Chapter 14
FOURTEEN
Anson
“Just thought I could bring you some lunch, since it’s gonna be a long day.
You need dinner, you just let me know. I’ll get some pizza sent over.
” I flash her a grin, and she peers inside the brown paper bag.
She has a long day at Many Moons and Moans ahead of her.
Everyone in Purgatory Falls is prepping for the fall season and the tourists are out in force.
“Anson! You didn’t have to do that. I could have just run down to Marlowe’s or the diner.”
“This way you don’t have to. Plus, I get to take a break with you.”
“And you get to get a peek at the store.” She slices an amused look in my direction. “Unless you’re here to pick up a costume.”
She nods to an array of sexy Halloween costumes she has in the front corner of the store. Sexy witches. Scantily clad pirates. An array of outfits I’ve never seen a nurse or firefighter wear in real life. I take a few steps in that direction to look closer at the options.
“They’re really popular now. It seems like everyone’s buying one. Better get one before the run out.”
“I don’t know that I look good in rhinestones, darlin’,” I quip, and it earns me that perfect melodic laugh of hers.
“You don’t know until you try. But maybe thigh-high boots or pasties are your thing.” She follows me over and plucks a couple of the items off the shelves.
“I think I’d rather see you try them.”
Her eyes flash up to meet mine. We’ve lost sight of our boundaries the last couple of times we’ve met up, our real life and our stranger life bleeding over into one another.
Her nephew’s father would never in a million years suggest something like that.
But the version of me she likes in dark rooms and trucks?
He’d put her in the back room and make her try on one of these right now.
“Which one would you like me to try?” She stands as she asks me, making the short walk to the backroom shop’s front door and flipping the latch without losing eye contact. She’s daring me to push the line between us again.
“Is that a serious offer?” I don’t mind giving her anything she wants but I’m asking every step of the way. The last thing I want is to break all the trust we’ve built over the years.
“It’s my lunch break. I have to shut down for a little while, since my friend brought me food.”
“Your friend, eh?” I realize what she’s doing. “He someone I should be worried about?”
She hesitates as she runs her finger along the shelf, pointing out my options and flicking sly looks over her shoulder to see what’s catching my attention.
But then she shrugs one shoulder and dips down to fix one of the displays on a lower shelf.
A monster dick. Literally. It’s shaped like a tentacle and ribbed for her pleasure.
I have to tuck that question away for a later moment because the tone of her voice drags my attention back to her.
“Nah. He’s just tall. Dark hair. Deep brown eyes.
Sexy smile. Super serious but fun when he wants to be.
Owns his own business and his own house.
Single dad with an amazing kid. Incredibly smart.
The kind of guy you call when you’re in trouble because you know he’ll help you figure things out without judging you.
” She straightens another toy before she stands again.
“Brings me lunch to cheer me up. You know. Not a threat at all.” She smirks as she hands me two costumes.
I look down, and one is a maid’s costume, with a skirt that leaves nothing to the imagination and a top that’s barely a scrap of fabric.
The other is black pleather with straps and grommets.
Neither fit her personality. I put them back on the shelf and hand her a short blue-and-white gingham dress costume instead, the words “Sexy Kansas Girl” written across the front.
She went as Dorothy for Halloween, with Ford as her cowardly lion and me as her heartless tin man a few years back.
She ordered her costume online and hadn’t realized it was the sexy variety instead of the kind that would fit in with the rest of the moms on the block like she’d planned.
She spent a whole weekend trying to make it more small-town trick-or-treat appropriate by letting down the hem and adding solid white tights underneath.
Not wanting to disappoint me or Ford for Halloween.
But her efforts didn’t do much for the neckline or the looks she got in the two braids she wore.
Dads did double takes. Teenage boys whistled.
My hands were sore from the number of times I’d flexed my fists that night walking behind her and Ford, ready to step in if someone so much as breathed too closely.
It was the first night I had to confront how protective I was over her. How much I saw her as mine to keep safe, whether it was true or not. Realizing when I got home the kind of things I would have done to have those ruby-red lips pressed against mine. It’s a stark reminder of where we stand now.
I can’t have her. Not really. However much she jokes about the threat of it. My job isn’t to steal her off the path she’s on; it’s to make her feel sexy again. Wanted. Cared for. Those things I can do easily. But selfishly I want more. I want to feel like some part of this is for me too.
Her eyes light with recognition when she takes the costume from me, glancing up at me and then back down at the dress.
“This one’s more expensive. Nonrefundable.” Her business tone is back, like I’m the stranger again.
“Good.” I like the sound of permanent right now as I follow her to the makeshift changing room at the back of the place.
It’s a cordoned-off corner with a metal rod that holds a velvet curtain just short of a couple of feet off the ground.
It’s empty right now except for the chair sitting in the corner and a small rack to hold discarded items. “I’ll wait out here.
” I move to lean against the wall, but her hand wraps around mine, and she tugs me inside.
“Sit.” She nods at the chair, and I follow her orders. This is becoming a habit. Me doing what she says. Or maybe it always has been. I don’t mind when it’s her. She never asks for more than I’m willing to give. If anything I wish she’d ask for more.
She pulls the green velvet drape shut behind her, and it blocks out the bright light of the shop, drenching us in the warm hues of the sconce on the wall next to the vintage mirror.
She’s used antiques from her shop to decorate this room, and it feels like we’re being transported back to a time when me watching her undress at noon in the middle of her store would have had steeper consequences.
When her jeans slip down her legs, exposing her bare skin and the cute little pair of pale-purple panties she’s wearing underneath, I’m not entirely convinced this is any different.
She toes out of her shoes, and her bare feet hit the old wood floors beneath her.
Floors I refinished for her before she opened this place.
“Can you open that for me, please?” she asks as she pulls her top over her head, grabbing an empty hanger off the rack.
There’s none of her former shyness at being in a compromising position with me.
It’s raw confidence she has right now. Who she really is when Chris isn’t here to wear off her shine and make her feel small.
I feel like I’m getting fresh glimpses of the woman I’ve always known is still there under the surface.
I pull the dress out of the packaging along with a pair of white thigh-highs, a set of garters, and two blue bows.
“You gonna put your hair in braids again?” I hold them up, a smirk on my face as I say it.
“Do you want my hair in braids?” she asks as she unzips the dress and slips in. She turns her back to me and bends to sit on the edge of my lap. “Zipper, please.”
I’ve lost all train of thought as I grab the zipper to pull it up. It feels like a crime to be putting clothes back on her right now, but I do as she asks. It earns me the loss of her as she stands, turns, and puts her right foot on my left thigh.
“Stocking, please.” She nods to the gauze-like thigh-high draped over my other leg. I take it, bunching it down until I can get it over her toes and then her heel. I make slow work of dragging it up over her ankle and her leg. Her lashes lower as her eyes stay trained on my hands.
I pause when I get to the top of her right thigh, my thumb brushing a slow circle over her skin. I want to drift higher, test to see if I’ve managed to get her wet in the middle of her workday. Because she has me hard as fuck right now.
“Garters,” she murmurs after a long moment of letting me tease her with slow northward progress.
She puts the second thigh-high on herself before she reaches down and grabs for the belt, shimmying into it slowly, and then raking her eyes over me.
They land hard on my lap. It’s obvious how much I want her right now, and she rolls her lower lip between her teeth.
“Can you snap this on?” She slips her knee in between mine, and it brushes against my inner thigh.
I can feel it in my dick, and I have to close my eyes for a moment to recenter myself.
I clear my throat and reach for the garter, pinching the clip together and dragging the top of the stocking up to meet it.
I repeat the process on the other side, her eyes following every slow movement of my fingers.
“There we go.” I state the obvious when I’m done.
She steps back to let me have a full view, turning in one quick swirl of the dress that leaves almost nothing to the imagination.
“What do you think?” she asks, as if she doesn’t already know the answer.
“I think I could spend all day watching you.” The admission might be more honest than I should allow, but fuck if it isn’t the truth.