Bareback Risk

"Four o'clock in the morning and twenty freaking miles for a kiss." Reece mumbled as he forced himself to lower his speed to the posted speed limit and set the cruise control, groaning at the almost painful throb of his arousal. Just for good measure, he chastised himself a little further, "Burning the candle at both ends is not healthy and plays hell with a man's libido." He paused a moment and yelled at himself inside the silence of the cab of his pickup. "Get over it!" He added the last comment, clenched his jaws, and finished the ride back to the too big, too silent, and too lonely house in silence.

** ** ** **

Ana had difficulty sleeping in the daytime. However, because of her summer job, she had no choice and usually managed to lock her door and pull the covers over her head. On the day of the party, however, sleep was simply impossible. Her mother's friends called to gossip, which meant the telephone rang and rang again, and then rang again. Although her brother had his own apartment, Jerry was in and out, wedding activities took more of his time than he liked, which caused him to grumble loud enough for their mother to hear. He had developed the skill of trying to get someone else to do things he did not want to do with finesse Ana almost admired. Two of the groomsmen lived out of town, which meant they were usually guests in the Lancer home for any approaching wedding function.

Open House for the bridal couple would be the first, and hopefully the only time, other than the rehearsal and wedding, when Ana was required to be nice to Lloyd Bishop. After the wedding, if she never had to see him or speak to him again, it would suit her just fine. The doorbell had been ringing all day long, gifts were piling up in the living room, and the dining room table was already set with all the frills and fancy decorations. The maid of honor's silly giggle accompanied the cacophony of other sounds that grated on Ana's nerves.

By mid-afternoon, Ana was not in any better mood than her brother was and when the cell phone rang, she was tempted to throw it against a wall. She had thought the pre-dawn appearance of Reece Winters, earlier in the week, had satisfied him for a while, or maybe he was going to leave her alone. It appeared he wanted to taunt her again. Cautiously she answered the call, "It's Ana."

"Willow Grove, seven o'clock, tonight." Reece's voice was gruff and his words were short. He had not had a very good day. Two hours in the attorney's office, a couple of hours on a hot, bouncing, three-wheel vehicle looking at the emerging golf course left him tired and agitated. That many more hours in a smoky bar with the golf pro, after too few hours of sleep left Reece in a foul mood. Did he really think Ana Lancer would be happy to see him after the tryst in the park, and then showing up at the restaurant and leaving after one kiss? Well, he had left her alone for four days, but he was ready for another taste of her.

"I can't Reece. Tonight is an Open House for my brother and his soon-to-be bride and I have to be here. I'm a bridesmaid." She held her breath, waiting for the explosion.

"Outside, ten minutes, I'll pick you up."

If anyone had seen the look on her face, they might have thought she was going to faint. Reece was going to drive by her house, in broad daylight and far too many people in the house would recognize him. She was going to get in his truck with him and he would drive down the street. Anyone and everyone in town might see them together and that had never happened. As far as Ana was concerned, it was not supposed to happen.

She looked down at the faded jeans and old sweatshirt she was wearing and really didn't care what she looked like. She had long ago discovered she could wear her brother's old jeans, if she added a sturdy belt and rolled up the legs a couple of turns. She did not care that the jeans were faded to almost a threadbare white, at least four inches too big in the waist, and the legs were at least that many inches too long. She only wore them around the house when her usual wardrobe wasn't appropriate for whatever she was doing. Hanging balloons from a string around the tops of the walls in the dining room meant going up and down a ladder, which was certainly a chore she could not do in a long skirt.

Instead of waiting inside the house, risking a chance he would honk, and everyone would look up or out a window to see who was in front making all the noise, Ana decided to wait for Reece outside. She walked out the front door, down to the curb in front of the house and waved at the neighbor across the street who was working in her flowerbed. Oh great, the biggest gossip in town was going to see her leave home in a truck driven by Reece Winters and there was nothing Ana could do about the gossip that would begin making the rounds fifteen minutes later. She might have gotten by with getting into a white pickup, but when the truck had twenty-inch letters proclaiming it belonged to Winters Construction, it was useless to pretend to hide.

Ana almost sighed with relief when a large sport utility vehicle stopped in front of the house and the passenger door opened from the inside. She stepped onto the running board and managed to get inside without falling down, but did not manage to get her seatbelt buckled before Reece pulled her head toward him and kissed her firmly on the mouth.

As he drove down the street, he reached over and pulled her closer. With one hand, he unbuckled her belt, slipped his hand inside the waist of her jeans, and placed his palm against the crotch of her panties, feeling the heat of her sex. Slipping his fingers inside the leg of her panties, he placed his middle finger against the seam between the lips of her pussy and applied a slight pressure until the lips separated and he was resting his finger against the entrance to her vagina. He moved his finger gently from side to side, stimulating her, the base of his finger resting against her clit. He removed his hand and put his wet finger in his mouth, watching her face as he did so.

"Yeah, you like me to touch you, don't you, lover?" he chuckled, calling her lover either to taunt her or make her angry.

Ana glared at him, but she chose not to respond to his taunt. Instead, she told him she had to be back at the house in two hours to get dressed for the party.

"I'll take you home when I'm done with you," Reece informed her and laughed at her when she crossed her arms across her chest and looked out the side window. However, a few minutes later he was driving down the main street of town, pulling into a parking place in front of Elise's Fashionable.

"Come on," Reece commanded and left the vehicle, barely giving her time to tighten her belt buckle. When Ana did not immediately follow, he walked around the front, opened her door, and took her arm. "Ana, do not fight me on this. Consider it part of your job with Winters Construction. I don't know how long this will take. Just do as I say and I'll explain later."

"I don't work for Winters Construction," Ana objected and tried to take her arm away from him.

Reece tightened his grip and said, "You're splitting hairs. I don't have time for it. This is the only day I can do this."

Ana fumed and followed, as instructed. Elise was the nearest thing to a female steamroller Ana had ever met. In five minutes, the woman had a CLOSED sign on the front door of her exclusive clothing shop and blinds drawn to cover the display windows. Elise did not ask if something suited Ana, she asked Reece if he liked it. It took an hour of trying on cocktail dresses, checking sizes of undergarments, and trying on different pairs of low heel shoes while Elise and her assistant made multiple trips in and out of the large dressing room with ceiling to floor mirrors. As quickly as she was pulling one dress off, another was ready to pull over her head or lowered for her to step into. Ana stood half-naked most of the time and barely managed to turn her back every time Reece walked into the room to look at a dress, or undergarment, on which Elise desired his opinion.

That same hour gave Ana an opportunity to learn that although the actual construction on the golf course had already begun, the official start of construction for the main building of the country club was a cocktail party five nights away. Elise asked questions, which Reese answered, their conversation half about his business and the other half whatever garment Ana was wearing at the moment. At the cocktail party, Reece intended to introduce Ana as the in-house residential architect. Ana was speechless when she learned Reece was an architect in his own right and did not intend to participate in the design of any of the homes. He expected Ana to begin working as soon as she could and continue working through her final year of school.

For a short time, he left her in the care of Elise and went to the courthouse to pick up the official recorded copy of the subdivision restrictions. In those amazing few minutes, a young woman in the back of Elise's shop, cut Ana's hair into the shortest style she had ever worn. When Reece returned to get her, his lower jaw dropped as he stared at Ana for a full minute. Her dark blond hair feathered across her forehead, around her face, and down her neck. Her brown eyes filled her face, and her natural skin tone made her look like the photo of a model on the front of a fashion magazine.

By the time he left her at her house, Ana had a garment bag over one shoulder, which contained two dresses because Reece refused to decide which one he liked best and remarked that she should have both now, as it would just save him shopping time before the next event. Ana was also carrying a large shopping bag filled with undergarments because one set was for one dress and a second set was for the other dress. Reece found other silk, lace, and barely there undergarments, plus garter belts and stockings he insisted Elise add to the bag because he liked them and wanted to see Ana wearing them. A third bag held two shoeboxes. Her head was swimming so badly she did not recall everything in the bag and did not have time to think about it.

All the way upstairs to her room, she planned to throw everything into her room, slam the door, and escape. Instead, she did as Elise instructed and put the dresses on the padded hangers Elise provided. Ana removed the wrapping from each piece of pretty lingerie and put the shoeboxes in her closet. With bare minutes to spare, she took her shower and dressed for the party. It took a monumental effort to prevent Reece from selecting a third dress for her to wear to the party and she only managed to do so because she convinced him that she was wearing a dress selected for her, by the bride.

** ** ** **

When she was finally dressed in the almost strapless dress with the short full shirt, Ana stood in front of the mirror in her room and knew she had a problem. The dress, which had an internal bra lifted her breasts so high, she was showing a deep cleavage and a very large amount of each breast was showing above the top of the dress. The very thin straps over her shoulders would never hold the dress up. Throughout the evening, the dress would slip lower and lower exposing more and more skin. The multiple layered skirt of softly swaying fabric was so short her knees showed as well as several inches of her legs above the knees. Ana grimaced, at the thought that the dress and dyed to match high heel shoes made her legs look like she was a light blue bubble on stilts.

After several hours of thanking people for the compliments on her haircut, tugging up the top of her dress, and replenishing the refreshment table, Ana was on the back patio, looking for a cooling breeze. The air conditioner was nowhere near large enough to cool the house with the constant opening and closing of doors. She walked halfway down the path toward the back fence when someone grabbed her arm and spun her around.

"Well, well, hello Ana," Lloyd Bishop smiled as he held her arm and tried to put his arms around her. "I like the change. My goodness, you're trying to show the whole world you have tits and gorgeous legs, aren't you."

"Back off, Bishop," Ana sneered at him, stepped back, and jerked her arm out of his grasp.

"Come on, Ana," Bishop caught her arm again. "I've been between those thighs before. We can find a dark spot around the corner. I'd like a taste of you this time and I won't even ask you to blow me."

Ana looked at the man who had roughly taken her virginity in the back seat of his car on the night of the homecoming dance during her sophomore year of high school. She didn't like him any more today than she did after that night. She tried to move away from him but he was holding her too tightly. She looked around the back yard but they were alone.

It wasn't very smart, but Ana had had her day's fill of men telling her what to do and she just couldn't resist, "You know what Bishop, your nose is crooked."

Before Ana could take a breath Lloyd Bishop had his arm around her waist, lifting her off her feet, and was making determined steps toward the side of the house.

Ana did not scream. It did not occur to her to do so. She had never encountered a man who had any interest in her. She was too startled to do anything other than kick her feet a few times.

"Ouch, dammit. Stop," Bishop complained.

"Put me down. Let me go."

A tall, very muscular man walking out of the back door spoke in a pleasant sounding voice, "I think the lady asked you to let her go."

"Aw fuck," Bishop complained and pushed Ana straight into the arms of Reece Winters.

Ana struggled for a moment, but Reece held her, "Easy Sweetheart, easy." When she was standing quietly, he let her go and bent down to look into her face, kissed her softly and turned to go back inside the house.

Less than a minute later, Ana walked into the house and although she searched, Reece seemed to have come and gone. She saw his name in the Guest Book, but the Bride's father told her Reece had a late appointment to meet with engineers from the highway department.

** ** ** **

It was too late the previous evening to take down the party decorations and collect all of the glasses, dishes, and utensils. By late morning, Ana was standing in the kitchen, her hands in soapy water when the cell phone rang. "It's Ana," she gave her usual answer.

"Courthouse bell tower, thirty minutes."

"Reece," Ana screamed. She actually screamed his name.

Reece laughed. He laughed at her and patiently repeated the rendezvous instructions, "Courthouse bell tower, in thirty minutes."

"Alright," she responded, resigned that she was going to meet him as a shiver ran down her spine while she searched for a towel with which to dry her hands.

"No bra, no panties, and I like the red skirt. You can wear it again for me. Bye, sweetheart."

"What! I am not your..." Although she responded to his taunt, Ana knew he had ended the call. He expected her to meet him in the center of town. It might not actually be the town square, but it was not far from it. Across any street around the centrally located courthouse, anyone who happened to look up could see a person standing in the bell tower. It was an open-air room, without walls, only a handrail around the perimeter with decorative spindles supporting the handrail. Almost every primary business in town, the bank, a furniture store, two jewelry stores, Elise's Fashionable, and the largest department store, had direct line of sight to the bell tower. The clock above the tower room chimed a short musical piece before the hour, and then counted out the number of the hour. Almost everyone who heard the chimes looked at the building, listening to figure out the name of the song. For a small town, the bell tower was like New York City's Grand Central Station. What was the man thinking?

** ** ** **

It took her fifteen minutes to change and walk to the courthouse and Ana was in the elevator to the second floor, with a few minutes to spare. She found a door clearly marked Bell Tower, but had no idea it was so many stairs to climb. A chain across the final few steps had a small sign suspended from it,Unsafe Beyond This Point. Ana stepped over the chain and was standing in the middle of the octagonal shaped room when Reece walked up the steps and moved across the room to stand in front of her.

"Reece, why are you doing this?"

"I told you Ana, you do not ask me questions. Take you clothes off."

"No!" She didn't scream at him, but it was louder than she should have spoken considering she was standing on what amounted to the third floor of a building in the middle of town. Anyone paying attention could hear the echo of her voice.

Reece leaned toward her, speaking as if each word was a complete sentence, unbuttoning his shirt as he instructed her. "You take them off or I will tear them off of you. Do you understand?"

In less time than he took to do the same to his shirt, she had her shirt unbuttoned, letting it fall behind her, and then she unzipped her skirt and let it drop. Reece looked up from unbuckling his belt, with his shirt halfway opened. He just stood there staring at her. She was beautiful, she was so beautiful he could barely breathe. She had no tan lines to mark her slightly pink skin. Small bumps on her areola grew more defined as he watched. Her nipples were dark, already beginning to pucker as she stood in the warm breeze blowing through the open-air room. She was so fair he could see the faint blue lines of her blood vessels under the skin of each breast.

Ana's waist was a natural indentation above her rounded hips, faint edges of her hipbones protruded beside her flat stomach. Her legs were long and slender, not the muscled legs of a dancer, but the slender legs of a woman. Because he was such a big man, he had not realized she was actually rather tall. Her dark eyes looked straight up at him and her naturally dark lips parted, as her tongue came out to lick her lips leaving them looking moist and soft. Her neck was long and slender, a faint heartbeat moved at the base of her throat. He could see her collarbones and the short wisps of her dark blond hair moved gently in the breeze, lifting and settling around her face. Her neatly trimmed public hair was slightly darker than the hair on her head. He wanted to reach out his hand and place it against her, just to make sure she was a warm human and not a goddess or a statue. She was not the lush heavy hipped beauty of a reclining Rubens painting, or the over generous busty sculpture found in museums. Nor did she have the model thin, hard-edged type of body so many of her peers tried to maintain. She was a smooth, slightly rounded, woman. She was simply beautiful.

"Turn...turn around, Ana," his voice was just barely above a whisper.

Ana slipped her feet out of her shoes and did as Reece asked, no longer afraid of him. As if a sudden calm had moved into the room with them, she stood still allowing him to look at her. She stood as tall as she could and would not have known if half the people in town saw her display herself for him.

Time seemed to stretch out, as if many minutes passed while she stood with her back to him. Muted sounds from the street below barely reached them. Car engines took vehicles another block farther away. Voices called greetings and a woman's laughter filtered up to the lofty room. Ana stood still, her eyes closed, waiting to know what he would ask of her next.

She heard the rustle of his clothes falling and the clink of change in his pocket when his pants hit the wooden floor. After a moment, she felt his hands on her shoulders, sliding down her arms, and then running down her back. His large hands rested for a moment at her waist then slid down the sides of her hips, part of the way down her legs, and then back up, gliding across the roundness of her buttocks, to rest at her waist. He held her arms away from her body and moved his hands up her sides, rippling across her ribs, and then around to the flat plane of her stomach. Slowly his hands moved upward to cup her breasts as his hot breath stirred the short hair at the nape of her neck. Where he touched her, chills formed and left her wanting his hands to linger. Where his mouth touched her, was warmth, making her want to lean back against him, to give him greater access to her. She felt heat from his body so near her own and knew he lightly kissed the back of her neck. He moved closer to her, his skin just barely touching her with each breath he took. His hands held hers, and his erection rested against her.