I chuckled. “Yeah, okay. Maybe you didn’t steal him. And room to think? Sure. Take that any day, but galloping a half-wild racehorse into a thunderstorm? Less sure. A lot less sure.”
She shoved lightly at my chest, but I didn’t budge an inch. “I wasn’t galloping.”
“It sure felt like you were,” I muttered.
“You didn’t see it.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Oh, so you were galloping before I found you?”
She groaned. “Trent.”
“What?” I asked, but my voice was gentle. “You scared me, Charlotte.”
That brought her up short, her lips parting and her eyelids glitching with a few too many blinks. “You were scared? Really?”
“Terrified,” I admitted without hesitation. “I came home and you were gone, and so was Hustle, and the sky was getting dark. I thought I’d find you in a ditch or hanging off a damn fence.”
Her chin trembled, but it looked like she didn’t know what to do with that information. Thunder boomed again before either of us could say anything and she flinched hard, her shoulders jerking.
I tightened my hands on her face. “Hey. Eyes on me. Not the storm. On me.”
She did as she was told this time, her gaze locking onto mine. Something snapped between us as soon as our eyes met, slicing clean and sharp through the air like a wire that had been pulled too tight for too long.
Her breathing changed. Mine did too. Her eyes dropped to my mouth.
“Charlotte,” I warned.
I didn’t even know what I was warning her about. Myself, probably.
She rose onto her toes, her hands sliding up my chest, her fingers curling into the fabric of my shirt, and she kissed me. It was the first time she’d ever started it and I folded.
Instantly. Like paper.
I made a low sound that was embarrassingly close to a moan, and hauled her against me, one hand sliding into her damp hair and the other wrapping around her waist like I could fuse her to me. Her mouth was warm, soft, and desperate, kissing me like she’d been dying for it all day.
Hell, maybe I had too.
The storm raged on outside, but all I could feel was her. Her lips, her breath, and her hands bunching in my shirt, pulling me even closer. She gasped into my mouth when I angled her head and deepened the kiss, and the sound lit every one of my nerve endings on fire.
I pulled back for a second, just enough to breathe, and pressed our foreheads together. “If you keep kissing me like that?—”
“I’m going to,” she murmured steadily, showing no traces of backing down. “Unless you look me in the eyes and tell me that you want me to stop.”
I groaned. “I can’t do that.”
“So why expect me to?” She gazed up at me. “Forget whatever else I might be and focus on the fact that above all else, I’m your wife.”
My heart was thundering louder than the storm outside. “Fuck, Charlotte. I can’t do this with you.”
“Then who?” Hurt flickered in her eyes. “Is it?—”
The last thread of my restraint snapped, and this time when I kissed her, my mouth crashed into hers. She melted into me like she’d been made for it, but I could still feel the uncertainty in her.
Shit, why do I keep putting my foot in it with this woman?
“You are theonlywoman I want, Charlotte,” I said between bruising kisses. “Trust me when I tell you that this isn’t aboutwant.”
“What is it about then?”
