One Night with her Bachelor(6)

His forehead creased, and he dug his fingers into the corners of his eyes. “Why me?”

“I already told you—”

He dropped his hand long enough to give her a confused look before his face cleared. “Oh, right. The egg thing.”

Crumb. What an idiot she was. That moment at the store, the one she’d thought they’d shared, clearly hadn’t been anything more than a messy, but otherwise forgettable, errand for him.

Her cheeks heated, but she stood her ground. “I might’ve misinterpreted what happened at the store, but I have other reasons. I’ve known you a long time. I know you won’t blab about this around town. I just hiked out to the middle of the forest and propositioned a man in a cabin with no electricity. But because that man’s you, I don’t have to worry about being shoved into a wood chipper.”

He cringed. “Jesus, Molly.”

“Fargo. Good movie but not one to watch when you’re home alone.”

“Okay, so you know I’m not a murderer. Or maybe you’re saying my lack of electricity makes a wood chipper out of the question—it doesn’t, by the way. They have their own engines. Either way, it’s not really a selling point, is it? Why me? There must be dozens of men in town who’d eagerly take you out, show you a good time.”

“Actually, the single men in town are dropping like swatted flies. You’d be surprised. Something’s gotta be in the water, so you should check your water source if you don’t want to end up married and living happily ever after. But that’s beside the point. I’m too tired and too busy to have room for a relationship. And the kind of men I’m interested in think I’m too nice for anything but a relationship. It doesn’t leave me many options, Gabriel. All I know is one thing. If I don’t exercise my perfectly healthy hormones soon, I will explode.”

She knew one other thing, too. She desperately wanted to exercise those hormones with him. Partly, she was here for the reasons she’d given him, but also partly because he’d been the fuel for her fantasies since she was fifteen. Now she wanted a night of turning those fantasies into reality. Just one that was all she asked for.

And maybe one more in a few weeks, when the itch came back. But that was it. Anything more would be a commitment.

He sighed. “Let me get you some water. Sit down—carefully.”

She righted the chair and lowered herself gently until she was sure she was stable. He lifted the lid of a pot next to a wood-burning stove and poured water from it into a glass, giving her a chance to rake her gaze over the beauty of his half-naked body.

His sun-kissed skin showed evidence of hard living, with white scars marring his back and shoulders. One looked especially heinous. Was it from the helicopter crash? Or another rescue gone wrong?

Other than the puckered scars, his skin was smooth and his body lithe, running in masculine curves from his neck, to his broad shoulders and strong biceps, to his trim waist. Every movement seemed perfectly calibrated to waste no energy. He was a man who made his living rescuing people from desperation, and the more she watched him the more desperate she became.

Before he could turn around, she rose from the chair and covered the space between them in two steps. Her fingertips found the slope where neck turned into shoulder. He froze as she traced the lines of his body between his shoulder blades, down the bumps of his spine to the waistband of his camouflage pants. Her lips followed the same path. She was too short to reach his neck, but she pressed soft kisses all over his back as her hands moved forward to tease his front. He sucked in a breath, his whole body rigid under her explorations. She swirled the sensitive pads of her fingers around his nipples, then let them slide down the hard ridges of his abs. The thin trail of hair leading from his belly button down to heaven abraded her skin.

“Molly.” His voice was choked. All her fears that he would politely turn her down, making it clear he wasn’t attracted to her, disappeared in his hoarse moan.

“Just one night,” she whispered. “Back to reality tomorrow.”

Surely it wasn’t too much to ask.

She let her fingers flutter downward and brush against the erection straining the front of his camo pants.

At the first intimate contact, he sucked in a harsh breath and spun around. “Look. I’m trying to be a decent man here. You’re my best friend’s little sister. He would’ve killed me.”

They were both silent as the words brought reality back to them. Her brother couldn’t kill him. Her brother was dead.

She took a step back, her gaze dropping from his eyes to his strong chest and then away. Humiliation swirled with loneliness inside her. All she’d wanted was to spend time with him, giving in to a connection she’d thought they both felt. She’d wanted to touch him, reassure herself he was here and alive and okay.

And, selfishly, she’d wanted a chance to have the kind of fun other women got, the kind that came with no strings attached and no emotional entanglements. The kind she’d given up when she’d gotten engaged at seventeen and then pregnant on her wedding night.

Instead, she would be heading home alone to spend her weekend tidying up the Transformers that littered her house, with nothing but her fiercely blushing cheeks to warm her bed tonight. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come here and put you in this position. It wasn’t fair of me. I’ll go now, and I’d appreciate it if you forgot I was ever here.”