Page 33 of The Cowboy's Secret Babies

A man could spend a lifetime and not explore the half of them.

She walked around his truck, climbed in, and sat there in silence as he pulled back out of the driveway. He didn’t head back toward the lodge, but took the road that wound its way in and around the trees that dotted the mountainside. He kept going until he found an old lookout he vaguely remembered from high school.

He pulled in, turned his truck’s lights off but kept the engine running, and then he turned to her.

“Ryder. Are you okay? What is happening?”

“There are rules in your house,” he said, his voice low. He unbuckled himself from his seat belt and reached over to unbuckle hers. “I’m sick of the rules, Rosie.”

Then he pulled her across the bench seat, dragged her over his lap, and got his mouth on her, where it belonged. While he was at it, he got his hands beneath that coat and the turtleneck she wore beneath it.

And he decided that if he was going to experiment with all these worlds, and all that intensity, for as long as he was home—he’d be doing it like this.

Chapter Seven

Rosie knew thatshe really should stop this. That would be the wise decision.

But wisdom when it came to Ryder had gone out the window a long time ago. Back in Austin years ago, if she was going to be brutally honest about it.

And over these past few weeks, ever since they’d kissed like they were already naked in her pantry, of all places, well.

She’d felt as if she was slowly burning alive.

More alarming, she couldn’t say that she regretted a single moment of it. And now it was as if he’d reached into the depths of her mind, rummaged around in the dreams that had been haunting her for years, and found one of her favorites.

The two of them, wrapped around each other like this.

In the front seat of his truck, like a country song.

Rosie figured a girl never really knew who she was until a beautiful man had her pressed up hard against him in the dark cab of a pickup truck with the heat on and nothing else to do but surrender herself into his hands.

He had been surprisingly, deliciously talented at getting his hands in all kinds of places on the couch, while neverquitebreaking the rules she’d made. She should have found that to be evidence of his boundary pushing and inability to listen, but instead, she found she admired him for maintaining the letter of the law while making them both a little bit too giddy.

When she would have sworn up and down—and had—that she would never let herself get silly over a man again.

But this was Ryder.

And in her house, she was always still the mother.Mommy.At any moment, she could expect to hear one of the kids crying, so everything always felt rushed. Furtive. Like she was getting away with something and would likely pay for it—

She knew instantly that this was something different.

“Don’t you have a house somewhere?” she asked, smiling a little bit ruefully against his mouth.

“I do,” he said, still close. As if he couldn’t bear to move away any more than she could. “I have an Airstream and it’s too far away.”

Then he kissed her again, taking it even more slowly. Making it impossible to kiss him back with the same depth and greed and excitement that she could feel all over her, like some kind of delicious fever.

He moved his mouth from hers, finding a trail down her neck, and then, muttering something beneath his breath that sounded marvelously impatient—a move in the right direction, to her mind—he stripped off her coat and tossed it aside. Then the practical turtleneck she was wearing, though he did seem to take a moment of reverence as he traced the shape of it down the length of her body. But he peeled it off and tossed it aside, and then, his dark eyes rising to meet hers, he took off her bra, too.

It was only then that it occurred to her that her body was different now. Changed since the last time he’d seen it.

But any momentary twinge of something like embarrassment that she might have been tempted to feel was gone in an instant, because he made a noise that was all longing and delight, and she was surprised she didn’t come apart at the sound.

Maybe she nearly did.

He bent his head, used his hands to lift her breasts to his mouth, and then he feasted.

Rosie had nothing to do. Nowhere to go, no children to handle.

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