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“Anywhere.” Suddenly his mouth crashed down on hers, his fingers winding in her hair. The sounds of the night disappeared, and all Cassie heard was the wild cadence of her heart and the answering drum of Colton’s. All she felt was the strength of his arms surrounding her and the force of desire raging between them, a desire so strong it destroyed all rational thought, a desire so potent it heated more quickly than it had eight years before.
“This—this is a big mistake,” she murmured, dragging her mouth from his and searching for some shred of her sanity. What am I doing? she wondered, her breath short and shallow.
“Not our first.” He kissed her again, thrusting his tongue wondrously between her teeth. With one set of fingers tangled in her hair, he pressed his other hand insistently against the small of her back.
Through her clothes she could feel the sheer force of his body, the strength of his muscles, the passion racing through his blood.
Think, Cassie! But she couldn’t, and as the weight of his body dragged her down to a bed of pine needles and soft boughs, she sighed and wound her arms around his neck. I love you, she realized with a sinking heart. I always have.
His mouth covered hers, and she didn’t fight the warmth invading her. A familiar heat rushed through her blood like quicksilver, pounding in her eardrums as she lay with him.
He slipped his fingers beneath her sweater, reaching up, touching the silky lace of her bra, causing her skin to tingle. Her nipple grew hard with anticipation, and when the tips of his fingers brushed lightly against her burgeoning breast, she shuddered.
“I’ve missed you, Cass,” he admitted, kissing her lips gently as his hand surrounded her breast.
Her heart clamored crazily as he stroked. Her concentration scattered in the wind. “I—It was hard to tell.”
“Because I didn’t want to admit it,” he conceded, his teeth tugging gently on her lower lip, his hands moving erotically beneath her sweater, kneading her warm, soft flesh, causing a maelstrom of emotions to roil within her.
With her own fingers she found the buttons of his shirt, slipped under the coarse fabric, and touched skin stretched taut over a washboard of
corded muscles.
He sucked in a swift breath, his eyes fluttering closed. “You’re a witch,” he whispered.
“First I’m a ghost, now a witch,” she murmured. “No wonder I’m crazy about you.”
“Are you, Cass?” he asked, his eyes suddenly flying open.
“I must be—crazy, that is. Creeping around a ghost town, falling into the arms of a man who swore vengeance on my family. Honestly, Colton,” she said, her good humor surfacing, “this is something out of a bad horror movie.”
His grin was a slash of white in the darkness. “Don’t worry, I’ll protect you. Trust me.”
The last words spilled over her like a bucket of ice water. “Trust you?” she said, all warmth instantly seeping from her body. “After everything that’s happened between us?” Though Colton’s grip on her tightened, she pushed him away. She needed to be free to think. “What about you, huh? Trust is a two-way street, Colton, and last time I looked, you didn’t trust me or my dad!”
He reached for her, but she withered at his touch, straightening her sweater and drawing her jacket around her. Pine needles scratched against her back.
What was she doing here with him? What had she been thinking? “I think we’d better go!” she said, her teeth chattering as she scrambled to her feet.
Colton was on his feet in an instant, pinning her against the prickly bark of the pine tree. “What is it, Cassie?” he demanded, his square chin thrust forward, his gray eyes slits. “What’s on your mind?”
“Trust isn’t something given, it’s earned,” she said, her own chin inching upward mutinously. “And you can never expect me to trust a man who, without waiting for a word of explanation, walked out on me.”
“There was nothing to explain!”
“There was plenty!” she nearly screamed, the words that had burned so bright in her mind leaping to her tongue. “I thought I was pregnant, Colton, and I was scared. Scared to death that you’d reject me.”
“Bah!”
“I had all the symptoms. I threw up at least once a day, my period was late and I’d been sleeping with you without a thought for birth control!”
Under the shifting moonlight she witnessed the blanching of his face.
“But it didn’t matter, you see. You were right. I was too young to care, to understand what a burden a child would be. I could only see the good side, the thrill and joy of sharing everything with you, of bearing your son or daughter—”
“Cassie, don’t,” he warned, his skin stretching tight across his rugged features.
But she couldn’t stop. As if a dam had suddenly given way, Cassie’s words tumbled out in a rush. “I trusted you once, Colton. And I loved you. Good Lord, how I loved you. But you took that love and trust and turned it against me, believing what you wanted to believe so that you could leave Montana and not look back! You told me over and over again that you didn’t want a wife, that we were too young, that we had dreams we had to chase, and the first chance you got, you turned your back on me and took off! So don’t talk to me about trust!”
