“So we’ll tear one another apart and put each other back together, piece by piece.” I slide my hand over her hips, down the damp fabric of her dress. While my room may be warm already, it’s not so warm that she won’t end up sick if she keeps this thing on. I ease up onto my knees and pull her up so she’s doing the same. My hands snake around her waist to the zip at the back of her dress. She looks at me questioningly as I glide the zip down. “I thought you said I needed to make you work for it?”

“Darlin’ there’s a million other things I can do to your body without shoving myself inside it.”

She’s covered in chills as I pull the fabric over her head and I desperately want to erase them with my tongue, but Ana’s shaking on the bed before me and finally, I remember why I removed it in the first place.

I ease off the bed and open the cupboard, pulling out one of the hangers I never use. I hang the dress in the window, where it’s in full sunlight. I know I should probably close the curtains, but when I turn and see her naked body spread before me, highlighted by the sunlight spilling in through that window, I can’t bring myself to do much of anything. I shed my jeans that have been so tight since she stepped foot in this room last night and cover her body with my own.

For a long time we do nothing but maul each other with our mouths and roll around on the bed, and then I slide my hands between us and make her come in about two seconds flat, and yeah, I’m not gonna lie, the fact that I can get her off so quickly makes my heart swell with pride—shut the fuck up, it’s a guy thing.

My heart’s not the only thing swelling, though, but for now I’m content to leave it at that as I watch her bask with that freshly fucked glow, because in all my life I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more spectacular sight.

She cracks an eyelid and whispers, “Stop staring at me, it’s weird.”

“Eat me,” I reply and scoop her up until she’s lying on top of me. She sits herself up and I can’t resist trailing my hands over her gorgeous tits. She wiggles a little, like she’s suddenly ticklish, and my cock jumps around excitedly like it’s going to see some. Fuck. I feel like I’ve been in a state of perm-a-wood ever since I met this girl. She spears her bottom lip with her teeth and says, “Okay” before trailing her mouth down my neck and chest. She hovers over the tattoo on my left pec. Surprise twists her face as her eyes zero in on the name written in cursive, hidden there amongst an eerie moonlit cemetery. I tense.

Don’t ask me about it, I think. Not now.

For a moment I think she’s going to, and then she lowers her gaze and brings her mouth to my stomach, licking and kissing and sucking all the way. I breathe a sigh of relief.

When she reaches my navel I grab her wrist, stopping her from going any further, “Ana, you don’t have to do that.”

“And if I want to?”

Fuck me! Does she have any idea what that does to a man? It looks like she might, because she smiles this sneaky little smile and dips her head lower, taking me into her mouth. Her hand follows her lips up the length of my cock and back down again.

Oh fuck.

I’ve never had a problem staying the course, but holy mother of nun cunts, am I about to lose my shit like twelve-year-old at his first glance of pink bits in Playboy. I fist my hand in her hair, gently at first, and then harder. The urge to push her head back and forth until I’m defiling her beautiful mouth is so strong that I force my hand to go limp, so I won’t hurt her.

I’ve played this game too many times to count. The players are different, but the rules never change. Until now. Until her. All the rules are different now, and I’d do anything not to fuck it up. This is what I think about as her delicate little mouth milks every last drop of come from my cock. I just had the most incredible woman sucking me off and she’s got me so fucking tied up in knots that I forgot to enjoy the simplicity and base nature of it all. I missed the whole God damn thing!

Ana smiles coyly up at me, and then crawls up the bed and tucks herself in under my arm. I automatically pull her closer and kiss the top of her head. She lets out a contented sigh, and I feel her relax further into me. We lie in the patch of sunlight streaming in across the bed and she traces the tattoos on my arms and chest until she falls asleep.

I’m too wired to fall asleep. My brain is buzzing from the high and a million thoughts swarm my head. Despite the morning’s workout, my body is itching to move, to get up, to run. Instead, I hold Ana while she naps. I stare at the ceiling and wonder what the hell I’ve done, and what I’m going to do now. It doesn’t matter which way I look at it: when it comes to Ana Belle, I’m completely fucking screwed.

Chapter Nine

Ana

The minute I set foot in the house Dad is on me. “Where the hell have you been?”

“Excuse me?”

“You up and disappeared, without a word, Ana. Not to mention the fact that you drove while drinking.”

“Okay, first of all, I wasn’t drunk. I’d stopped drinking at least two hours before I drove anywhere, and I told Holly where I was going—”

“Holly is not your father!” Dad booms.

“Why are we even having this conversation? I’m an adult, Dad. It’s time you started treating me like one.”

“You’re not an adult, Ana. You might be nineteen, but that doesn’t mean you know what’s best for you.”

“Oh, and you do? Okay, Dad, let’s talk about what’s best for me. Is it dating one of your biker club friends and becoming an empty shell of a woman waiting by the window for my husband to come home after he’s finished screwing clubhouse whores, like the rest of the old ladies? Is it staying in this shitty, fucked up town, marrying one of the dickheads I went to school with and running the pie shop for the rest of my life? Hey, you know what? Why not throw in raising Sammy, too, since you and your whore of a wife seem too busy with your bike club to take care of the kid she spat out of her gaping vagina? Why not just throw the kid in and hammer that last nail in my coffin?”

“You watch your tone, missy,” he hisses.

“No, Dad. You watch yours,” I spit back.

“Let’s get one thing straight. While you live in this house, you live by my rules. You come home at a decent hour, not 3 pm the next day, wearing the same clothes you had on last night. That’s how shit gets started in places like this, Ana. You want more of those rumours floating around that you’re the town bike? You want me to get hauled back to the station for punching out some other fucker that’s been running his mouth?”

“Are you done insinuating that I’m some giant fucking whore?” I fold my arms over my chest. “You wanna know where I was all night, Dad? At Elijah’s motel room. And since you’re so damn concerned about it, my virtue is still very much intact.”

His eyes go saucer-wide, like he cannot believe I just said that. Come to think of it, I can’t believe I just said that. Call me crazy, but the fact that my dad thought I was a slut, along with the rest of the town, broke my heart into a million tiny pieces. As angry as I am with him, and as grown-up as I claim to be, I’m still his little girl, and it cuts to the bone to hear how low his opinion of me really is.

“Yeah, Dad, still a virgin. But thanks for your vote of confidence.” I throw my keys on the table, grab a hair tie from the phone caddy on the bench and yank my hair back into a messy bun. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to spend the next eight hours of my free time making pies for this town that thinks so highly of me.”

Dad stands there looking absolutely crushed. His mouth is working but no words are coming out. Sticking it to him like that should have made me feel better, but it doesn’t. It makes me feel just as ashamed as when he’d insinuated I was a whore. That’s the thing about guilt; it always leaves you feeling cheap.

“Ana …” he begins, but I wave him off and head for my room.

“Forget it, Dad. I have to get to work.” I close the door and allow myself a minute or two for the tears pricking my eyes to fall.


I have maybe twenty pies lining the countertops when I hear Elijah’s bike pulling in around back. I smile to myself, thinking of the better part of the day when my dad wasn’t accusing me of being a whore and I was instead partaking in activities where I could perhaps still be considered one. I marvel at how small I felt in his hands and at how quickly he was able to blow my world apart for the third time today when he pushed me up against the cool shower tile.

I’m still smiling as I pour melted chocolate into the recipe base for the pie that Elijah inspired, and I’m halfway to creating another recipe in my head when I hear the front door bang back on its hinges and my dad come tearing out of the house and across the gravel walkway toward Elijah. “CADE!”

Oh crap! I throw the spatula down on the bench and run for the door. My dad has Elijah by the collar of his jacket, holding him up against the back of the shop and, despite being younger, taller and musclier than Dad, Elijah’s hands are up in surrender. “I know what you’re thinking, but I didn’t pursue her, I swear. It just happened.”

“So you think that makes it okay? Because she came to you? She’s nineteen, she doesn’t know what the fuck she wants.”

“Dad!” I snap and the two of them glance at me. Dad backs off, but only enough so that there’s maybe an inch or two more space between them, and he’s no longer holding onto Elijah’s collar.

“Bob, your daughter’s old enough to know what she wants.” Elijah runs a hand over the back of his neck and then looks at me a little sheepishly. “For God’s sake look at her. Have you ever seen a more put together nineteen-year-old? Look, you’re my boss. I respect you immensely. I respect your family and your family’s reputation in this town, but your daughter? There aren’t enough words to describe how much I think of her.”