She drove back to her cabin and shut the door behind her, leaning against it, her heart pounding hard against her breastbone.
And then she took stock of what she felt.
Her legs felt like jelly, that place between her legs felt swollen and slick. Hollow. And it was humiliating. Because everything she had felt when they’d danced in Vancouver was magnified by about a thousand degrees now.
She was trying to catch her breath, and couldn’t.
And then two whole minutes later, when she still had her back up against the door, there was a solid knock that landed just between her shoulder blades.
“I clearly ran away from you,” she said.
“I had to check to make sure you were okay,” he said.
She flung the door open and looked at him. “Do I seem okay to you?”
“No. You seem freaked out. And I wanted to make sure that...”
“That what? That I wasn’t as freaked out as I appeared?”
“Yeah. That.”
“You kissed me,” she spat, as if it could take the impression of his mouth off hers. As if it could do something to minimize the heat.
“Yeah. I did.”
“That’s insane.”
“I agree.”
She realized something in that moment.
That if she moved toward him, he wouldn’t be able to resist. That if she put her hand on his chest, if she pressed her breasts against him, that he would respond because he wanted her. And she knew that. She knew it, like it was a new kind of knowledge that hadn’t been there before, and suddenly was.
She didn’t feel so weak or scared right now. Not at this moment.
Instead, she felt a little bit powerful. And she didn’t quite know what to do with it.
She didn’t know what to do with this. With this wealth of knowledge that felt suddenly opened up to her even in the midst of her ignorance.
That was what it had felt like. A stunning moment of ignorance. How could she not have known that she was attracted to Hunter?
Because now she couldn’t not see it.
Now she couldn’t look at him and see anything other than a man. A man that was beautiful.
A man that women wanted.
A man that made women weak.
And he wanted her. Even more miraculously.
She wondered what he saw, standing there, because what she saw was... It was like a revelation. Right there in her little house that she had lived in for all of these years. On this property she had been born on.
Very near the barn she had been born in.
And yet it was like seeing with new eyes. So many familiar things, but Hunter was no longer one of them.
She studied his face. The intensity in his dark eyes, that mouth that had been on hers. His square jaw, the strong column of his throat, and when had she ever noticed a man’s throat before? But there was something indescribably sexy about it. That even that was different. Sure, they both had a neck, but his had an Adam’s apple.
Something she’d never pondered in her life.
His chest was broad and thick and deep, well muscled. And she had felt it when she’d been pressed up against him, and she thought again of when he’d gone to bed shirtless in the motel.
And how she’d had to look away because it had done things to her she wasn’t ready to confront. Same as she hadn’t wanted to confront what she’d felt when he’d turned all that flirtation right onto her. Or when she’d sat on his chest on the football field.
Then he’d pressed his lips against hers and there was no more pretending she didn’t know.
And she felt rotten with it.
“I’m okay,” she said softly.
“Are you?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I’m okay. I... Hunter, I... They can’t know. Not ever. I don’t know what would happen if...”
“Oh, I know,” Hunter said. “They would peel my skin off my bones and hang me from the nearest tree as an example.”
“And they wouldn’t do that with just any guy.”
“I know,” he said, his tone grave.
He wasn’t just any guy. He was Hunter. He was the man who had taught her to ride a horse. He was the man who had taught her to dance.
And he was a man who had shown her what it meant to be a woman and feel powerful with it. And she could never, ever have him. Alaina...
Alaina.
There were so many reasons that this couldn’t happen, but Alaina.
And it wasn’t because she thought Hunter was going to want Alaina, it was just that... Of all the things... Of all the things, and she hadn’t thought about her best friend even once during all of this, during her entire emotional breakdown.
She had just been annoyed with her.
It was the crappiest thing. It really was. And she just felt like the biggest jerk in the entire world.
The saddest. And the most frustrated. And...
She had needed Hunter in her life. In about a thousand different ways. For so many years, and if this happened, and she ruined the friendship between Sawyer and Wolf and Hunter—if Hunter was effectively removed from their lives—she would never be able to forgive herself for that. Ever. Not ever.
“You have to go,” she said. “Nothing else can happen.”
“Absolutely,” he said, his agreement firm.
“Nothing.”
And she realized that as they were talking, they had moved closer to each other. And she was close enough that she could smell his skin. His hard work, and sunshine. The grass and the hay.
“Nothing,” she repeated.
“I agreed with you.”
“Hunter,” she said.
And then she was in his arms. And he was kissing her again. And she didn’t want talk. She didn’t want to do anything but be in this moment. She said that it was impossible, and he had agreed, but here they were. It wasn’t stopping them. It couldn’t.
It should, because there were about a million reasons they couldn’t kiss. That he shouldn’t be walking into her cabin right now, that he shouldn’t be shutting the door behind him.
She should stop. And she should tell him to go away.
But she didn’t want him to go away.
He had told her not to do this with someone she didn’t want. He was the only person that she wanted. What she had thought was wanting, it wasn’t anything. It was just thinking somebody was cute. It wasn’t the same.