While I’d never been an overly cautious person, I didn’t generally consider myself impulsive either. I was structured and careful when it came to work, and I’d always made sure that I played things safe when it came to dating.

First dates were always in public, and often the next couple as well. I took my time to get to know the men I went out with before things progressed to spending time alone. I considered myself a good judge of character but also knew that even the wisest and most perceptive person could be wrong.

Which was why I couldn’t quite believe that I was going to Blake’s house for dinner only a few hours after he’d emphatically told me to get off his property. More than once.

I knew why I was doing it though. I’d seen something in his eyes when he’d grabbed my arm. He hadn’t been trying to hurt me. He was hurting, whether he acknowledged it or not. The same thing that kept him so isolated also kept him telling me to leave, even though I could see that it wasn’t what he really wanted. He wanted a connection. He might not be the sort of man who liked crowds, but there was a part of him that didn’t want to be alone.

However, I’d have been lying to myself if I didn’t admit the physical aspect of it all. I’d never had such a visceral reaction to a man. Ever.

Which explained the extra care I’d taken when getting dressed for this evening. I’d selected one of my favorite dresses, a long, flowing one that reached nearly to my ankles. A rich burnt orange color, it did for my coloring what the cut did for my figure. Since it was sleeveless, I took along a warm wool shawl that looked better with it than a coat would have. Even though snow wasn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility, I risked my flats because they were the most comfortable shoes I owned. I had a feeling I would want to be as sure of myself as possible and being comfortable was the best way to accomplish that.

As I pulled up the long driveway, I found myself admiring the sprawling ranch from a distance and then more closely. It was gorgeous, and while I didn’t know much about architecture, I was confident that he hadn’t done much in the way of changes. This was the sort of place that I would’ve seen in some old Western on TV growing up and thought about how much fun it would be to live there. As an adult, I understood how much work must come with a ranch like this, but I still thought it looked like fun.

It wasn’t until I was parking behind his truck that a thought hit me, and I frowned.

Based on the gossip I’d heard around town, he didn’t have any kids, and I didn’t think he’d ever been married. He did some sort of carpentry or something like that, and I’d never heard anything about him having any employees who lived out here. I didn’t think he even had any friends. What, then, was the point of him having a house that size? The land I understood, but why would anyone want such a massive house if he didn’t intend to have it filled with people?

There was a lot I didn’t understand about Blake Hunter. This was just one more thing to add to the list I’d been making for the past few hours. The biggest question, however, was whether he would answer any of them, or if I would leave in a couple hours without any more knowledge than I had right now.

Only one way to find out, I supposed.

I was still a couple yards from the door when it opened, and Blake stepped outside. My feet kept moving even though my brain had ceased telling them what to do. It’d pretty much stopped completely the moment it’d registered Blake.

He wore a pair of dark pants that could have been either jeans or slacks, but the material didn’t matter as much as how he looked in them. Damn was the only word that came to mind. His shirt was short-sleeved and just tight enough to show off all those muscles I’d seen on display earlier. His clothes, however, weren’t even the best part.

He was smiling.

Sort of.

It wasn’t the sort of open, full smile like the ones my parents usually wore, but more like the smile of someone who didn’t do it very often.

“Hi.” He shifted his weight, looking uncomfortable, whether because of his clothes, me, or the smiling, I couldn’t tell.

“Hi.” I smiled at him, hoping to put him at ease. “You have an absolutely beautiful home.”

“Thanks.”

He stepped back a bit to give me room to enter while still holding the door, and I caught a whiff of that same clean-soap smell I’d noticed before. It was tempting to linger, but I didn’t want to make him regret asking me to dinner. The nerves I’d managed to avoid for the last few hours appeared all at once, making me wonder if I’d made a mistake. I usually believed in trusting my gut, but everyone made mistakes at one time or another.

I really hoped he wasn’t mine.

“Want me to take that?” He pointed at my wrap, and I handed it over. He scowled at it as he tried to figure out how to get it on a hanger, but I didn’t step in to help him. I had a feeling he’d rather be annoyed than feel like I had to come to his rescue in his own home.

Once he figured out how to get it to stay, he went off to his right, and I followed. After a few steps, he still hadn’t said anything else, but I was more interested in the mouth-watering aroma permeating the air.

“I made stuffed peppers, breadsticks, and a fruit salad,” he said finally. Even without raising his voice, the tone had a roughened quality to it. Not like he was a smoker – he didn’t smell like he smoked – but more like his voice didn’t get much use and he’d already gone over his limit for the day. “You said vegetarian, not vegan, right? ‘Cuz the peppers have cheese in them.”

“Yes,” I said. “Vegetarian. Dairy is fine. Thank you.”

He shrugged like it wasn’t a big deal, but to me it was. If he’d really been as much of a jackass as he’d come across this afternoon, he wouldn’t have cared about whether he got it right.

Honestly, I’d been expecting him to order in his favorite meal, and if it contained meat, he’d maybe make sure there were enough side dishes I could eat. I hadn’t expected him to cook, and especially not a meal like that.

I was glad to know that my first impression, hadn’t been all of who he was.

The kitchen was just as beautiful as the rest of the house, a wonderful combination of modern and rustic with stainless steel appliances alongside wooden counters and cabinets. A massive garden window took up a quarter of the southern wall, and a table sat up against it, matching chairs on three of the four sides. The scrollwork on the edge of the table was a lovely intricate pattern I’d never seen before.

“I thought we could eat in here,” he said. “I have a dining room, but it seemed silly to use it since there’s two of us and the table in there is huge.”

“This is perfect,” I said honestly. “What can I do to help?”

He looked pleasantly surprised by my offer, and I wondered what sort of women he usually brought home that they wouldn’t extend that common courtesy.

“I wasn’t sure what you’d like to drink,” he said. “I usually have a beer, but I didn’t know if you’d be okay with that.” He flushed, which surprised and pleased me. “I mean, I didn’t know what your opinion is about alcohol. If you drink wine or whatever.”

I smiled and crossed to the fridge. “I’m actually more of a beer person than a wine person.”

Another look of surprise. “Really?”

“Really.” I opened the fridge. “I’ve spent most of my life traveling, which means I’ve sampled alcohol all over the world, but in my mind, nothing beats an American made beer.”

I took out two bottles and carried them over to the table, feeling his eyes on me as I went. I wasn’t unaccustomed to men staring at me, but with Blake, it was different than anything else I’d experienced. The intensity of his gaze felt like it was boring a hole right through me, like he could see more of me than I wanted to be seen.

“Bottle opener?” I asked.

I heard a drawer open, and by the time I turned, he was right there. I tilted my head back to look up at him, and he didn’t look away even as he reached around me for the beer. He opened them both, keeping his arms around me the whole time. Neither of us said anything, but I didn’t think either of us needed to. The electricity between us said enough.

He went back to the food, and I tried not to be disappointed that he hadn’t touched me.

“The table’s beautiful. Did it come with the house?” I congratulated myself on keeping my voice even despite how wobbly my knees had become.

“I made it.”

I turned around. “Seriously?”

One corner of his mouth quirked up in a smile. “I thought you knew who I was.”

I opened my mouth to respond, then realized I couldn’t actually say what I’d intended to say. Not without sounding like a snob or a bitch.

“It’s okay,” he said. “I know my reputation.”

“The only thing I’ve ever heard about what you do is that you work with wood. I didn’t know what that meant.”

He gestured toward the table. “I make furniture.” He went back to putting the stuffed peppers on a pair of plates. “Among other things. I do blacksmithing too.”

He said it so casually that if I hadn’t known the skills it took to do either of those jobs, I wouldn’t have understood how impressive it was.

“I’d love to see more of your work.”

He glanced up, a pleased look in his eyes. Something told me that he didn’t have the opportunity to share what he did with anyone except customers. Or maybe it wasn’t that he didn’t have opportunities, but that he purposefully kept things to himself. Either way, I was glad the idea of showing me made him happy.

“Speaking of work,” he said as he brought the plates over to the table. “I need to apologize for what I said about your store. Just because I don’t understand something doesn’t mean I can make judgments about it.”

I didn’t want to dismiss his apology as unnecessary, because he had been insulting, but I also didn’t want to make a big deal about it either. “Thank you,” I said. “I’d be happy to explain things if you’d like.”

He went back to the fridge and took out a glass bowl of various kinds of fruit. As he brought it to the table, his eyes met mine. “I’d like that very much.”

I hadn’t had a date like this ever. I’d explained to him about what I did in the store and how to make sure homeopathic remedies were the real thing. He told me about blacksmithing. He asked about school, and so did I, and we both talked about why we’d chosen to forgo the college option.

We steered clear of any talk of family or anything overly personal. It was only a first date, after all, and our initial meeting hadn’t exactly been pleasant. Even though we didn’t talk about it, my intuition told me he felt the same way I did about tonight. We were keeping it simple, not complicating it with all the things that eventually became a part of a relationship. If this became more than a first date, we’d see where to go from there.

Right now, I was happy to be standing next to him at the sink, washing the few dishes that couldn’t go in the dishwasher. He was drying and putting them away since I didn’t know where they went, and we didn’t need to talk to do any of that.

The silence wasn’t uncomfortable, but it was charged. Each time I handed something off to Blake, our hands brushed, and I felt a pleasant jolt. I’d experienced near-instant attraction, but this was beyond me simply thinking he was attractive. It was a deep, primal tug in his direction, and the longer I stayed, the greater the chance I would act on it.

After finishing the last of the dishes, I reached for the hand towel and dried my hands, but before I could ask about what we were going to do next, I felt him step up behind me. I went still, closing my eyes as I absorbed the warmth radiating from his body.

I had a choice now, I knew. I could sidestep and put some space between us, and we’d end the night on a pleasant, albeit unsatisfying note. Or, I could wait and see just how far he wanted to take things. I’d never slept with a guy on the first date, but I didn’t have some internal moral code about when the right time was. I didn’t go by a specific timeframe, more the way things felt.

Right now, I liked how things felt between us.

Then he put his hands on my hips, and I really liked how that felt.

His lips brushed the back of my neck, and I shivered. Damn. The scruff of his beard scratched my skin in a good way as he moved, and then his mouth was at my ear.

“If you want me to stop, just say the word.”

I nodded, and then it became about touch and sensation, sounds but not words.

He squeezed my hips, then moved his hands up over my ribcage and then over my breasts. Another squeeze, his grip tightening until I gasped. He paused, and I knew he was giving me a moment to protest if I wanted to. Instead, I turned around and wrapped my arms around his neck.

His mouth came down on mine, and I pressed my body against his. His muscles weren’t the only thing hard about him, and if what I could feel against my hip was any indication, he was large all over. His tongue slid between my lips, and his hands slid to the small of my back, and then lower. His hair was softer than I’d imagined, and I surprised myself with the realization that I had thought about it.

I moaned as he took my bottom lip between his teeth and tugged on it. He tasted as good as he smelled. Beer and peppers and pineapple. I moved my hands down his chest and around his back, tipping my head back as I slid my hands beneath his shirt. His mouth moved over my throat, the burn of his facial hair soothed by his lips and tongue, then accompanied by the sharp sting of a bite.

I’d never been so grateful that my skin didn’t mark easily.

I wanted his mouth on more of me. His hands on me. I just needed him to keep touching me.

He lifted me up, putting me on the counter so I was closer to his height. His hands moved up my calves, pushing my skirt up as they went. I pulled him in for another kiss as he stepped between my legs, and my temperature skyrocketed.

What was I doing? I needed to end this before things went any further. But I didn’t want to stop. I liked the way our bodies fit together, the way it felt when he touched me. His fingers flexing on my thighs felt right in a way that things hadn’t ever felt right before. With other men, I’d always felt like I needed to build toward the different levels of physical intimacy, but with him, I felt like I was already there.

I whimpered as the tip of one finger traced along the crotch of my panties. It had been too long since someone else had touched me there.

“More,” I breathed against his lips. My tongue tangled with his, exploring his mouth as his fingers slipped under the damp fabric.

A light brush against my clit, and then two fingers were pushing inside me. I dug my nails into his shoulders as he stretched me too far, too fast, but I didn’t ask him to stop. It was like he’d found this switch inside me, and he’d flipped it, taking me to an edge I hadn’t known I wanted.

“Do you want it like this?” he asked, his voice even rougher than it had been. “Do you want me to make you come on my fingers, or do you want…more?”

He’d do whatever I wanted, even if it meant he didn’t get off, I didn’t doubt that. I wasn’t going to do that though. I wanted him too badly to make either of us wait. Unusual for me, yes, but I was going into this with my eyes open, which was almost all I needed.

“Do you have a condom?” That would be the only thing that could keep me from saying no.

He pulled his fingers out of me, licking them clean as he reached into his pocket. Some humor danced along the desire darkening his eyes. All of it made me hotter, more determined to follow through.

I scooted closer to the edge of the counter, hooking my legs around his thighs and pulling him toward me as he rolled on the condom. We came together hard, and all the air rushed from my lungs as spots danced behind my eyes. He was huge, filling me more completely than anyone else ever had. He wrapped his hand around my neck, his fingers curling around the base, his thumb resting against the underside of my jaw.

For a long moment, we stayed like that, bodies locked together, every cell buzzing with energy, and then he began to move the way I’d known he would: with powerful, punishing strokes that drove me relentlessly toward climax.

I came with a wordless cry, the speed of it taking my breath away. But he didn’t stop or even slow down, the continued pounding building on top of my orgasm until my entire body was shaking, overwhelmed by the sensations coursing through me.

Then his arms were around me, holding me – no, clinging to me – as he came with a guttural groan.

Well this, was not, how I’d imagined my day ending.