And although she had been an innocent back then, Charlie had not been. According to rumor, she was the only girl in Tangleheart Charlie didn’t fool around with.
“Why did you pull away from me Saturday night?” His voice was hoarse and low and turned her knees to water.
“Maybe you should try again.” Her heart might be fluttering in her chest like hummingbird wings, but her tone sounded calm, nearly aloof. Good.
“Anna, I’ll ask you again because I don’t want to hurt you. Why did you put the brakes on that night?”
“I’m a big girl now, Charlie. I can look out for myself, so you don’t need to worry about it.” She gripped his buttocks with her hands and lowered herself onto his thigh.
As he pressed his thigh into her crotch, she could feel his erection clamoring against her belly. He slid to his knees in front of her. She was wearing a pair of loose cotton shorts and a barely-there thong. She opened her legs wide and gave him a good look. If he thought she was still some shy flower in need of protection, she’d show him just how very much he misjudged her.
He pushed her knees open even wider. “You’re so beautiful, Anna,” he said, and then he moved her thong to the side and pushed his thumb inside of her. She made a little noise in her throat because it came naturally, and because she wanted him to know she wanted this. She wanted him.
Working his thumb exquisitely, he put his mouth over her shorts and sucked her right through the cloth. She writhed against him, needing much much more.
“Please,” she begged. “Please take them off.”
And then it was his turn to make a noise in his throat.
When he yanked her shorts and thong down, she thought her knees would buckle. Then he carried her to the bed. Somehow, they must’ve gotten the rest of their clothing off because his bare skin was slick against hers, and his male scent was mixing with the fragrance of cedar in the air.
She told herself to slow down. She wanted to savor every moment, note every detail, make every touch, every sigh into a keepsake—but it didn’t happen that way. Her body was too hungry for him. Her need was too great.
Afterward, she recalled him taking her face in his hands and dotting little kisses on her eyes and lips—but when, she didn’t know. And she did remember grasping at his shoulders, and him groaning with delight—but was that before or after she wrapped her legs around him and watched his expression come undone?
She most certainly recalled him driving into her hard and fast and slow and gentle, unrelenting—showing the same determination he’d used to spark the fire in the hearth, and she could not forget the feel of her muscles coiling and uncoiling around him until she was spent. But in the end, the whole experience was a hazy dream of pleasure that her mind rearranged into out-of-sequence bits and pieces.
Such was her keepsake, and she would have to make do.
ANNA HAD TURNED AWAY from his kiss when they finished making love. Blinking away the moisture in his eyes, he shut down the emotion that made it hard to swallow, hard to breathe. Now was not the time.
A quick splash of water to his face, an even quicker glance in the mirror and comb of his fingers through disheveled hair, and Charlie was ready to join Anna in the main room of the cabin and get to work on sorting through those clippings. If nothing else, concentrating on the puzzle of Simone’s mysterious trip to the library would provide temporary respite from all the what-ifs running through his head.
What if Boots had somehow tracked them to the cabin?
What if they didn’t find Simone in time to warn her about Boots?
What if he never got another chance to tell Anna what was in his heart?
What if…
Moondrops dribbled in through the bathroom window and pinged off an object on the shelf above the sink. Curiosity jarred him out of his reverie. Right away, his gut told him whatever it might be, it didn’t belong on a dusty old shelf in Uncle Joe’s cabin. He grabbed the shiny object, took one look, and a current of excitement shot through him. True, the gleaming silver charm bracelet in his grasp might belong to Anna, but he didn’t recall seeing it on her wrist.
Accelerated by the hope in his heart, his pulse picked up its pace. This might very well belong to Simone, and if Simone had, in fact, been at the cabin earlier in the day, she might still be hiding somewhere in the vicinity. If the charm bracelet was Simone’s, Anna would recognize it.
Slipping his secret hope into his pocket, he stepped out of the bathroom and found Anna working at a picnic-style table in the cabin’s main room. Well, perhaps she was doing more frowning than actual working. There was a piece of old poster board laid on the tabletop, and Anna had removed the clippings from the file and stacked them atop the folder, but it didn’t look like she’d even begun to sort through them yet.