Wild

My love life was non-existent. Sure,
the guys in my department had asked me out, but none of them had done it for
me. I had no idea what I was holding out for… some of them were handsome and
nice. Smart. Funny. But they were boys.

I wanted a man. A real man. A manly man. A guy to take hold of my hair and
drag me back to his cave. Oh, and maybe not for him to flake like the last one.
Sticking would be good, too. Maybe I’d settle for not cheating.

God, the bar was getting lower and
lower.

Still, I knew exactly what had been
missing. What I was craving. Heat. Chemistry. Off the charts sizzle.

What Audrey had found with her
cowboy.

I wasn’t a virgin, but I might as
well have been. The last guy I’d been with had traded me in for a newer model.
That had been fun. Not. I wanted a guy who made me hot, where there was some
kind of zing, like the lightning that lit up the sky. I craved it, and the dead
batteries in my vibrator were proof of that.

I turned my face up and let the rain
pelt my eyelids, my cheeks, my lips. And then I started to laugh. Took a deep
breath, then another as I looked at the two-lane road in front of me. A creek
had swelled over its banks and covered the roadway. The murky water rushed by,
a tree branch or shrub ripped from the ground bobbed and moved downstream.
Nature always won. Was always grander, bigger, stronger. It could always reduce
my problems to insignificance. I picked up a rock and tossed it into the swift
moving water to see how deep it was.

It instantly disappeared.

I laughed again. I wasn’t getting
across anytime soon, at least not on this road. All around me was nothing but
prairie grass whipping in the wind. The nearest town was five miles back,
although the term town was generous.
It didn’t even have a stoplight.

I could turn back and detour a
different way, but the alternate route the GPS gave me took me three hours out
of the way. And that was if those roads hadn’t been flooded, too.

If I couldn’t get to Wolf Ranch
tonight, I wasn’t in any hurry to get anywhere else. Might as well enjoy
nature’s ill-timed show. I climbed up onto a two-foot high stone and concrete
marker by the side of the road to get a better look.

A pickup’s headlights caught my
attention, and I wobbled on the top of my perch. Because of the storm, I hadn’t
heard the engine until it stopped right behind my car. The door opened, and a
large man climbed down and stalked toward me.

“You okay?” he called, concern
lacing his voice.

I blinked the rain away, stared.
Blinked again. Well, hell-o. Speaking
of a real man.

The guy was huge, at least six-three
or four. Solid muscle, as if he lifted little rental cars like mine for
exercise, was barely concealed beneath a black t-shirt and cargo pants. He was
instantly wet.

So was I, and not from the rain.

He stopped beside me, and even with
me standing on the sign base, I stood only a foot above him. His hair was
close-cropped and dark, although it was almost black now. He needed a shave, as
if he’d lost his razor a few days ago. I bet he had a hairy chest.

Yum.

I laughed, nearly losing my balance
again. “I’m fine. I was just having a look.” I pointed toward the flooded road,
but he didn’t take his eyes off me.

He reached up and caught my elbow to
steady me. A deep V crinkled his forehead. He was probably a decade older than
me and wow... h.o.t., HOT.

“That water’s deeper than you
think,” he said. His voice was deep, gruff and full of command. My body
shuddered, not from the chill from the rain but in response to his words.
“There’s no way you’ll get across.”

Piercing dark eyes roved over me,
stopping on my chest.

I looked down and realized my
nipples were poking against my pale pink shirt which was now practically
see-through. He didn’t need x-ray vision to know I wasn’t wearing a bra.

I turned my face to the rushing
water. “I know. I just wanted to watch it for a minute.” I turned my foot, and
it slid a little on the slick surface.

His grip tightened on me. “Little
girl, you’re making me nervous. Hop down before I pull you down.”

Little girl? I stared at him. I was so much smaller and definitely
younger, but still. Those same bossy words out of another guy’s mouth would
have offended me. Somehow from him they sounded sexy. Virile. It probably had
something to do with those bulging muscles in the arm holding me.

He reached for my waist, not waiting
for me to comply. “Let’s go.” He lifted me easily to the ground, but kept his
hands resting lightly on my waist. He looked around, as if searching for
something, then back at me. His gaze roved over my face, dropped to my lips,
then looked me square in the eyes.