Heroes Are My Weakness(71)

THEO CAME INTO THE KITCHEN behind Annie and watched her gazing through the window, her open coat falling slightly off one shoulder. She hadn’t bothered with makeup, and standing in this kitchen from the past, she could have been a farm woman from the 1930s. Her bold eyes and abundance of unruly hair didn’t conform to contemporary standards of manufactured beauty. She was a creature unto herself.

He could imagine the makeover Kenley and her fashion-forward friends would have ordered up if they’d had the chance. Chemically straightening Annie’s hair, fillers to plump her lips to porn star proportions, breast implants, and a little liposuction, although he couldn’t imagine where. But the only thing wrong with the way Annie looked was . . .

Absolutely nothing.

“You belong here.” As soon as the words were out, he wanted to snatch them back. He manufactured something approaching a drawl. “All ready to plow the fields, slop the hogs, and paint the outhouse.”

“Gee, thanks.” She should have been insulted. Instead she gazed at her surroundings and smiled. “I like your house.”

“It’s okay, I guess.”

“More than okay. You know exactly how special it is. Why do you always have to act like such a tough-ass?”

“No acting necessary.”

She thought it over. “I guess you are. But in all the wrong ways.”

“In your opinion.” He didn’t like her insights into his weak spots, her bleeding heart opinion about his relationship with Kenley, her willingness to set aside everything that had happened during that summer all those years ago. It made him afraid for her.

A beam of sunlight skipped across the tips of her eyelashes, and he felt a primitive urge to dominate her. Prove to himself that he was still in control. He wandered toward her, taking his time, gazing into her eyes.

“Stop it,” she said.

He lifted a curl that lay by her ear and ran it through his fingers. “Stop what?”

She shoved his hand away. “Stop going all bloody Heathcliff on me.”

“If I had any idea what you were talking about . . .”

“The saunter. The hooded eyes, the whole broody-arrogant thing.”

“I’ve never sauntered in my life.” Despite her protests, she hadn’t moved an inch. He brushed her cheek with his thumb . . .


HE WAS CASTING HIS DEVIL’S spell over her. Or maybe it was the farmhouse. Whatever the cause, she couldn’t seem to move away from him, even though there was something disquieting in his gaze. Something she didn’t entirely like.

All she had to do was turn her back. She didn’t. Nor did she stop him as he pushed her coat from her shoulders, then shrugged off his own. They landed in the puddle of winter sunshine spilling through the window.

As they stood there, arms at their sides, gazes locked, she grew aware of every inch of her skin. Her sensitivity was so sharp that she could feel the hum of her veins and arteries. Of his. She wasn’t made for mindless sex. She wasn’t designed to take what a man had to offer and forget about him afterward. In these womanpower times, that lack of detachment was a weakness. A defect. One more giant thing wrong with her.

He touched her cheek.

Don’t touch me like that. Don’t touch me anywhere. Touch me everywhere.

He did. With a kiss that seemed almost angry. Because she wasn’t someone as beautiful as he? As privileged? As successful?

His tongue invaded, and she gripped his arms. Parted her lips. Gave herself up to the seductive power of the kiss. He pressed against her. He was taller, and they shouldn’t have fit together so well, but their bodies meshed perfectly.

His hands slipped under her sweater, splayed over her back. His thumbs marked a path along her spine. He’d taken charge, and she needed to stop it. To step up and assert herself the way today’s woman should. Use him, instead of the other way around. But it felt so good to be desired.

“I want to see you,” he murmured against her lips. “Your body. Golden in the sunlight.”

His writer’s words poured over her like poetry, and she couldn’t find a single wisecrack to put up between them. She even lifted her arms as he tugged her sweater over her head. He unhooked her bra. It fell to the floor. He pulled off his own sweater, never taking his eyes from her breasts. The sunlight bathed her body, and although the farmhouse was cold, she was warm. Hot.

She wanted more of his poetry. More of him. She bent down and took off her shoes. As she slipped off her socks, his fingertips glided over the bumps of her curved spine. “Like a strand of pearls,” he whispered.

Her skin pebbled. Men didn’t talk like this during sex. They barely talked at all. When they did, it tended to be coarse, unimaginative, and libido-dulling.

She kept her eyes locked with his as she slid down the zipper of her jeans. With the shadow of a smile, he went to his knees. Kissed the skin of her belly just above the waistband of her underpants. She slipped her hands into his hair. Felt his scalp under the pads of her fingers. Gripped the strands. Not pulling it but experiencing its texture, its feel.

He took his time, finding her hip bones and her navel, the stubble on his jaw lightly abrading her skin. Through the thin nylon fabric, his fingers traced the crack between her buttocks. She braced her hands on his shoulders as he grew impatient, tugging on her underpants, her jeans, shoving both to her ankles, then inhaling and nuzzling all that was exposed.