“Do you think you’ll write about your experiences out here?”
She smiled a little. “I was thinking about it. I mean”—she gestured her hand toward the sky—“this place is so inspiring! It’s untamed, beautiful and wild nature. I just feel like I’m bubbling over inside with joy,” she said. “It does something good to me. . . .” and her voice trailed off. Shiloh held his interested gaze, felt that masculine heat surround her once more like invisible arms. It was palpable. Every time he studied her with that intensity of his, she felt . . . well . . . like his woman. Like he was claiming her. Branding her as his own, maybe?
Her flights of imagination were taking off and truly crazy. Shiloh tried to tell herself that because Roan was an operator in the military, that look he gave her was due to past training. Still, her breasts automatically tightened, her nipples hard and rubbing erotically against her cotton bra. The sensations were new. Exciting. Driving her to distraction. She didn’t see desire in Roan’s eyes. No, if anything, she felt like he was a scientist. She’d rather be his lover than looked upon as an interesting petri-dish experiment.
Chapter Six
Roan tried to remain immune to Shiloh as they rode around the far end of Pine Grove. About halfway around it, he pulled his horse to a halt. Raising his arm toward a huge pine tree, the top of it containing the red-tail nest, he pointed it out to her. She got busy and pulled out her cell phone and took photos of it. He felt himself go hungry as she became excited and awed as one of the hawks flew back to the nest. The hawk had a four-foot wingspan and when it came in for a landing, Roan had to admit, it was impressive-looking.
There was a stand of cottonwood trees a little farther around the edge of the grove, a small stream nearby. He decided to pull up there, get her off the horse, and give her legs a stretch. Roan dismounted and walked over to Charley’s head, his hand on the reins.
“Go ahead and dismount,” he told Shiloh. He watched as she gripped the horn with her left hand, placing the reins on the horse’s neck, and swung her leg across Charley’s rump.
“Oh, geez,” she muttered, grimacing as she slowly lowered herself to the ground. “My legs are killing me.” She looked up to see him grin a little. The gleam in Roan’s eyes made her very aware she was a woman and he was a man. Leaning down, she rubbed the insides of her legs near her knees. They felt tender.
Roan pulled the reins over Charley’s head and let them drop to the green grass. The horse was ground-tied trained and wouldn’t move from the spot. “What you don’t want to happen is that the skin inside of your knees has been rubbed raw. Is any skin broken? You should check.”
Hotly aware of Roan’s closeness, she tenderly touched her Levi’s inside her knees. “No . . . they feel okay. No broken skin. Yet . . .” Straightening, she grinned up at him. “But my thighs . . . I feel like a chicken that got its drumsticks ripped apart,” she said, laughing.
His mouth twitched. He opened one of the saddlebags on his horse and pulled out a bottle of water, handing it to her. “Yeah, that pretty much says it all, Tenderfoot. Drink all of this. Need to keep you hydrated. City people don’t realize even when they ride a horse, they’re sweating a lot more than normal. You lose water and that’s not good.” His gloved fingers met hers. Damned if Roan didn’t feel momentary sparks of heat in his fingertips. There was such joy shining in Shiloh’s eyes, the change in her was startling. Mesmerizing. Roan felt like he was meeting another woman, not the one he’d met earlier at the airport.
“Come on,” he said gruffly, lifting his hand. “Follow me.” Roan led her over to beneath the sprawling limbs of a very old cottonwood tree. He gestured for her to sit down on the lush grass beneath it. He sat down, back resting against the rugged-looking grayish trunk. Shiloh plopped down, removed the green baseball cap, her ponytail loosened between her shoulder blades. The crimson tendrils only enhanced the natural pinkness in her cheeks. Roan purposely pulled his gaze away from her mouth. The woman was calling to him on every level—intellectually, physically, and emotionally—and yet, she’d made no obvious sign or signal to him. She was probably caught up in the wild, natural beauty of the West.
Sipping from the canteen of water, Shiloh sighed, gazing around. “Will the horses be okay out there? You haven’t tied them up.”