“And you did these?” she asked.
“I’m a man of many talents,” he boasted playfully.
“Good Lord, I thought Hunter was the cocky one,” she said.
Anson laughed because he knew better than anyone just how self-assured and self-loving his little brother was. “Life will humble him down a bit. Life . . . or a good woman,” he added.
“True,” was all that she said.
They fell silent again.
“As a matter of fact,” she began, “I had a vision that Hunter’s my soul mate.”
There was silence on Anson’s end.
“When he touched my hand that’s what I saw, Anson,” she said. “I know you don’t believe in it all . . . but I do.”
Anson licked his lips and leaned back in his chair to look up at the tray ceiling. He honestly didn’t know what to say. Or how to feel.
“Anson, my next client just walked in,” she said.
“Okay.”
“Thanks again for the sketches and take care of yourself.”
Anson nodded and moved the iPhone from his ear to end the call.
He’d had no intention of pursuing anything with Mona and the kiss . . . the kiss had been a fun moment of her beloved spontaneity. Still, it had felt like there was much more to be said, but neither ventured toward it.
Mona sat on the foot of her bed going through the four sketches Anson made when there was a knock at her door. She checked the time on the digital cable box. It was a little past nine.
Still carrying the sketches, she padded barefoot to the front door. She peeked out the window.
Anson?
Looking down at her fuzzy bunny slippers and bright orange pajamas with green aliens on them, she turned her lips downward before taking a deep breath and opening the door. “Well, hey there, Anson,” she said, and then grimaced because she sounded like her elderly aunts.
He stepped past her inside her house and Mona was left to shut the door and turn to find him limping back and forth in front of her fireplace. He paused, looked at her, opened his mouth as if to say something, and then started pacing again.
“Anson,” she said sharply, before licking her lips. “What do you want?”
He stopped. His eyes took her in from head to toe and then up and down again. He locked his gaze on the sketches she still held gently in her hand. “I sketched those from memory. When I close my eyes I see you so clearly,” he admitted, his conflict evident on his handsome features. “I could create just as detailed a picture of your naked body coming out of my pool that day. I can’t forget it.”
She met his look and a warm shiver raced over her body. “Anson—”
“I can’t get you off my mind.”
She released a long breath, hoping to ease the hard pacing of her heart.
He limped over to her and gripped the sides of her face with his hands. She felt breathless and weak at the knees as he looked down at her with an intensity that shook her to the core.
“I want you, Mona. That’s what I want. You,” he whispered against her face before capturing her mouth with his own and kissing her with a moan that seemed torn from his soul.
Chapter 9
The sketches gently fell to the floor as Mona brought her hands up to clutch the back of Anson’s head as he deepened the kiss and traced her tongue with his own. She offered no protest when he wrapped his good arm around her waist and picked her body up against his. His lips moved from her lips to press hot kisses against her jaw. She tilted her head back as he kissed the length of her neck and hoisted her up just a bit higher to taste her collarbone.
“Yes, yes, yes,” she sighed heatedly. “Yessss!”
It was everything. The chemistry that pulsed in the air. The passion that flowed between them. The desire they both craved.
He lowered her again and she kissed his face before finding his lips and opening her eyes to look at him. He pulled back from her just enough for their panting breaths to mingle in the air between them. Their chests heaved. Their hearts pounded like crazy. Their eyes stayed locked.
“I can’t get enough of you,” he admitted, swallowing over a lump in his throat. “I can’t stop.”
She kissed each corner of his open mouth. “Then don’t,” she said in a heated whisper.
Anson’s eyes glazed over as she released him and leaned back in his embrace to pull her pajama top open. She cupped her breasts with her brown hard nipples showing between her splayed fingers.
“Damn, Mona. Damn,” he said, his eyes feasting on her.
He dipped his head to lick one taut nipple with the tip of his tongue.
She flung her head back and gasped.
He licked the other nipple.
She shivered and called out his name, clutching his shirt at his shoulders with her fists.
Anson hobbled them over to the couch and sat down with Mona straddling his hips. He buried his face in the sweet and warm valley between her breasts, inhaling deeply of the scent of her skin covered with a sweet mist. Jerking her top down, he held the material tightly, locking her arms to her sides as he sucked one brown nipple slowly, as if relishing ambrosia, and then dipped his head again to pleasure the other.
Mona shook her upper body, causing her topknot to work free and her breasts to sway back and forth across his face. He jerked her body up close to his and she smiled before she licked his bottom lip and then dipped her head to suckle at his neck. She inhaled deeply of his scent as she did. She allowed herself to get lost in him. Completely.
Nothing else mattered at all. How could it?
Anson shivered from her kisses and continued to bless her with his own as he worked the shirt down her arms to fall to the floor. She moved to stand between his legs, looking down at him as she removed the pajama bottoms to puddle at her feet.
Anson shook his head in wonder at her nakedness. He reached to lightly trace the tattoo of a colorful butterfly on her right hip before he slid his hand around to grip one fleshy buttock and jerk her body close to press the side of his face against her belly and her soft mound.
“Say hello to Miss Kitty,” she taunted him sexily as she lifted one leg to sit her thigh on his shoulder.
He turned his face to kiss her inner thigh and inhale deeply of her womanly scent. It was fresh and sweet and calling to him. “Come and get it.”
“Here kitty kitty,” he said, looking up at her as he opened her plump lips from behind and stroked her clit.
Mona hissed in pleasure and locked the knee of the one leg still on the floor as she felt it give way from under her.
“Why must I chase the cat . . . nothing but the dog in me,” he sang softly and playfully as he reached down to unzip his pants and free his hard dick.
Mona eyed his thickness. His darkness. His length. “Bow-wow-wow-yippie-yo-yippie-yeah,” she said, enjoying their banter.
She kicked the leg on his shoulder high and over his head to turn and sit down on his lap, rolling her hips and enjoying the feel of his dick against her buttocks.
Anson brought one hand around to cup her breast and the other down between her open thighs to stroke her swollen clit with his thumb. “She’s wet,” he moaned against her back, in between heated kisses up her spine.
“He’s hard,” she moaned, backing up against the length of him.
Mona spread her legs wide as he slid one and then another of his thick fingers inside her. Her back arched as she cried out and grasped wildly at the edges of the couch, gyrating her hips against his hands.
“She’s tight.”
Mona purred before she rose from his lap and bent over to wrap her hands around her ankles.
Anson sat back and massaged the length of his hardness as he watched her work the inner muscles of her core before him. Feeling hungry for her, he shifted up to the edge and licked her before sucking her clit between his lips. He felt her thighs and buttocks shiver against his face. He sucked harder. Her knees buckled and he reached up to support her thighs with his ha
nds.
Her moans and mumblings egged him on.
“Whoa,” she said, sounding breathless as she rose and took two steps forward from the unrelenting pleasure of his tongue. She jumped up and down as she eyed him like he challenged her, and she wasn’t having it.
Mona came back to him and dropped to her knees between his thighs, moving her hand to his dick to grasp his hardness. He thrust his hips upward, sending his dick up through her grasp. With a wicked little smile, she lowered her head and took the smooth and thick brown tip into her mouth.
At the first feel of her tongue circling him he arched his hips high off the couch and flung his head against the back of the couch. Shit.
She sucked him deeply and Anson literally bit his bottom lip to refrain from releasing a howl that would scare a pack a wolves.
She cut her eyes up at him as she continued to work him with her tongue. “Nothing to say?” she whispered against his moist flesh. “I should be the one tongue-tied.”
I love her.
Anson dug his fingers in her hair and gripped it from the roots, rolling his hips to send a little more of his dick into her mouth as he bit his own tongue lightly and tilted his head to the side to watch her work.
Knock-knock-knock.
Mona paused with her mouth still wrapped around him to look over at the door.
“Oh, hell naw,” Anson complained. “Let them go away.”
Mona smiled and gave him another suckle and a lick.
Knock-knock-knock.
Freeing her mouth, she rose and quickly grabbed her pajama top to pull on and wrap around her. She headed over to the window and pulled the curtain back. She quickly closed it at the sight of Hunter.
The reality of her actions sank in. Her beliefs in her gift and everything it stood for meant Hunter was her soul mate, but there she stood with the taste of his brother still on her tongue. “No, no, no, no, no,” she wailed, lightly pounding her own forehead with her tiny fist.
Knock-knock-knock.
“What’s wrong?” Anson asked.
“It’s Hunter,” she whispered harshly.
Anson calmly stood, his erection still standing off from his body through the open zipper. “Let him in. I should have told him about us from the jump anyway,” he said.
Mona looked at him as if he was crazy.
Knock-knock-knock.
“You expect me to hide from my brother?” he asked.
Mona came over to rush into her pajama pants, her top hanging open and exposing her breasts swaying against her body as she moved. “What do you suggest?” she asked. “You want to stroll to the door, open it wide, and poke him in the stomach with your dick?”
Anson worked his now semihard inches back inside his pants as Mona rushed to button her top. “Let him in,” he said when they were done. “Or I will.”
“Anson,” she said by way of pleading.
“So you were what—going to have sex with me and then marry him because of some stupid vision you think you had?” he asked, his face incredulous.
“I’d rather be with you. And this is all confusing for me because I am not feeling Hunter like a soul mate, and all I know is what the visions mean.... So don’t be an asshole and act like my visions aren’t real just because you don’t think so, Anson Tyler,” she finished with ferocity, her eyes blazing from the anger stoked by his insulting words.
“I can hear y’all.”
They both jumped in surprise and looked to the door at the sound of Hunter’s voice through the wood. Mona walked over to the door, pausing to pick up her sketches before she opened it.
Hunter strolled in and gave them both a leisurely look before shaking his head. “You know, you two could have told me you were messing around,” he said, moving around Mona’s living room looking at or picking up this item or that without a care in the world.
“It wasn’t like that,” Anson said.
“It’s pretty clear what it’s like, but I just left the house and I’m dying to hear what Kyra thinks with all those candles and rose petals everywhere,” he said, reaching behind him to pick up one of her frames from the sofa table.
Mona’s head snapped up to glare at Anson. “But you know what you want, right? First me, then her. You really had all your spinach, huh?”
“Y’all triplets?” Hunter asked, showing her a photo of her and her sisters.
Anson threw up his hands. “It’s pretty clear where I was planning on laying my head tonight . . . until this knucklehead”—he jerked his thumb at his brother—“interrupted.”
“Whatever, Anson.”
“Whatever?” he repeated with attitude.
“What’s this about visions? And I’m your soul mate?” Hunter asked, sounding as doubtful as his brother as he plopped down onto the couch.
“Get out, Anson,” she said, storming to the door and opening it wide. “Get your one leg Hopalong ass outta here.”
He walked over to stand beside her.
“So it’s his turn now,” Anson said snidely, low in his throat, his eyes brilliant with his anger. “Because the silly vision said so, right?”
For a moment, Mona allowed the pain of his words to permeate before she stiffened her back and her jaw.
“I wouldn’t do that. Man, bros before—”
“Say what now?” Mona snapped, cutting Hunter off.
“Hunter!” Anson roared, his glare now for his brother.
Hunter looked alarmed. “I didn’t mean it like that. I meant I would never let a woman come between my brother and me.”
“Then you should have said that,” Anson said in a hard voice.
“You know what? I want you both to get the hell out.”
“My apologies, Mona,” Hunter said, moving past both Anson and Mona to step out onto the porch. “Is the sister who made that stew in that picture? If my brother is blocking me and you’re supposed to be my soul mate, then you could at least hook me up with one of—”
Mona slammed the door in his face.
Anson chuckled.
She glared at him with her arms crossed over her chest.
Anson grasped her elbows with his hands. “I’m sorry,” he said.
She twisted lightly to free herself of his hands and move away from him. “You’re just happy because your brother’s not mad at you,” she said, disgruntled. “How Hunter feels doesn’t change what I know. What I saw. What I believe. Period.”
“And your vision doesn’t change what just happened between us either.”
“You don’t understand,” she said.
“So you want to marry Hunter?” he asked, his eyes locked on her.
“No,” she said, turning up her lip.
Anson looked offended.
Mona shrugged. “He’s a lot to swallow,” she said dryly.
Her eyes widened at what could have been a double entendre after the interlude Hunter had interrupted. “Don’t you dare,” she said at the amused expression on his handsome face.
Anson just held up both his good hand and the one in the cast as he shook his head.
She began pacing in front of the unlit fireplace. “It just doesn’t make sense, and before you . . . before you everything made sense,” she stressed, lightly tapping the fist of one hand against the palm of the other.
He limped over to her.
Mona held up her hands as tears filled her eyes. “You don’t understand how serious this is to me, Anson. I believe what I believe and now I’m so caught up in you . . . in us . . . that I will forever know that I gave the brother of my future husband a blow—”
“I get the picture,” he said, meaning to interrupt her.
She just ran her fingers through her hair.
“So you would marry my brother?” he asked.
She looked over at him, her fingers still entwined in her curls. “Why? Are you asking me first?”
Anson looked alarmed. “I didn’t say all that.”
Mona fought the childish urge to flip him the bird. “I�
��m not saying all that either, Anson.”
“What are you saying?”
“That I don’t know it all. I don’t know how Hunter and I get from this point to the next, being in love. I don’t know. But in time we all will get past this—maybe you with the help of the chick at your house with the roses and candles.” Mona plopped down onto the sofa and crossed her legs Indian style. “I don’t know.”
Anson came over to sit down on the couch beside her. He pulled her body close to his side, settling her head against his chest as he massaged her arm.
“You’re not getting any,” she mumbled against his chest.
Soon his chest shook with laughter as he pressed a kiss to the top of her head.
Anson was disappointed his brother’s Jeep wasn’t parked in front of the house when he got home an hour later. It was nothing for Hunter to hop on the road and head back to Atlanta at a moment’s whim. Sometimes Anson didn’t even know his brother had left the state until he got a call from him telling him he was back in Atlanta.
The lights were off, but there was a definite glow in the windows that let him know candles—and plenty of them—were lit. Anson may not have believed in love being as deep and profound and lasting as Mona did, but there was one thing about relationships he knew for sure. There was no way he could marry a woman, live under the same roof and have a sexual relationship with her, while his desire was for another.
He would never cheat on any woman he married—that was all about his character. But to lust after another—that was all about a serious breakdown in the relationship. Before it even begins . . . again.
Knuckling up his will for a confrontation, he shut the car off and reached for his crutch, leaning against the passenger seat, before slowly making his way across the drive and up the stairs to unlock his front door. “Well damn,” he muttered. The multitude of filled glass votive candles on the floor was enough to heat the foyer. The layers of red roses making a trail down the hall was so thick that he couldn’t see the floor beneath it.
His first instinct was to ignore the red rose road and go hide out in his office. He noticed the roses led to his bedroom door and not the guest room where Kyra had been stationed all week.
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