Cowboy Christmas Blues

But...oh, no. No.

He had never once used her name. Not once tonight, until now.

He hadn’t known who she was.

There were no words for the horror. The humiliation. He didn’t want her. She’d thought...finally. And no. He’d just wanted sex. She’d trusted him with her body because she knew him. And she’d thought...he knew her, too. But he didn’t.

Her stomach twisted, turning sour.

She pushed his shoulder, scrambling to get out from beneath him. “Who did you think I was?”

“Annabelle,” he said again, moving away from her.

He was just staring at her, like she was a ghost still, but now possibly a ghost who had grown a second head. Which was not the look that you wanted from a man who had just banged you senseless.

It was ludicrous. She was naked, pressed against her headboard, her breasts heaving with every breath she took, her thighs parted slightly, because she still hadn’t gotten control over everything.

When she realized that she snapped her knees together, angling to the side.

He was still naked, too, breathing hard, the muscles on his chest and stomach flexing, that very large, very masculine part of him looming in her vision, making it impossible for her to think straight.

“Yes,” she confirmed. “Annabelle. But I thought you... I thought you knew.”

“No,” he said, shaking his head.

He sounded so disgusted, so horrified. She wanted to curl up into a ball and disappear from the situation completely.

“So, you just thought you were having sex with a stranger? You didn’t even ask my name.”

“I thought that’s what we were doing,” he said.

“I knew it was you,” she whispered. “That’s why I...”

Oh, no. This was horrible. Worse than having the boyfriend who had so firmly felt like settling tell her one day, after five years, that he’d been wasting his time with her.

Cooper Mason didn’t finally see her as a woman.

Cooper Mason did not want her. Cooper Mason the opposite of wanted her, if his reaction to the entire situation was anything to go by. He was clearly disgusted unto his soul that he had ever touched her.

Except... He had been into it when they’d done it. He had been.

“I don’t understand.”

“I don’t understand,” Annabelle said. “I thought that we... I thought you... You didn’t know who I was.”

“No,” he said, holding his hands up, “I swear to God. If I had I never would’ve touched you.”

“Well, that’s...horrible. And humiliating. And you are a gigantic tool,” she said, grabbing a pillow and holding it across her breasts. He was not allowed to look at them if he was going to cast aspersions on her.

“Annabelle, I have known you since you were three years old. I would not have slept with you if I’d...” He stared at her harder. “You look different.”

“I hope so, since I’m not seventeen anymore.” She sniffed. “Also, I lost a little weight.”

He shook his head, getting out of the bed and hunting for his clothes. “You’re just not...not a woman to me.”

“Clearly I am,” she said.

“Not...not you. The person that I thought you were.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

He took a step back. “I have to go.”

“Cooper,” she said, scrambling out of bed.

“This was not what I wanted,” he returned. “It was a bad idea.”

“Why does it change anything?”

“Because I’m not here for an entanglement. And I’m certainly not here to start something with a hometown girl who, when last I saw her, wasn’t old enough to drink.”

“I don’t want to start anything with you,” she said. “I wanted to have sex with you. I wanted to...”

She couldn’t go on; it was too humiliating. Because she had fulfilled her lifelong fantasy of jumping Cooper Mason’s bones and he was actively disgusted that he had jumped hers.

She couldn’t admit it. Not to him. Not now.

Couldn’t confess that she had a crush on him as deep and enduring as the Tioga River when he looked like he would rather take a stick in the eye than even think about having sex with her again.