Magnolia Dawn by Erica Spindler Page B

her. He answered her plea, deepening the kiss, his tongue stroking and twining with hers.
    Yet deeper wasn’t enough. Rush moved his hands from her hair to her face. He splayed his fingers over her cheeks, stunned at his response to her. At her response to him. He never would have suspected that beneath Anna’s quiet, guarded reserve teemed a volcano of passion.
    He never would have suspected she could ignite such an answering passion in him.
    He was neither young nor inexperienced. Since he’d been old enough to care, women had been drawn to him. And he to them. Sex had come early—and naturally. But this…this didn’t feel real. It felt super-real.
    He wanted this woman. Beyond reason or good sense. In a way he hadn’t wanted since those first desperate encounters in his youth. Or maybe ever.
    Why? He tore his mouth from hers. What made her so special? What made holding her feel so new? So extraordinary?
    Instinct warned him to go slow; he ignored instinct and found her breasts, cupping them, moving his thumbs across her erect nipples.
    Anna froze, a memory from her fifteenth summer barreling into her head, and with it the urge to run. Arousal evaporated, was replaced by fear, icy cold and numbing.
    The boy’s weight pressed her back against the naked field. A stone bit viciously into her shoulder blade, and she cried out. But not in pain. In terror. She pushed frantically, ineffectually, against the boy’s chest, her breath coming in shallow gasps.
    He pawed at her, his hands clutching at her breasts, hurting her. From somewhere outside herself she heard the scream of a truck barreling past, the cry of a mockingbird, the rasp of a zipper being yanked down.
    She heard Macy calling her to lunch.
    Anna squeezed her eyes shut, trying to force the memory from her head. Trying to rid herself of the panic coursing through her. She wasn’t fifteen years old, she told herself. She was in control. She knew exactly what to do—where to strike and how—should she be attacked.
    This was Rush touching her, not Lee Fuller. She wasn’t being attacked. She’d invited Rush’s touch, his kiss. She’d enjoyed it almost desperately.
    For a moment. Only a moment.
    Tears of frustration and disappointment welled in her eyes, and she wedged her hands between them. Dear Lord, how had she allowed herself to get into this situation? What had she been thinking? She couldn’t do this. She didn’t want it. She’d been crazy to think this time would be different.
    A sob rising in her throat, she pushed against Rush’s chest.
    â€œAnna?” He lifted his head, his expression dazed, his breathing labored. For a long moment, he gazed down at her, confused. “What’s wrong? What’s—”
    â€œLet me go.” She squirmed beneath him, fighting the panic, fighting the fear pressing in on her. Fear that he wouldn’t let her go. That she would have to fight him. That, in the end, she wouldn’t be strong enough to free herself.
    What would she do if that happened? she wondered, hysteria rising like a bile inside her. This time, how would she live through it?
    â€œAnna?” Rush curved his fingers around her shoulders. “Did I do something to…tell me what I—”
    â€œGet off me, I said!” The panic clawed at her, and she flailed her fists against his chest. “Now, dammit!”
    Rush rolled off her, his expression stunned. Without giving him a chance to speak, Anna jumped up and raced for the safety of Ashland.

Chapter Five
    H ours later, Anna paced. The brilliant light of midday had been replaced by the purple of late afternoon. The time since she’d run from Rush had passed with excruciating slowness. She’d paced and raged and cried; she’d cursed a past that refused to let her out of its grip.
    She paused beside one of the parlor windows that faced the front of the house and gazed out at Sweethearts’