Take Me, Cowboy (10 page)

They had opened the lid on Pandora's box. And they couldn't close it until they had examined every last dirty, filthy sin inside of it.

Even though she thought it might kill her, she knew that they couldn't stop now.

He tore open the condom, positioning the protection over the blunt head of his arousal, rolling it down slowly.

She was transfixed. The sight of his own hand on his shaft so erotic she could hardly stand it.

She would pay good money to watch him shower, to watch his hands slide over all those gorgeous muscles. To watch him take himself in hand and lead himself to completion.

Oh, yeah. That was now her number-one fantasy. Which was a problem, because it was a fantasy that would never be fulfilled.

Don't think about that now. Don't think about it ever.

He leaned in, kissing her, guiding her so that she was lying down on the couch, then he positioned himself between her legs, testing the entrance to her body before thrusting forward and filling her completely.

She closed her eyes tight, unable to handle the feeling of being invaded by him, both in body and in her soul.

“Look at me,” he said.

And once more, she was completely helpless to do anything other than obey.

She opened her eyes, her gaze meeting his, touching her down deep, where his hands never could.

And then he kissed her, soft, gentle. That kind of tenderness that had been missing from her life for so long. The kind that she had always been too embarrassed to ask for from anyone. Too embarrassed to show that she needed. That she desperately craved.

But Chase knew. Because he was Chase. He just knew.

He flexed his hips again, his pelvis butting up against her, sending a shower of sparks through her body. There was no way she was ready to come again. Except he kept moving, creating new sensations inside of her, deeper than what had come before.

It shouldn't be possible for her to have another orgasm now. Not after the first one had stripped her so completely. But apparently tonight, nothing was impossible.

There was something different about this. About the two of them, working toward pleasure together. This wasn't just her giving it out to him, or him reciprocating. This was something they were sharing.

She focused on pieces of him. The intensity in his eyes. The way the tendons in his neck stood out, evidence of the control he was exerting. She looked at his hand, up by her head, grabbing hold of one of the blankets she had been using, clinging tightly to it, as though it were his lifeline.

She looked down at his throat, at the pulse beating there.

All these close, intimate snapshots of this man that she knew better than anyone else.

Her chest felt heavy, swollen, and then it began to expand. She was convinced that she was going to break apart. All of these feelings, all of this pleasure. It was just too much. She couldn't handle it.

“Please,” she begged. “Please.”

He released his grip on the blanket to grasp her hips, holding her steady as he pounded harder into her, as he pounded them both toward release. Toward salvation. It was too much. It needed to end. It was all she could think. She was begging him inside.
End it, Chase. Please, end it.

Orgasm latched on to her throat like a wild beast, gripping her hard, violently, shaking her, pleasure exploding over her. Ugly. Completely and totally beyond control.

And then Chase let out a hoarse cry, freezing above her as he thrust inside her one last time, shivering, shaking as his own release took hold.

They were captive to it together. Powerless to do anything but wait until the savage beast was finished having its way. Until it was ready to move on.

And when it was over, only the two of them were left.

Just the two of them. Chase and Anna. No clothes, no shields.

She remembered the real reason she hadn't had sex since that first time. It had nothing to do with how good or bad it had felt. Nothing to do with what a jerk she'd been after.

It had been this. This feeling of being unable to hide. But with the other guy, it had been easy to regroup. Easy to pretend she felt nothing.

She couldn't do that with Chase. She was defenseless.

And for the first time in longer than she could remember, a tear slid down her cheek.

Eight

H
e couldn't swear creatively enough. He had just screwed his best friend's brains out on a couch in her living room. On top of what might be the world's friendliest, most nonsexual-looking blanket. With a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical on the TV in the background.

And then she had started crying. She had started crying, and she had wiggled out from beneath him and gone into the bathroom. Leaving him alone.

He had been sitting there by himself for a full thirty seconds attempting to reconcile all of these things.

And then he sprang into action.

He got up—still bare-ass naked—and walked down the hall. “Anna!” He didn't hear anything. And so he pounded on the bathroom door. “Anna!”

“I'm in the bathroom, dumbass!” came the terse, watery reply.

“I know. That's why I'm knocking on the bathroom door.”

“Go away.”

“No. I'm not going to go away. You need to talk to me.”

“I don't want to talk.”

“Anna, dammit, did I hurt you?”

He got nothing in return but silence. Then he heard the lock rattle, and the door opened a crack. One green eye looked up at him, accusing. “No.”

“Why are you hiding?” He studied the eye more closely. It was red-rimmed. Definitely still weeping a little bit.

“I don't know,” she said.

“Well...you had me convinced that I... Anna, it happened really fast.”

“Not
that
fast. Believe me, I've had faster.”

“You wanted all of that...? I mean...”

She laughed. Actually laughed, pushing the door open a little bit wider. “After my emphatic... After all the
yes-ing
... You can honestly ask whether or not I wanted it?”

“I have a lot of sex,” he said. “I don't see any point in beating around the bush there. And women have had a lot of reactions to the sex. But I can honestly say none of them have ever run away crying. So, yeah, I'm feeling a little bit shaky right now.”

“You're shaky? I'm the one that's crying.”

“And if I was alone in this...if I pushed you further than you wanted to go...I'm going to have to ask Sam to fire up the forge and prepare you a red-hot poker so you can have your way with me in an entirely different manner.”

“I wanted it, Chase.” Her tone was muted.

“Then why are you crying?”

“I'm not very experienced,” she said.

“Well, I mean, I know you don't really hook up.”

“I've had sex once. One other time.”

He was stunned. Stunned enough that he was pretty sure Anna could have put her index finger on his chest, given a light push and knocked him flat on his ass. “Once.”

“Sure. You remember Corbin. And that whole fiasco. Where I kind of made fun of his...lack of...attributes and staying power in the hall at school. And...basically ensured that no guy would ever touch me ever again.”

“Right.” He remembered that.

“Well, I didn't really get what the fuss was about.”

“But you... I mean, you've had...”

“Orgasms? Yes. Almost every day of my life. Because I am industrious, and red-blooded, and self-sufficient.”

He cleared his throat, trying to ignore the shot of heat that image sent straight through his blood. Anna. Touching herself.

What the hell was happening to him? Well, there was nothing happening. It had damn well
happened
. On the couch in Anna's living room.

He could never look at her again without seeing her there, obeying his orders. Spreading her thighs for him so that he could get a good look at her. Yeah, he could never unsee that. Wasn't sure if he wanted to. But where the hell did he go from here? Where did they go?

There were a lot of women he could have sex with, worry-free. Anna wasn't one of them. She was a rare, precious thing in his life. Someone who knew him. Who knew all about how affected he and Sam had been by the loss of their parents.

Someone he never had to explain it to because she'd been there.

He didn't like explaining all that. So the solution was keep the friends that were there when it happened, and make sure everyone else was temporary.

Which meant Anna couldn't be temporary. She was part of him. Part of his life. A load-bearing wall on the structure that was Chase McCormack. Remove her, and he would crumble.

That was why she had always stayed a friend. Why he had never done anything like this with her before. It wasn't because of her coveralls, or her don't-step-on-the-grass demeanor. Or even because she'd neatly neutered the reputation of the guy she'd slept with in high school.

It was because he needed her friendship, not her body.

But the problem was now he knew what she looked like naked.

He couldn't get that image out of his head. And he didn't even want to.

Same with the image of all her self-administered, industrious climaxes.

Damn his dirty mind.

“Okay,” he said, taking a step away from the door. “Why don't you come out?”

“I'm naked.”

“So am I.”

She looked down. “So you are.”

“We need to talk.”

“Isn't it women who are supposed to require conversation after basic things like sex?”

“I don't know. Because I never stick around long enough to find out. But this is different. This is you and me, Anna, and I will be damned if I let things get messed up over a couple of orgasms.”

She chewed her lower lip. She looked...well, she looked young. And she didn't look too tough. It made him ache. “They were pretty good ones.”

“Are you all right?”

“I'm fine. It's just that all of this is a little bit weird. And I'm not really experienced enough to pretend that it isn't.”

“Right.” The whole thing about her having been with only one guy kind of freaked him out. Made him feel like he was responsible for some things. Big things, like what she would think of sex from this day forward. And then there was the bone-deep possessiveness. That he was the first one in all this time... He should hate it. It should scare him. It should not make him feel...triumph.

He was triumphant, dammit. “Why haven't you slept with anyone else?”

She lifted a shoulder. “I told you. I didn't really think my first experience was that great.”

“So you just never...”

“I'm also emotionally dysfunctional, in case you hadn't noticed.”

A shocked laugh escaped his lips. “Right. Same goes.”

“I don't know. Sex kind of weirds me out. It's a lot of closeness.”

“It doesn't have to be,” he pointed out. It felt like a weird thing to say, though, because what they'd done just now had been the epitome of closeness.

“It just all feels...raw. And...it was good. But I think that's kind of why it bothered me.”

“I don't want it to bother you.”

“Well, the other thing is it was
you
. You and me, like you said. We don't do things like this. We hang out, we drink beer. We don't screw.”

“Turns out we're pretty compatible when it comes to the screwing.” He wasn't entirely sure this was the time to make light of what had just happened. But he was at sea here. So he had to figure out some way to talk to her. He figured he would make his best effort to treat her like he always did.

“Yeah,” she said, finally pushing her way out of the bathroom. “But I'm not really sure there's much we can do with that.”

He felt like he was losing his grip on something, something essential, important. Like he was on a rope precariously strung across the canyon, trying to hang on and not fall to his doom. Not fall to
their
doom, since she was right there with him.

What she was saying should feel like safety. It didn't. It felt like the bottom of the damn canyon.

“I don't know if that's the way to handle it.”

“You don't?” she asked, blinking.

Apparently. He hadn't thought that statement through before it had come out of his mouth. “Yeah. Look, you kissed me yesterday. You gave me...oral pleasure earlier. And now we've had sex. Obviously, this isn't going away. Obviously, there's some attraction between us that we've never really acknowledged before.”

“Or,” she said, “someone cast a spell on us. Yeah, we drank some kind of sex potion. Makes you horny for twenty-four hours and then goes away.”

“Sex potion?”

“It's either that or years of repressed lust, Chase. Pick whichever one makes you most comfortable.”

“I would go with sex potion if I thought such a thing existed.” He took a deep breath. “You know there's a lot of people that think men and women can't just be friends. And I've always thought that was stupid. Maybe this is why. Maybe it's because eventually, something happens. Eventually, the connection can't just be platonic. Not when you've spent so long in each other's company. Not when you're both reasonably attractive and single.”

She snorted. “
Reasonably
attractive. What happened to me being a
damn miracle
?”

“I was referring to myself when I said reasonably. I'd hate to sound egotistical.”

“Honestly, Chase, after thirty years of accomplished egotism, why worry about it now?”

He looked down at her. She was stark naked, standing in front of him, and he felt like he was in front of the pastry display case at Pie in the Sky. He wanted to sample everything, and he didn't know where to start.

But he couldn't do anything about that now. He was trying to make amends. Dropping to his knees in front of her and burying his face between her legs probably wouldn't help with that.

He could feel his dick starting to wake up again. And since he was naked he might as well just go ahead and shout his intentions at her, because he wouldn't be able to hide them.

He couldn't look at her and not get hard, though. A new development in their relationship. But then, so was standing in front of each other without clothes.

“You're beautiful,” he said, unable to help himself.

She wasn't as curvy as the women he usually gravitated toward. Her curves were restrained, her waist slim, with no dramatic sweep inward, just a slow build down to those wide, gorgeous hips that he now had fantasies about grabbing hold of while he pumped into her from behind. Her breasts were small but perfection in his mind. More would just be more.

He couldn't really imagine how he had ever looked at her face and found it plain. He had to kick his own ass mentally for that. He had been blind. Someone with unrefined, cheap taste. Who thought that if you stuck rhinestones and glitter on something, that meant it was prettier. But that wasn't Anna. She was simple, refined beauty. Something that only a connoisseur might appreciate. She was like a sunset over the ocean in comparison to a gaudy ballroom chandelier. Both had their strong points. But one was real, deep. Priceless instead of expensive.

That was Anna.

Something about those thoughts made a tightening sensation start in his gut and work its way up to his chest.

“Maybe what happened was just inevitable,” he said, looking at her again.

“I can't really disprove that,” she said, shifting uncomfortably. “You know, since it happened. I really need to put my clothes on.”

“Do you have to?”

She frowned. “Yes. And you do, too. Because if we don't...”

“We'll have sex again.”

The words stood between them, stark and far too true for either of their liking.

“Probably not,” she said, sounding wholly unconvinced.

“Definitely yes.”

She sighed heavily. “Chase, you can have sex with anyone you want. I'm definitely hard up. If you keep walking around flashing that thing, I'm probably going to hop on for a ride, I'll just be honest with you. But I understand if I'm not half as irresistible to you as you are to me.”

Anger roared through him, suddenly, swiftly. And just like earlier, when she'd thrown her walls up and tried to drive a wedge between them, he found himself moving toward her. Moving to break through. He growled, backing her up against the wall, almost sighing in relief when his hardening cock met up with her soft skin, when her small breasts pressed against his chest. He grabbed hold of her hands, drawing them together and lifting them up over her head. “Let's get one thing straight, Anna,” he said. “You are irresistible to me. If you weren't irresistible to me, I would still be at home. I never would have come here. I never would have kissed you. I never would have touched you. Don't you dare put yourself down. If this is because of your brothers, because of your dad...”

She closed her eyes, looking away from him. “Don't. It's not that.”

“Then what is it? Why don't you think you can have this?”

“There's nothing to have. It's just sex. You mean the world to me. And just because I'm...suddenly unable to handle my hormones, I'm not going to compromise our friendship.”

“It doesn't have to compromise it,” he said, lowering his voice.

“What are you suggesting? We can't have a relationship with each other. We don't have those kinds of feelings for each other. A relationship is more than sex. It's romance and all kinds of stuff that I'm not even sure I want.”

“I don't want it, either,” he said. “But we're going to see each other. Pretty much every day. Not just because of the stupid bet. Not just because of the charity event. I'd call all that off right now if I thought it was going to ruin our friendship. But the horse has left the stable, Anna, well and truly. It's not going back in.” He rolled his hips forward, and she gasped. “See what I mean? And if you were resistible? Then sure, I would tell you that we could just be done. We could pretend it didn't happen. But you're not. So I can't.”