Page 11 of The Cowboy's Forbidden Bride

Wilder sighed. “And I’m sure that my mama would rise up from her grave and haunt me herself if she thought that one of her sons was abandoning a girl in the woods in the middle of the night. It’s not going to happen,” he continued as she started to protest. “Even if that does mean I’m polluting myself on Lisle land.”

When Cat didn’t move because she was too busy glaring at him, he handled her with an easy grip on her elbow, guiding her along with him as he walked through the trees like there was a path there—on Lisle Hill—that he knew and she didn’t. She didn’t like it.

But she didn’t say anything, because that kiss was still working its way through her, making her bones feel brand-new and wrapped up in something sparkling.

And the night all around them felt close and warm, like something intimate.

He stopped walking at the edge of a clearing and when she looked around him instead of at him, she could see her house.

Though it was the first time in all her life that she wasn’t pleased to see it.

“Go on then,” he ordered her. “I’ll wait to make sure you’re safely inside.”

She turned and looked up at him, and he seemed to forget that his hand was on her arm. Or he knew it was, maybe. Because he moved his thumb back and forth in that crease of her elbow, just enough to reignite that lazy sort of heat inside her.

Cat let herself drift closer, pleased that her eyes had adjusted to the dark on the walk so she could see that he was looking at her with all the heat that she could feel deep inside.

“Darlin’,” he rumbled, low and hot. “You better not look at me like that. I’m not exactly known for my restraint.”

“Darlin’,” she drawled right back to him. “Please don’t develop any on my account.”

Then she pressed herself against him, going up on her toes so she could wind her arms around his neck again and taste him once more.

And she realized, immediately, that he’d been holding himself back on that Marietta street.

Because now they were in the dark woods, all alone, with nothing but the summer night sky to see that.

Wilder bent, then picked her up. Cat wrapped her legs around his waist again and then laughed with the thrill of it, right into his mouth, as he turned and pressed her up against the nearest tree.

And then, for a long while, there was nothing but the way his mouth moved on hers. The way she was pressed against that hard heat of him—that and the seam of her jeans making her whole body bloom into something bright and hot andperilous.

He pulled back and muttered something under his breath, then stepped away—letting her fall to the ground. But not too hard, not too fast.

“Enough,” he growled out.

“I don’t think it’s enough at all.”

“If we keep going, Cat,” he began, in a lazy drawl that was different from how he’d talked to her before. None of that concern and temper. This was something else.

This, she understood in the next moment, was a man who knewallthe things she didn’t. All that physical magic that he worked in her so easily. All that wonder, all that need.

“Yes,” she said. “Was that a question? I vote yes, let’s keep going.”

“If we keep going,” he said again, something dark and reproving his voice, though she could see the fire in his gaze, “we’re going to squander your innocence in the dirt beneath a tree.”

“It’s mine to squander,” she argued.

“Then you’ll have to go ahead and do it without me,” he replied, something like steel in the heat of his voice. “And I don’t think you want that.”

She might have argued that she did, actually, want that—but she didn’t. And what was more, he already knew that. He had not one shred of doubt. She wanted to find that kind of confidence annoying.

But she didn’t.

Instead, she held his gaze for a long moment, aware that she was afraid that as soon as she turned around, all of this would disappear like it really was a dream after all. She would wake up to the same old life, no wildfires, nogalaxies, and Wilder Carey would never look at her like this again.

So it felt like an act of extreme courage to turn around, give him her back, and run across the field toward the front of the house. Not to look back. Not to even glance over her shoulder, to trust that he really was there, watching, the whole way.

It was only when she got to the porch and then up to the front door that she turned around at last.

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