Page 44 of The Cowboy's Forbidden Bride

Cat was sure she must have been here before. She could picture the main ranch house in her head, though she couldn’t remember why she would have come here. Maybe some kind of elementary school excursion back in the day, she thought—and that brought back a faint shred of memory. They’d toured a lot of local ranches as kids, as a part of 4-H and FFA initiatives in the county.

And it hit her then that she and Wilder had gone about all this in such a bizarre way. That he was taking her home for the first time as his wife when they’d gone on only one official date.

It would make more sense if she really was pregnant.

But thinking about pregnancy made her think about the process of becoming pregnant. And she was only aware that she was squirming a little in her seat, her cheeks flaming red, when he reached over and ran his knuckles over the heat of the one nearest him.

“Just a little longer,” he promised her, the dark gleam in his gaze taking all the air from the world.

Cat thought that if she opened her mouth and tried to speak just then, something embarrassing would come out. Maybe she would cry. Or laugh too loudly. Or die.

He turned down an even narrower dirt road and they poked along a while, then turned, and he drove her up to a perfect little cabin set back and the top of a gently sloping yard with a heart-stopping view back toward Copper Mountain.

“This is beautiful,” she whispered.

“I’m glad you think so,” Wilder said as he pulled the truck to a stop in front of the cabin’s wide, comfortable porch. “I’ve always been of the opinion that my little bit of land here is the best on the ranch.”

He swung out of the truck and came around to her door. And instead of setting her on the ground when he lifted her out, he swept her up into his arms.

And this was happening. This was actually, really, and truly happening.

Looking up at his beautiful face, with her wedding gown spilling all around them and her heart like a drum, Cat wondered if her whole chest might split wide open from all this impossible joy.

When he leaned in and kissed her he made it so much more exquisitely worse, because it was different.

More raw. More wild.

Because, she realized in a bit of a daze, this time they didn’t have to stop.

This time, there were no more rules.

She could feel that shiver through her until even her toes seemed to be singing.

He lifted his head, and there was a kind of tautness in his face, as if he was using every single bit of self-control he had not to throw her down on the ground right there.

Part of her wished he would.

He swung around, kicking the truck door shut behind him. Then he headed for that covered front porch with its wide steps and shouldered his way through the front door. He carried her over the threshold and that was like a new current of bright, bubbly joy inside of her. She had a jumbled impression of tidiness, worn leather in rich tones, a wood-burning stove, and a surprisingly orderly kitchen complete with a table and what looked like another porch off the side.

She would have to investigate all that later because he kept moving, down a small hallway to the very last room that she knew even before he entered it was his bedroom.

It was big, as befitted a large man like Wilder. His bed was high and wide. It faced a fireplace in the corner and a big window that looked off into the mountains, and there was a sloped skylight above.

But then all she could see was Wilder as he sat her down on her feet next to the bed with that gentleness she had seen from him before.

It was always at such odds with that leashed hunger in him. And today, she thought, the hunger in both of them was even more acute.

“I can’t believe this is actually happening,” she whispered.

“We should lay down some ground rules,” he began.

“Absolutely not.” Cat shook her head at him, not sure where her confidence came from with this man. But there was no denying that it was there. She had absolutely no fear of him. And things like this, she just knew. “No more rules, Wilder. I want everything. I want it all.”

His eyes got even hotter, which shouldn’t have been possible. “You know what they say.” He slid the puffy white jacket down over her shoulders, tossing it aside. “Happy wife, happy life.”

Cat was smiling so wide that her cheeks hurt. “That’s the most sensible thing you’ve ever said to me.”

And they weren’t lying down in a pickup truck, with the fresh air and the stars and the odd mosquito pressing in.

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