by Anya Summers
Once inside, he set her down on her feet. She swayed, wanting his heat back.
“Strip. Then you can put this on,” Cole said, setting a pair of jeans and flannel shirt beside her.
“Wh-wh-what?” she said, shivering.
“Mia, you need to get out of the wet clothes before you freeze. These are an extra pair of my clothes that I like to keep here, just in case,” he explained.
“But wh-wh-what a-a-about you?” she said, her teeth chattering.
“I’ll be fine. I have another spare set in the Jeep. I’m going to bring everything else in while you change. Okay?”
She nodded.
Cole headed back outside. Mia peeled herself out of her clothes. It was hard to do with them plastered and wet. The waders came off with no problem. But she struggled with her jeans until she was finally able to shove them off. Everything went into a neat pile. Her sweatshirt, Henley, tank top, bra, leggings, panties and socks.
She slipped Cole’s flannel shirt on and fumbled with the buttons. It smelled like him, woodsy with a hint of darker spice, and more that was inherently Cole. Masculine, raw, and untamed. She rolled the sleeves up until her hands poked through. Being out of the wet clothes, she was already feeling better, although her hair was still a sopping mess. She blotted it with the flannel blanket.
Then she tried on the jeans. They were laughable at best. At worst, they were downright dangerous. Cole was a good ten inches or so taller than her. She tried to push the legs of the jeans up over her feet so that they poked through. The waist was a problem. Without a belt, the suckers slid right off her hips and pooled at her knees.
With a shake of her head, she took them off and folded them back up. Then she looked around for a bag of some sort to stow all her wet clothing in.
Cole came back in just as she was shoving all the wet items—including the blanket, which she’d figured she’d wash—into an extra black trash bag. The rental boots and waders, she’d hung up, and had put her boots back on.
“Why aren’t you wearing the jeans, Mia?”
“They won’t work. They won’t stay up without a belt and I don’t want to trip or do something else equally embarrassing.”
Cole’s gaze roved over her form from head to toe. Mia felt her nipples perk up at his perusal. Then he handed over her black puffer jacket.
“You really are a small thing. No matter, you should be fine for the ride to the cabin. I have the Jeep already started and warming up, so it should be nice and toasty for you. Let’s get you back to the lodge,” he said, picking up the bag with her things and ushering her out of the boat shed.
True to his word, Cole got her situated in the front seat of the Jeep. She sighed as she was enveloped in heat and held her hands up to the grate near the window as he opened the trunk door. Mia glanced in the side view mirror as he tossed in the black bag with all her wet things.
Her gaze remained glued to the mirror as Cole began to strip. As in: down to his birthday suit. Mia didn’t make a sound. Her breath caught in her throat at the expanse of chest muscles he revealed. The man had acres of finely hewn, rock hard pecs that narrowed down over ripcord abs and lats, to the deep vee of muscle that led to his groin. His chest was furred with dark hair. This wasn’t a pretty boy model posing for the camera. He was rough and male, and heaven help Mia but her body stirred to life. Quicksilver desire hummed in her veins.
She knew it was wrong to stare at him while he disrobed. The man had saved her life. She should turn away. She should look somewhere else. But she didn’t think grenades falling around their heads could make her look away.
He was beautiful—so much so, he made her ache to feel his wildness, to taste life with him as her holy grail.
When he turned, giving her a view of his muscled back that rippled with each movement and then dropped his jeans, Mia clenched her hands together. His butt was absolutely perfect. She didn’t think she’d ever seen a more perfect ass on a man. The globes were taut and round, the muscles flexed. And he even had two dimples just above the most mouthwatering buttocks she’d ever seen. An image of tracing her tongue into the little divots blossomed in her mind. Her breathing grew shallow as desire raged in her veins.
She wondered what his reaction would be if she asked him to be with her.
He’d probably laugh in her face.
She’d had that happen before. It was what she expected from a man.
His thighs were thickly hewn, not spindly like other men’s. It was as if Cole’s form had been carved by the nearby mountains in recognition of the life he would spend among them. He drew a fresh pair of jeans up his legs. And she almost whimpered when he pulled them over his rear and covered his most impressive ass.
But then he turned back to the Jeep, still fastening the front of the jeans, and Mia damn near melted into a puddle on the floorboards. He couldn’t be that big. No man could be that large. It had to be a mirage or a trick of the light.
And then the flash of the appendage she couldn’t think about without spontaneously combusting was hidden beneath the blue jeans. Cole shrugged into a new flannel shirt that was sky blue. She sighed as his fingers moved economically along the row of buttons and covered his chest.
She was still staring in the side view mirror when he lifted his head and fit his black Stetson over his head. His gaze clashed with hers. Banked embers smoldered in his dark eyes.
Mia nearly hyperventilated.
He knew!
He knew that she’d watched him strip.
But then he moved and closed the back hatch. Next moment, he was climbing into the driver’s side seat and putting the Jeep into gear. Mia didn’t say anything. She couldn’t. She’d just been caught peeping at him. It had been rude of her. She should have looked away.
“We should be at your cabin shortly,” Cole murmured.
“Thank you. You know, in some ancient civilizations, tribes in Africa and elsewhere, there were traditions stating that when someone saved someone else’s life, they owed them a lifetime debt of servitude.”
“You don’t owe me, Mia,” Cole said gruffly.
“You have it just the same. Thank you.”
He pulled the Jeep up next to her Audi and finally glanced at her. His enigmatic soot-colored eyes regarded her, not giving her any hints as to what he was thinking.
“Let’s get you inside,” he said, the deep bass of his voice curling along her spine.
He followed her into the cabin, and she was infinitely aware of the fact that she was in his shirt, her jacket, and nothing else.
When she would have gone into her bedroom to change, Cole ushered her to the bathroom.
“Cole? What are you…”
“Get in the shower and finish getting yourself warmed up. I’ll get your stuff out of the trunk.”
“But—”
“No arguments. Shower. Now,” he ordered. It made her want to spit fire and protest that he wasn’t the boss of her. “Or I will make sure you get in and enjoy the view. It’d only be fair, considering you’ve seen all of me,” he murmured huskily.
She squeaked and rushed into the bathroom with Cole’s dark chuckle following behind. Inside, she flipped the lock, just to be on the safe side, before she stripped off her coat, then Cole’s shirt, and slipped off her boots.
Mia started the shower and adjusted the temperature to just this side of boiling, then turned back to the bathroom door. Before she could question her sanity, she undid the lock. If Cole wanted to join her then she wouldn’t bar him entrance. In this instance, she didn’t want to think about the consequences. She didn’t want to think at all, she wanted to do, to feel.
But it meant she kept eyeing the door as she stood under the hot spray. He’d been right. She’d still been cold all the way to her toes. The shower, getting a chance to scrub the lake water off her body, felt like sheer heaven. She shampooed her hair twice, so that it didn’t stink like the lake water, until her scalp was squeaky clean.
When Mia emerged fro
m the shower, she felt refreshed. She didn’t have a change of clothing with her but slipped on her thick terry cloth robe that fell to her ankles. The lavender material hugged her curves and absorbed any remaining moisture she’d missed when she’d toweled herself off. She brushed her wet hair until it gleamed and fell in a damp sheet nearly to her waist.
Mia exited the bathroom, assuming Cole had left already. She went into the kitchen to get a pot of water boiling for some tea and yelped.
Cole stood at her stove and was moving the kettle off the heat. There was a pot on the small range as well.
“I thought you could use some warming up from the inside too,” he said, moving like he did everything else, with easy confidence. His hair was still damp beneath his Stetson. She wondered how it would feel in her hands.
He poured what smelled like chicken noodle soup into a bowl and poured hot water over a tea bag he’d put in a coffee mug. He picked up both and took them to the dining table before turning back toward her and crooking his finger at her in the age old come here gesture.
Mia didn’t really know what to think or to feel. It had been so long since she’d had anyone take care of anything for her. Not since her Aunt Alice had gotten sick a few years back, and it had been Mia’s turn to take care of her.
Joe certainly hadn’t wasted any time.
But here was this man. Mister sexy surly cowboy, as she’d originally dubbed him, had quite literally saved her life, and then he went beyond the call of duty. Most people, most guys she’d had dealings with, would have dumped her on the porch for her trouble and taken off.
But not Cole.
And yeah, he might be surly at times but he’d been more than gracious and kind to her today. She was looking at her sexy surly cowboy with new eyes. And when had she staked her claim on him? He didn’t belong to her.
She followed him into the dining room, where he was patiently waiting for her to come take a seat. But instead of sitting down, she stood before him. She lifted her gaze from his chest and the dark swirls of chest hair peeking through the top of his shirt, up over his corded neck to his beard-shrouded jaw, over the firm lines of his lips and straight nose to his black gaze.
“Why are you being so nice to me?” she whispered, because she’d done nothing but cause him trouble. But before he could reply, she hugged him.
Hiding the bit of moisture that seeped into her eyes, she slid her arms around his waist, planting her palms against his solid back. Shock seemed to riddle his body for a moment before his hands lightly caressed over her back.
“It’s okay, Mia. You needed someone to look out for you after the spill you had. I couldn’t leave until I knew you were safe,” he murmured against her temple.
She nodded against his chest. Being held by Cole was about the best thing that had happened to her since arriving in Wyoming. His warmth surrounded her, his strength. The man was solid everywhere. She easily could have stayed within his embrace for the rest of the afternoon and evening.
When Cole moved to release her, she glanced up at him. His head was bent forward and she could see lighter specks of bronze within the sooty darkness of his eyes. Her gaze dropped to his lips that were so close, she could feel the warm puff of his breath against hers.
She opened her mouth—to say what, she didn’t know. All she did know was that if he didn’t kiss her, she’d go up in a whiff of smoke.
Her grip on his back tightened. Cole swore under his breath and the next thing Mia knew were his lips on hers. His mouth—oh, sweet heavens, his mouth—moved hungrily against hers. Cole’s kiss was like this forbidden fruit that she had secretly yearned to experience, and her sexy surly cowboy did not disappoint. She gasped at the pleasure of his greedy mouth moving over hers.
That gave him room to change the angle of the kiss and take it deeper. He slanted his mouth over hers and plundered the very depths of her soul. He flayed her open with his wildness, with the surge of desire that flooded her veins, until she found herself kissing him back as if her life did depend on it.
She leaned into him, plastering her body against his rock-hard form. His beard scraped against her chin, creating pinpricks of pleasure.
Cole kissed like he did everything else: with confidence and with heat, and Mia was melting into a puddle at his feet. She knew she should pull away but then a part of her rose that had been dormant for far too long. She was needy and wanton, wanting to explore everything he had to offer. She was ready to lead him into her bedroom and see where the night took them. Mia wanted him: her sexy surly cowboy. Wanted the chance to run her tongue over all those muscles she’d seen today.
It was Cole who broke the kiss. He lifted his mouth from hers, then disentangled himself from her arms. Mia stared, her breaths coming in sharp pants. That’s when she noticed his breathing was just as ragged as hers. His eyes blazed with desire and a wild yearning that nearly brought her to her knees to beg him to take her.
But she didn’t. She didn’t know how to do that, and the thought of him turning her down made her back away.
Cole’s gaze roamed over her body from head to toe and then he said, “You should be fine now. Enjoy the rest of your evening, city girl.”
Then he left her cabin.
She stood, rooted to the spot as he walked out. When the door shut behind his handsome form, she wilted into the chair he’d pulled out for her.
All she knew was that she’d never been so thoroughly kissed in her life. She didn’t know why he had stopped. Another few seconds and she would have started undressing.
What had stopped him? Had he found her lacking, or the kiss merely pleasant when he’d spun her entire world upside down?
Needing to make sense of everything that had happened today, she went and grabbed her journal. She sat at the table, eating soup as she wrote.
Day Three in the Wild West
I had the oddest end to my fishing trip today. Sexy surly cowboy kissed me. And I don’t know how I feel about him. I just know I want to do it again. The kissing, not the fishing.
Chapter 9
Cole spent the next two days staying as far away from cabin D as he possibly could. It would behoove him to never cross paths with the city girl again. He’d made a vow, to himself, that he wouldn’t go near her. Unless he was forced to in an official capacity.
Luckily for him, the running of the Black Elkhorn Lodge and Resort tended to be a round the clock business that always needed tending. Even with the excellent staff they had on hand, more often than not he and his brother were in the thick of things, ensuring everything ran smoothly.
Even with the promise he’d made himself, throughout the day he would catch his gaze straying time and again to the hill where the cabin sat, as if he could pierce through wood and stone to see her. He recalled the way she’d looked the other day; fresh from the shower, with her miles of long hair. He hadn’t anticipated its length since she’d worn her silken tresses piled on top of her head in one of those messy knots. But when she’d come out of the bathroom it had hung loose around her delicate shoulders and flowed nearly to her waist.
It had made her look younger, softer, and he’d wanted to know how it felt in his hands. Her face, the pearlescent skin, had a rosy flush blooming over her cheeks and down the elegant column of her neck to disappear beneath the edges of her light purple robe. The vee of the neckline displayed the swell of her breasts and made him yearn to unwrap them and watch them pucker at his touch.
Yet, it had been her eyes, the wide teal orbs, that had sucked him deep inside with her astonishment that he’d stuck around to care for her after her mishap. It had called to the Dom in him to stand as her bastion against the dark. His heart had broken at her shuddering whisper, words that had lanced through him. And then she’d startled him to his foundation by tossing her arms around him and plastering her taut body to his.
Heaven. She felt like heaven in his arms, pressed so intimately against him. He’d felt every womanly curve and indent. His arms had closed ar
ound her and his hands had caressed the smooth lines of her back. Her scent, peaches and cream, made him yearn to taste her skin. Desire unlike anything he’d felt in far too long had enveloped him. Cole had wanted to remove the paltry barrier her robe made and explore her body, sink into her exquisite heat, and lose himself in her flesh.
With the proof of his desire straining the confines of his jeans, he had backed off—or tried to do the honorable thing and withdraw. But Mia had turned the large pools of her eyes up to him, the wounded, fathomless orbs displaying her fragility, and at the quiver of her generous lips, he had been lost.
Cole had claimed her mouth and been sucked into a heated, electrified maze that he hadn’t wanted to emerge from. But he’d had to stop. Doing what he wanted, which was carry her into the nearest bedroom and keep them both there, sinking into her flesh until they were too boneless to move, would have been wrong.
Cole didn’t bed women who wanted more than he could give. He chose submissives who understood the game, who knew the rules, and didn’t ask for more from him than a few good orgasms.
Except, the fact that he had kissed her, when he never should have touched her, was about the dumbest thing he could have done. Cole had crossed a boundary he never should have gone near in the first place.
As much as he tried to focus on the rest of his tasks, like installing the new kitchen faucet in one cabin, repairing a toilet in another, replacing furnace filters, and checking on water heaters in the units, he’d not been able to get their kiss or her out of his mind. Any time he did think of it, his dick hardened and twitched, craving her.
Cole couldn’t want a woman like her, one who was so vanilla she was nearly blanched white.
And she was delicate and fragile, spooked at the slightest provocation even despite the hints of tenacity and boldness that had peeped through when they’d been on the water together. Cole didn’t know her well enough to see which was her natural default state. From what he’d witnessed thus far, he could only imagine that should she be shown an inkling of the BDSM world, she would faint dead away.