Page 1 of Reckless Woman
Chapter One
Anna
The late afternoon heat is red and vicious, burning up the cloudless sky like God himself touched a match to the heavens.
“What is this place?” Shielding my eyes with the crook of my hand, I turn back to the car. The atmosphere feels heavy and intense. It’s weighing down the corners of my smile.
“Hell.”
Joseph’s leaning against the side panel of the black Dodge with his arms crossed—a tall, Texan depiction of heaven, in denim jeans and a faded gray shirt rolled up at the sleeves. His face is expressionless, but that’s nothing new. His truth is concealed behind a pair of dark sunglasses and a wall of history I’ve yet to dismantle.
“Why did you bring me here?”
“A compulsion.”
“A compulsion to bring me tohell?”
Turning back to the burnt landscape, I squint at the carcass of an old farmhouse that’s stinking up the horizon with ghosts and neglect. Sweat is trickling between my breasts. There’s no breeze today. No let-up. There’s barely any sway in the overgrown wheat fields bordering the dusty driveway we’ve parked next to—with its ugly, brown surface uneven and pockmarked.
Hell.
I knock the word around my head again, hearing his past in his measured drawl.
“Come here, Anna.”
“Give me a moment…”
“Are you making me repeat it?”
Bloody caveman.“Hell, huh?” I turn back again, but I don’t budge an inch. “I was expecting a few more chains to be lying about the place. Maybe a horned demon or two.”
The sunlight catches on his Wayfarers, glinting wickedly. “Oh, there’s a demon alright.”
“Doubt it. He’s back on an island in the Pacific.”
Joseph’s lips almost twitch.Almost.“Get the fuck over here, Anna. I won’t ask again.”
He crooks his finger to me and I acquiesce, my stomach muscles tensing as I turn away from the farmhouse. This feeling of dread worsens with every step. It’s like the ruin is a gutless criminal who’d shoot me three times in the back at any moment.
What is this place?
Hell.
I never paid much attention to instinct until I met a man who lives his life by it, until I fell so hard I allowed every part of him to seep into my soul. Now I feel as much as I see, and there’s an evil lurking here that’s icing up my overheated skin.
A few feet out, he’s grabbing me by the wrist and wrapping his arms around me so tight I can scarcely breathe.
“This farmhouse means something to you,” I mumble into his hard chest.
His ensuing silence stretches on and on like the empty highway we’re standing on.
“Tell me, Joseph.”
His hands drop to my ass, sliding underneath my khaki mini, his fingers straying dangerously close to the lace trim of my black panties. “Tell you what?” There’s movement at the corners of his lips again before he’s burrowing his face into the side of my neck, making my senses spin.
“Youknowwhat,” I say, grasping the hem of his shirt and tugging.
“You want me to tell you how hot you look in this short skirt?” His fingers find the crease of my ass and trail downward—slowly…tantalizingly—rewarding me with a trickle of wetness between my thighs. “Or about all the filthy fucking things I want to do to you right now?”