*Some words omitted to maintain the PG 13 blog rating
Chapter One
Warren stumbled into his bedroom. Having shared in one too many congratulatory shots of whisky in honor of his friends, Derek and Sandi’s, news of upcoming nuptials, he was a bit more drunk than usual. Thankfully, Ann and Quinn had driven his sorry ass home. He had to admit the good old Travis boys had lucked out in the woman department. Ann was a goddess, and Sandi was an angel. No matter how happy he was for his old buddies, he was glad it was them and not him. The last thing he needed was to be stuck with one woman his whole life. He was very satisfied with bachelorhood.
“Hi, handsome.”
He flipped the light switch on and was met with the image of a nearly naked, but gorgeous redhead lying in his bed. The only thing covering her was a tiny pair of green panties. He’d always prided himself on his practicality in any situation. Some questions just need to be asked.
“Hey there, sweetheart. Pardon me for asking, but do I know you?”
The brazen bombshell seemed hurt by his question. “Well, not really, but I thought I left a bigger impression than that.”
He scanned his memory for any indication of her. Surely, he hadn’t slept with her. Something like that he would remember. That ruled out any chance that he’d taken her out on a date, since all of his dates end in sex.
“Sorry, sugar. I’ve had a few too many shots of whisky tonight. Help me out?”
“Actually, I think I’ll just be leaving.” She got up from the bed and reached for her clothes.
As she bent over, he got an incredible view of her ass. Instantly, his d**k became hard, and the idea of her leaving was not something he was going to let happen.
“Hey now, don’t be like that. Of course, I remember you. I was only teasing, babe.”
She flung her long red locks around and put her hands on her hips. “Oh, really?”
He gave her his best smile. The one that always made the women fall to their knees. “Really. Now why don’t you come here and let me make it up to you?”
She came toward him slowly, her beautiful, round t**s all but begging to be sucked on. He had no idea who the hell she was, but he couldn’t wait to get her back in his bed.
She was only a couple steps away from him when he grabbed her and pulled her into him. Her ass was so round and soft, he wondered if she bathed in creams and lotions.
He wasted no time as he brought his mouth down to hers and swept his tongue inside hers. There was a brief moment of hesitation on her part, like she hadn’t been expecting him to be so aggressive. It only took a couple seconds to coax her to give into him. He was used to women who needed a little help relaxing. She was a gorgeous woman, definitely worth his patience.
“Oh, Warren. I’ve wanted you for so long.”
She had? Who the hell was she? Nothing about her seemed familiar. He very rarely forgot a pretty face and never forgot a hot body. His curiosity was getting the better of him, and he was dying to ask her who she was, but he didn’t want to risk her trying to leave again.
“Me, too, sugar.” It wasn’t a total lie. He’d wanted her for the past five minutes. For dogs, that was a very long time. Lord knew he had been compared to a dog a time or two.
She pulled away from his kiss. “You have?”
He couldn’t exactly burst her bubble. She looked so happy to hear him say it. “Yeah, sweetheart. Really.”
“Oh, Warren, make love to me.”
Their mouths locked together again. This time, she was not timid. Her mood had changed, and she seemed eager to play. He could hardly wait as he undid his jeans while she was ripping open the front of his shirt. He knew she’d broken some buttons and heard them hit the floor, but he didn’t care. He wanted to bury himself inside this sexy, mystery woman. Figuring out who she was could come later.
His shirt was on the floor, and his jeans soon met with the same fate as he kicked them off. He slid his hand in her panties. A small patch of hair was coated in her wetness. Dipping a finger inside her to test her readiness, he was struck by how wet she was. Whoever she was, she wanted it as bad as he did.
“Mmm…I have to be inside you, sweetheart.”
“Yes.” She was breathless. “Please, I’ve waited so long.”
He knew he should be confused about who she was. She clearly knew who he was, yet he had no memory of her. Hell, he didn’t care though. He wanted to f**k her senseless. Getting acquainted could come later.
Hurriedly, he pulled her panties down to her ankles and lifted her to the bed. He covered her with his large body and reached over to his bedside table. Grabbing a condom from the box, he tore it open with his teeth and threw the package on the floor. Mere seconds went by as he rolled the condom on his d**k. Her glistening, pink lips looked so delicious. He wanted to bend his head down and slide his tongue in her slit, but his need to pound inside her overpowered his thirst. He spread her legs apart and positioned the tip at her entrance. A second later, he drove into her.
A loud scream tore from her. Being a man that made women scream on a regular basis, he knew what pleasure sounded like, and that scream was not one of them.
Scared he’d hurt her, he stopped and looked at her. “Are you okay?”
Her eyes were squeezed tight. Biting on her lower lip, she mumbled, “Uh-huh.”
She was lying. Something was wrong. “Open your eyes.”
Her eyes opened, and he saw tears fall. “Oh f**k!”
For the first time in his life he was losing his hard-on. He pulled out of her and got off of her. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he put his head in his hands.
“What did I do wrong?”
Her shaky voice perplexed him.
He turned around to answer her. “What? Sweetheart, you did nothing wrong.” Reaching over, he wiped a tear from her cheek. “You’re crying. I hurt you.”
She nuzzled her cheek into his hand. “I’m sorry. I didn’t expect it to hurt so much. It’s okay now. Can we try again?”
What the hell? He knew he wasn’t small in size, but never had he hurt a woman. She was wet and ready. It didn’t make sense that—oh shit!
He closed his eyes, almost afraid to ask the question. “Are you a virgin?”
His mystery guest looked up at him from her tear-filled, green eyes and nodded.
“Oh f**k!”
He rose from the bed and paced the room. No matter how much he loved women and sex, he still had a heart. If he knew she was a virgin, he would’ve never taken her so roughly. Hell, he would’ve never taken her, period.
“Warren, please don’t be angry with me. I’ve wanted to be with you for so long. I figured if I told you, then you wouldn’t want to.”
“Oh gee, ya think? Of course I wouldn’t have.” He didn’t know what to do. How was he going to deal with the fact he’d taken a girl’s innocence? “Jesus, how old are you?” He prayed her answer would make her at least legal.
“I’m twenty-three.”
Thank God for small favors, he thought to himself.
“Why do you keep saying you’ve been waiting for this for so long? Who the hell are you?”
As soon as he saw her pretty eyes flood with even more tears, he wanted to kick himself for being so cold. He’d just taken her virginity, and now he dug the knife in a little deeper for her.
“You…you said you remembered me.”
“Look, I’m sorry.” He came to the bed and sat next to her. She’d pulled her knees up into her body and was curled up. “I don’t remember you. Where did we meet?”
“At my grandpa’s stables.”
He shook his head and wondered if she had him confused with someone else. “At your grandpa’s stables? Sweetheart, that doesn’t make sense. The only stables I’m ever at are…” He stopped.
His heart suddenly ceased its continuous beating when images of a sweet thirteen-year-old girl who always wore her long, auburn hair in a braid.
“What is your name?” he asked while silently praying his suspicious were wrong.
“Amber.”
“Amber Jenkins?”
She gave him a soft smile. “Yes. It’s me, Warren. You do remember me.”
She leaned over to kiss him, but he quickly pulled away. “Amber Jenkins! As in my boss’s granddaughter, Amber Jenkins. As in the girl that old man Jenkins vowed to shoot the nuts off of any man who went near his precious granddaughter!”
“Warren, I’m not a little girl anymore.”
He wanted to hit something. He didn’t just have sex with the one woman who would not only cost him his job and probably make old man Jenkins chase him down with a rifle, but he took her virginity.
* * * *
Her vision blurred from tears as she waited for him to say something. She wasn’t a little girl anymore. She’d gone off to college, graduated. She was twenty-three years old for crying out loud. If there was one thing she was not, it was a baby, and she hated that so many in town still treated her like one.
Having Warren treat her like one though, that was the worst kind of humiliation. How many nights had she lain awake thinking about him? How many times did she delve into her deepest fantasies and imagine what it would be like to finally have him hold her, kiss her, and touch her? Finally, after all these years, and he was acting like she was a leper.
“Please say something.” She reached for him as she said it.
Turning toward her he gave her a somber look. “Amber, why did you do this?”
Had he actually just asked her that? Why had she done it? She would have thought, with her waiting in his bed naked and asking for him to make love to her, that her intentions were pretty clear, but apparently he was the kind of man who needed to be hit over the head with a frying pan.
“I like you, Warren. Ever since I was…” She stopped herself, refusing to utter the words “little girl” and searched for the right way to say it that wouldn’t betray her. “Ever since I was younger, I’ve had the biggest crush on you, but I never grew out of it. Instead, my feelings just kept growing.”
He sighed and turned to face her. Covering himself with a pillow, he looked at her with so much regret it made her want to cry some more. Was the act of making love to her so completely humiliating that he couldn’t even smile at the prospect?
“Sweetheart, you know the kind of man that I am. I…date…a lot. I’m flattered that you have feelings for me, but I’m thirteen years older than you.”
“Age is just a number,” she insisted.
“That’s a nice theory, and it would look great on a refrigerator magnet, but this is real life, darlin’.”
“Are you telling me that you didn’t want me just five minutes ago? Did I imagine you touching my body and kissing me while you whispered you wanted to be inside me?” She blinked against the tears, refusing to let more show themselves.
He muttered something under his breath she couldn’t make out. “With all due respect, sweetheart, you did show up in my bed naked. A man is only human.”
Now she was getting angry. He blamed her for this? What this was she didn’t even know. The only thing she was sure of was that it had taken every bit of her courage to finally let him know how she felt.
Granted it wasn’t like she had sent him a letter or made some grand announcement of her feelings, but she figured that was what a teenager would do. She was a woman now. So she did what any woman would do when they wanted to lure a man. She used her body to seduce him, and he was using that against her as though she did something wrong?
“Oh, I see. So it’s my fault that you wanted me, then? If I had just stayed away, this would have never happened and you wouldn’t be left with the horrible knowledge that you had sex with me. Is that it?”
No longer hurt, no longer holding back tears, she now got up from the bed. She was angry and insulted that he wanted to make her the bad guy in the situation. It wasn’t that she could deny that she had started it, but when she tried to leave just fifteen minutes earlier he was on her like flies on a barbeque trying to get her to stay.
No. She would not be made to feel guilty because he had issues with her age, or because of who her grandfather was. He wanted her just as much as she wanted him. How dare he blame her! Reaching for her clothes, which she had tucked on the side of the bedside table, she continued her rant.
“I’m so sorry, Warren. You poor thing! Who I am to come in here and turn you on like that when you were so clearly against it!”
“Amber…” He tried to interrupt her, but she quickly cut him off.
“No, really. I can’t believe I tried to take advantage of you like that. You must feel so used and hurt. It really is because of women like me that make it hard for such good, church-going men like yourself to live a life of celibacy.” Her tone increased with sarcasm with each word she spoke.
“Now hang on just a second. I know you’re…”
Once again she stopped him, unwilling to listen to any smooth talk from the great Warren Murphy.
“You know nothing!”
She pulled her T-shirt over her head while looking around the room for her panties. When she spotted them on the floor at the foot of the bed, she went to reach for him, his swift movement beat her to it, and he was already handing them to her.
“Amber, honey…I know that you are hurt and probably embarrassed. But you’ve got to know that I would never hurt you intentionally. Not in a million years.”
His southern drawl was comforting as he tried to soothe away her hurt. She had watched him work the magic of his silver tongue for years with other women, but she would not fall victim to his charms. At least not this time. He wouldn’t be able to get himself out of this jam that easily.
She gave her virginity to him, and moments later he was acting like he had just been infected with some horrible virus. Virginity-taketh-itis it was probably called. He’d probably mope around for the next week, downing beers at The Roadhouse while all of his little admirers fed into his ego. Well, she wouldn’t be one of them. Not this time anyway.
“Well might I say you look remarkable for your age,” she bit out sarcastically.
“Huh?”
“Well, you managed to hurt me fairly quickly, so clearly those requisite million years have come and passed us by.”
He let out a groan of frustration and reached for her arm, but she pulled away. No matter how angry she was at him, he still was the keeper of her heart. His touch might be the very thing that made her forget what an incredibly giant jackass he was being.
She grabbed for her jeans, quickly slipped into them, and jumped up and down as she brought them up to her waist. In seconds, she had them zipped up and snapped shut. He stood before her, his hands on his hips, still completely naked, and it took everything she had to not look to see if there were still signs of how he had wanted her.
Her tennis shoes were next, and she sat on the edge of the bed to slip the canvas on before quickly tying them. She could feel his eyes on her, the intensity of his gaze was all but boring a hole right through her, but she refused to look up at him.
She had shown up without an invitation. She knew that and wouldn’t deny it, but he hadn’t exactly been complaining either. He was just as eager for her as she was for him. The fact that he was so incredibly small-minded that he would let her age or last name affect how he felt more than hurt her feelings, it made her mad.
Once she was completely dressed, she ran her hands down her pant legs and pushed up while exhaling a deep breath.
“Good-bye, Warren.”
She made her way toward the door, and he stepped in front of her, his large hands cupped the side of her face as he brushed a thumb over dampness that still lingered below her eye.
“Darlin’, I’m so sorry I’ve hurt you. I really never wanted that. I didn’t remember you. Hell, the last time I saw you, you were still just a kid.”
His stupidity and thoughtlessness only fueled the fury that was welling inside of her. Leave it to him to take her already-hurt feelings and stomp all over them.
“We saw each other last summer at the Fourth of July barbeque. You winked at me and called me ‘pretty lady.’”
His discomfort was obvious when he asked, “I did?”
She simply nodded her head at him, certain that if she answered she would forget her ladylike manners and use language that wasn’t fit for a woman’s mouth.
“Shit.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I remember you I think. Were you wearing a little red sundress with blue and white stars?”
“Yep. That was me. Can I go now?”
Please move. Please don’t touch me again. Please just let me leave.
The silent pleas echoed inside her head. He still stood before her, completely naked, and she was beginning to fall victim to the memory of that hot evening when she thought he truly saw her as a woman and not some little girl anymore. It hurt more than she could describe to know that he hadn’t even known who she was when he said it.
“Jesus. You must have thought…I led you on, didn’t I…in a way anyway.” He looked at her with remorse and brushed his knuckles against her cheek.
She would not let him see her cry again. Not ever. This was the only time she would offer herself up to Warren Murphy. He had taken that opportunity and threw it back in her face after he had taken something from her she could never get back.
“With all due respect, Mr. Murphy”—she made a mocking gesture of placing her hand on his arm—“can I call you Mr. Murphy? I mean you are thirteen years older than me. It would be rude not to show my elders respect.”
She didn’t miss the way he worked his jaw in annoyance at her comment. “I suppose I deserved that.”
“Whatever. Like I was saying, with all due respect, you should probably let me pass and get some clothes on. Standing there naked like that might give a person the wrong impression. Wouldn’t want me to try and take advantage of you again, would you?”
Not waiting for him to move, she pushed his hand away and nudged herself past him. She was halfway through the living room when she heard him shout her name. Refusing to stop, she reached in her pocket and dug out the key to her Jeep.
She was down the front steps and reaching for the door handle when she heard his front door fly open with so much force that his screen door slammed into the wall of the house. Looking back, she saw him fumbling with his jeans while attempting to make it down the steps without falling.
The darkness made it hard to read his expression, but his demands that she wait spoke to her crystal clear. He was upset, and she cared very little to hear his reasons or thoughts on an already-mortifying situation.
She opened the door to the Jeep and got in. If he didn’t like the way things were going, too bad. Things weren’t exactly working out the way she had planned either. With shaky hands, she stuck the key in the ignition and revved up the engine.
Just as she placed the Jeep in reverse, he had caught up to her. He reached inside to try and stop her, but she floored the gas pedal. The abrupt movement of the Jeep had him jumping out of the way while gravel shot up from the tires.
He was shouting, but the radio had kicked on, and she refused to turn it down to hear him. Whatever his complaint was, she didn’t want to hear it. It had taken her years to work up the nerve to finally let Warren know how she felt. Knowing the kind of man he was, she broke every rule she had and offered him the one thing she had offered no other man.
Her innocence.
He had thanked her for the precious gift by making her feel a fool, treating her like a child, and placing the blame with her.
Never again. Warren Murphy had his chance with her. He would not have another. He may have captured her heart years ago, but he would not take her pride, too.
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