red top.
There was no way she didn’t come from money. Anyone who’d grown up poor would never be able to clean a sink while wearing that outfit.
Her table manners were also perfect. Not that I knew much about manners. My mom had insisted I do cotillion when I was twelve, along with several of the other boys from town. I’d been horrified of course. I’d begged and pleaded not to go, but my mom was resolute. She wanted me and my friends to shape up and learn to be gentlemen.
In an old drafty barn that someone had cleaned up, we stumbled our way through a semester of waltzing, two-stepping, and line-dancing. At the end of every dance, we’d have to sit down at a table and practice our manners. The girls all sat together, leaving the boys to cram in together and tell dirty jokes in hushed tones.
The boys’ manners were atrocious, my own included. So while I’d picked up very little of the information, Ava clearly had been through some kind of similar training.
My years of deployment had not been kind to my table manners either, although the military balls that I attended when stateside did require me to brush up a little.
“Did you go to Cotillion?” I asked.
Her head jerked up. She licked her lips. “Not exactly.”
What the hell did that mean? “You must have learned etiquette somewhere.”
“It was an ever-present part of my family life,” she explained.
“So your parents were pretty formal.”
“You could say that.”
She obviously didn’t want to talk about her family. Maybe they’d been real assholes.
“Thank you for dinner. It was delicious.” I still had some paperwork to finish, but it would be a lot easier now that I’d eaten such a filling meal.
She got up with her plate in her hand. I stood quickly. I touched her wrist. “Let me do the dishes.”
She glanced down at my hand on her bare skin but didn’t pull away. “It’s literally my job to do the dishes.”
“You cooked.”
“And you paid me to do it.”
She was just inches away from me, but she wasn’t stepping back. And to my shock, I found that I didn’t want her to step away.
I hadn’t been with a woman since I’d been discharged from the military. I hadn’t even considered the possibility. My nightmares hadn’t magically disappeared, and I still had a huge yellow lab that slept in the bed with me at night.
But having Ava this close was making me want to try. I took one step closer, giving her the chance to step away if she chose. She didn’t move. She stayed where she was, with her piercing gaze staring right at me.
Immediately, I was rock hard. For years, I’d been able to control my physical response to attractive women. Yet with Ava, I had no control whatsoever. I barely knew her, but my body was at the mercy of my intense desire for her.
I was going to kiss her. I brought one hand up and laid it on her cheek. Her skin was warm and flushed. I moved my hand farther back, threading my fingers through her hair, and cupping the back of her hand. I kept a grip on her hair, and guided her toward me.
I skimmed my lips over hers, just tasting her. Her lips were sweet from the Shiraz wine she’d had with her dinner. She always mentioned what kind of wine should be paired with a certain kind of dish, even though she didn’t consume much wine at all.
It was another sign of her probable wealth. No one in Pine Hills knew about wine. But none of that mattered right now. All that mattered was the feel of her lips against mine.
I tugged her closer. “I want you.”
Her voice was quiet, barely above a whisper. “I want you too.”
That was all the encouragement I needed. With the hand I had in her hair, I tilted her head to the side and deepened the kiss.
With my other hand, I grabbed her round little bottom. I cupped her ass, squeezing the firm flesh beneath my palm. She moaned, and scooted closer to me, until her lithe body was slotted right up against mine.
I rolled my hips, pressing my hard cock against her front.
She let her head fall back. Her lips were parted, and her eyes were closed. She smelled like apples. It must be the kind of shampoos she used. Moving on from her lips, I buried my face in her thick hair and inhaled.
Yes. Apples. I