She huffed at me and, stooping down, flung hay at my face. It didn’t go far. It mostly floated around me.
“Continuethat,” she said. “Eat it. Choke on it.”
My eyebrows raised and my cock hardened.Eat it. Choke on it.On a basic level, my dreams of being with her in the bedroom. Or, where the fuck ever. Her ass in my face, my mouth over her sweet spot, her mouth over my cock…
She stuttered, trying to get words out, and then she started slinging Italian insults at me again.
“I take it back.” She waved a wild hand at me. “I wouldnotmarry you if you were the last man in this earth.”Inthis earth, not on it. “I would rather marry Rocky!” She shoved the rope down, stepped out of it, and, spinning on her booted heel, started toward the door.
Rocky was a kid—one who enjoyed using his head to ram asses.
So many fucking delicious visions she was giving me today as I watched her fine ass walk away from me.
I grinned, watching as she stormed through the barn. She kicked a bucket, and it flew. I knew, though, that one of the hands had left a rake against the wall. If she didn’t see it in her rage, she might stomp on the tines, and the stick might whack her in the head. I reached her just as she stumbled over it. She wasn’t expecting it, and she tripped over it.
Instead of going forward or toward the wall, she was going for a horse’s stall. A horse known to be a biter. His lips were up, and he was already showing his teeth, ready for his chance. He probably thought he was getting an apple.
I’d never seen fear on her face that great before. All the color drained from her cheeks, and she let out a quiet cry of anguish. My body brought hers in to protect her while my heart turned to fucking mush.
Once she was on her feet, in my arms for not nearly long enough, she stepped out of my embrace. I fixed her hair, residual hay from when she had flung it at me stuck in places, and she let me, but then she stuck her shoulder to the wall.
“You were bit before,” I said.
She nodded, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “After I was thrown off.” She looked away from me for a few moments before she’d meet my eyes again. “I learn from mistakes, Casanova, even if they are not always mine. Once bitten, twice shy.”
“If you slathered yourself in honey, would bees surround you?”
“You’re saying he bit me because I smelled like…honey?”
“Apples,” I corrected. The forbidden fruit. “Besides, we’re not talking about horses. We’re talking about relationships.”
“Correct. I’m not some simple-minded woman who falls for a man because he has a gorgeous face. Love is not a game, Casanova. You, just like my sister, make it into one.Grazie, but nograzie.”
She went to walk off but stopped when I called herAnnie. She shivered, like I’d breathed out against her neck. Her hand went there like she was trying to slow her pulse. She turned to me.
“You think I’m gorgeous.” I smiled.
She rolled her eyes. “You know you are gorgeous. The entire planet probably knows this. If a woman has seen you, all billions of them on this planet, I am not alone in thinking this. It is a fact at this point.” She shrugged.
“You love me, Annie. You know you do. You even said so yourself with the whole ‘love is not a game’ speech.”
“What?” she breathed out. “That isnotwhat I meant!”
“You said it.”
She growled at me, and I ducked just in time to miss the bucket she flung at my head. Mr. Ed, the horse with the teeth, seemed like he was laughing at me. He was snorting and shaking his head.
Joke was fucking on him.
She loved me.
Andfuck me sideways.
I loved the girl too.
Chapter 10
Sistine
