To Love a Wilde (10 page)

Retracing his path, his tongue flickered out to dart and caress its way back, until he reached the corner of her mouth.

“So sweet,” he murmured, before stroking his tongue over the seam of her mouth.

On fire, hungry for his tongue, his mouth, his touch, Yasmine rose on tiptoes and wrapped her arms around his neck to pull him closer.

His hand moved from the back of her neck, his roughened, callused palms sliding over the skin of her throat, making her body arch sharply, before cupping one of her breasts. She sighed into his mouth when he ran his thumb over her nipple.

Beneath her bra she felt her nipple grow erect, pushing insistently against the fabric.

“Holt,” she whispered against his mouth. “Please …” She stopped when two fingers pinched the nipple, the sensation sharp but not unpleasant.

“God, your mouth is sweet,” he growled. “I can’t get enough of it.” He pushed away from her, his breath harsh as he ran a hand through his hair and ran an eye over her disheveled body. “I can’t get enough of you—” the admission was dragged from him “—I haven’t been able to get you out of my mind since Saturday,” he said.

He captured her mouth, dragged her body closer and lavished his attention on her. Licking and suckling her lips, he ate at her mouth as though it was food from the gods.

Yasmine squirmed, her body caught between the hard door of the refrigerator and the even harder wall of his chest.

In her movement, her elbow hit the ice lever of the refrigerator, and seconds later ice ran down her back.

Yelping, she pushed away from Holt and the refrigerator.

“What?” He breathed the word, his breaths coming out harshly.

“Ice … down my back,” she hissed.

She glanced up at him, seeing the sensuality still stamped on his features.

When he moved to draw her nearer, she held up a staying hand, shaking her head no.

The ice had been just what the doctor ordered, forcing her to pull up and decloud her murky vision.

“Stop right there.” She drew in a deep, fortifying
breath. “You need to go.” It took all she had to push him away.

“Yasmine, what’s wrong?” He frowned, moving toward her as she backpedaled away, both physically and mentally.

“This … whatever we have going on between us, needs to end. I don’t need this.” She waved her hands in the air. “You … whatever, in my life. My life is complicated enough.”

“Is that what I am to you? A complication?”

His jaw hardened and the corner of his mouth twitched.

“Yes. That’s
all
you are. And I’ve got other things to think about,” she said, and could tell her response angered him more.

“Well, while you’re deciding what you want, think about this,” he said. He reached out, grabbed her by the waist and hauled her close. Her breath escaped on a startled rush of air when he slammed his mouth over hers.

The kiss was short but no less hot.

As soon as it began, it was over, and Yasmine stumbled a bit when he moved away from her, her legs like jelly. She righted herself against the counter and watched as he turned on his boot heel and left without another word. The minute she was alone, her body slumped.

Slowly she moved away and went to the oven. With shaky hands she dumped the cooled muffins into plastic containers, her mind whirling. She’d done everything
in her power to avoid him over the past few days, which hadn’t been easy, living in the same house, keeping her hands and mind busy. As her aunt said, an idle mind was the devil’s playground.

She was finding that for her the devil was all wrapped up in perfect masculinity by the name of Holt Wilde.

B
usiness returned to usual the day following Yasmine’s encounter with Holt.

She also managed to avoid Holt as much as possible. She’d learned the men’s schedule from Lilly and Althea. Nate was the first of the brothers to come home, usually to see his wife. With their upcoming preparations for the wedding, the two of them usually took to the study and would eat a later dinner, together.

As soon as Nate arrived, Yasmine would quickly finish her work, eat with Lilly and retire to her room. Their last encounter still lay heavy on her mind. Although she didn’t want him thinking it meant any more to her than it had him, she’d be lying if she tried to convince herself of that fact.

Or that it didn’t matter to her that he no longer tried
to seek her out, dogging her footsteps as he had before in an attempt to pick up where they’d left off.

Yasmine convinced herself that that only served as a relief. She completely ignored that irritating little voice inside her head that suspiciously sounded like her aunt, that not only called her a liar, but a bald-faced one at that.

As the days grew closer to Aunt Lilly’s surgery, she was relieved that Jake was going to drive her and her aunt to Sheridan that weekend for her surgery. She was worried enough about her aunt, and his offer had been one that she’d gladly accepted.

Forcing Holt from her mind, Yasmine sank into work. Between running the kitchen as well as meeting with Nate and Althea, as she’d agreed to cater their wedding, life was hectic. By the time her days ended, Yasmine sank into the mattress, her muscles achy and tired.

Yet for all the hard work and the aches, and the long days, she couldn’t remember a time when she’d felt more content, more fulfilled, despite the many things on her agenda she had to consider regarding her future. Along with running the kitchen and preparing a menu for the wedding—thankfully getting help from one of the local girls in town Lilly had managed to snag—she’d also reacquainted herself with the ranch.

Over the past few days, after finishing work, she left the cleanup to Jackie, the new girl Nate had found to help, trying one last time to redeem himself in Lilly’s eyes for all the others who hadn’t worked out.

The ranch had grown so much since her last visit,
she thought as she came home after a short ride on one of the horses she’d been given to use.

The men had recently begun to breed high-quality Braunvieh bulls with some of their prize heifers, and the income this generated had allowed them to expand the ranch.

Besides the nightly calls from Clayton, many of which she had missed, she’d kept her mind busy, tooling over the idea of a catering business, which had begun to look more and more appealing as she took her nightly rides.

After her aunt recovered, she would be bucking at the bit to return to her kitchen, and with the help of Jackie, she knew Aunt Lilly would be able to manage.

She knew soon she’d have to make a decision about her career, which road she would take.

She knew the decision wouldn’t be an easy one.

Holt waited until he was riding parallel with the steer before making his move. Timing it just right, he leaped from his horse and caught the steer in a smooth head catch, taking it to the ground.

Maintaining his hold on the steer’s horns, he grabbed the rope from around his waist with his gloved hand, sweat pouring down his face as he wrestled the out-of-control steer to the ground.

Not giving the animal a chance to escape, he jumped on top of its fallen body, swiftly wrapping the rope around the front two legs, securing them together, before moving to its hind legs and wrapping them
securely together, establishing and maintaining control throughout the process.

Once he was sure the animal was trussed properly, unable to move, he jumped up, removed his Stetson from his head and wiped his brow with the bandanna from his back pocket.

“Damn it!” He bit out the expletive, placing his hands alongside his waist, blowing out an exhausted breath of air.

“Hell, man … I didn’t know who was going to win that round … Gotta hand it to you, Holt, you would have done Dad proud!”

Holt turned toward his brother Shilah, part of his irritation evaporating at the unexpected compliment.

He’d been called in by one of the hands to help with a steer that was out of control that morning, just as he’d been about to hunt down Yasmine. Enough was enough. He was tired of the way they circled each other, both knowing they wanted each other but equally hell-bent on ignoring the attraction.

He was going to tie her down to a chair if he had to, and make her listen as he tried to explain what had happened the Saturday of her welcome-home party, as well as the night she’d seen him come home early in the morning.

He could tell from her cold look as well as the way she’d called him the hated nickname, she thought he’d come in from a night spent with a woman. Too tired to run after her and explain that he’d simply been helping Doc Crandall, the ranch’s vet, bring in two calves both
within hours of each other and both hard births, he’d let her think what she wanted.

That had to be the reason for her avoiding him as well as her hot-to-cold treatment in the kitchen.

He’d also been damn pissed off. He knew his reputation. Hell, he’d earned the nickname a hundred times over. But that was the past, and although he hadn’t been that guy in a long time, the nickname, as well as the rep that went with it, was one he still dealt with.

Until Yasmine had reentered his life, he hadn’t given a damn what others thought of him. In fact, he’d relished the nickname, as it kept most of the women with long-term dreams of happily-ever-after far away.

Again … until Yasmine.

Damn. When had that happened? he wondered, the realization that he had feelings for her, hitting him, hard, fast. When had her opinion of him begun to matter?

He had always lived his life the way he wanted, no commitments to anyone or anything unless he was the one who wanted it and he was the one calling the shots. The only time
he
was willing to bend to another’s will had been to his foster father, Jed Wilde.

Jed had been the only man to prove he was worthy of that type of devotion. And then came his brothers. He loved them both, Shilah and Nate, as though they shared the same blood.

Nothing and no one came before his brothers, and no one mattered to him in the world like his brothers did, outside of Lilly. And no one ever would.

Yasmine’s pretty face instantly came to mind.

He’d been trying for the better part of a week to get her alone, to explain.

And what did he do the minute he did? Mauled her like an adolescent trying to get his first piece, he thought in disgust. He had to do something. He didn’t know how long his libido could take the nightly visits he received from her, via his dreams, before he went caveman and hauled her stubborn, obstinate … sexy body off to his bed.

“Yeah … that’s the way to get her to think you’re not the ‘Penthouse,’” he muttered.

Deciding to explain things once and for all, wanting to start all over with her, he’d been seconds from hunting her down when he received a call from Jake. He was needed to help with one of the new steers they’d recently bought at auction.

Although Nate was the one they normally called in for situations like this, having done a stint in rodeo, he and Althea were going to visit the pastor for marital counseling. Any other time, that alone would have been fodder for Holt to seek his brother out just for shits and giggles and to give the once-confirmed bachelor a hard time. But now his only objective was to find Yasmine and try and fix what he had no idea how to fix.

And why he was so desperate to do so.

He ran a hand through his sweaty hair and frowned when he saw his brother staring at him as if he had two heads.

“What the hell are you staring at, Shilah?” he asked, irritably.

“Guess I forgot what it looked like.”

Holt frowned. “Okay, I’ll bite … What looks like?”

“When a Wilde falls in love.”

“Man, go to—”

“Hey, guys, have you seen Nate?”

Before Holt could finish his sentence, both men turned when Althea came near them.

“Hey, Thea, what are you still doing hanging around? Don’t you and Nate have to be in town this morning?”

“We do. Which is why I’m hunting down your brother,” she replied. “Thought I’d find him here. I heard Jake asking for help with the new steer,” she finished with a frown, casting a look down at the animal who now, much more docile, was being led away by one of the hands.

“Already taken care of,” Shilah said, nodding toward Holt.

Althea turned her dark brown eyes in Holt’s direction. “I was just in the kitchen helping Lilly and Yasmine,” she said directly. “I haven’t been able to talk with her as much as I would like to, with the wedding plans taking a lot of my time. Between that and her busy schedule, we’ve barely been able to chat.”

She stopped and frowned. “And even then, I rarely see her. Seems one minute she’s busy in the kitchen, and then she’s gone.”

Although the statement was said innocently enough, Holt caught the question behind it, but ignored Althea’s not-so-subtle probes.

“Yeah, it has been long days for her. Besides, she’s
always been shy. I think it may take her a while to get used to the ranch again. It can be a little overwhelming,” Holt replied, evading the questions in Althea’s eyes.

“Shy? Yasmine?” All three turned when Jake cut in, having come in on the tail end of the conversation after directing the men on where to move the herd.

“The Yasmine I saw at the party was anything but shy.” He shook his head, laughing. “And the Yasmine out riding at night hardly seems to be overwhelmed. In fact, just the opposite. No, our caterpillar has definitely come out of her cocoon. She’s a beautiful butterfly now.”

Holt was two seconds from knocking the grin off Jake’s face. “Beautiful butterfly? Where do you come up with shit like that, Jake? From the back of a cereal box?”

Before Jake could respond, he continued, “And what do you know about her rides?”

“I’ve seen her a few times. I even rode out with her a few nights ago,” Jake replied. “Is that a problem?”

Althea’s eyes darted back and forth between the two men, before glancing at Shilah, silently asking for help. When he only shrugged his wide shoulders, an enigmatic look on his handsome face as he closely watched his brother, Althea turned back to Jake and Holt.