Page 16 of The Cowboy's Forbidden Bride

And sure enough, he found the answers to questions he didn’t know he’d desperately wanted to ask.

Like whether or not Cat Lisle found it necessary to wear a bra. The answer was no, and he understood in that moment that knowing that answer meant he was changed forever.

That he could never not know.

That there was no going back from the information because she shuddered when he found those breasts she let do as they liked, and then let his thumbs do what they liked with her hard little nipples.

She went to push his T-shirt up and maybe off, but he didn’t let her.

“Clothes stay on,” he told her, like an order. “And we’re not having sex.”

She pulled back then, glaring at him, and he could see the temper mixed with the longing that was all over her, as bright as a whole new summer. “Why do you get to decide?”

“Because I do,” he replied. When her scowl only deepened, he shrugged. “Because I’m the one who knows better. And I say so. And you can’t do anything about it, kitten, so you might as well enjoy it.”

“That does not sound like the recipe for enjoyment.”

“Doesn’t it?” He grinned at her, lazy and sure, and watched her melt. “And one other thing. This? Whatever this is? It stays between us.”

Her lips parted at that, and she looked confused in a way that made his chest hurt, but he didn’t take it back.

“Like a secret,” Cat said, but like she was sounding out the words because they were unfamiliar, not because she agreed. She looked away for a moment, and he saw her bite her lip, just a little. Just enough, because when she looked back her gaze was direct and blue again. “Blood feuds and obnoxious brothers sound like the very opposite of a recipe for enjoyment, I’ll give you that.”

“Let’s see about that enjoyment,” Wilder murmured.

And then he rolled her over so she was beneath him at last. And settled in to have himself a banquet.

Chapter Four

“You seem different,”Cat’s mother said one morning in the General Store.

It took everything Cat had, every scrap of willpower, not to openly and obviously react to a statement like that the way she did inside.

Outside, she kept it together—somehow.

She didn’t flinch. She didn’t blush. She didn’t stare at her mother with big, round eyes, like a cartoon character caught in the act. She was working on one of their little in-store displays and so she kept on doing it, stacking up the back-to-school items because fall was looming.

Like it or not, it would be September over the weekend.

And it had been the best almost two weeks of her life, but that was something she couldn’t share with anyone. Not even her mom, who she had always told everything. She couldn’t share it, and so she also couldn’t share that she was terrified that this was just a summer thing.

That September would come and she would never see Wilder again—not up close, in the dark, where she could crawl all over him and taste the skin beneath his perfect jaw and listen to him breathe—

That fall would start and he would be someone she saw in passing and heard the odd story about, here and there. The way he had been before.

She was terrified that she would have to live like that, with her heart forever ripped out of her body. That she would have to walk around like that and pretend she was fine. She knew that people did this, but she had never understoodhow.

She understood even less now—and she couldn’t talk to anyone about it.

That was the whole point of it being a secret.

“I think I got too much sun,” Cat said instead, pretending to study the notebooks, binders, and pens with a critical eye, as if their customer base in the off-season was likely to be concerned with aesthetics over necessity. “Gardening is brutal.”

Jenny made a noncommittal sort of noise. “You do seem to have a glow about you, but I didn’t think it was sunburn from playing with the roses for all of an hour yesterday. Maybe it’s just that you’re normally a bit more broody this time of year.”

Cat did look up at that. “Broody? I don’t even want to know what that means.”

Jenny Lisle had the face of an angel, and was as tough as she was sweet, but she leveled one of her serious looks on her daughter, then. “You know exactly what it means. You’re in want of a little direction, my girl. There’s no shame in that. Just because your brothers want to stay put doesn’t mean you have to. There’s a whole world out there and Lisle Hill isn’t going to go anywhere if you go off and explore some of it.”

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