Cooper's Fall (2 page)

Sarah threw the towel on her bed, pouted, and stomped to the shower. She washed the tanning oil from her body beneath the spray and sighed in exasperation at the need that still throbbed between her thighs.

Twenty-four years old. She was twenty-four years old and still a virgin. And as though everyone in this little town she had moved to knew it, she was still known as Miss Sarah. And she was tired of it.

She washed quickly, dried her hair vigorously before combing through the tangles and leaving the long, loose ringlets hanging to the middle of her back before moving back to the bedroom and breathing out roughly.

She’d tried everything to make herself fit in here, in this little Texas town.

Well, everything but walking into a bar and just picking up a man and she just couldn’t bring herself to do that. Just as she hadn’t been able to bring herself to let one of the drunken frat boys from college heave and moan over her.

She grimaced at the thought of the parties her sorority sisters had dragged her to while in college. There had been a few boys who hadn’t been drunk. Who had flirted with her, seemed interested. In a quick little screw.

She sat down on her bed and glared at her bedroom wall. She should have moved to a larger town. She made a damn good living as a Web designer and computer programmer. She worked for an excellent company. She had good benefits. She’d been damn lucky. She didn’t have to do the nine-to-five rush and could relax. She could afford to move to Houston or Dallas. The thought had her breath trapping in her throat. So many strangers. So much noise and fear. It was quieter here in Simsburg. A little, almost unknown, town outside of Corpus Christi. She could relax here.

Hide away.

Shaking her head, she rose from the bed and headed to the closet. She pulled one of the sleeveless dresses from the closet and slipped it over her head before buttoning it nearly to her neck.

She went back to the bathroom and stood in front of the mirror. She unbuttoned the dress, spread it back from her chest and stared.

The faint white lines were still there. She should stay out of the sun, she told herself as she let her fingers trace over the thin white scars. Tanning made them worse, she reminded herself. Made them easier to see. Harder to hide.

She let her fingers trace over them. There were half a dozen,
long, narrow, very thin. But they were there. They had been there since she was sixteen years old. Sixteen and stupid.

She rebuttoned her dress before moving back to the bedroom and pulling on the bronze lace panties she took from her dresser. She slid her feet into sandals, twisted up her hair and secured it in a smooth twist at the back of her head before heading to the kitchen for her purse.

She locked the house quickly but securely as she stepped out on the front porch a few moments later. Even here, in the quaint little town, amid the little houses and friendly citizens, she didn’t take chances. She kept her doors locked. Her windows locked. She kept her car locked.

Head down, she dug her keys out of her purse, raising her head just in time to see her neighbor driving into the driveway right beside hers.

The powerful steel-gray four-by-four rumbled with power as he drove into the driveway. Parking, he moved from the vehicle, then stopped and stared.

God, he was a poster boy for big, bad, and dangerous. Six four. Jeans and boots. A T-shirt that did nothing to hide the snake tattoo wrapping around his bicep.

And he was staring at her. He stopped by his pickup, folded his arms on the top of it, and just stared. Hooded dark eyes, thick lashes. Black hair, dark flesh.

She stared back, feeling her chest tighten as it did every time she saw him. She could feel her breasts suddenly swelling, her nipples pressing against the thin material of her dress. She could feel heat skimming over her body, as she felt pinned in place, held by his gaze.

His lips quirked. The lower lip was a little fuller than the upper. It was sexy, sexual. It was a wicked smile that promised he knew her secret fantasies. And knew he starred in them.

Sarah felt held. Caught. Her fingers gripped her keys, and as a breeze whispered around her, she was sure she felt his gaze like a caress. Licking over her bare legs. Up her dress.

Her breath caught.

“Miss Sarah, how are you doing today?” His voice rumbled and stroked her senses with wicked fingers of desire.

God, he was incredible.

“Just fine, Mr. Cooper. And your knee appears to be doing quite well.”

He had returned from the military wounded. Sarah had done the neighborly thing for a year. Fixed soup and cookies, and a few times made certain to pick up fresh vegetables or light snacks from the store for him to eat.

He was appreciative. He always thanked her nicely. But damn if he had ever invited her to share a meal. She had done everything to make certain he was in fit, healthy shape, and he still called her Miss Sarah.

“The knee is as good as it’s gonna get.” He flashed her that bad-boy smile and her heart raced as though he had actually touched her.

“I’m glad you’re doing better.”

He made her feel jittery. He made her feel flushed and hot.

“I’m doing just fine.” He tilted his head, lifted a hand, and touched two fingers to his forehead in a gesture of farewell before striding to the front door of his house, unlocking it and moving out of sight.

Damn.

She drew in oxygen with a ragged breath, clenched her keys, and forced herself to the car. Hitting the auto door lock, she got into the sweltering confines of the car and started the engine with a hard turn of the key.

He couldn’t know her fantasies. She kept all her fantasies safely locked away, along with her nightmares.

He would never know that when she touched herself, she thought of him. That when she thought of being bad, being naughty, she always thought of being naughty with him. He would never know that she had come here because of him. Because of his actions on a dark, shadowed Dallas street and her fascination for the man who her uncle had saved.

Ethan Cooper had been one of the first people she met when the realty agent showed her the little house. He had been outside, cutting the grass in his front yard, pausing to watch as she drove into the driveway with the Realtor.

He had smiled and lifted his hand in greeting before going back to his yard work. Shirtless. In jeans and boots. Dark flesh gleaming. Sweat running in narrow rivulets down his back and shoulders. Black hair laying damp along his nape.

Then he had turned his head back quickly, and grinned and winked at her while the Realtor wasn’t looking, which made her respond as though he had actually touched her.

She had gotten wet instantly. Hot and wet. And she had practically been panting as she walked up the drive to the little house. As though it had been a sign, that the dreams and fantasies she had woven around him could have a chance.

He was big, tall, broad, and dangerous-looking. The Realtor said Mr. Cooper was in the military. He had disappeared several weeks later and his house had sat empty, except for the occasional motorcycle-riding thug-looking type who came, checked over things, and then left.

A year later, Ethan Cooper had returned limping. She’d heard he’d been wounded in action. She’d watched as he worked out in
the enclosed acre he owned behind his house. Weights, push-ups, sit-ups, stretches. God, he had made her crazy that year. She’d nearly killed herself trying to ease the cramp of arousal in her stomach.

During those months, she’d had a chance to get to know him. When she took him cookies or soup, he always chatted, always laughed with her. And she always came home, desperate to be touched.

She was tired of masturbating. She was tired of being alone. And she was tired of aching for that tall, broad bar owner with the sexy grin.

Perhaps it was time to do something about this, she told herself. After all, covert looks and wishing weren’t going to get her anywhere. It was time to do something about it. If she was going to get Ethan Cooper to fall into her bed, then she was going to have to take the initiative.

He couldn’t get it out of his mind. Sarah Fox, spread out on the cement by her pool, long heavy ringlets fanned around her head, her curvy body slick and hot and oh so aroused.

He jacked off to it after he got back in the house. Hell, as if he could help it. The more he thought about it, the harder he got. He hadn’t been so damned hot for a woman in years. Not since his first woman, in fact.

Who would have thought it? Timid little Miss Sarah.

He shook his head again before grabbing a beer and heading to his back deck. Sarah’s privacy fence was over seven feet tall and extended around the full half acre of land behind her house. His white wooden fence connected with hers at a corner and extended almost double her area.

He didn’t have a pool, though. He narrowed his eyes at the backyard and considered it before grinning and lifting the beer to his lips. He’d just end up in trouble. He’d never be able to keep his buddies out of it. It was hard enough keeping them out of his house.

He grinned, wondering if Miss Sarah would let him use her pool. Maybe while she was tanning herself beneath the hot Texas sun. All ripe and wet.

He grimaced at the thought of that. Piercings aside, luscious sweet little body aside, Miss Sarah Fox wasn’t for the likes of him.

He finished his beer before heading into the bathroom to shower and change. Owning one of the roughest bars in the area could get dicey at times. He liked to be there before too late in the evening.

He was leaving the house, locking the door behind him when Sarah’s compact, boring-looking little sedan pulled into her driveway.

He felt the hot lick of her gaze for just a second before the car shut off and she was moving from the vehicle. She kept her head down.

Cooper couldn’t help but watch as she rounded the back of the car and opened the trunk. She pulled out a canvas bag—groceries, he assumed—and strode quickly up the drive to the house.

Ignoring him.

“Hello, Miss Sarah,” he called out as she stepped up on her porch and came to a hard stop.

Her head lifted, eyes widened. “H-hello.” A small smile, not hardly a smile, tipped her lips. Pouty lips. He liked pouty lips.

Cooper stepped across the drive. There wasn’t much distance that separated their particular houses. The two homes had been built by two sisters, close together. The property extended out
behind and beside one side of the houses, bunching them close while other neighbors were kept at a distance.

Cooper couldn’t even explain why he was pushing this, except he’d already jacked off twice today because of her. He gave her one of his trademark slow smiles and watched the little flush that filled her cheeks.

She watched him carefully, making no move to unlock the door, holding her keys carefully with one hand, the canvas bag with the other, as though she hadn’t known him for two years. Wary, pausing to be careful. Miss Sarah wasn’t a casual person by any means.

His eyes almost narrowed. She was in a carefully disguised protective stance. Keys to slash out with, bag to hit out with. Her body was balanced, ready to flee at a moment’s notice. Now, why the hell would something that tiny, that damned shy, be on guard against a neighbor?

“Can I help you, Mr. Cooper?” she asked carefully as he leaned against the side of her house.

He let his smile widen. “Yes, ma’am, you sure can.” He nodded. “You can tell me why a pretty little thing like you is all alone on a Friday night. There should be a law against it.”

“I’m sure there should be.” There was the barest hint of cynicism in the look she gave him.