Carolyn Zane - Taking On Twins

He called the stupid, noisy birds “air-rats” and shooed them off. They reminded them too much of himself as a boy he guessed. Always begging for food.

He fired a pebble at one now, and without looking, Annie reached up and smacked his hand. He chuckled. She was so cool.

They’d been dating for nearly a month now, and it had been the slowest, most torturous month of his life. Courting this woman took finesse. Savoir-faire. A patience born of wisdom and maturity.

A veritable sainthood.

Hell, he’d be a monk by the time she got done with him. So far, she’d given up three dinky little good-night kisses and some hand-holding at the midnight movie. He’d relived every moment of these whisper kisses a million times after each successful union of their lips. But always, she’d push him away, shyly claiming that she needed time.

Time? Time for what? he wanted to know.

Normally, he’d have moved on to greener pastures by now, but this was Annie.

Annie was different.

Annie was his soulmate. He’d known that from the moment his lips had touched hers back there on Valentine’s Day and a clap of thunder had gone off in his head that left him deaf to any kind of rhyme or reason when it came to one flame-haired, fiery-tempered, good-humored, overly studious Annie Summers.

“Hey.” He reached over and tugged a strand of her wild red mop away from her cheek.

“Mmm?” Her highlighter squeaked as she found a particularly interesting section in her text.

“Want to go to a party on my dorm floor tonight?”

“Sure.”

“Really?” Annie wanted to party tonight? During dead week? Had a Frosty Freeze opened in hell?

“Yeah. I could use a study break.”

Wisely, Wyatt bit back the sound of impatience he’d been on the verge of snorting.

Study break?

This would be no milk and cookies study break. This was to be a kegger of mass proportion. An out-and-out rock-n-roll, get-down-and-funky brawl. He couldn’t wait. Right now his roommate and a couple other guys who were freshly twenty-one were out scoring the beer and other accoutrements. He could fairly hear the electric guitars tuning up from here. By ten o’clock that night, people would be swinging from the chandeliers. He just hoped Annie would loosen up for once and enjoy herself.

No such luck.

By ten that night, Annie was angrily shrugging into her slightly beer-stained jacket and marching out the door and back to her room. Wyatt, whipped puppy that he envisioned himself to be these days, followed, bellowing her name like a lovesick bull.

“Annie!”

“Shut up,” she barked.

She jerked her arm out of his grasp when he finally did catch her out on the sidewalk. The moon was full—which no doubt accounted for at least some of the insanity up on his dorm floor—and he could clearly see the disgust etched into her flawless brow.

“But wait. I can explain. I had no idea, really, that it was going to be such a big, well, riot, actually—”

“Bull.”

“No, really, I’m not lying. I knew it’d be wild, but not that bad. Especially that guy with the can of Crisco. He was kidding, I think. Anyway, I’m sorry. Forgive me?”

She slowed slightly. He was breathless. Man. When the woman was mad, she could move. They reached the end of the street that fronted his dorm and Annie turned down a main drag that led to the library.

No doubt she had some studying to do, he thought sourly. The street lamps shone through the trees and cast eerie patterns on the pavement. Now and then a Thursday night reveler or two would pass. Staggering, slurring, singing and generally firing Annie up even more. He grinned, imagining that her face was nearly as hot as her hair.

As her body.

Oh, man, she had to forgive him.

Out of energy reserves, he grabbed her arm, and when she tried to jerk away, he didn’t let go.

“Annie.” He was breathing heavy now, from the exertion or from the effect her anger had on his libido, he couldn’t tell. “Annie, please, honey, I’m sorry.”

Annie sighed. “I can’t believe you like hanging out with those…those…” She groped for the perfect word, meant to scathe. To blister. To singe.

“Animals?” he supplied helpfully.

“Yes!” she exploded, sending the word into the next zip code. “They were horrible!” She gave her arms a frenetic waving. “All gropy and dopey and—”

“Freaky and geeky?” He pulled her off the beaten trail and into a small grove of trees at the side of the library. “Goofy and doofy?” Steering her against a tree, he leaned across her body, balancing against a smooth trunk with his palm. Looking into her eyes, he arched a brow and grinned. “Dancy and fancy?”

“Don’t make me laugh.”

“Why not?”

“I’m mad and I want to stay that way.”

“What if I don’t want you to?”

“Tough noogies,” she said petulantly.

He brought his lips to hers and rubbed them lightly across. “Don’t be mad,” he whispered into her mouth. Her breath was sweet. Minty and warm and fresh and…Annie.

“I can’t help it. I want you to respect me. Not treat me like some kind of brain-dead, sex-crazed party animal.”

“I’m sorry,” he murmured, raining kisses in a line along her jaw until he reached that little place behind her ear where she’d dabbed something musky. “I’ll never treat you like a sex-crazed animal again,” he murmured, reclaiming her mouth and speaking against her lips, her nose, her chin.

“Promise?” she breathed.

He noted that her lungs were laboring nearly as hard as his now.

“Promise.”

“What?” she murmured and wound her arms around his neck. “What did you promise? I—I forgot.”

“I promise to treat you like a sex-crazed party animal.”

“Good.” She didn’t seem to realize, or care about, his mistake.

Wyatt wasn’t actually sure that it was a mistake, but he was too busy filling his hands with her silky red curls to analyze. Just the same, before she could protest, he closed his mouth over hers for their first real kiss. A deep, soul-searching kiss that he put everything he had into, knowing that—for this evening anyway—it was all he’d get from Annie.

He eased her flat up against the tree trunk and pressed his body into hers, absently noting how well her valleys fit his hills and vice versa. As he lay over her, he lowered his hands from where they’d been tangled in her hair and captured her wrists and pulled her arms up over her head.

She writhed beneath him, arching against him, returning his kiss with every bit of the passion he’d dreamed of from the moment he’d laid eyes on her. From deep in her throat, a whimper of sorts issued, and she melted against him, her head moving back and forth, seeking, searching for a better fit of her mouth under his.

He moved with her, accommodating, anticipating her every move, straining to become a single unit with her. He released her arms and she wound them at the back of his neck. His own hands settled at her jaw. Beneath his onslaught, Wyatt could feel her losing herself, becoming weightless, boneless, fearless. He knew because the same thing was happening to him.

It was a blissful feeling that he’d never experienced before. A feeling he never wanted to lose. A feeling of unity.

Of belonging.

This. This must be what love was all about, his muzzy mind reasoned, as he tore his mouth from hers just long enough to gasp for air and go back for more. No wonder so many people spent their lives searching for it. If this was at the end of the rainbow, count him in.

With his fingers, he traced the contours of her face, memorizing the feel of her cheeks, the union of their mouths, the way her fabulous hair tickled his cheeks, his neck. He breathed in the sea air, the scents of spring flowers, the velvety, cool darkness, the scent of Annie’s perfume mixed with spilled beer and old leather. He listened to the serenading crickets, the distant music and laughter of a party in progress and the footfalls of the occasional passerby. He committed each of these things to memory, realizing this was an experience he never wanted to forget.