Little Secrets: Claiming His Pregnant Bride

Except it wasn’t. This was not a seduction. This was an action born of necessity. He would not touch her. She’d already had a bad day, and being groped by a biker wouldn’t make anything better.

“Now what?” His voice cracked with the strain of trying to sound normal. “Do you just step out?” That was when he realized she didn’t have on shoes. They were standing on gravel. Had she been missing her shoes the entire time?

“I...I don’t want to lose my balance,” she said in a strangled-sounding voice. Before Seth could process what she meant by that, she turned. Which was good due to the fact that he was no longer staring at her ass.

But now he was staring at her front. The thin lace of her virginal white thong covered the vee of her sex and everything about Seth came to a screeching halt. His blood, his breath—nothing worked. He couldn’t even blink as he stared at her body.

It only got worse when she placed one hand on his shoulder for balance. Seth squeezed his eyes shut because there was no point in looking if he couldn’t have her, and he couldn’t have her. Offering anything beyond assistance would be a mistake. She’d run away from a wedding today. She was pregnant with another man’s baby. None of her was for him.

Even though his eyes were closed, the scent of her body surrounded him, torturing him. It wasn’t the scent of arousal, but there was no missing the sweet notes of flowers—maybe lilacs, and a hint of vanilla that had been buried underneath the layers. Her smell reached out and stroked him, making him shake with need.

She stepped out of the petticoat and—thankfully—let go of the skirt. It fell, covering her legs and hiding that lacy thong and those white thigh-highs and that garter belt from his eyes. Seth gave himself another few moments to make sure he had himself under control.

Then she let out a little cry and stumbled. He moved without thinking, catching her before she fell. His arms folded around her body and finally, he was able to pull him to her.

But despite his awareness of her body—and the fact that her arms went around his neck so that he could feel her breasts pressing against his chest—he didn’t miss the way she shivered or how her breathing was ragged.

“Easy,” he said, coming to his feet with her in his arms.

“I stepped on a rock,” she said, her voice wavering. She sounded like she was on the verge of tears again, and that hurt him in a way he hadn’t expected.

He wanted to make sure she didn’t hurt. He’d wanted that from the very beginning. But now, it felt more personal.

He didn’t understand this strange drive to take care of her. He could’ve called her a ride. Surely someone could’ve come to get her. Rapid City had taxis, and for a price they could’ve made it out this far.

But he hadn’t. He hadn’t done anything except hold her close and make sure she was okay.

He didn’t want to think too much about why.

He carried her over to his bike and sat her on the back. He gave thanks that his father had built this prototype with the passenger seat behind the driver’s seat. Part of Billy Bolton’s rigorous testing was to make sure that he took Seth’s mom, Jenny, out for rides with him. Billy claimed that sometimes, the additional weight of a passenger would reveal design flaws that needed to be tweaked. Because Seth didn’t want to consider any other options about what happened when his parents went out riding, he accepted that explanation at face value.

“I’ll put the petticoat in the car and then we’ll go, okay?” he said. “But you’re going to have to straddle the bike. See if you can figure that out with your skirts.” He waved a hand over her dress and hoped like hell he wouldn’t have to take the whole thing off to get her corset removed.

But even as he thought that, his brain decided it would be a really great idea. He would kill to see Kate Burroughs in nothing but a corset and some stockings and a garter. Splayed out on the bed, a package that Seth was almost done unwrapping.

He slammed the brakes on that line of thought. Nope. She had too many bags to carry, and he was a single twenty-five-year-old man. He had no interest in tangling with someone whose personal life was as messy as Kate Burroughs’s was. No matter how good she looked, no matter how sweet she smelled, no matter how much she’d clung to his neck.

No matter how right she’d felt in his arms.

She nodded and he went back to get the petticoat. It was all dirty with rocks and bits of grass stuck in it. He shoved it into the back of the limo and glanced around, hoping against hope that there would be a purse with a wallet, but nothing. There was some champagne that was probably warm, though. But he didn’t think that’d help anything right now.

He locked the limo and left the keys on the ground on the inside of the front driver’s-side wheel, where Stein had told him to leave them. True dark was settling now and it was going to be a long, cold ride back to Rapid City. It wouldn’t be so bad if he had his jacket, but he couldn’t let her freeze to death behind him.

The other logistical problem was that he only had one helmet. He had no idea if it would fit over her hair.

He went back to the bike and picked up the helmet. “Let’s see if this works,” he said. At the very least, she had managed to straddle the bike. The skirt had hiked up over her calves, and her legs were going to be cold by the time they got out of the hills, but there was no way he could risk having her fall off if she was riding sidesaddle. Maybe if she pressed herself against him, his body could take the worst of the wind. He’d be a Popsicle by the time they made town, but he’d take it for her.

But even that noble sentiment was almost completely overridden by the image of her arms around his waist, her chest pressed to his back, her legs tucked behind his. Of that lacy little thong and the corset.

Of a wedding night that ended differently.

He pulled at the collar of his shirt. Yeah, maybe he wouldn’t freeze.

She looked up at him, her eyes wide. “I can’t thank you enough, Seth,” she said, her voice soft. “I’m having a really bad day, but you’re making it better.”

If she were anyone else, he’d cup her cheek and stroke her skin with his thumb. He’d tilt her head back and brush his lips over hers. He’d offer comfort in a completely different way.

But she wasn’t anyone else. She was Roger’s pregnant runaway bride. So instead of kissing her, he settled the helmet over her hair. It didn’t work. He pulled it off. “Let me see what I can do here.” She tilted her head so he could get at the elaborate updo—it probably had some sort of name, but he didn’t have any idea about women’s hair. He could see the pins and clips—sparkly stuff in her hair. And hairspray. Lots of hairspray. He began pulling them out and shoving them into his pants pocket. What would her hair feel like without all this crap in it? Soft and silky—the kind of hair he could bury his hands in.

He really had to get a grip. The whole mass of hair sagged and then fell. It looked awkward and painful, but he was sure he could fit the helmet on now. “There.”

She looked back at him as he settled the helmet on her head and strapped it under her chin. She looked worried. “This will be fun,” he promised. Cold, but fun. “Just hold on to me, okay?”

She nodded. Seth took his seat and fired up the engine. It rumbled beneath him. He loved this part of riding. Bringing the machine to life and knowing that a journey was ahead of him.

After a moment’s hesitation, Kate’s arms came around his waist. His brain chose that exact moment to wonder—when was the last time he’d had a woman on the back of a motorcycle?

Of course he’d ridden with women before. That was one of the reasons to ride a bike—women loved a bad boy, and Seth was more than happy to help them act out their fantasies. Motorcycles were good seduction and he was a red-blooded American man. He wasn’t above doing a little seducing.

But there was something different about this—about Kate. This wasn’t a seduction, leaving aside the fact that he knew what her thong looked like. This was something else, and he couldn’t put a name to it.

Then he felt more than heard her sigh against the back of his neck as the helmet banged his shoulder. He winced but didn’t flinch as she settled her cheek against his back, her arms tightening around him even more. Her body relaxed into his. Which was good. Great. Wonderful. The tighter she held on, the safer this ride would be.

Except his body was anything but relaxed. He was rock hard and she’d know it if her grip slipped south in any way.

He needed to get her to a hotel and then he needed to get on his way. He had a future as a partner of Crazy Horse Choppers. He had plans for the business. He had motorcycles to sell.

None of those things involved a pregnant runaway bride.

He rolled away from the scenic overlook and hit the road back to Rapid City.

Kate Burroughs wasn’t in his plans. After today, he wasn’t going to see her or her stockings ever again.

That was final.

Four (#u736919c3-e7a2-5a56-9d88-3db157223926)

“Good morning, Katie,” Harold Zanger said, strolling into Zanger Realty with a smile on his face and a bow tie around his neck. “It’s a zinger of a day at Zanger, isn’t it?”

As cheesy as the line was—and it had been cheesy every single day for the last month and a half—Kate still smiled. She smiled every day now. “It is indeed, Harold,” she said.

Harold Zanger was one of her father’s oldest friends. They’d been playing poker together for a good forty years—longer than Kate had been alive. Harold was almost an uncle to her.

Kate had not gone back to Burroughs and Caputo Realty. She just couldn’t—especially when her parents had made it clear that splitting Roger off from the business was going to be quite complicated, which was one way to say that her father wasn’t going to do it because he was beyond furious with her.

So it had been Kate to decide that, rather than grovel before her father and Roger, she’d start over. She was the one who put distance between them.

It had hurt more than she wanted it to, to be honest. Although she’d known it wasn’t likely, she’d wanted her parents to put her first. She’d wanted them to take her side and tell her it’d all work out. She’d wanted her mom to get excited about the pregnancy.