Chapter Ten
A fter the ceremony, Wilder drove them back up the mountain. Cat used this as an opportunity to mount an argument that he could simply pull off somewhere so they could finally— finally —have sex.
“If I wanted to have sex with you in this truck,” he drawled, seeming maddeningly calm, “I would have done it already. And not when the entirety of Cowboy Point is waiting for us.”
“Who cares if they’re waiting for us? What does that matter?”
Her whole body seemed to be conspiring against her. The wedding had been a straight shot of exhilaration. Was she nervous? Was she apprehensive? Was she so excited that the blood in her veins felt carbonated? She had debated that very thing all the way down from Cowboy Point, singing along to the songs her mother played to set the mood, as she’d put it.
Then Cat had seen him.
Wilder had been standing apart from all the others, waiting. She’d found his gaze the moment she’d climbed out of her mother’s truck, and she’d known. That this wedding was only a formality. That she had already decided. That her body and blood and heart and soul had been his since the start.
And now they were alone and she felt wild and bubbly and he was still refusing to have sex with her. How she had managed to end up with one of the most famously carnal men around, and was still technically a virgin, she would never know.
Much less how she was now his virgin wife .
Cat made a frustrated noise. “It’s not like it has to take too long, we can just get it over with and—”
But the look Wilder slid her from behind the wheel was so blazing hot, so filled with a dark sort of amusement that made all that fizzing inside her seem to boil over , that she forgot what she’d been about to say.
“…oh.”
“Yeah,” he agreed, in a low voice that matched the look in his eyes. “Oh.”
And that, obviously, was then the only thing Cat could think about when they arrived at Mountain Mama to rounds of applause that almost drowned out the murmurs of speculation at the sight of them.
Cat couldn’t blame anyone for spreading a juicy rumor or two. If she’d been attending this party, she would have thought that the bride had to be pregnant too. She had picked a wedding dress that allowed everyone a nice, long look at her midsection and its lack of a pregnant belly, but she knew that wouldn’t stop people talking.
Only about ten months of a continued lack of said belly would do that, and she knew that everyone in town would be counting. But the truth was, having never been even remotely scandalous in all her life, Cat kind of enjoyed being the focus of all that speculation.
The day was bright, but cold. She slipped on the white puffy jacket she’d gotten specifically for the occasion and was happy that there were heaters set around the patio so it was only a little bit chilly. Which, in Montana, was the same as warm.
The Bennet sisters served pizza. Everybody gathered around and offered congratulations. Her brothers managed to tone down the glowering. Her mother, Zeke Carey, and his wife Belinda stood in a knot on one side of the patio, laughing uproariously. Almost all of her friends were here, and happy to celebrate her. Even the three wild Stark brothers were dressed nicely and managed not to cause their usual commotion.
It was sweet. It was nice.
It was exactly what Cat had planned and she couldn’t wait for it to be over.
“I hope you have good intentions toward my brother, Cat,” came a voice from beside her some while later when she was taking a breather at the side of the festivities.
She looked up and realized instantly that even though the man beside her sounded like Wilder and certainly looked like Wilder, he wasn’t Wilder at all. She knew it instantly, even before she registered the fact that he wasn’t wearing the clothes she knew perfectly well her husband— her husband —was wearing today.
Ryder.
“I’ll admit that it’s refreshing that someone is actually concerned about my intentions,” Cat confided in him. “So far I think the entire town has put Wilder on notice. Everyone’s watching him. Everyone’s certain that he’s going to snap me in half like a twig.”
Something that currently sounded delightful, if she was honest. Especially if it involved kissing.
“I’m more worried about you,” Ryder said. “And not because I think he’s going to hurt you.”
“Thank you,” she said, and she meant it. “I’ll have you know that I was not only a willing participant in my disgrace, I pretty much engineered it, too.”
“I suspected you might have.”
“Are you going to warn me off of him?” Cat almost hoped that he would. Because that might make her feel dangerous and sophisticated, and wouldn’t that be fun?
Ryder smiled then, and it was amazing to her that he could truly look exactly like Wilder and yet… that smile was just a smile. It didn’t rearrange the cells inside her body.
It didn’t make her feel foolish and strong, all at once.
“Just go easy on him, Cat,” Ryder drawled. “I’m not just the pretty one, I’m the tough one, too.”
And she watched him as he went back into the crowd, holding himself slightly apart from all these people who had known him his whole life. But she forgot about that not long after because it was finally time for Wilder to take her home.
Out in front of the pizza place, Wilder’s truck waited. Better yet, so did he. Cat said goodbye to her friends and neighbors and hugged her mama, then walked toward it, loving the way her wedding dress brushed against her legs, making her feel wildly feminine—something that the banked fire in Wilder’s gaze only exacerbated. In all the best ways.
But she tried to get it together, because her brothers were standing between her and him, like one last hurdle she had to clear before she could have what she wanted. What she wanted, Cat thought as she drew close, was to kick the hurdles, but she didn’t.
There were too many people watching. And besides, her mother wouldn’t approve.
“Do you want me to throw you the bouquet, Tennessee?” she asked sweetly. “Maybe a little romance would fix your personality problem. What do you think?”
Dallas laughed at that, but Tennessee only frowned.
“I put that suitcase in the back of your new husband’s truck,” Dallas told her. “Just like you wanted.”
“Thank you,” Cat said. And then they all… stood there.
She had no idea what they were thinking, though she imagined it had something to do with her in pigtails and scraped knees. Meanwhile, she was hyperaware of the fact that while she was standing around chatting with her brothers as if this was all perfectly normal, everyone knew that she was going off to have sex. With Wilder.
Who was now her husband, but that didn’t make it any less weird.
It made her feel a little bit giddy, and silly, and it seemed that she could feel the light of the entire Milky Way like little pinprick stars all over her body.
“If you ever need help,” Tennessee told her, “no matter what kind of help, you know that all you have to do is call and we’ll be right there.”
“I do know that,” Cat said softly. “I’ve always known.”
She went over and hugged Dallas, hard, going up on her tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek. And she moved to Tennessee and hugged him, too. And when she stepped back, she held onto her older brother’s arms and looked up at him.
“We didn’t have an aisle,” she told him. “But I want you to know that if we did, there’s only one person I ever would have considered walking down it with. I know you’re not my dad. I don’t want you to be my dad.” He stiffened, just slightly, but she held on. “But you’re the reason I know what a good man is, Tennessee.”
And she thought, to her shock and some delight, that her taciturn older brother was about to get emotional. She could see his eyes get a little bit glossy—
But Wilder came up beside her then, took in the situation with a glance, and clapped Tennessee on the back.
She thought that her brother actually looked grateful.
“She’s going to be just fine,” Wilder told both Tennessee and Dallas. “You’ve known me my entire life, and never seen me so much as step on an ant. I’m not going to hurt her.”
“Of course you’re not,” Dallas agreed, with a bland smile that hinted at tightly held mayhem beneath. “But this is our baby sister. This is a trust but verify situation.”
“As it should be,” Wilder agreed, and then he shook Dallas’s hand.
Then he turned to Cat. And it wasn’t as if she felt torn , really. But this was very clearly a before and after moment. Nothing would ever be the same. She didn’t want it to be the same. This was exactly the kind of thing she had been longing for. This was an absolute break with everything she knew.
Her new job was training wheels. This was not.
But she’d been so busy looking for the horizon that she’d forgotten—or maybe underestimated—how much she’d always liked what she had right here.
She threw herself at both her brothers and the three of them hugged, hard.
Then she pulled away, and maybe all of the Lisle blue eyes in the vicinity were a little glossy as she very deliberately reached over and twined her fingers with Wilder’s.
“I love you both,” she told them. She looked back toward the crowd, where their mother stood with Zeke and Belinda, and their friends. “Take care of Mom.”
“Just want to point out that we’re not headed off in a covered wagon with the vague hope of striking gold in half a year out west,” Wilder drawled. “She’ll still be right here in Cowboy Point, working in the General Store and for the good doctor, for the foreseeable future.”
“Mom hasn’t lived alone in that house,” Cat reminded her brothers. “Ever.”
“Understood,” Tennessee said. Dallas nodded, his military face on, which was the strongest indication she had that he was fighting back emotion.
Then she let Wilder take her to the door of the truck, opening it, and helping her in. Once she was settled, she looked back out the open door, waving at all her friends and neighbors who were still standing there, watching. She caught her mother’s gaze and smiled, because Jenny hated goodbyes and had refused to come out to the truck. She picked up the bouquet that someone had thoughtfully left in the truck for her, tilted it in the direction of the crowd, and threw it.
But she didn’t watch to see where it landed, because Wilder was closing her door and crossing in the front of the truck to swing himself inside, and once again he was the only thing that she could think about.
And everything seemed to take too long, then.
It took an eternity to drive away from Mountain Mama, down the main road with all its familiar buildings, shops, and little houses, and then start the climb up the hill that led away from Copper Mountain. The rundown old lodge building stood tall at the top, and she wondered what it would be like if the Stark family really did remodel it someday, giving the tourists a place to stay right here in Cowboy Point that was a little more cushy than the odd Airstream rental.
But that, like everything else, was nothing but a passing thought that glanced off her and danced away as they went over the hill and down the other side, then started winding their way along the lazy mountain roads until they eventually reached the one that led into High Mountain Ranch.
Cat was sure she must have been here before. She could picture the main ranch house in her head, though she couldn’t remember why she would have come here. Maybe some kind of elementary school excursion back in the day, she thought—and that brought back a faint shred of memory. They’d toured a lot of local ranches as kids, as a part of 4-H and FFA initiatives in the county.
And it hit her then that she and Wilder had gone about all this in such a bizarre way. That he was taking her home for the first time as his wife when they’d gone on only one official date.
It would make more sense if she really was pregnant.
But thinking about pregnancy made her think about the process of becoming pregnant. And she was only aware that she was squirming a little in her seat, her cheeks flaming red, when he reached over and ran his knuckles over the heat of the one nearest him.
“Just a little longer,” he promised her, the dark gleam in his gaze taking all the air from the world.
Cat thought that if she opened her mouth and tried to speak just then, something embarrassing would come out. Maybe she would cry. Or laugh too loudly. Or die.
He turned down an even narrower dirt road and they poked along a while, then turned, and he drove her up to a perfect little cabin set back and the top of a gently sloping yard with a heart-stopping view back toward Copper Mountain.
“This is beautiful,” she whispered.
“I’m glad you think so,” Wilder said as he pulled the truck to a stop in front of the cabin’s wide, comfortable porch. “I’ve always been of the opinion that my little bit of land here is the best on the ranch.”
He swung out of the truck and came around to her door. And instead of setting her on the ground when he lifted her out, he swept her up into his arms.
And this was happening. This was actually, really, and truly happening.
Looking up at his beautiful face, with her wedding gown spilling all around them and her heart like a drum, Cat wondered if her whole chest might split wide open from all this impossible joy.
When he leaned in and kissed her he made it so much more exquisitely worse, because it was different.
More raw. More wild.
Because, she realized in a bit of a daze, this time they didn’t have to stop.
This time, there were no more rules.
She could feel that shiver through her until even her toes seemed to be singing.
He lifted his head, and there was a kind of tautness in his face, as if he was using every single bit of self-control he had not to throw her down on the ground right there.
Part of her wished he would.
He swung around, kicking the truck door shut behind him. Then he headed for that covered front porch with its wide steps and shouldered his way through the front door. He carried her over the threshold and that was like a new current of bright, bubbly joy inside of her. She had a jumbled impression of tidiness, worn leather in rich tones, a wood-burning stove, and a surprisingly orderly kitchen complete with a table and what looked like another porch off the side.
She would have to investigate all that later because he kept moving, down a small hallway to the very last room that she knew even before he entered it was his bedroom.
It was big, as befitted a large man like Wilder. His bed was high and wide. It faced a fireplace in the corner and a big window that looked off into the mountains, and there was a sloped skylight above.
But then all she could see was Wilder as he sat her down on her feet next to the bed with that gentleness she had seen from him before.
It was always at such odds with that leashed hunger in him. And today, she thought, the hunger in both of them was even more acute.
“I can’t believe this is actually happening,” she whispered.
“We should lay down some ground rules,” he began.
“Absolutely not.” Cat shook her head at him, not sure where her confidence came from with this man. But there was no denying that it was there. She had absolutely no fear of him. And things like this, she just knew. “No more rules, Wilder. I want everything. I want it all.”
His eyes got even hotter, which shouldn’t have been possible. “You know what they say.” He slid the puffy white jacket down over her shoulders, tossing it aside. “Happy wife, happy life.”
Cat was smiling so wide that her cheeks hurt. “That’s the most sensible thing you’ve ever said to me.”
And they weren’t lying down in a pickup truck, with the fresh air and the stars and the odd mosquito pressing in.
This was his bedroom. She was his wife.
So she didn’t ask him for permission. She reached over and helped herself to the wall of his chest, running her palms up and getting to work on the buttons of his shirt so that when he shrugged off his jacket, she could push his shirt off with it.
And she let out a sound of wonder, because he was everything that she’d imagined, and more. She’d had a sense of him, of course. She’d pushed his shirt out of the way in the woods, adhering to the no-clothes-off rule in theory more than fact, but it was something else entirely to stare at him with the light coming in from outside and get to see the entirety of the man’s unbelievably chiseled torso.
“Turn around,” he told her.
And when she didn’t rush to obey him because she was having far too much fun looking at him, he laughed a little and turned her around himself. Cat felt his hands at her neck, then at the back of her dress, unzipping it and letting the fabric fall to the floor.
Wilder didn’t let her turn back around. He pulled her toward him, one hand going around to hold her at the waist and that big, wide hand of his that had already brought her unimaginable amounts of pleasure out in the woods sliding around to rest almost benignly between her belly button and the part that wanted him most.
He kissed along her neck, holding her flush against the heat of his body, and all she could do was shiver and sigh and break out in goose bumps, everywhere.
When he finally turned her around and settled her on the side of the bed, he knelt down, pulled her legs over his wide shoulders, and bent to taste her.
It wasn’t the first time that she’d felt his mouth on her like this, but it was different. She was in his bed . She was his wife .
And, finally, this was the appetizer instead of the full meal.
Maybe that thought alone was what made her shatter almost immediately. He laughed there against the heat of her body, then kissed his way up, ridding her of the white panties she’d worn in celebration.
Then groaning, because she still wasn’t wearing a bra.
“I love how obsessed you are with the fact I don’t wear bras that often,” she said, arching into his touch.
“Not as much as I love that you don’t,” he replied.
He showed her exactly what he meant, until she was crying out all over again. Because he was magic. The things he could do with his mouth and his hands and oh, she was lost.
Every new touch was a new way to lose herself, a new revelation.
Wilder pushed back and finally stripped off the rest of his clothes. And for a moment, they both sat there and stared at each other, as if struck by the glory of this the same way. At the same time.
“I didn’t really believe that I was going to get to see you naked,” she whispered.
He only smiled, but it was a deeply wicked, magical kind of smile that seemed to set every nerve in her body on fire, and then he leaned over and picked her up again. He settled her more in the middle of the bed and she wondered if the storm in her body might wipe her out altogether when he found his way to her once more.
“Cat,” he began, in that way he did when he was about to make pronouncements that she was almost certainly not going to like.
“Yes, I know it will probably hurt,” she said impatiently. “Yes, I know it’s very unlikely that it will be good for me, too. Yes, I know—”
“You don’t know much, apparently.” He shook his head. “We’re going to do our best to make sure it barely hurts at all. And you can trust and believe that it will be more than good for you .” He rolled his eyes as if the very idea that it could be awkward in any way was ridiculous. “What I was going to ask you is whether or not you were on birth control, or if you wanted me to handle it.”
“Oh.” She felt silly again. “Uh… no, I’m not. Though Ramona and I did discuss it. And depending…”
How was she supposed to have this conversation? Then again, as Ramona had pointed out to her, if she couldn’t have a conversation about sex she probably shouldn’t be having sex. And in theory that made sense. But staring at Wilder’s absurd male beauty while every single part of her was rioting to get closer to him, she could see why people maybe jumped a step or two.
“There are good options, depending on our plans,” she said diplomatically, because this didn’t seem like the moment to bring up babies. Not when what she wanted was some practice in the making of them first.
“I got it,” he told her.
Then he settled in beside her, pulled her over his body so she was astride him, and kissed her.
Then kept kissing her, lazily. Slowly. Even though she could feel that huge, hard part of him between them, so hot it was like electricity spun off everywhere.
Still, he made no move to do anything but kiss her.
As if they really were back out in the truck and he had no intention of taking this further.
“If you don’t do something,” she whispered, leaning down close to him so her face was in his, “I will kill you. With my very own hands.”
“Violent threats on our wedding night?” He made a chiding sound, but there was a gleam in his dark gold gaze. “I am shocked and appalled.”
“Wilder,” she said, but on a moan when he nipped at her collarbone. “I’m begging you. Please.”
“Well,” he said, laughter in his voice and making his chest move, too, “if you insist.”
Then he rolled her over and came up on top of her, and everything seemed to shoot off into space. If space was a bonfire, and they were nothing but kindling.
He kissed her everywhere. He teased her, and she would say even tortured her, in ways that made her realize that she didn’t know her body at all. And that all the things she’d thought he’d already taught her hadn’t prepared her for this at all.
The weight of him above her with nothing between them, just skin to skin.
All the places where he was smooth, and then not smooth, from his hair-roughened chest all the way down to where their legs tangled together. She loved every bit of it. It was everything. How could there be more?
But oh, how she wanted that more .
Wilder rolled aside and grabbed something from the nightstand, took a moment, and then he was back. He nudged against the core of her and where she expected a pinch or straight-up agony or something too overwhelming to bear—there was only softness. Heat.
And the astonishing, outrageous, magical feel of him filling her, slowly but surely.
Until she shifted her hips to accommodate him, slightly worried that she’d misjudged this whole thing and there was no possible way that he could fit—
“I’m going to fit just fine,” he told her, kissing her on her mouth and then across her jaw, and Cat didn’t know if she’d actually said that out loud.
Or if he simply knew every single thing that was happening to her, even in her thoughts.
That only made it hotter.
He eased in, farther and farther, and she thought that she could understand why this could have hurt, though it didn’t. If he went faster. If she hadn’t already come apart as many times as she had. If he wasn’t… him .
And then, finally, he was all the way inside her and when she breathed, she could feel him there. Everything was fullness, heat, hardness. He propped himself up on his elbows, gazed down at her, and once again looked entirely too relaxed. As if he could hang out like that, lazily , forever.
Cat decided that she was tired of being tutored.
She wrapped her arms around him, grabbing hold of his wide, naked back the way she’d imagined, dreamed, fantasized about and she arched up to press her breasts against him too. That got her the quick reward of his swift intake of breath.
So she shifted until she could cross her legs behind his back too and it turned out that he could go that little bit deeper still.
And Cat might not have known what she was doing, in the sense that she’d never done it before. But she decided that meant she might as well be creative.
She raised her hips and moved them around, creating a push and a pull, and then—
“You’re going to kill me,” he muttered, and there was nothing lazy about the way he said it.
He dropped down, wrapped himself around her, and began to move.
And it was extraordinary .
It was a lesson and a love letter, and it felt like a song.
If a song could be made entirely of fire and need.
And together, they sang and sang until it all exploded, like a shower of stars all around them, though it wasn’t yet night.
Comets shooting, stars falling, galaxies shifting.
Wrapped up together like one.
And having experienced being one, with him, Cat understood deep down in her bones that she could never go back. She could never be just her again.
Some time later Wilder showed her the rest of the cabin. He took her on a tour, but it took an awfully long time, because they kept getting distracted in each and every room.
Later still, he wrapped her in blankets and they sat out on his porch, looking at the Milky Way like it was putting on a show, just for them.
And in the morning, she woke up and found herself in her husband’s bed.
Wilder Carey, her husband.
Cat smiled sleepily, then stretched, and her body felt both nothing like hers and more like her than it ever had before.
She sat up, pushing her hair out of her face. She was sure that it was everywhere, and wild, but she couldn’t bring herself to care about that one bit. When she looked around, there was a bright light coming in through the skylight and the mountains felt as if they were inside the room, and it took her a few moments to remember that the suitcase with her things was probably still in the back of his truck.
What a tragedy that she would have to wear her husband’s clothes instead.
Cat crawled out of bed, enjoying the little shiver the colder air of the room gave her. She picked up the button-down shirt that Wilder had tossed aside last night and wore it like a dress, padding out into the main part of the cabin in only that.
Somehow, she wasn’t at all surprised that it was warm. Even if Wilder liked his cabin on the cooler side, she’d somehow known he would keep it warm for her.
And she found him in the kitchen, sadly dressed, and making what looked like an extraordinarily complicated cup of coffee.
“I never would have taken you for coffee purist,” she said when she came and stood beside him, looking down at all his… coffee things .
“A man has to have some standards, Cat,” Wilder said.
And she thought he sounded… odd, maybe. A little rough. Or maybe it was simply that she’d never seen him in the morning before. Maybe this was what he was like in the morning light.
He presented her with a large, hot mug and then steered her toward the front door. On the way, he grabbed a thick throw that was really more of a blanket from his couch and draped it over her shoulders, and she understood why he took her outside to the porch. The cold had come in hard overnight, and Wilder made sure she was wrapped up tight, bare feet and everything, then sat down beside her on the step.
When he didn’t speak, she took a sip of the coffee he’d made her and found it just about the silkiest, best coffee she’d ever tasted.
Really, she didn’t know why she was surprised.
“Wilder,” she said with a sigh. “If this is the first day of the rest of our lives, I have to say that I think you’re starting it off beautifully.”
Next to her, he put his mug down on the step with a thunk and blew out a breath.
And she had an inkling, then. A prickle of something like foreboding. She told herself she was catastrophizing, because surely—
“Cat,” he said, in a somber voice. In that tone . “We made a terrible mistake, but we can fix it. I’m going to file for divorce.”
And, somehow, it was both a shock and yet not a surprise at all.
She couldn’t tell if she was reeling from that, or from the combined experiences of the past twenty-four hours—not to mention the weeks before that since they’d run into each other at the Wolf Den. And she didn’t know what reaction he was going for, but it probably wasn’t the one she had.
Because Cat laughed.
She laughed so hard that her coffee spilled on her hand, and she had to put it down. And then, when she felt tears on her cheeks, she had to wipe them away, and that meant there was coffee everywhere.
Which struck her as perfect and ridiculous and it only made her laugh more.
And when she finally stopped, he was looking at her in a kind of frozen astonishment, as if she’d really gone off the deep end.
“I’m serious,” he said.
“I know you are.” Cat leaned closer, reaching over so she could put her coffee hand on his face, to hold him there, all wounded dark eyes and that set to his jaw. “Wilder. Don’t you know by now? I’m the love of your life.”