had all night. They could play around later. But for now, he needed to be inside her.
He felt like he had waited forever, even though it had been no time at all. They hadn’t wasted any time talking, and yet he felt like he knew her. He knew that she should be a lot more confident in how beautiful she was; he knew that a man was responsible for making her feel like shit. He knew that she hadn’t been pleasured nearly as extensively as she should have been in her life. Knew that she had a neat little life. Knew that she took care of her things, and that having undivided attention on her made her uncomfortable.
All that knowledge added up to something big. Made him feel like he’d been waiting for this moment for years rather than an hour or so.
He pressed the head of his arousal against the slick entrance to her body, dragging the broad head through her wetness before pushing in an inch or so, rolling forward slowly, teasing her methodically.
Teasing them both.
She whimpered, the sound building into a moan that came from deep inside her.
Then he lost it completely. He bucked forward, burying himself to the hilt, swallowing her little gasp of pleasure as he did.
She gripped his shoulders, wrapping her legs around his waist, her lush lips pressed against his ear. “Yes,” she whispered. “Harder.”
And Cooper was a gentleman, so he obliged.
He bucked into her, losing all sense of time, of anything other than the red-hot pleasure that was racing down his veins, that was overtaking him completely.
She was hot, so hot and responsive, tight around his cock. She met his every thrust, a sweet sound of pleasure on her lips each time he thrust back home. When she came, she gasped, the expression on her face one of wonder, like he had given her a gift. And damn it all, he couldn’t hold back any longer.
His control broke entirely, and he froze as his own release took him over, grabbing him by the throat and shaking him hard, leaving him nearly blacked out as he pulsed deep inside her tight, wet body.
He collapsed against her, pressing his forehead down on hers. She clung to him, her fingernails digging into his shoulders, her heels pressed into the backs of his thighs.
“Cooper,” she whispered. “Oh, Cooper.”
A rush of adrenaline worked its way through him, a strange sensation prickling over his skin.
He had never told her his name. He was sure of that. He lifted his head, looking down at the woman who was currently staring dreamily up at him.
Eyes that were very familiar. An expression that was very familiar.
A memory swam in front of his vision. Of waking a sleeping teenager in the loft of his parents’ barn. Those sleepy, dreamy brown eyes had looked up at him just like this.
And suddenly he realized that he was buried balls deep inside little Annabelle Preston.
One of his father’s best friends’ daughters. A girl who had spent ages following him around the family ranch, all round chubby cheeks and hopeful eyes.
A woman he’d known since she was a child, and who he had just screwed within an inch of both their lives.
Well, fuck.
COOPER HAD GONE still on top of Annabelle, and her brain was buzzing from the spectacular orgasm she’d just had.
She had never had sex like that in her life. She had never been with a man that looked like him, had never had a man do...that to her. She had never, absolutely never, come twice in one...session.
She was lucky if she got to come once.
But now her fuzzy feelings were fading because Cooper was looking at her like he had just seen a ghost.
“Annabelle,” he said.
His tone was so confused, his expression so dumbfounded. She couldn’t make sense of it.
But...oh, no. No.
He had never once used her name. Not once tonight, until now.
He hadn’t known who she was.
There were no words for the horror. The humiliation. He didn’t want her. She’d thought...finally. And no. He’d just wanted sex. She’d trusted him with her body because she knew him. And she’d thought...he knew her, too. But he didn’t.
Her stomach twisted, turning sour.
She pushed his shoulder, scrambling to get out from beneath him. “Who did you think I was?”
“Annabelle,” he said again, moving away from her.
He was just staring at her, like she was a ghost still, but now possibly a ghost who had grown a second head. Which was not the look that you wanted from a man who had just banged you senseless.
It was ludicrous. She was naked, pressed against her headboard, her breasts heaving with every breath she took, her thighs parted slightly, because she still hadn’t gotten control over everything.
When she realized that she snapped her knees together, angling to the side.
He was still naked, too, breathing hard, the muscles on his chest and stomach flexing, that very large, very masculine part of him looming in her vision, making it impossible for her to think straight.
“Yes,” she confirmed. “Annabelle. But I thought you... I thought you knew.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head.
He sounded so disgusted, so horrified. She wanted to curl up into a ball and disappear from the situation completely.
“So, you just thought you were having sex with a stranger? You didn’t even ask my name.”
“I thought that’s what we were doing,” he said.
“I knew it was you,” she whispered. “That’s why I...”
Oh, no. This was horrible. Worse than having the boyfriend who had so firmly felt like settling tell her one day, after five years, that he’d been wasting his time with her.
Cooper Mason didn’t finally see her as a woman.
Cooper Mason did not want her. Cooper Mason the opposite of wanted her, if his reaction to the entire situation was anything to go by. He was clearly disgusted unto his soul that he had ever touched her.
Except... He had been into it when they’d done it. He had been.
“I don’t understand.”
“I don’t understand,” Annabelle said. “I thought that we... I thought you... You didn’t know who I was.”
“No,” he said,
