Accidental Cowgirl (21 page)

He’d been fighting his attraction to her since that day on the highway, and he should have been successful in banishing it by now. He should be ready to flirt casually, head out on the trail tomorrow, say a quick good-bye next weekend, and never think of her again. But it wasn’t working.

“Nope. I’m not done.” She smiled. “I know you. I know your type. I know all the words you’ll use to convince me you’re different, but it won’t work.”

“You smell like apple pie.”

Her mouth opened in a quick laugh.
“What?!”

“I said you smell like apple pie.” He leaned in closer, tracing her hair around her ear. “Whenever I’m near you, I swear to God I get hungry.” She elbowed him. “Not hungry like that. Well, yes, definitely hungry like that. But that’s not what I meant.” He took a chance and planted a soft kiss behind her ear. “You smell like apples.” Another kiss. “And cinnamon.” Another kiss. “You smell completely edible, Kyla.”

He reached out to pull her closer, and to his relief, she didn’t resist. He kissed her neck softly, breathing in the gorgeous scent that was her alone, tasting her sweet skin with his lips. He kept his hands in her hair, on her back, on her face, tracing the lines of her body slowly, surely. “You haunt me, Kyla. Your voice has tormented me from the first time we met. Your eyes
remind me of melted dark chocolate, and your hair. God, I am dying to see it fanning down over me.”

Kyla made one of those quiet little purring sounds she’d made on the dance floor Friday night as she inched closer to him. He was determined not to take this further than kissing, didn’t want to scare her off, but Jesus, he wanted her. Wanted to peel off every strip of clothing she wore, wanted to explore every inch of her skin with his fingertips, his lips, his tongue.

He pulled back a few inches, sliding his hand up to cup her jaw. “Do you believe me now, Kyla?”

“Nope.” She shook her head, the tiniest smile escaping her lips. “I’m still pretty sure you’re a Malibu Barbie type.”

Decker smiled. “No, I’m really, really not.” He stroked his hand up and down the baby-soft skin on her arm, and he heard her sigh. “I’m picturing more of a Kung Fu Snow White right now.”

She laughed out loud as he pulled her closer, and he could feel her resistance fading. “Kyla, I know you barely know me, and have no reason to trust me, but I really wish you could. Marcy is a complete fruitcake with no basis in reality. She also has a highly overrated sense of her own significance in my life, and her power to pull my strings.”

He pulled her chin gently toward him. “I have never, repeat
never
, even danced with another guest, let alone kissed one. Let
alone
cuddled with one in the barn in the middle of the night. Please tell me you believe me.” He stroked her jaw and lips with his index finger, dangerously, exceedingly slowly.

“Not when you do that,” she whispered.

He stilled his finger. “How about when I do this?” With a soft, sure motion, he lowered his lips to touch hers, moving his fingers through the hair at her temple as he pulled her body closer to his.

“Definitely not,” she whispered again. “Ask me another one.”

He groaned, pulling her so close they were practically glued. With his right hand, he pulled her jean-clad leg up over his thigh, stroking steadily, slowly toward her bottom. “This?” he growled.

“Nope,” she sighed. “Not quite yet.”

* * *

Kyla’s heart was tripping along so fast that she worried Decker would hear it and assume she was headed for a stroke. His hand was inching slowly up the outside of her thigh, and she hated the fact that she was dying for it to go higher, faster, but also wanted the exquisite slowness of his hand on her body to last forever.

This wasn’t supposed to be happening. She was supposed to be pushing him away, protecting herself from another heartbreak. For cripes’ sake, he’d just admitted he wasn’t even a freakin’ cowboy. He designed houses … in L.A. That was a long way from here. And an even longer way from Boston. Even if this was real, even if this flirtation had the potential to outlast the week here, there was no way they’d be able to make it work beyond next weekend. It was a completely lost cause.

She sighed as his hand reached her buttocks and caressed excruciatingly slowly. Then he groaned softly as he rolled her back on the blanket, supporting her with one arm while he brought the other hand around to her face. His eyes were dark pools in the soft light as he slid his fingers up and down her jawbone.

“I will stop anytime you want me to, Kyla. I want you to know that.” He closed his eyes and leaned down to touch his lips to hers, soft and inquisitive. Between kisses, he spoke in a whisper. “I will stop. I will. But God, please tell me you don’t want to, because the only thing in the world I want to do right now is make love to you.”

He stopped, holding her tight, and Kyla could hardly take in a breath as she looked up at him. She was overwhelmed by the intensity, frightened by her own need to have him, all of him, now, now,
now
. It was nothing she’d ever felt before, and it defied all logic and reason. She knew she should ask him to stop, knew she should run from that stable as fast as her gimpy leg would carry her. No good could come of this.

She reached up a hand to stroke his jaw, and he leaned into her fingers, then captured her hand with his and planted soft kisses in the palm and down her wrist. “Please let me make love to you, Kyla. Let me love you, let me protect you, let me make you crazy.”

“God, Decker.” Her body arched toward his as his lips and tongue heated a path down her neck while his fingertips caressed the part of her chest exposed by her shirt. With expertise she didn’t want to dwell on, he unbuttoned one button, two, three, until he could easily expose her,
but instead he stroked his hand up her arm and to her face again, making her ache for his touch.

“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered as he kissed her neck. She could feel the cool night air goose-bumping the skin on her stomach as he stroked her hair back from her face. His kisses were hot, his fingers scorched, and she was dying for more. She’d never taken the lead before, never felt the need, never felt the
want
, but this time, with this man—oh, God—she couldn’t resist.

Taking his hand in hers, she guided it slowly down her neck and toward the open buttons of her shirt. “Touch me, Decker. Please touch me.”

He groaned as he pushed open her shirt. “If I do, if I see any more of your delicious body, I’m not going to want to stop, Kyla.” His hand cupped her breast, slid under the fabric to touch a nipple that pebbled instantly. She arched again, wanting more.

He leaned down to kiss her again. “Are you sure?”

She cupped his face with both hands. “Decker, I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.”

His hand unclasped her bra, then slid slowly down her stomach. He lowered his mouth to her breast and kissed her, drawing the nipple in and circling it with his tongue until she thought she would cry out in ecstasy. “God, you taste so damn good.”

His hand reached her waistband, and she held her breath. He slid his hand in an inch. “Do you want me, Kyla?”

Her body involuntarily rose to meet his hand. “God, yes, Decker.”

He slid another inch, caressing in circles. “Are you sure?”

She groaned. “Yes. Yes, yes, yes.”

His hand slid inside her panties, where she knew he would find her hot and slick. “Oh, Jesus,” he moaned as he stroked and caressed her. He raised his head and captured her lips again. “Kyla, I swear to God, you are not going to regret this.”

Decker looked down at Kyla, smiling as he noted that her eyes were still blissfully closed, her breathing deep. His left arm was completely numb, but he’d be damned if he was going to move it and risk jostling her awake. He’d only known her for a week, but he was pretty sure the six-hour stretch of sleep she’d just enjoyed was the longest one she’d had in a year.

He resisted the urge to stroke her cheek, laying his head back on the wool blanket. How in the world had his entire universe flipped on its head in the span of six months? And then done it again in one week? One night? With a woman he barely knew? He’d built a very controlled, logical existence out on the West Coast, far
far
away from everything he’d ever known.

Then Decker Senior had bitten the dust and left Ma holding the empty purse strings. Nothing had been the same since he’d made that fateful red-eye trip home to Montana. Decker looked sideways again at Kyla. Her hair draped softly over his arm, and her eyelashes were thick on her cheeks. Teeny freckles dotted her nose, and her cheeks were still flushed.

As if she could feel him examining her in her dreams, Kyla’s eyelashes fluttered, and then she woke with a start. “Good morning, Snow White,” Decker said softly, pulling her in to kiss her forehead.

Kyla looked confused and disheveled at the same time. She pushed herself up to a sitting position, grabbing the blanket as it fell and revealed her flushed, gorgeous body. She squinted out the window at the other end of the barn. “What time is it?”

Decker shook the tingles out of his arm and checked his watch. “Seven-thirty.”

“Seven-thirty? That’s not possible. That would mean I—” Kyla snapped her eyes back to his.

“Slept through the night?” Decker finished for her.

She nodded slowly. “Yesss. And I haven’t done that in a very, very long time.” She looked around, pulling her jeans and blouse out of the hay while she held the blanket up to her chest. “So—”

She looked so adorably disheveled that he just wanted to gather her in his arms and lie her back down, but Cole would be here any minute. Decker knew his morning routine. He also
knew Kyla would absolutely die if she was caught naked in the barn with him, as fun as the night had been.

“So—” he echoed, eyebrows raised.

She struggled to put her clothing back on without dropping the blanket, and he struggled not to help her keep it off. “I, um, I wish I could think of something appropriate to say, but I’m coming up empty.”

He reached out to stroke her silky cheek. “Appropriate’s overrated anyway, sweetheart.” She looked so discombobulated that he knew he had to try to put her at ease. “You could talk about how fantastic last night was if you want to. Or … let’s see … maybe wax poetic about my prowess if you need to.” He flexed his abs playfully, making her giggle. “You could definitely tell me I’m the best you ever had. That would be totally fine.”

She finished buttoning her shirt and stood up to pull on her jeans. “If I told you that, you’d get all egotistical on me.”

He put his hand to his heart. “You’re killing me here.”

Kyla zipped her jeans, then straddled his legs as she crouched down to her knees. She took each of his hands in hers and trapped them over his head, then leaned down to capture his lips with her own. He tried to move his hands to her hips, but she forced them back down to the blanket as she darted her tongue across his lips. He groaned. “You are
definitely
killing me now.”

“Decker Driscoll, I have only just
begun
to kill you.” She pulled away with an impish smile. “But right now I’d better get out of here before someone comes in.” She stood up, then got a pained expression on her face. “Oh, my God.”

“What’s the matter?”

“I have to get back to my cabin. And your mother’s already cooking breakfast up at the lodge. Her kitchen window looks right down here. She’s totally going to see me.”

Decker laughed, standing up and pulling on his shirt. “If you sneak out the back door, you can come around the cabins from the other side.”

Kyla looked sidelong at him. “I thought you said you’d never done this before.”

Decker’s smile faded as he reached for Kyla’s hands and brought them both to his chest, clasped inside his own. “Kyla, you are the first woman I’ve ever snuck out the back door of the south barn. Got it?”

Kyla let a small giggle escape as he kissed her nose. “Got it. I’d better go before anyone
catches us. Ma could fire you for fraternizing with the guests.”

“I’ll take the risk.” He opened the back door and pretended to shoo her through it, smiling as she mock-tiptoed down the path. Damn. He shook his head as he pulled the hose from its hanger and started filling water buckets. He was playing with fire here, that’s for sure.

Someone was gonna get burned.

* * *

“Everybody have enough to eat?” Cole asked as he piled the tin plates into the wagon sitting at the edge of the clearing they’d pulled into on Monday night. Kyla laughed. The volume of food in that wagon could have fed a crowd three times their size.

Next to her on a log at the fire, Tom rubbed his ample stomach. “I don’t know if it’s your Ma’s recipe, or riding all day, or just this mountain air, but that is the best damn stew I’ve ever had.”

“Well, as soon as we get everybody back around the fire, we’ll teach you some good old-fashioned camp songs.”

Hayley laughed. “Oh, Jess will be in heaven.”

Cole pointed at them. “On second thought, I’ve heard you three sing. Maybe we’ll skip campfire songs and go straight to bed.”

Decker laughed as he came into the circle of logs. “I second that.” He was carrying a guitar, tuning it as he found a spot to sit on one of the logs directly across from Kyla. After an entire day in the saddle, replaying an entire night in his arms, she was more confused than ever.

Every time she looked at him, she could swear she ached in all the wrong places. Every time he caught her eye and winked, she remembered how his eyes had looked last night, inches from hers. Every time she saw his muscles flex under his soft blue shirt, she swore she wanted to tear it right off from his body and run her hands over the taut skin underneath.

She sighed. This was not like her. She was not one of those women undone by lust. She was highly logical, intelligent. Or at least she’d thought so before the whole Wes debacle. He’d snowed her completely, but had she ever felt this need, this longing to be with him? To drag him off into the forest for some alone time? To undress him slowly, exquisitely, painfully?