She hesitated. She wanted to, she desperately wanted to. She wanted to share everything about herself with this man. She wanted to share her heart, her soul, her life story and all her pains and disappointment and hopes and dreams, and her bodily fluids.
It wasn’t that easy, though. A lifetime of disappointment with men, capped with finding out the real reason that her fiancé had proposed to her, hadn’t just damaged her ability to trust, it had stomped on it with steel-toed boots and left it crushed and flattened. She’d just met this man. How could she be sure that he really cared about her? Sure, it seemed as if he really liked her, but it had seemed as if Miles liked her, too.
She took a deep breath, and met his gaze. “I want to tell you. I just can’t. There are reasons why I can’t.”
“It seems like you’re running from something,” he said, and then the next song came on so loudly that she couldn’t make out what he was saying.
“What?” she shouted.
“Let’s get out of here!” he yelled.
Now, that was a tempting offer. She knew she shouldn’t, because every minute she spent with this man, she felt as if she were falling for him more and more, but she couldn’t stop herself. Hanging out with him for one evening didn’t mean any kind of commitment, did it?
“Let me just use the rest room,” she yelled above the noise. That drink had gone right through her, and she didn’t want to try to flirt with a full bladder.
When she got to the restroom, she turned to glance back at him, and saw him holding up the glass that she’d just been drinking from. Odd, she thought. But then she put it out of her head, used the bathroom, and spent several minutes checking her hair and makeup before she finally went back out to meet him.
The two of them left the bar together, and he put his arm around her shoulders as they walked to his pickup truck. His touch felt so right, so strong, so comforting.
“Are you purring?” he asked, as they reached the passenger side door.
“What? No!” She blushed furiously.
He put both his arms around her waist and pulled her up against him, and she felt the thick length of his erection pressing against the fabric of his jeans.
“I was hoping you were,” he said in a low, sexy murmur. “I want to make you purr.”
“Okay,” she admitted, looking up at him. “Maybe I was purring a little bit.”
She’d never, ever purred for a man before. And a wolf shifter, at that! What was happening to her?
He smelled so good, she wanted to bury her face in his hair and breathe him in. His arms were as strong as steel, looping around her, pressing her up against him. He was rock hard, from head to toe.
He looked into her eyes and for a moment she thought, prayed, that he’d kiss her lips, but instead he just smiled, a slow sensual curl of his lips that sent a rush of moisture to her already soaked panties.
“I want to take you to a beautiful spot,” he said, and he let go of her and opened the door to the truck. She wanted to fling herself back into his arms and rub herself up against him, but she bit her lip and forced herself to cling to the last little bit of her dignity.
“I can’t wait,” she said, and climbed into the truck.
It wasn’t the view that she couldn’t wait for.
He turned on the radio and country music blared from the truck’s speakers, songs of love and heartbreak. They drove without speaking for several miles, the wheels rumbling over the country roads, and he turned down a dirt path that took them to the top of a small clearing, where he parked. She climbed out without speaking, hands trembling with anticipation.
This incredibly hot man is going to have sex with me. It will be the best I’ve ever had. She didn’t even try to hide the purr that vibrated in her throat.
The summer air was sultry and warm, and the faintest of breezes caressed her and rustled through the tree branches. A chorus of cicadas serenaded them.
“What I was starting to say back at the bar…it seems like you’re running from someone,” he said.
He put his arm around her shoulders, pulling her to him, and she felt desire shuddering through her. She leaned into him, drinking in his warmth, his earthy scent.
“You could say that,” she said.
“I would never let anyone hurt you.”
“It’s not like that,” she said. “Family stuff. Complicated family stuff.”
“Isn’t it always?”
“I have to leave in a week and a half now. I just came here to get away from it all. To forget. To be a different person.”
“Why? What’s wrong with the person that you were?”
“The person I was?” Tears suddenly pricked her eyes, and she blinked hard. She didn’t want to cry, to ruin this night of incredible magic. “She let people walk all over her, and she felt fat and ugly and undesirable. Then she came here and met an incredibly handsome wolf shifter who made her feel sexy and desirable for the first time in her life.”