He was doing something right, so he kept doing it, palms sliding down her sides to her hips.
“Keep. Doing. That.” She nibbled on the top of his ear. It sent a shot of electricity right through him.
“That’s it.” She increased the pace, faster and faster until she was saying “there, there, there” over and over in his ear.
He couldn’t concentrate anymore. He wanted to be in control. He wanted this to be something she couldn’t laugh at, even though she never would.
He gritted his teeth, holding her hips tighter as she groaned. “Oh, Wes.” She collapsed against him. She sighed, running her fingers through his hair from the base of his scalp upward.
Then she kissed him, fisting her hands in his hair. He was starting to think he was seeing stars. Everything seemed so unreal because she had...
A few more thrusts and he was done, because he’d made her orgasm first. He’d really managed it. The climax washed over him, and Cara wrapped her arms around his neck as he tried to catch his breath. He’d had sex. He was no longer the pathetic thirty-one-year-old virgin.
It was every bit as amazing as he’d ever dreamed, because Cara was amazing. She’d done that. Somehow fixed him.
Which was silly. She hadn’t. The truth had. He’d never told any woman that stuff. Telling her had made this possible, but so had her reaction. The way she’d led him through it as if it wasn’t completely stupid he needed leading.
She breathed heavily against him, arms wrapped around his neck, his cheek pressed against the center of her chest.
But she wasn’t letting go of him, so he didn’t let go of her, either.
* * *
CARA LAY PERFECTLY STILL. In Wes’s bed. In Wes’s arms. For a while, it had been nice. Dozing off with him, all tangled up together. For a while, she’d felt like a freaking queen. She’d given Wes something no one else had.
Dinner forgotten, they’d fallen asleep. Something about the stress and probably lack of sleep the night before had apparently given them both a reason to nod off.
But hours later, she’d woken up with a start when the door to the bedroom creaked. In the dark she could just barely make out the shadow of a dog, probably Phantom.
Then she didn’t feel so great. Because Wes was still a guy who had a therapy dog. A guy with injuries she’d all but forgotten when she’d ridden him into oblivion.
Oh, God, she was terrible. There should have been more talking. More preparing. Talking about what it meant. Did he think she was going to be his girlfriend now? She’d been so focused on sex she hadn’t thought about the other side of sex. Intimacy. Emotion. All those things that got her burned if she ever tried to enter them into the equation.
Life was so much easier when you dated assholes. You never had to worry about hurting their feelings. They were the ones sneaking out at four in the morning. They were the ones purposefully getting caught by their supposed ex-girlfriends.
Ugh. She was not letting herself think about the Kevin fiasco right now. She had to think about how to fix what she’d done to Wes. If he expected things from her now, she’d be powerless to say no. Because she didn’t want to hurt him. Because he was hot and cute rolled into one grumpy, flannelly package.
Then he’d have to dump her when she couldn’t deal with all his baggage, and she’d feel even worse than she already did for not knowing how to be the good, comforting girlfriend.
Get the hell out. Get the hell out.
Carefully, hoping not to wake him, she wriggled out of Wes’s grasp. He rolled o
ver but was back to even, heavy breathing in a second flat.
She had to get up in a few hours and work for the guy. Know what to say. How to act. She had to get out of here. Maybe it was stupid. Maybe it was panic, but she could not wake up with him. She could not wake up and see signs of expectation on his face.
Ugh. She crawled out of bed, doing her best to quietly find her clothes. She could feel Phantom’s eyes on her. Judging her.
He’s a dog. He’s not judging you.
The clock read 4:45 in bright red letters. She could feasibly tell Wes she’d left to take a shower and get ready for work. She could feasibly pretend like nothing had ever happened. Maybe that’s what he wanted? She’d never know, because she’d been too stupid to ask.
She inched through the crack in Wes’s bedroom door, then leaned against the hallway wall and squeezed her eyes shut. She was the girl version of the kind of guy who took a girl’s virginity and ran.
But how could she just face him? Even if he didn’t expect anything, there was an intimacy here. She’d given him something no one ever had. No one. She was it.
Everything in her revolted against the idea that she could possibly be special enough to deserve that.
Such a coward. If only she could be a forward-thinking coward who wouldn’t put herself in this position by seducing the poor guy. Who hadn’t forced the issue. Why hadn’t she thought about this part? The part where you laid down the ground rules. Now she was going to sneak out and reject him?
“I suck.” She needed a glass of water and to clear her head. Maybe get her bag and shoes and bolt. No. She couldn’t do that. Not to Wes. She had to be brave and...talk it out.
Oh, God, run.
When she got to the kitchen, all she could see was the front door. Outside the window was the teeniest tiniest hint of light over the hill to the east.
“Just a breath of fresh air,” she muttered to herself, slipping on her shoes. She didn’t even grab her bag, so she wasn’t bolting.
Yet. No, Cara, you are not going to be a coward. Not now.
She shook her head and opened the door, and then screamed and fell backward at the not-dog animal standing right there.
Of course from her position on the floor, she could make out that it was a sheep. A damn sheep.
“I thought you couldn’t walk very well, you little—”
“Cara.” Wes stumbled into the kitchen, looking bleary-eyed and mussed and cute and wonderful, and oh, she was terrible.
He knelt next to her. “Are you okay?”
She nodded, then pointed at Shrimp. “That a-hole scared me.”
He glanced at Shrimp, then back at her, specifically at her shoes. “You were going?”
“No. No. I was just getting...air.”
He made one of his Wes smiles, but she didn’t count it as a smile. It looked sad. No. No. No sad Wes. “Sure.”
“Really! Look, I don’t even have my purse!”
He got to his feet. “It’s okay, Cara. You can leave if you want. It won’t hurt my feelings.”
“But I wasn’t.”
“Thinking about it, though.” He pulled a glass down from his cabinet, filled it with tap water. He leaned his good hip against the counter, and because of the shadowy dark she couldn’t make out his face.
“Don’t let me keep you.”
“I wasn’t going.” He had to believe that. He had to know...this was her. Like when he’d rejected her and said it was him. His issues. Well, he could buck up and realize she had issues of her own.
“It’s fine.”
She realized she was still sitting on the ground where she’d fallen and pushed to her feet. “It is not fine because I was not leaving.” She wouldn’t let him accuse her of something she hadn’t been actually going to do—just had considered.
He drank his water in silence.
“I wasn’t! I was thinking.”
“About leaving,” he supplied.
“Damn it, Wes. You know what?” She was going to be honest, because he couldn’t judge her for that. Because they had built this little...thing between them on saying uncomfortable truths. On being honest. On freaking out, out loud, instead of buried down so low no one could even guess you were a mess. “I was freaking out a little. Because I would so have sex with you a million times over, but the relationship stuff is not my forte.”
“Were you expecting a marriage proposal?”
She didn’t like the edge to his voice. Not even a little. “No. I just—”
“Then, go. Feel free to go. Did you think it would scar me for life? I’ll survive. You successfully cured me. I owe you one.”
She stared at him openmouthed. So sex could turn all guys into jerks. What had she been thinking? She’d cured him, maybe, in a way of speaking, but of course she’d failed at everything else.
Typical Cara.
You will not cry. Not over this. Not in front of him. But there was a lump in her throat and burning in her eyes, and oh, shit. She had to get it together. “You know, I have my issues, too. Just because yours are bigger, it doesn’t mean mine don’t exist.”
He put the glass down on the counter. No slam. No thud. But then he took a few slow, measured steps toward her, and she almost wished he had slammed it. This was a lot more intimidating.
“I didn’t ask you for anything, Cara. You pushed. You demanded. You...”
Oh, God, how was she getting turned on right now? She was mad at him. But he said her name, and he was all growly. Mmm.
Not allowed! They were having an argument. “I wanted to help, and I did. But I didn’t consider the implications. And maybe I didn’t consider myself, okay? I don’t have the best reputation. I doubt sleeping with my boss is going to help. I wasn’t thinking about me.”
He took a few more steps toward her, and she felt the need to back away. She could kind of make out his intense expression now. Zoomed right in on her.
Hot.
“What do you care about your reputation? It’s a dumb small town with a lot of people who’d do better caring about their own lives rather than obsessing about other people’s.”
“Right. Well. My parents and sisters and soon-to-be brother-in-law all live in that town, and they don’t need Liz Fetter telling them I’m the town slut.”
Finally there was nowhere for her to go. She was trapped against the wall, and he was standing way too close. But he softened at the mention of Liz.
“She’d be wrong.”
“It doesn’t have to be right to hurt.”
“Yeah.” He let out a long breath. “Yeah, I get that.”
Cara couldn’t look at him, because if she did she’d want to jump him. Or cry into his shoulder. So, she stared out the window, watching the sky lighten.
“You said if I did something you didn’t like, you’d tell me,” he said, and when she forced herself to look at him, his eyebrows were drawn together in concentration. “And I couldn’t be wrong, because you’d say no, and it wouldn’t be a big deal. Right?”
“Well, yeah, I—”
And then he kissed her. Grabbed her face like last night, and oh, she did like grabby, but it was sweet this time. Like kissing a scrape.
What was that weird fluttering in her chest? Not nerves. But he pulled his mouth away before she could analyze it.
“I can’t even imagine being in a relationship,” he said, his big hands still cupping her face. “If that’s what you’re worried about. Just because I finally did this doesn’t mean I’m not a mess.”
“You’re wonderful.” It slipped out before she could make it sound less pathetic, but oh, well, maybe Wes deserved some idiot girl being all pathetic over him.
“You must be delirious from taking my virginity.”
She snorted, resisted leaning toward him by sheer force of will. He was wonderful. It didn’t erase his issues, and it really didn’t erase hers but he was.
“I’d get grumpy with any romantic gesture, and I’d never remember an important date. So, may
be it’s just sex, and we’re both okay with that?”
Cara bit her lip, trying to ignore the little sliver of disappointment. She wasn’t disappointed. Not even a little bit. Because she was bad at all that stuff, too. Expectation and hope and future. Nope, she was not that girl.
“So, like, we could keep having sex and not be in any kind of relationship?”
“Yeah. Although, if you want to sleep with someone else, I’d kind of want to know first. But other than that, yeah. What was that word you used? No expectation. No hope. And we’re both fine.”
“Except for the part where we’re emotionally stunted and afraid of relationships?”
“I can only handle one big overcoming-the-odds thing at a time. And I definitely choose sex over fixing my emotional stuntedness.”
“Me. Too.” This would be fine. Better than fine. It would be great.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
WES SAT AGAINST his headboard, watching Cara scurry around his bedroom finding her clothes and, sadly, putting them back on.
He had things to do, too. Though he’d already made his barn rounds when he’d had to put Shrimp back into his pen. There was still his normal routine. Exercise. Shower. There was the everyday work of dog treat making and packaging to be done.
But Cara was pulling on her skinny jeans, then hopping as she pulled on socks. A curtain of light brown hair fell over her face, and the slope of her shoulder with a smattering of freckles was damn near mesmerizing. All the while she mumbled on and on under her breath about being late.
In his room. After sex. He sat and he watched, and he figured if that wasn’t what he was supposed to do, she’d tell him.
He felt lighter than he had in years, even with his hip kind of aching. What was a little hip pain when he had sex with this woman under his belt?
“I may be back here a little late for work.”
Right. She worked for him. She worked for him because he’d thought that would somehow put her in the employee zone. Instead, he’d slept with her.
