CHAPTER TWELVE
THEY DRESSED AND drove across the property in Chase’s truck. His heart was still hammering like crazy, and he had no idea what the hell he was doing. But then, it was Anna. She wasn’t some random hookup. He wanted her again, and having her spend the night seemed like the best way to accomplish that.
He ignored the little terror claws that wrapped themselves around his heart and squeezed, and focused instead on the heavy sensation in his gut. In his dick. He wanted her, and dammit, he was going to have her.
The image of her dancing in front of him in the shop...that would haunt him forever. And it was his goal to collect a few more images that would make his life miserable when their physical relationship ended.
That was normal.
He parked the truck, then got out, following Anna mutely up the steps. When they got to the door, Anna paused.
“I don’t...have anything with me. No porcupine pajamas.”
Some of the tension in his chest eased. “You won’t need pajamas in my bed,” he said, his voice low, almost unrecognizable even to himself.
Which was fair enough, since this whole damn situation was unrecognizable. Saying this kind of stuff to Anna. Seeing her like this. Wanting her like this.
She was a constant. She was stability. And he felt shaky as hell right now.
“I’ve never spent the night with anyone,” she blurted.
The words hit him hard in the chest. Along with the realization that this was a first for him, too. He knew it, logically. But for some reason it hadn’t seemed momentous when he’d issued the invitation. Because it was Anna and sleeping with her had seemed like the most natural thing on earth. He liked talking to her, liked kissing her, liked having sex with her, and he didn’t want her to leave. So the obvious choice was to ask her to stay the night.
Now it was hitting him, though. What that usually meant. Why he didn’t do it.
But it was too late to take the invitation back, and anyway, he didn’t know if he wanted to.
“I haven’t, either,” he said.
She blinked. “You...haven’t? I mean, I had a ten-minute roll in the hay—literally—with a loser in high school, so I know why I’ve never spent the night with anyone. But you...you do this a lot.”
“Are you calling me a slut?”
“Yes,” she said, deadpan. “No judgment, but yeah, you’re kind of slutty.”
“Well, you don’t have to spend the night with someone when you’re done with them. I guess that’s why I haven’t. Because I am kind of slutty, and it has nothing to do with liking the person I’m with. Just...”
Oblivion. The easiest, most painless connection on earth with no risk involved whatsoever.
But he wasn’t going to say that.
Anna wasn’t oblivion. Being with her was like...being inside his own skin, really in it, and feeling it, for the first time since he was sixteen.
Like driving eighty miles per hour on the same winding road that had killed his parents, daring it to come for him, too. He’d felt alive then. Alive and pushing up against the edge of mortality as hard as he could.
Then he’d backed way off the gas. And he’d backed way off ever since.
This was the closest thing to tasting that surge of adrenaline, that rush he’d felt since the day he’d basically begged the road to take him, too.
You’re a head case.
Yes, he was. But he’d always known that. Anna hadn’t, though.
“Just?” she asked, eyebrows shooting up. She wasn’t going to let that go, apparently.
“It’s just sex.”
“And what is this?” she asked, gesturing between the two of them.
“Friendship,” he said honestly. “With some more to it.”
“Those benefits.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Those.”
He shoved his hands in his pockets, feeling like he’d just failed at something, and he couldn’t quite figure out what. But his words were flat in the evening air. Just sort of dull and resting between them, wrong and weird, but he didn’t know what to do about it.
Because he didn’t know what else to say, either.
“Want to come inside?” he asked finally.
“That is where your bed is,” she said.
“It is.”
They made their way to the bedroom, and somehow it all felt different. He could easily remember when she’d been up here just last week, walking in those heels and that dress. When he’d been overwhelmed with the need to touch her, but wouldn’t allow himself to do so.
He could also remember being in here with her plenty of times before. Innocuous as sharing the space with any friend.
How? How had they ever existed in silences that weren’t loaded? In moments that weren’t wrapped in tension. In isolation that didn’t present the very tempting possibility of chasing pleasure together. Again and again.
This wasn’t friendship plus benefits. That implied the friendship remained untouched and the benefits were an add-on. Easy to stick there, easy to remove. But that wasn’t the case.
Everything was different. The air around them had changed. How the hell could he pretend the friendship was the same?
“I’m just—” She smiled sheepishly and pulled her shirt up over her head. “Sorry.” Then she unhooked her bra, tossing it onto the floor. He hadn’t had a chance to look at her breasts the last time they’d had sex. She’d kept them covered. Something that had added nicely to the tease back in the shop. But he was ready to drop to his knees and give thanks for their perfection now.
“Why are you apologizing for flashing me?”
“Because. In the absence of pajamas I need to get comfortable now.” She stripped her shorts off, and her underwear—those shocking black panties that he simply hadn’t seen coming, much like the rest of her—and then she flopped down onto his bed. He didn’t often bring women back here.
Sometimes, depending on the circumstances, but if they had a hotel room, or their own place available, that was his preference. So it was a pretty unusual sight in general. A naked woman in his room. Anna, in this familiar place—naked and warm and about as inviting as anything had ever been—was enough to make his head explode.
His head, and other places.
“You never have to apologize for being naked.” He stripped his shirt off, then continued to follow her lead, until he was wearing nothing.
He lay down beside her, not touching her, just looking at her. This was hella weird. If a woman was naked, he was usually having sex with her, bottom line. He didn’t lie next to one, simply looking at her. Right now, Anna was something like art and he just wanted to admire her. Well, that wasn’t all he wanted. But it was what he wanted right now. To watch the soft lamplight cast a warm glow over her curves, to examine every dip and hollow on the map of her figure. To memorize the rosy color of her nipples, the dark hair at the apex of her thighs. The sweet flare of her hips and the slight roundness of her stomach. She was incredible. She was Anna. Right now, she was his.
That thought made his stomach tighten. How long had it been since something was his?
This place would always be McCormack, through and through. The foundation of the forge and the business...it was built on his great-grandfather’s back, carried down by his grandfather, handed to their father.
And he and Sam carried it now.
This ranch would always be something they were bound to by blood, not by choice. Even if given the choice, he could probably never leave. Their family... It didn’t feel like their family anymore. It hadn’t for a lot of years.
It was two of them, him and Sam. Two of them trying so damn hard to push this legacy back to where it had been. To make their family extend beyond these walls, beyond these borders. To fulfill all of the promises he’d made to his dad, even though the old man had never actually heard them.
Even though Chase had made them too late.
And so there was something about that. Anna, this moment, being for him. Something that he chose, instead of something that he’d inherited.
“I like when you look at me like that,” she said, her voice hushed.
“I like when you take control like you did back in the shop. I like seeing you realize how beautiful you are,” he said. It was true. He was glad that she knew now. And pissed that she was going to take that knowledge and work her magic on some other man with her newfound power. He wanted to kill that man.
But he could never hope to take his place, so he wouldn’t.
“You’re the first person who has made me feel like it all fit. And maybe it’s because you’re my friend. Maybe it’s because you know me,” she said.
“I don’t follow.”
“I had to be tough,” she said, her tone demonstrating just that. “All my life I’ve had to be tough. My brothers raised me, and they did a damn good job, and I know you think they’re jerks, and honestly a lot of the time they are. But they were young boys who were put in charge of taking care of their kid sister. So they took care of me, but they tortured me in that way only brothers can. Probably because I tortured them in ways that most little sisters could never dream. They didn’t go out in high school. They had to make sure I was taken care of. They didn’t trust my dad to do it. He wasn’t stable enough. He would go out to the bar and get drunk, and he would call needing a ride home. They handled things so that I didn’t have to. And I never felt like I could make their lives more difficult by showing how hard it was for me.”
She shifted, sighing heavily before she continued. “And then there was my dad. He didn’t know what to do with a daughter. As pissed as he was that his wife left, I think in some ways he was relieved, because he didn’t have to figure out how to fit a woman into his life anymore. But then I kind of started becoming a woman. And he really didn’t know what to do. So I learned how to work on cars. I learned how to talk about sports. I learned how to fit. Even though it pushed me right out of fitting when it came to school. When it came to making friends.”
He knew these things about Anna. Knew them because he’d absorbed them by being in her house, being near her, for fifteen years. But he’d never heard her say them. There was something different about that.
“You’ve always fit with me, Anna,” he said, his voice rough.
“I know. And even though we’ve never talked about this, I’m pretty sure somehow you knew all of it. You always have. Because you know me. And you accept me. Not very many people know about the musicals. Because it always embarrassed me. Kind of a girlie thing.”
“I guess so,” he said, the words feeling inadequate.
“Also, it was my thing. And...I never like anyone to know how much I care about things. I... My mom loved old musicals,” she said, her voice soft. “Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to watch them with her.”
“Anna...”
“I remember sneaking out of my room at night, seeing the TV flickering in the living room. She would be watching The Sound of Music or Cinderella. Oklahoma! of course. And I would just hang there in the hall. But I didn’t want to interrupt. Because by the end of the day she was always out of patience, and I knew she didn’t want any of the kids to talk to her. But it was kind of like watching them with her.” Anna’s eyes filled with tears. “But now I just wish I had. I wish I had gone in and sat next to her. I wish I had risked her being upset with me. I never got the chance. She left, and that was it. So, maybe she would’ve been mad at me, or maybe she wouldn’t have let me watch them with her. But at least I would’ve had the answer. Now I just wonder. I just remember that space between us. Me hiding in the hall, and her sitting on the couch. She never knew I was there. Maybe if I’d done a better job of connecting with her, she wouldn’t have left.”
“That’s not true, Anna.”
“She didn’t have anyone to watch the movies with, Chase. And my dad was so... I doubt he ever gave her a damn scrap of tenderness. But maybe I could have. I think... I think that’s what I was always trying to do with my dad. To make up for that. It was too late to make her stay, but I thought maybe I could hang on to him.”
Chase tried to breathe past the tightness in his chest, but it was nearly impossible. “Anna,” he said, “any parent that chooses to leave their child...the issue is with them. It was your parents’ marriage. It was your mom. I don’t know. But it was never you. It wasn’t you not watching a movie with her, or irritating her or making her angry. There was never anything you could do.”
She nodded, a tear tracking down her pale cheek. “I do know that.”
“But you still beat yourself up for it.”
“Of course I do.”
He didn’t have a response to that. She said it so matter-of-factly, as though there was nothing else but to blame herself, even if it made no sense. He had no response because he understood. Because he knew what it was like to twist a tragedy in a thousand different ways to figure out how you could take it on yourself. He knew what it was like to live your life with a gaping hole where someone you loved should be. To try to figure out how you could have stopped the loss from happening.
In the years since his parents’ accident he had moved beyond blame. Not because he was stronger than Anna, just because you could only twist death in so many different directions. It was final. And it didn’t ask you. It just was. Blaming himself would have been a step too far into martyrdom.
Still, he knew about lingering scars and responses to those scars that didn’t make much sense.
But he didn’t know what it was like to have a parent choose to leave you. God knew his parents never would have chosen to abandon their sons.
As if she’d read his mind, Anna continued. “She’s still out there. I mean, as far as I know. She could have come back. Anytime. I just feel like if I had given her even a small thing...well, then, maybe she would have missed me enough at some point. If she’d had anything back here waiting for her, she could have called. Just once.”
“You were you,” he said. “If that wasn’t enough for her...fuck her.”
She laughed and wiped another tear from her face. Then she shifted, moving closer to him. “I appreciate that.” She paused for a moment, kissing his shoulder, then she continued. “It’s amazing. I’ve never told you that before. I’ve never told anyone that before. It’s just kind of crazy that we could know each other for so long and...there’s still more we don’t know.”
He wanted to tell her then. About the day his parents died. About the complete and total hole it had torn in his life. She knew to a degree. They had been friends when it happened. He had been sixteen, and Sam had been eighteen, and the loss of everything they knew had hit so hard and fast that it had taken them out at the knees.
He wanted to tell her about his nightmares. Wanted to tell her about the last conversation he’d had with his dad.
But he didn’t.
“Amazing” was all he said instead.
Then he leaned over and kissed her, because he couldn’t think of anything else to do, couldn’t think of anything else to say.
Liar.
A thousand things he wanted to tell her swirled around inside of him. A thousand different things she didn’t know. That he had never told anybody. But he didn’t want to open himself up like that. He just... He just couldn’t.
So instead, he kissed her, because that he could do. Because of all the changes that existed between them, that was the one he was most comfortable with. Holding her, touching her. Everything else was too big, too unknown to unpack. He couldn’t do it. Didn’t want to do it.
But he wanted to kiss her. Wanted to run his hands over her bare curves. So he did.
He touched her, tasted her, made her scream. Because of all the things that were happening in his life, that felt right.
This was...well, it was a detour. The best one he’d ever taken, but a detour all the same. He was building the family business, like he had promised his dad he would do. Or like he should have promised him when he’d had the chance. He might never have been able to tell the old man to his face, but he’d promised it to his grave. A hundred times, a thousand times since he’d died.
That was what he had to do. That was on the other side of making love with Anna. Going to that benefit with her all dressed up, trying to help her get the kind of reputation she wanted. To send her off with all her newfound skills so that she could be with another man after.
To knuckle down and take the McCormack family ranch back to where it had been. Beyond. To make sure that Sam used his talents, to make sure that the forge and all the work their father had done to build the business didn’t go to waste.
To prove that the fight he’d had with his father right before he died was all angry words and teenage bluster. That what he’d said to his old man wasn’t real.
He didn’t hate the ranch. He didn’t hate the business. He didn’t hate their name. He was their name, and damn him for being too young and stupid to see it then.
He was proving it now by pouring all of his blood, all of his sweat, all of his tears into it. By taking the little bit of business acumen he had once imagined might get him out of Copper Ridge and applying it to this place. To try to make it something bigger, something better. To honor all the work their parents had invested all those years.
To finish what they’d started.
He might not have ever made a commitment to a woman, but this ranch, McCormack Iron Works...was his life. That was forever.
It was the only forever he would ever have.
He closed those thoughts out, shut them down completely and focused on Anna. On the sweet scent of her as he lowered his head between her thighs and lapped at her, on the feel of her tight channel pulsing around his fingers as he stroked them in and out. And finally, on the tight, wet clasp of her around him as he slid home.
Home. That’s really what it was.
In a way that nowhere else had ever been. The ranch was a memorial to people long dead. A monument that he would spend the rest of his life building.
But she was home. She was his.
If he let her, she could become everything.
No.
That denial echoed in his mind, pushed against him as he continued to pound into her, hard, deep, seeking the oblivion that he had always associated with sex before her. But it wasn’t there. Instead, it was like a veil had been torn away and he could see all of his life, spreading out before him. Like he was standing on a ridge high in the mountains, able to survey everything. The past, the present, the future. So clear, so sharp it almost didn’t seem real.
Anna was in all of it. A part of everything.
And if she was ever taken away...
He closed his eyes, shutting out that thought, a wave of pleasure rolling over him, drowning out everything. He threw himself in. Harder than he ever had. Grateful as hell that Anna had found her own release, because he’d been too wrapped up in himself to consider her first.
Then he wrapped his arms around her, wrapped her up against him. Wrapped himself up in her. And he pushed every thought out of his mind and focused on the feeling of her body against his, the scent of her skin. Feminine and sweet with a faint trace of hay and engine grease.
No other woman smelled like Anna.
He pressed his face against her breasts and she sighed, a sound he didn’t think he’d ever get tired of. He let everything go blank. Because there was nothing in his past, or his future, that was as good as this.