Brambleberry House

by RaeAnne Thayne

  Conan obviously didn’t share her sentiments, however. The dog could usually run for miles along the beach at any time of the day or night. But though he had been so insistent earlier, as soon as he had taken care of his pressing need, now he didn’t seem nearly as enthusiastic to be walking. One moment he planted his haunches stubbornly in the sand, the next he tried to tug her back the direction they had come.

  The third time he tried the trick, she gave a tug on the leash. “You don’t know what you want, do you?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do.”

  She looked over at Max and found him watching her in the fading sunlight, a glittery look in his hazel eyes that made her catch her breath.

  “I was talking to Conan,” she murmured. “He’s being stubborn about the walk. I think he’s ready to go back.”

  “Not yet,” Max said quietly.

  Before she could ask him why not, he pulled her against him as the sun slid farther down the horizon.

  All the heat and wonder they had shared the night before during the storm came rushing back like the tide and she couldn’t seem to get enough of him.

  She tried to be careful of his sling and his arm but he lifted the sling out of the way so he could pull her against his chest.

  He kissed her for long moments, until they were both breathing hard and the sun was only a pale rim on the horizon.

  “If we keep this up, we’re going to be stuck down here in the dark and won’t be able to find our way back.”

  “Conan will lead the way,” she murmured against his mouth. “He hasn’t had dinner yet.”

  He laughed roughly and kissed her again. She wrapped her arms around his waist, a slow heat churning through her. She couldn’t seem to get close enough to him, to absorb his hard strength and the safe harbor she felt here.

  She didn’t know how long they stood there accompanied by the murmur of the sea, a salty breeze eddying around them. She would have been quite content to stay all night if Conan hadn’t finally barked with thinly veiled impatience.

  The moon had started to rise above the coastal range, a thin sliver of light, but all was dark and mysterious around them.

  “I guess we should probably head back.”

  She couldn’t see his features but she was quite sure she sensed the same reluctance that was coursing through her.

  Somehow she wasn’t surprised when he pulled a flashlight from his keychain in the pocket of his leather bomber. He was a soldier, no doubt prepared for anything.

  “I don’t have night-vision goggles with me so this will have to do,” Max said. He reached for her hand and they walked back up the beach toward Brambleberry House, whose lights gleamed a welcome in the darkness.

  Her insides jumped wildly with nerves and anticipation. She didn’t want this to end but how could she possibly scramble for the courage to tell him she wanted more?

  They said little as they made their way back home. Even in his silence, though, she sensed he was withdrawing from her, trying to put distance between them again.

  Her instinct was confirmed when they reached the house. She unlocked her apartment and opened the door for Conan to bound inside to find his food. She and Max stood in the foyer and she didn’t miss the tight set of his features.

  Desperate to regain the fleeting closeness, she drew in a shaky breath and lifted her mouth to his again.

  After a moment’s hesitation, he returned the kiss with an almost fierce hunger, until her thoughts whirled and her body strained against him.

  After a long moment, he wrenched his mouth away. “Anna, I need to tell you something.”

  Whatever it was, she didn’t want to hear it. Somehow she knew instinctively it was something she wouldn’t like and right now she couldn’t bear for anything to ruin the magic of this moment.

  “Just kiss me, Max. Please.”

  He groaned softly but after a moment’s hesitation he obliged, tangling his mouth with hers again and again until nothing else mattered but the two of them and the fragile emotions fluttering in her chest.

  “I have been trying to figure out all day how to seduce you,” she admitted softly.

  His laugh was rough and strummed down her nerve endings. “I think it’s safe to say you don’t have to do anything but exist. That’s more seduction than I can handle right now.”

  She smiled with the heady joy rushing through her. He made her feel delicate and beautiful, powerful in a way she had never known before.

  “Come inside,” she said, her voice soft.

  He froze and she knew she didn’t mistake the indecision on his features. “Anna, are you sure?”

  “Please,” she murmured.

  With a ragged sigh, he yanked her against him and an exultant joy surged through her.

  This was right. She was crazy about him, she thought. Head-over-heels crazy about this man.

  She knew he wasn’t going to be here forever, that he wanted to return to active duty as soon as possible and she would be alone again.

  But for now, this moment, he was hers and she wasn’t going to waste this precious chance fate had handed her.

  A soft, silken spell wove around them as they kissed their way inside her bedroom.

  The rest of her house was tasteful and subdued, all whites on wood tones. Her bedroom was different. It was soft and feminine, with lavenders and greens and yellows.

  How was it possible that Max could seem so overwhelmingly masculine amid all the girly stuff, the flounces and frills? she wondered. He had never seemed so dangerously, enticingly male.

  She led the way to her bed, with its filmy white hangings and mounds of pillows. Max looked at the bed for a moment then back at her and his expression was raw with desire.

  “I should probably warn you I haven’t done this in a while. I’ve been redshirted for a while with my injury and before that I was in a country where there wasn’t a hell of a lot of opportunity for extracurricular activities.”

  She couldn’t seem to think with these nerves skating through her. “Good to know. I haven’t, either. My engagement ended five years ago and I haven’t been with anyone else.”

  His eyes darkened, until the pupils nearly obscured the green-gray of the irises.

  “I don’t know if I can take things slowly. At least not the first time.”

  She smiled. “Good.”

  He gave a rough laugh and kissed her again, then lowered her to the bed. “As much as I want nothing more than to take hours undressing you and exploring every inch of that glorious skin, I’m a little clumsy with buttons right now. With this damn cast, I can barely work my own.”

  “I’ve got two hands,” she answered. Her fingers trembled a little as she slowly worked the buttons of her shirt and pulled her arms free. At least she had worn one of her favorite bra-and-panty sets, a lacy creation in the palest peach.

  He swallowed hard. “I definitely don’t think I can take things slowly.”

  He pressed his mouth to her bared shoulder, then trailed kisses along the skin just above the scalloped edge of her bra. She shivered, arching against him as he slid a hand along the bared skin at her waist then up until he touched her intimately through the lace.

  She wanted more. She wanted to feel his skin on hers. He must have shared her hunger because he pulled the sling off, revealing the cast underneath that ran from his wrist to just above his elbow and began working the buttons of his shirt.

  “Let me help,” she said.

  He leaned back to give her more access and she helped him out of his shirt and then went to work on the snaps on his Levi’s.

  “I can take it from here,” he told her.

  In moments, they were both naked and he was everything she might have dreamed, all hard muscles and lean strength.

  Then she
caught her first view of the full extent of his injuries and her heart turned over in her chest.

  For some reason, she had thought the damage was contained to his arm and shoulder. But rough, red-looking burns spread out from his collarbone to his pectoral muscles on the right side, crisscrossed by scars that were still blinding white against his skin.

  “Oh, Max,” she breathed.

  Regret slid across his features. “I should have kept my shirt on. I’m so used to it by now I forget how ugly it is.”

  “No. No, you shouldn’t have. I am so sorry you had to go through that.”

  She pressed her mouth just above the raw-looking skin at the spot where his shoulder met his neck, then again in the hollow above his collarbone.

  “Does it hurt?”

  He looked as if he wanted to deny it but he finally shrugged. “Sometimes. Right now, no. Right now, all I can think about is the incredibly sexy woman in my arms. Come up here and kiss me.”

  “Absolutely, Lieutenant,” she said with a smile and settled in his arms.

  They kissed and touched for a long time, exploring all the planes and hollows and secret places while those tensile emotions twisted through her, wrapping her closer to him.

  He said he couldn’t take things slowly but it seemed to her their teasing and touching lasted for hours. At last, when she wasn’t sure she could endure another moment, he braced above her on his left forearm and he entered her.

  She gasped his name and tightened her arms around him, hunger soaring inside her like bright, colorful kites on the wild air currents of the beach.

  Had she ever known this sense of wonder, the feeling of completion, that scattered pieces of herself had only right this moment fallen into place?

  She was floating higher and higher, her heart as light as air as he moved inside her, slowly at first and then faster, his mouth hard and urgent on hers with a possessive stamp that thrilled her to the core.

  She held tight to him, her body rising to meet his, and then he pushed slightly harder and she gasped suddenly as she broke free of gravity and went soaring into the air.

  He groaned her name, then with one last powerful surge he joined her.

  Oh, heaven. This was heaven. She held him tightly as a delicious lassitude slid over her.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  ABIGAIL WOULD HAVE APPROVED.

  Anna lay next to Max, her arm across him, feeling his chest rise and fall with each slow, steady breath as he slept. Pale moonlight filtered in through her open window and played across his features, and she thought how vulnerable he looked in sleep, years younger than the hard-eyed soldier he appeared at times.

  Abigail would have loved him. She didn’t quite know why she was so certain but somehow she knew her friend would have been quick to include him in the loose circle of friends that Sage had called her lost sheep—people who were lonely or tired or grieving or who just needed to know someone else believed in them.

  Max would have been drawn into that circle, whether he wanted it or not. Abigail would have taken him in, would have filled him with good food to ease all the hollows from those months in the hospital. If he ended up leaving the army, Abigail would have been right there helping him figure out his place in the world.

  He made a soft sound in his sleep and her arm tightened around him. She rested her cheek against his smooth, hard chest, astonished at the sense of peace she found here in his arms, the tenderness that seemed to wind through her with silken ties.

  She was in love with him.

  The truth shimmered through her, bright and stunning, and she drew in a sharp breath, astonished and suddenly terrified.

  Love. That wasn’t in the plan. She was supposed to be having a casual fling, nothing more. The man had made no secret of his plans to leave as soon as he could. This whole situation seemed destined for disaster.

  He wasn’t the stick-around type. He couldn’t have made that more plain. He had told her himself that he considered his base in Iraq more of a home than anywhere else he had lived. She remembered how sad that had seemed when he told her. It was even more tragic now that she had come to know him better, since she had seen a certain yearning in his eyes when he looked at Brambleberry House.

  He needs a home. A place to belong. That’s what he’s always needed.

  The words whispered into her mind and she frowned. Why on earth would such a thought even enter her mind, let alone with such firm assurance? It made absolutely no sense, but she couldn’t shake the unswerving conviction that Harry Maxwell needed Brambleberry House, maybe more even than she did.

  She couldn’t make him stay. She knew that with the same conviction. She might want him to, with sudden, fierce desperation, but she couldn’t hold him here.

  When his shoulder healed, he would return to his unit, to his helicopter, and would go wherever he was needed, no matter how dangerous.

  Even if his arm didn’t heal as well as he hoped, she couldn’t see him sticking around. Brambleberry House was a temporary stop on his life’s journey and there was nothing she could do to change that.

  She sighed, just a tiny breath of air, but it was enough to awaken him. Watching him come back to consciousness was a fascinating experience. No doubt it was the soldier in him but he didn’t ease into wakefulness, he just instantly blinked his eyes open.

  Her brothers always told her she did the same thing—one minute, she could be in deep REM sleep, the next she was wide-awake and ready to rock and roll.

  They used to tease her that she slept with the proverbial one eye open, as if she was afraid one of them would sneak into her room during the night and steal her dolls. Not that she ever had many, but could she help it if she liked to protect what little she had from pesky older brothers?

  “Hi,” Max murmured, a sexy rasp to his voice, and Anna forgot all about brothers and dolls and sleeping.

  “Hi yourself.” She smiled, determined to savor every single moment she had with him. Why waste time wishing he could be a different sort of man, the kind who might be happy rattling around an old house like this for the rest of his life?

  “Have I been asleep long?”

  She shook her head. “A half hour, maybe.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to doze off on you.”

  “I didn’t mind. It was...nice.” A major understatement, but she wasn’t about to risk scaring him off by revealing just how much she had treasured a quiet moment to savor being in his arms.

  He gazed down at her, an oddly tender expression in his hazel eyes that stole her breath and left her stomach doing cartwheels again.

  “It has been. Everything. I never expected this, Anna. You have to know that.”

  She smiled, her heart full and light. “I didn’t, either. But a gift can be all the more rare and precious when it’s unexpected.”

  “Is that more of Abigail’s wisdom?”

  “No. Just mine.”

  With surprising dexterity, he tugged her with his left arm so she was lying across his chest, then he twisted his hand in her hair so he could angle her mouth to meet his kiss. “You are a wise woman, Anna Galvez.”

  She smiled. “I don’t know about that. But I’m learning.”

  They kissed and touched and explored for a long time there in the dark, quiet intimacy of her room. At last he pulled her atop him, letting her set the pace.

  Their first union had been all heat and fire. This was slower, sweet and sexy and tender all at the same time.

  I love you.

  She almost blurted the words just before she found release again, but she caught them in her throat before she could do something so foolish.

  He wasn’t ready to hear them yet—and she wasn’t sure she was ready to say them.

  * * *

  IT TOOK A long time for his he
artbeat to slow back to anything resembling a normal pace. He lay in the dark watching the moonlight dance across the room and listening to Anna breathe beside him.

  The soft tenderness seeping through his insides scared the hell out of him.

  This wasn’t supposed to happen. He wasn’t supposed to care so much. But somehow this woman, with her tough shell that he had discovered hid a fragile, vulnerable core, had become fiercely important to him.

  She soothed him. He didn’t know how she did it but these last few days with her had been filled with a quiet peace he only now realized had been missing since his helicopter crashed.

  He had been so damn restless since he was injured. But with Anna, the future didn’t seem like a scary place anymore. She made him think he could handle whatever came along.

  Except telling her the truth.

  He let out a long, slow breath, guilt pinching away at the tranquility of the moment. He had to tell her Abigail was his aunt. The very fact that he was lying in her bed having this conversation with himself while she was naked and warm in his arms was evidence that he had allowed the deception to go on far too long.

  But how, exactly, was he supposed to tell her that now? She would be furious and hurt, especially after they had shared this.

  He stared up at the ceiling, trying to figure out his options. He ached at the idea of hurting her but he couldn’t see any way out of it. Maybe it would be best all the way around if he just left town before this could go on any further.

  She would be hurt and baffled if he suddenly disappeared. But what would hurt her more—wondering why he left or discovering he had deceived her, that he had slept with her under false pretenses?

  What he had done was unconscionable. He could fool himself that his intentions had been honorable, that he had only wanted to make sure Abigail had been competent in her last wishes when she left the house to Anna and Sage Benedetto. He had been compelled to do something, if only to assuage his own guilt over his negligence these last few years.

  Then he had come to Brambleberry House and Anna had made Abigail’s French toast for him and bandaged his wounds and kissed him senseless and everything had become so damn tangled.