Running Wild by Denise Eagan

sank into sensation as his left hand drifted over the curve of
her waist, then higher—
    He stiffened suddenly. His mouth slid to her neck. “Hold
still,” he rasped in her ear.
    Hold still? What? Hold what still?
    His breath was a whisper against her cheek. “Don’t move, not
a muscle.”
    His hand was coasting along her waist, and then covered her
hand. His heat penetrated her gloves, and she trembled, closing her eyes in an
attempt to recapture that incredible thoughtlessness—
    He tugged at something in her hand. The rifle.
    “Hold on tight, I have to cock it,” he whispered.
    Cock? What?—vulgarity. . .
    “Good, now release the rifle. I’m going to count to three.
When I reach three, you hunt grass. Go to your right.”
    Hunt grass?
    “One—two— three !”
    She didn’t have to hunt anything. He shoved her aside and
she fell, barely reacting fast enough to save herself from a severe bruising.
    The rifle exploded above her, and Star bit back a gasp of
shock as the sound echoed through the valley. Slowly, she rolled over to regard
Nicholas. In the haze of bemusement, her mind registered a click followed by
another explosion. The pungent smell of gun smoke floated in the air.
    “Got it!” he exclaimed triumphantly. He looked down, smiling
as he offered her a hand. “You O.K.? Hope I didn’t push too hard.”
    “I’m not certain,” she said, taking his hand and rising.
“How hard is too hard?”
    “That’s the spirit,” he said with another quick grin.
Dropping her hand, he took several long strides to the edge of the pond where a very large yellow cat lay. Good gracious, it was a mountain lion! A very
dead mountain lion, too, for blood seeped from its head and chest, turning the
snow pink, then red.
    Nicholas squatted down next to it, his back to her, his pants
pulled tight against his rear end, his coat molding his broad back. His
muscular shoulders were attached to equally muscular arms, which had been
wrapped around her seconds before he’d shot his rifle and killed something that
no doubt wished to kill them . Quite suddenly, she couldn’t breathe. . .
.
    Foolish notion, she thought sucking in air. Of course she
could breathe. She was Star Montgomery. Virginia Star Montgomery, daughter of
Boston Brahmin Ward Montgomery, descendant of a long line of very well-breathing
Montgomerys. Situations—men—did not affect her this way.
    But no one had ever before saved her life.
    Surely, though, Nicholas had done no such thing, for what
had the cat against them that it would try to kill them? At any rate, it was
too far away to pounce, she admonished her stupid, tight lungs. No doubt it had
merely been wandering through the clearing, minding its own business, and
Nicholas had shot the poor creature to prove his masculinity.
    “Just like I thought,” he said smugly. “It was mad. See the
foam around its mouth.” He turned to her as he motioned to its mouth, hanging
open. “Rabies, and in the late stages too. Not in its right mind, or it’d never
have come near us, ’specially during the day.”
    Rabid. Her heart skipped a beat. He had saved her
life.
    Deep, primal excitement burst through her, then flowed
downward reigniting the embers of desire in her belly. It felt good, and so her
mind repeated the phrase. He saved me . More excitement, followed by
little thrills in the soft area between her thighs.
    He lifted his head and his eyebrows gathered into a bemused
frown. “It’s dead. There’s no cause for fear,” he soothed.
    Yes there was, and oh, how that fear added to desire, like
kerosene to a fire.
    “I’m not afraid,” Star replied.
    No, Nick thought, holding her gaze, she wasn’t afraid. She
was exhilarated. It shot across the clearing to hit him square in the chest,
and then drove downward to where lust resided. A harsh, writhing lust, the kind
a man felt for whores, maybe even for a wife, but never for a died-in-the-wool
suffragette. Not for the noble-blooded daughter of a Boston