Page 44 of Ten Mountain Men

The next thing I know, I’m enveloped in Nash’s arms. His body, even larger than Lynx’s, floods every one of my senses, eclipsing everything else, while his great big hands maneuver mine, arranging and rearranging my fingers ’til he says, “There you go. Now what you do is—”

“Goodness gracious, you smell like a man,” I blurt.

His laugh rolls through my back like the briefest massage, sending shivers down my spine.

“Is that a bad thing?” he asks.

No. No, it is not. I mean, it’s a bad thing in that it makes me want to turn around and climb him like he’s a damn tree and bury my face in his neck and sniff him like a creeper, inhaling the delicious scent of him ’til my nostrils hurt. But the smell itself? Not a bad thing at all.

Rusty and Buck smelled the same way, kind of. Different, but still, they each smelled like a fucking man.

That’s it. That’s what it is.

I realize he doesn’t smell like cologne or aftershave or products, the scents we’re told men should smell like.

“You’re doing it all wrong,” Lynx says. Then he growls again. This time I’m sure it was him.

Wait. Let’s forget Sasquatches for a minute. All this growling! All this hairiness! Is it possible I stumbled upon real-fucking-life werewolf shifters?

And…why am I not turned off by that?

“Move,” Lynx barks at Nash, and Nash releases me, stepping back. But he, too, makes a guttural noise that rises from somewhere deep in his belly up to his throat.

Damn, boys, there’s enough of me to go around, I think giddily. Some Goldie for Nash, some Goldie for Lynx, some Goldie left over for…oh my God.

The combination of the mountain air and the altitude and the manly, manly masculine pheromones are going to be the death of me. Or at least the death of my virginity.

I shake my head. It may be on life support when I leave, but I am leaving this mountain with my virginity.

Lynx wraps his arm around me, his biceps boulders. “You need to be careful,” he tells me. “There’s a dangerous hook at the end of that line. And you don’t want it to wind up swinging back on you.”

“No, I definitely don’t want to get caught,” I say with a giggle, and what the fuck, I have a case of heaving bosoms, but Lynx smells like a man too. And something about the protective side of him…well. I might just growl soon myself.

“This is serious,” he says. He extracts the rod from my hands and leans it against a tree. “You could really hurt yourself.”

He spins me around so my bosoms are heaving against his chest. Pointing at the edge of his bushy eyebrow, he says, “Do you see this scar? This scar is a result of Ranger being careless. Half an inch over and I would’ve had a fishing hook embedded in my eyeball and probably would be staring at you out of my one eye right now.”

He leans down, down, down so his face is close to mine, and he scrunches one eye closed to make his point, and he looks so dang cute. Despite the bigness and the burliness and the beardiness. I really don’t know what comes over me except he’s right there, and I wrap my arms around his neck so that when he returns to his full height, my feet come off the ground.

Dangling in the air, Lynx wearing me like a necklace, I press my lips to…his beard.

He turned his head and I kissed his beard. So much beard.

“What are you doing?” he asks. But he doesn’t put me down. His golden-green eyes are imploring.

I’m shaky. Like, my insides are shaky. And I feel weak-kneed. And you could probably fry bacon in my panties, that’s all I’m saying.

“I don’t know,” I admit, because what the hell am I doing. I’m not impulsive! I don’t know how to be impulsive. And yet…

“I thought you didn’t like messy,” he says.

I shake my head.

“I don’t.” My voice is raw and throaty and I have no idea what I’m doing or what’s happening here, but all the blood in my body is zooming to my clit. “I just…I just wanted to kiss you.”

“If he doesn’t want to kiss you, I will, ma’am,” Nash says.

“Oh my goodness. You guys have got to stop calling me ma’am.”

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