Free A Dixie Christmas by Sandra Hill Page B

went up, balking.
     
    “All right?”
     
    After a long pause of hesitation, she nodded.
     
    He proceeded then to unbutton her jeans.
     
    Her eyebrows shot up in surprise, but she didn’t protest.
     
    “Lift up a little, honey, and lean forward,” he advised. When she did, he slid a hand inside the waistband of her panties, down between her legs. The warm, wetness he met there caused him to sigh with pleasure. “Oh, Annie-love, you feel so good.”
     
    “Claaay,” she cried out, unsure whether she wanted him to touch her there.
     
    Before she had a chance to think further, he inserted a long middle finger inside her tightness and rested a pulsing thumb against the swollen bud. “Now, Annie,” he encouraged her with a guttural hoarseness, “you ride  . . . you set the pace.”
     
    “I  . . . I don’t think I can,” she whimpered.
     
    “Yes, you can, darling.” And she did. With each forward thrust, she brushed the ridge of his erection. They were separated by denim material but the sensation was still intense. With each withdrawal, that part of his body yearned for her next stroke. It didn’t last long. Probably only minutes. But when Annie began to spasm around his finger and melt onto him, he held her fast by the hips, leaned forward to kiss her with a devouring hunger, and bucked upward  . . . once, twice, three times.
     
    “Annie-love,” he whispered into her hair a short time later. She was nestled at his side, both of them stretched out full-length on the sofa.
     
    “Hmmm?” She was half-asleep and sated.
     
    Clay couldn’t have been prouder if he’d pulled off a million dollar investment deal. You’d think he was personally responsible for having made the world move. Well, he had, actually. For both of them.
     
    “Clay?” she prodded.
     
    “I’m think I’m falling in love with you,” he disclosed. He hadn’t intended to tell her . . . not yet. But his senses were on overload, brimming with so much joy. He couldn’t contain it all.
     
    “I already know I’m in love with you,” she admitted. “I think I fell the minute I saw you storming across that vacant lot looking like Scrooge himself.”
     
    He poked her playfully in the ribs at that insult, but inside he felt such a triumphant sense of elation. Annie loves me. Annie loves me. Annie loves me. It was all so new and strange and confusing. Not what he’d come to Memphis to find. It would pose all kinds of problems in his life. But what a wonderful, wonderful thing! Annie loves me.
     
    Annie worried her bottom lip with her teeth then. Obviously, she had something on her mind. Finally, she blurted out, “When will you know for sure?”
     
    Clay chuckled and said, “Maybe after we check out the hayloft.”
     
    The best-laid plans of foolish men…
     
    I love her.
     
    It was Clay’s first thought when he awakened the next morning to bright sunlight warming the cozy bedroom. You’d think it was springtime, instead of four days before Christmas. But then, Clay recalled, he was in Tennessee  . . . almost the deep South.
     
    With an open-mouthed yawn, he stretched widely, becoming immediately aware of the ache in his ankle and at the back of his head. He glanced to the side, saw the bedside clock, and jolted upright, causing the dull pain to intensify. Ten o’clock! He hadn’t slept beyond six a.m. in the past twenty years.
     
    Oh, well! First, he would take a shower. Afterward, he had at least a dozen calls to make, first to check with his office in New York, then to set the hotel sale in motion here in Memphis.
     
    But there was only one thought that kept ringing through his head. I love Annie. Clay was not a whimsical person. If anyone had told him a few days ago that he would believe in love at first sight or romantic destiny, he would have scoffed, vehemently. He didn’t know how it had happened or why, though he suspected, illogically, that it involved that dingbat bellhop and God’s big toe