Page 8 of Canadian Wild: Love

But I want him. I can feel it zinging in my veins, heating my blood up to boiling. He stares down at me and I stop breathing, locked in on him and the way I feel when I’m close to him.

Turned on. I never thought I’d feel this way again but there’s just something about this guy.

“You can go in. I promise you’ll be safe with me.”

I almost find that depressing. Almost. Because you know that I don’t want a guy. Definitely not this guy.

But I’m not feeling safe. I’m feeling a little out of control with him so close to me so I move quickly through the doorway andinto the tiny space. It’s a small cabin with just the one room with a pullout and a kitchen that’s so small I’m sure only one person can fit in it at a time. There’s no other door and I wince. No bathroom.

Like he can read my mind, he turns to me as he closes the door and leans against it, lips quirking. “It’s for emergencies so there’s no bathroom. But there’s an outhouse behind the cabin to use so at least you won’t have to go off into the woods and get lost.” He sets down the pup that I forgot he was carrying and I tense as the dog starts sniffing around the room.

I point at it. “What are you going to do with that?”

He grins. “It’s just a puppy. I’ll take it back with me and see if I can find a family for it. Can’t leave the animal all alone out here in the woods. It will die or go feral.”

I nod my head, confused at the reckless, lost look in his eyes.

He turns away so I can’t see his eyes anymore. “That’s what happens when you spend too long out here alone in the woods. Things go feral or they die.”

I nod my head, watching him closely as he shrugs out of his coat. “Is that what happened to you? You’ve been alone out here too long and you’ve gone feral.”

He grunts and looks over his shoulder at me as he hangs the coat up on a little hook by the door. “George said you were smart. Sounds like you’re a little too smart for your own good, Lizzie Montgomery.”

I feel my face pale, feeling that name like a punch to the gut. “God, how I hate that fucking name!”

He faces me, confusion clear on his harsh, craggy features. He’s turned on the little lantern that he must have had ready for emergencies and it’s the first time I can see him fully in that little circle of light he’s carrying.

His face is all harsh lines and deep crags, kind of like the mountains around us. He’s got the darkest blue gaze that looksalmost black as he stares at me, the same way I’m staring at him. I just can’t look away.

He nods at my clothes. “You need to get those wet clothes off before you catch pneumonia.”

Flushing, I glare at him. “How do I know you don’t say that to all the lost women you find as some weird kind of pick-up line?”

He throws his head back and his dark hair that’s longer on top and shaved on the sides falls into his eyes like a little boy’s. An ache settles deep in my gut, throbbing in all my private parts in ways that I’ve never felt before, never thought I could feel.

In all the years that I was married, I really thought that I was unable to reach any kind of orgasm because there was something wrong with me. But this man that I don’t even know makes my pussy clench like he’s inside me already, slamming into me and driving me to higher heights than the sky above the mountains. Heights that if I fell from would be earth-shattering and fatal.

Shaking, I watch him settle down and stop laughing, shaking his head. “I haven’t brought any other woman here. I wouldn’t have brought you if the storm wasn’t so bad.”

Glaring at him, I growl, “That doesn’t actually make it better.”

He shrugs his broad shoulders and I follow that movement, the bunching, rounding of his muscles, with a greedy eye.

Seriously? What the hell is wrong with me?I’m not sure but it feels like this is the most dangerous thing I’ve ever done in my life. More dangerous than running into a burning building or jumping out of an airplane and into the abyss of the sky with nothing to catch me but a scrap of fabric.

It’s…something’s wrong.

I jerk my head around and see the puppy panting behind me, his paw on the back of my leg as he noses at my crotch, almost knocking me over, the little bastard.

I scream and jump and the man in front of me leans over, his hands on his big-ass thighs and laughs his ass off at me, until tears are rolling down those craggy cheeks and disappearing into the hollows of his cheekbones.

“That’s not funny!” I cry out and whip around, knocking the dog off of me in the process. He whines and follows me as I back away.

Emile comes to stand at my back and I feel his big, broad chest dwarfing me and cradling me at the same time. I’ve never felt so…safe and at home before and I shudder to a stop, eyes closing as he closes his arms around my upper arms, his nose running along my throat, as he whispers in my ear, “Shhh. It’s just a puppy. He won’t hurt you. All he wants is to love you. That’s all supposedly dumb animals like him are good for. To love and be loved with all the abandon we have in us. Until they’re gone and we still remember that for awhile, we loved them and it just never fades away. It dulls to a deep hurt then a softer pang whenever we think of them.”

I turn to look up at him, shattered by the heartache I see in his dark indigo gaze. “Is that what happened to you? You lost your pup?”

He backs away and I miss that hard chest behind me, protecting me, surrounding me. “Something like that.”

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