AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Hale was more my friend, as well as my boss, than Jonah’s, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t love to cause trouble by telling Jonah what I was doing. Hale was a natural-born shit-stirrer.
The other problem with telling him was risking the high probability that he’d wonder why I was doing this for Anna. Would he think I was doing it because I had feelings for her? Feelings I shouldn’t be having for my best friend’s baby sister? Because he’d be right.
When Anna had shown up on my back porch that late afternoon with hope in her pretty eyes, I knew that whatever she wanted from me, I was going to give it to her.
It felt like I’d been trying my whole damn life to suppress what I felt for her. But it had really started the night I’d saved her from that party and from that asshole, Blake Guidry, when she was in high school. Even today, I’d get raging mad thinking about that night and what could’ve happened to her. It had changed things between us.
Yes, I’d noticed like any red-blooded male that she was growing into a beautiful, sexy young woman. But there was something about that night, specifically, that had set my mind on a different, very non-brotherly course where Anna was concerned. I’d started thinking about her as mine to protect. More than Jonah’s or her other brothers or even her father’s.
Which was ridiculous.
She wasn’t mine, nor was she meant to be. Which is why I’d worked as late as possible this past week on her studio, not wanting her to be there when I got home. The temptation of having her alone in my house was too much for me to bear. I was only mortal.
That’s why I was pretty shocked—and somewhat panicked—to find her car still sitting in the driveway when I pulled up. When I walked through the back door into the laundry room, I knew for sure that fate was fucking with me.
Anna was bent over the dryer, pulling my towels, work shirts, and goddamn boxer briefs out and dropping them into a basket. It wasn’t her handling my underwear that made a hot surge flood south of my belt. It was those tiny shorts she was wearing again, revealing so much of what I wanted to touch, kiss…bite.
“Working a little late,” I mumbled too gruffly as I weaved around her and into the kitchen.
Whatever she’d cooked smelled amazing, my stomach growling instantly.
“Hey! Yeah.” She walked into the kitchen, laundry basket in hand. “You’re working late too,” she added softly.
I stared at her, standing in my kitchen in flip-flops, a tank top, and cut-offs, her hair in a messy bun, no make-up, and a stain on her shirt, likely from cooking my dinner. A rush of heavy, powerful emotion left me breathless.
I wanted this to be real, not an exchange of services. I wanted Anna Hebert waiting for me when I got home, flitting around my house like it was her own. I wanted her scent in the air, in my sheets, on my skin. I wanted that look she was giving me now to be the prelude to me pulling her into my arms and sinking my hands into her hair, my tongue into her mouth.
I simply wantedAnna.
The intensity of it had never barreled over and crushed me the way it was right now as she blew an errant, stray lock of hair out of her eyes. The same eyes gazing at me with both trepidation and something much more like desire.
Warning alarms blared in my head.
Clearing my throat, I broke the spell and turned to the stove where I picked up the lid on a cast iron skillet. “Dinner smells good.”
“Let me put these down, and I’ll make you a plate.”
“Go sit down, and I’ll make us both a plate.”
She blinked in surprise but didn’t reply as she disappeared into the living room. I dished out the chicken and rice casserole onto two plates, then some green beans cooked down with bacon and onions from the other pot on the stove.
“I made some iced tea today, so I’ll get that,” she added, walking back into the kitchen and reaching up for two glasses from the cabinet next to me.
Unable to help myself, I watched, savoring the brief sight of skin on her stomach when her shirt rode up. “You know you could’ve just bought some iced tea.”
“Yeah, but I know how you love my Mom’s home-brewed sweet tea. I don’t mind making it for you.”
I blew out a sharp breath and carried our plates into the living room. “You’re going to spoil me so much that I won’t want to let you go when this job is done.”
She followed me and sat down on the sofa beside me, placing the glasses on coasters that I didn’t even know I had.
“I can continue cooking and cleaning for you after the job is done,” she offered, again in that soft, shy voice that made me want to kiss the fuck out of her, then bite her. Her sweetness had a tendency to call to my most primitive instincts, and I couldn’t fucking understand it.
Damn, my aggression was overkill when it came to her. This was dangerous. She made me want to do things to her, not giving a good goddamn what my best friend or anyone else would think about it. She made me forget everything but her.
I sat back with my plate in my lap and picked up the remote. “What do you want to watch tonight?”
The first suggestion that popped up on screen when I opened Netflix was the new season ofThe Witcher.
