Page 30 of Untamed Heart
Suddenly, an idea hit.
The pools.
Before I could talk myself out of it, I crept out of the tent, shining the small torch Bailey had brought to navigate through the trees. The fires had been carefully extinguished earlier to prevent any chance of causing wildfire, which meant that the moon was the only source of light. Luckily it was almost full, casting a silvery sheen across the river as the wisps and whorls of steam from the pools danced.
I climbed the bank to reach them, clutching my towel under my arm.
And froze.
‘This your way of saying you’re sorry?’
I almost choked. Cole.
Leaning back against the smooth rocks at the side of the smaller pool, exposed arms and broad chest reflected in the moonlight, he looked like he owned this space. As though he was one and the same as the untamed landscape.
‘Sorry? For what?’ I hissed, only just resisting the urge to rest my hands on my hips as I said it.
‘For calling me an asshole?’ he said, raising an eyebrow as he ran his fingers through the hair that fell across his face, chasing it back.
‘But you . . . I didn’t actually call you an asshole. I said your assumptions about me made you come acrosslikean asshole.’
If my year of working alongside lawyers had taught me anything, it was to be careful about the words you used, how to skirt the lines between different meanings.
‘Right,’ he replied. ‘Same thing. So, you getting in, or you going to freeze yourself half to death out there?’
I hesitated. Technically it was my family that owned this ranch; these were not his pools to monopolize. But . . . I risked another glance at him and saw the open curiosity in his face, the hard planes of muscle in his chest, and under the surface of the water . . . well, that I could only imagine.
‘Well, I can’t,’ I replied, stepping back. ‘I’m not just stripping off in front of you. If you were any kind of gentleman you’d get out and leave me be.’
I turned and began to walk away.
‘Wait up, wait up,’ he called, keeping his voice low. ‘I’m sorry, I’m only teasing. How’s about I turn around and keep my eyes to myself, then you let me know when you’re safely in and tucked away?’
The deep aching in my legs begged me to return, the sincerity in his eyes egging it on.
Narrowing my eyes in response, I walked over, drawing closer before making a motion with my hand for him to turn around. He did so immediately, presenting me with a back so toned and sculpted that I simply stared at it for a solid few seconds before shaking myself and stripping off. I hesitated at my underwear, but figuring I didn’t want wet clothes in my bag, they followed.
‘Why are you awake anyway?’ I asked, clutching my towel to my front and stepping over to the larger pool, separated from his smaller one by a few rocks.
‘Jesse snores,’ he replied as I dropped the towel and stepped in, the warm water sending goosebumps across my cold skin. It was the temperature of a perfect bath. I lowered myself under the surface, twisting my hair back to keep most of it out of the water. ‘And I like sitting out here like this, it’s . . . peaceful. Usually.’
‘I’m in,’ I said, rolling my eyes at his comment and mirroring his initial position, arms out of the water on the rocks beside me, but carefully keeping my chest under the surface.
He turned back around, his eyes lingering a few seconds longer than I knew how to handle across my face, my neck and where my skin disappeared into the water. A silence fell, even the soft sounds of the river, the horses and cows around us fading out, and a feeling crept through me, my thighs aching in a whole new way as I watched him right back.
Clearing his throat a little, he broke eye contact, leaning his head back on the rocks and looking right up at the moon. My pulse thudded in my ears as I wondered if he could see below the waterline, and about what might happen if he climbed in here. Once again my mind took me back to the night I’d arrived, to his hands on my body. Imagining how they would feel now on my bare skin, where they might wander, unrestricted by clothes.
‘So given that you’re not a city girl,’ he said, gradually turning his head back to me, moonlight reflected in his eyes, ‘then what’s a country girl doing in the city?’
I arched my eyebrows at his admission of his previous misconception, a handful of sarcastic responses landing alongside the more straightforward answers I could give. But, if I was being honest, with him and myself, none of them fitted.
‘Trying to make something of myself.’ I shrugged. ‘Honestly, I don’t know.’
Admitting it out loud felt painful, especially to someone who I couldn’t get a read on and whose reaction I couldn’t guess.
I closed my eyes and leant back, waiting for the provocation to begin again. Would he try for a reaction? Maybe try and get me to stand up in the water if I was angry enough and forgot myself? Could I goad him into doing the same? Did I want to?
‘My mom was a country girl in the city,’ he said, his voice lower than before, jolting me from my thoughts. ‘She . . . felt the same thing, I think.’
