Have Me

by Anne Marsh

  He does an awesome thrusting thing, his arms braced on either side of me, so close that his fingertips stroke over my shoulders each time he enters me. My sleep tank is shoved up to my collarbone, my shorts have disappeared into the tangle of sheets at the bottom of the bed, and dark o’clock sex has never been so welcome.

  He tips his head to look down at me in the dim light, his mouth kissing distance from mine. “Let’s stay here all day.”

  My bastard husband stops thrusting and actually waits for me to respond. The corner of his mouth curls up in a knowing smirk.

  I expect him to move but he doesn’t, so I may smack his ass. “Really?”

  “I’ll make it worth your while.” He pushes into me. Slowly. Because he’s a freaking tease and he’s holding out on me. He kisses along my throat while I try to remember why this is a bad idea.

  “Say yes,” he coaxes shamelessly.

  It’s two more strokes before I remember that since last night was Friday, it’s now technically Saturday—which means it’s my day to make him live at the bee farm instead of this really horrible, super swank mansion in San Francisco. Since he’s debauched me nightly for the past week in his quest to turn me into a bona fide bad girl, I get a shot at teaching him to behave in public. It’s like dog school for sexy billionaires or something.

  I grin up at him. Two can totally play this game. “You’re coming with me, farm boy.”

  I squeeze my inner muscles around him and he groans.

  “You’re not playing fair,” he whispers.

  “I learned from the best.”

  Liam

  I rarely lose a business negotiation.

  Trying to renegotiate while naked was clearly not my smartest move, however.

  When I brought up the possibility of exchanging farm time for quality bedroom time, she proved that she’d been paying attention to all those feminist theory classes Jax complained about at UC Santa Cruz, flipping the script on me and kissing me senseless. Ordinarily, I’d applaud her for being clever and pulling a good gender-role-reversal, but the end result is that I’m now riding shotgun in her ancient truck and it’s barely light out.

  “Good guy lessons,” she reminds me, sliding laughing brown eyes in my direction.

  “Eyes on the road.” I scoot over and tuck my arm around her shoulders. If she gets sleepy or distracted, I can take over. Plus, she smells great. Hana takes one hand off the wheel and slides it up my thigh. Her gentle grip has me considering the merits of a pit stop, but the road’s narrow and her farm has to have a bed. Or a hay loft. I’m pretty sure that’s required for farms. “And both hands on the wheel. You can maul me later.”

  She makes a pouty face. “You’re so safety-conscious. It’s weird.”

  When life drops something good into your lap, you look after it. Anything else would be stupid.

  “If I’d stuck with being the unethical corporate monster you think I am, I’d still be in bed,” I point out. “Instead I’m driving to Marin at the ass crack of dawn in a truck that’s incapable of exceeding sixty miles an hour.”

  “You’re lucky I didn’t make you leave at 12:01,” she points out.

  I press a quick kiss against her neck. “That’s because I produced an excellent counterargument.”

  “It was very impressive. Feel free to bring it up again later just in case I didn’t fully get your point.”

  Her eyes are bright with laughter. While dawn is never going to be my favorite time of day, I’m a fan of this. I try not to read too much into it and instead concentrate on what’s happening outside the truck. It’s not as gorgeous as Hana, but I can see why she likes living up here. There are flashes of ocean, lots of steep hills and some obvious perilous drop-offs. It’s like being in a video game except there are no free lives and the birds aren’t angry.

  The time passes quickly, no one falls asleep, and before I know it, Hana’s hitting the brakes and making a ball-jarring left-hand turn off the main road and onto a gravel track. A jaunty white sign with a plethora of bright yellow bees putting the moves on a flower flashes past my window and then she sends us hurtling downward. Fortunately, I started the day out with amazing sex, so I’m still mellow enough that I don’t yell.

  Hey Honey Farm must be located on the lowest level of hell. We jolt down the middle of the road, propelled partly by gravity and partly by Hana’s lead foot. I’m sure she’d know whether or not it’s likely someone else would be coming up the road, right? Just in case the potential for a devastating head-on collision isn’t enough, the road is lined on one side with enormous trees, redwood and otherwise. Drift left—hit trees. Drift right—plummet down a steep cliff that ends in the ocean.

  Once things level out, the ocean view disappears behind a curtain of trees and we coast into a large clearing. There’s a small white farmhouse with a wide porch, tons of flowers, a handful of outbuildings and poor cell phone reception. I don’t see bees, but they must be here somewhere. I’ll be lucky if they’re not in the house. This place is as alien as the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

  “Remember that this is my first time on a farm. You have to be gentle with me.”

  “You like rough.” I do, but I hope that the way Hana’s yanking on the parking brake isn’t supposed to be a metaphor. “You’ve really never been on a farm before? No school field trips? Community gardens? Romantic weekend getaways to a dude ranch in Montana where you could commune with nature?”

  I’d mostly skipped field trips because they’d cost money and I hadn’t wanted to be someone’s charity case. “Give me the grand tour, okay?”

  The first thing that hits me when I get out is the smell. It’s not so much bad as it is unexpected. There’s a shitload of flowers, which I’d guessed there’d be, but there are also notes of decomposing greenery, salt water and a whole lot of compost. The sun filters through the trees, painting Hana with little gold flecks and bouncing off the red-and-white roof of the farm cottage. As we get closer to her house, there’s a soft droning noise from the lavender massed around the big front porch. I’ve found the bees.

  She barrels up the porch and pushes the door open. Of course it’s not locked.

  “You’re not worried about the woodsman paying you a visit? Or the Three Bears?”

  She grabs my hand, laughing. “Come on, city boy. I’ll show you around.”

  I’ve never been in here before but I think I would have recognized it as hers. It’s sunny and cheerful, with a steep staircase on the right. A bright floral pattern covers the treads and bookcases crammed with books fill the landing above. She leads me through the living room, which has a fireplace, glass-faced built-ins and a squashy sofa. I catch just a glimpse of a dining room on the left and then we’re hotfooting it through a dollhouse-sized hallway, past a bathroom dominated by an enormous claw-foot tub and into the bedroom.

  She turns and plants her hands on her hips. The laughter’s back in her eyes. “What do you think of farm life so far?”

  “Is it nap time? Do good farm employees get a ten-minute break?” I pounce on her and toss her onto the bed. In no time at all, I’ve got her clothes off, and mine follow.

  “There’ll be a performance review later,” she says with mock gravity.

  * * *

  The next day brings more of the same. Lots of sexing mixed with outdoor time while we work through her chore list. After we check to make sure the bees are well-watered and that no enemy mites have tried to move in since we checked yesterday, Hana whips up a stellar PB&J for lunch. It turns out we get the afternoon off since the bees are good.

  “Come on.” She reaches for my hand as if it’s the most natural thing in the world for us to be joined together like that and then she starts down what looks like a rocky, wildflower-covered hillside.

  I let her pull me along although this is crazy.

  “Is there a path? A destination?
For the record, I prefer to climb up mountains and not down.”

  For all I know, she’s decided to resolve our marital status the old-fashioned way. She could just roll me down the hill—honestly, it’s nearly a mountain—and no one would ever find my poor, dead body once my cell phone had died and the signal had vanished.

  She turns—still moving down the path/track/whatever it is—and grins at me. “God, you’re so old.”

  I think my mouth falls open, which is a mistake at a bee farm. Who knows what will fly into it?

  “I’m only five years older than you. Turn around and watch where you’re going.”

  She rolls her eyes but turns around. My heart settles back into my chest.

  Once I’m convinced Hana isn’t about to barrel-roll herself into an early death, I can appreciate the view. There’s definitely a path, although it’s mostly just a dirt thread that’s almost entirely swallowed up by the clouds of meadow grass and flowers on either side of us. If this is what Hana’s bees live on, it’s no wonder her honey tastes so fantastic.

  And then we step into a grove of tall pines, the sunlight muted for a handful of seconds, and out again onto a beach that’s hidden at the bottom of the mountain-hill we’ve just climbed down. A pocket of cream-colored sand and dune grass separates us from the water and there’s a darker strip of wet sand where the ocean breaks. A ring of rocks juts out from the cliff on the right, taking the brunt of the incoming waves.

  Hana drops my hand as if it’s on fire. “I’m going for a swim.”

  “Now?”

  She beams at me. “Unless you want to come back at midnight. Moonlight on the water is amazing.”

  I consider asking her if I could take her somewhere safer—and warmer. Fiji maybe, or the Bahamas. The ocean waves pound against the sand rather too similar to a jackhammer for my taste. I don’t even want to think about her swimming alone in the dark.

  Wait.

  “Do you swim here by yourself?”

  “You’re my first farm boy.” Her answer is muffled because she’s busy whipping her tank top over her head, revealing a cute polka-dotted bra.

  Something about her makes me worry, like I need to wrap her up and keep her safe. Not because she’s not capable of taking care of herself—she is and she’s proved it—but because I don’t want to imagine a world without Hana in it. I need her to tell me everything she’s done since she was that sixteen-year-old girl with the awkward crush because I want to know. I want to know her.

  She’s right.

  She’s not just Jax’s baby sister.

  She’s not just the girl I’ve sort of watched grow up like a holidays-only uncle.

  She’s not even just my temporary wife, as much as I wish she would be.

  She’s an uninhibited, take-no-prisoners, curious, funny woman who’s busy stripping off her clothes because apparently it’s time for naked swimming.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  SEX IN WEIRD PLACES

  Hana

  I’VE COME TO an obvious decision: if I’m going to make Liam really and truly mine, I’ll have to make him see me. Not the teenage girl I was or even the woman who possesses a sometimes grudging but lifelong membership in the Jax Valentine’s Baby Sister Club. I love my brother, but I have to be more than just some kind of weird extension of him. I should probably also borrow a leaf from Liam’s meticulously organized planner and come up with a plan. No more winging it and then pouting when I don’t magically get my happy ending. Relationships are exactly like sex: you have to say what you want, then demonstrate, and then you still end up responsible for your own happy ending.

  Step one is to strip Liam naked. I’ll pry him out of his expensive designer wardrobe, and then I’ll open his soul with my metaphysical can opener and get a good look inside that. Bare Liam will be amazing. I’m certain of it.

  Currently, though, he’s eyeing me as if he thinks insanity might be grounds to annul our marriage. I’m not sure if it’s the swimming conditions that have him so uptight or my willingness to strip down outside.

  “Hana.”

  His voice is low and stern, the take-charge tone that gets me wet, although I’m not stupid enough to tell him that. Instead, I drop my tank top on the flannel I’ve already shucked. It may be July in California, but the bee farm is surrounded by trees and fields. Going bare-armed would be like walking into a bar of horny sailors naked. There are mosquitoes and ticks everywhere. This leaves me in my jean shorts, boots and bralette. I should come up with a plan for shimmying out of these, but instead I plop my butt down on the sand and unlace, unbutton, and generally beat all known land records for stripping down to a tiny pair of lacy yellow panties. From the way Liam stares, he likes yellow just as much as I do.

  He opens his mouth to say something else that I bet is either super practical (about the water’s undoubtedly frigid temperature or the lack of toweling and personal safety devices) or dirty. Dirty Liam is the best, but after last night’s dream, I’m too sleepy to come up with a witty response. So instead I drop my panties and sprint toward the water, trying to ignore the goose bumps crawling over my skin.

  “Last one in pays a forfeit!”

  I hear Liam’s bark of laughter behind me. It’s going to take him a minute to catch up because I’ve got a head start in the naked department. I lose time, though, twisting my head around to check out his progress. Liam’s competitive, so he’ll strip down. The biggest question is whether he’ll decide to wear those cute boxer briefs I spotted peeking over the waistband of his jeans or if he’ll meet my challenge. I’m betting on the latter.

  I crash into the water, slowing down only a little when the waves slap at my knees. I’m hot and sticky and this is heaven. The next wave hits my crotch and I suck in a breath. Okay, so it’s also a little like going for a polar-bear swim in January, but it’s still good.

  I don’t so much hear Liam as I sense him. He comes up from beneath the water, pulling me down with a quick, hard tug on my ankle. I go under, but he anchors me, cradling me against his big, warm body as we bob toward the surface. I should get even, but instead I thread my arms around his neck. My legs go around his waist like they’ve been doing all week.

  “That was mean.”

  “You started it.” He gives me his lopsided sexy smile, the one that makes my heart pick up speed as if we’ve just hit the final mile of a marathon and maybe, just maybe, that’s the finish line right there and all I have to do is run a little faster, a little farther.

  “Truer words,” I say as lightly as I can. I don’t need him to point out that I started everything between us. For a handful of minutes, I float, loosely anchored by his arm, my face tipped up toward the sun and the bright patch of sky above us where a pelican is chugging by.

  “Could you climb that?” I point to the cliff on our right, the one that sticks straight out of the water and then keeps on going and going for what feels like miles. The rock face is all craggy bits and old birds’ nests, ledges and crumbling stone. Somewhere, even farther up, is the public road that leads toward Stinson Beach.

  “Yes.” Liam anchors himself against a larger wave, assessing the cliff face in a way that makes me think that next weekend we’ll be rock climbing.

  “Why do you do it?”

  “I like the challenge. I like getting to the top.” He shrugs as if it’s no big deal. I give up pretending that I’m not curious if he’s gift-wrapped in wet cotton briefs and shimmy lower until I discover that not only is Liam completely naked, but he’s superhuman. Despite the chilly temperature of the water, he’s semihard.

  “You’re naked.” The words come out on a yawn.

  His brows draw together. “Am I boring you?”

  “I didn’t sleep well last night.”

  “Bad dreams?” He starts walking us toward the beach, which is a good thing. It’s cold enough that I can’t feel my good parts
anymore.

  “No. The opposite. I had an amazing sex dream—the kind where you wake up because you’re coming and you wish you could go back to sleep and do it again.”

  God. The look on Liam’s face is priceless. I can barely keep my own expression straight. Poor guy. He’s just so convinced that I’m this sweet, innocent princess.

  Liam

  Jesus. I just about trip over my own feet and drown us. The ocean is cold, but it would take prolonged exposure at this point to shrink my dick. Any temperature-induced siesta has been abruptly aborted by Hana’s dream announcement. I know she mostly says these things to get me going, but it works. I wade out of the surf with a raging hard-on.

  “Are you superhuman?” She asks this question while patting beneath her with one hand, just in case I’m unclear why she’s asking. When her hand closes around me, I grit my teeth to keep from groaning out loud. Her palm is barely warmer than an ice cube, but my dick doesn’t care. It kicks happily in her grip.

  She looks up at me through her lashes. “Should I tell you about it?”

  I snort. We both know there’s not a chance in hell I say no.

  “Every last detail. Feel free to reenact.”

  Jax said I should share what I’m thinking and open up more. Seeing as how he’s Hana’s brother, I’m entirely certain he didn’t mean I should tell her about the dirty dreams she routinely stars in since our wedding, but I’m just adapting his plan to fit my current needs. I can tell her later, when we’re substantially warmer, about my childhood woes or my intense dislike of art films. If it goes really well, I might even share the feeling I get when I close a business deal and add another zero to my bank account. If nothing else, it’ll offer her a chance to give me shit.

  “Alrighty then.” Her fingers walk up my chest and circle my right nipple.