Page 4 of Marrying the Mountain Man

What I wanted was seated right across from me, but I was too shy to say it. I clamped my lips around the straw and took a big sip. If he thought I had to wait until I was legally married to lose my virginity, he was dead wrong. What I wanted to happen would happen tonight. The wedding could come later.

I’d already given my heart to this guy. The rest was just a formality.

3

PHOENIX

My heart was racing as I pushed open the door to my cabin and held it for my bride-to-be. First thing Monday morning, I was taking her to the county clerk to get that license and make it official.

She rolled her suitcase over the threshold and into the main room of the cabin, which was where I spent most of my time. There were three bedrooms off a hallway toward the back—plenty of room for two kids, if that’s what she wanted. I’d buy her a bigger cabin if she wanted more. All I knew was the more I got to know her, the surer I was that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her.

“Wow,” she said. “You live here?”

Going by what the matchmaker, Kenzie, said about Cherry, I assumed she’d grown up in a gigantic home on the lake. Seeing those big blue eyes widen swelled my ego. Speaking of swelling…

“I’ll take your suitcase to the guest bedroom,” I said before she could catch a glimpse of my bulge.

As I took off with her suitcase, I half-hoped she’d stop me and tell me she didn’t want to sleep in the guest bedroom. She wanted to sleep in my bed, and she wanted to go there immediately.

But that didn’t happen. And all it did was make me harder for her. With each step, I tried to pound out the thoughts that threatened to consume my mind. Creamy cleavage spilling out of that tight tank top, those plush pink lips that’d tightened so teasingly around that straw… I’d spent most of lunch picturing her wrapping those lips around my cock, teasing me with her tongue before taking my full length into her mouth.

“Your kitchen is amazing,” she said as I walked back through the living room.

She was standing in the center of my kitchen, spinning in a slow circle while she took it all in. It was a hot day, so the skimpy outfit made sense, but it was making it tough to think about anything but what those long legs would look like wrapped around my naked waist.

I went straight to the fridge and grabbed a couple of bottled waters. When I turned to hand her one, my heart sank. The look on her face was far from happy. In fact, her expression said she was about to deliver some bad news.

What if she didn’t want to marry me? She’d had second thoughts. She wanted to go home.

All of that flooded my mind as I uncapped the bottle and guzzled water like I was dying of thirst. Finally, I capped the bottle and looked at her, steeling myself for whatever words were about to come.

“I don’t know how to cook,” she said.

My shoulders slumped with relief. Was that it? That was her bad news?

“You don’t have to cook for me,” I said, looking around. “We can go grab food from the pub whenever we need it.”

“We can’t eat out for every meal,” she said.

“I know how to cook.” I should’ve said that to start with. “I don’t know what you were raised to believe, but I’m not some asshole who stands around demanding my woman cook and raise my babies for me. If you decide you want to stay with me and have a family, I’ll be just as involved as you. If you’re fine with that.”

I was bending over backward to please her, which wasn’t my nature at all. Something about this woman made me want to do whatever it took to keep her around.

“I just ask one thing of you,” I said.

She was staring at me with an expression I couldn’t decipher. Hopefully, the more time I spent around her, the better I’d be able to read her. That wasifI’d be able to spend more time around her. It wouldn’t surprise me if she ran screaming from this cabin any second now.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“Like I mentioned on the phone, I have a bit of a reputation around here.”

She nodded. “The town grump, you said.”

I smiled, glad I was free to do just that without worrying about townspeople gawking at me. “I like my privacy, and in this kind of town, people nose into your business. I had enough of that in the military.”

We’d discussed my deployment on the phone, too. Those conversations often happened while I was on my bed in the dark, wearing nothing but my boxers. Yeah, those were some of the best times I’ve ever had. I opened up to her in ways I’d never opened up to anyone before.

But there were some things I still didn’t tell her. I didn’t mention the soldier who’d befriended me, then ratted me out to our captain, telling him some of the things I’d said. It didn’t start there, though. I’d always been slow to trust, having a mom who abandoned me when I was a kid, leaving me to be raised by my grandmother.

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