His words washed over her, everything she had never known she needed. This full, complete acceptance of who she was. Right here in her garage. The mechanic, the woman. The friend, the lover. He wanted her. And everything that meant.
She didn’t even try to keep herself from feeling it now. Didn’t try to keep herself from thinking it.
She loved him. So much. Every part of him, with every part of her. Her friend. The only man she really wanted. The only person she could imagine sharing her days and nights and blankets and musicals with.
And that realization didn’t even make her want to pull away from him. Didn’t make her want to hide. Instead, she wanted to finish this. She wanted to feel connected to him. Now that she was in, she was in all the way. Ready to expose herself completely, scrape herself raw, all for him.
She rose up so that she was on her knees, tugged her panties down her hips and maneuvered herself so that she was able to dispense with them completely before settling over him, grabbing hold of his broad shoulders as she sank down onto his hardened length.
He swore, the harsh word echoing in the empty space. “Anna, I need to get a condom.”
She pulled away from him quickly, hovering over him as he lifted his hips, grabbing his wallet and pulling out a condom with shaking hands, taking care of the practicalities quickly. She was trembling, both with the adrenaline rush that accompanied the stupidity of her mistake and with need. With regret because she wished that he was still inside of her even though it wouldn’t be responsible at all.
Soon, he was guiding her back onto him, having protected them both. Thankfully, he was a little more with it than she was.
He gripped her tightly, guiding her movements at first, helping her establish a rhythm that worked for them both.
He moved his hands around, brushing his fingertips along the seam of her ass before teasing her right where their bodies were joined. She gasped, grabbing hold of the back of the chair, flexing her hips, chasing her own release as he continued to touch her. To push her higher.
She slid her hands up, cupping his face, holding him steady. She met his gaze, a thrill shooting down her spine. “Anna,” he rasped, the words skating over her skin like a caress, touching her everywhere.
Pleasure gripped her, low and tight, sending her over the edge. She held his face as she shuddered out her orgasm and chanted his name, endlessly. Over and over again. And when it was over, he held her to him, kissing her lips, whispering words against her mouth that she could barely understand. She didn’t need to. The only words she understood were the ones she most needed to hear.
“Stay with me tonight.”
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