Page 5 of The Mountain Man’s Untamed Bride (Mountain Man Sanctuary #4)

“Operation Deflower Me Now”

Scarlett

Something was staring at me.

I blinked awake, my body registering several complaints at once: the too-firm mattress beneath me, the scratchy army-surplus blanket against my skin, and the lingering scent of what I could only assume was Eau de Raccoon Family.

After a restless night of tossing and turning—partly due to the unfamiliar bed and partly due to the maddening knowledge that Bodhi slept just one thin wall away—I felt about as refreshed as week-old lettuce.

And there, framed perfectly in the small window, was Colonel—Bodhi's demon chicken—watching me with beady eyes that judged my life choices more effectively than my mother ever could.

"Seriously?" I muttered, sitting up and running a hand through my tangled hair. "Poultry paparazzi. That's a new one."

Colonel tilted his head, his feathers puffing slightly as if offended by my existence. The morning light backlit him like some feathered harbinger of doom.

"Take a picture, it'll last longer," I told him, only to have him peck once at the window in what felt distinctly like a threat.

I checked my phone out of habit—still no service, still no escape route digitally available.

At least the basic functions like my Notes app still worked offline.

Small mercies. My reflection in the screen made me wince.

Without my usual array of products, my hair had decided to channel "electrocution victim" rather than "tousled bedhead goddess. "

The cabin was quiet except for the occasional creak of the ancient structure settling.

No sign of my reluctant host. I slipped out of bed, pulled on the silk robe I'd packed (because even when fleeing an arranged marriage, a girl has standards), and padded to the window.

The morning air seeped through the thin glass, carrying the crisp scent of pine and something earthy that never existed in Atlanta's perfumed suburbs.

That's when I saw him.

Bodhi stood in the clearing beside a massive pile of logs, swinging an axe with the casual precision of someone who'd done it ten thousand times.

His shirt—apparently an optional garment in the wilderness—was draped over a nearby stump, leaving nothing but acres of tanned skin and muscle on full display.

Sweet baby Jesus on a pogo stick.

I pressed my hand against the cool glass, suddenly very aware of my heartbeat.

Bodhi's body moved with fluid grace, the muscles in his back rippling as he brought the axe down in a perfect arc, splitting a log clean in two.

Sweat glistened on his shoulders, highlighting every defined plane of his torso.

His arms—dear lord, those arms—flexed with each movement, veins visible beneath tanned skin that had clearly never seen the inside of a tanning bed.

"Good lord," I whispered, "it's like someone took a Greek statue and just... added more muscles."

I'd dated prep school boys with expensive gym memberships and personal trainers who hadn't achieved half of what Bodhi's body displayed.

This wasn't sculpted vanity muscle—this was functional strength, carved by actual physical labor rather than carefully programmed workouts.

My mind wandered dangerously into territory I'd only experienced through romance novels and late-night internet searches.

What would sex with him be like? I'd never done it—a fact that would have my father hosting a celebratory church service if he knew with certainty—but if I had to choose someone to change that status, which I absolutely did and had. ..

Well. Mountain Man was making a compelling visual argument for himself.

How big was his...? I felt my cheeks flame at the thought. The correlation between height and other measurements was supposedly a myth, but at 6'3" with hands that could probably span my entire waist...

I needed a distraction before I combusted on the spot.

Turning from the window with reluctance, I surveyed the room in daylight. My Louis Vuitton luggage—which Bodhi must have brought in while I was showering last night—looked absurdly out of place against the rough-hewn walls, like a Prada bag at a tractor pull.

I'd come here with a plan—admittedly a half-baked one formulated during a wine-fueled panic—but a plan nonetheless.

Step one: escape Atlanta and my impending matrimonial doom.

Step two: find a man my father would hate.

Step three: lose my inconvenient virginity, thereby rendering myself "damaged goods" in the eyes of Langley and his biblical fixation on purity.

Bodhi Wilder, with his wilderness hermit aesthetic and complete disdain for social niceties, was perfect for steps two and three. Now I just needed to convince him to cooperate.

I pulled out my phone and opened my notes app, creating a new list titled "Operation: Deflower Me Now.

" I'd always been a planner—it was how I'd survived eighteen years of Bible camp without committing any of the sins I was constantly warned against. Plus, I'd always had a knack for naming my schemes—from "Operation Sunday School Escape" at age eight to "Mission: Prom Night Freedom" at seventeen.

"Step 1," I typed, "Breakfast seduction wearing only an apron and a thong."

It was a classic for a reason. Men liked food, and men liked women wearing almost nothing. Combine the two, and surely even the most stoic mountain man would cave to basic biology.

I rummaged through my suitcase, finding the black lace thong I'd packed specifically for emergency seduction scenarios. What constituted an "emergency seduction scenario" had been unclear when I packed it, but fleeing an arranged marriage to seduce a mountain man certainly qualified.

The apron part was trickier. I tiptoed into the kitchen, finding a utilitarian canvas apron hanging on a hook by the ancient stove. It was frayed at the edges and stained with what I hoped was just food, but it would have to do.

I changed quickly, examining my reflection in the small mirror hanging in the bathroom.

The effect was less "domestic goddess" and more "confused stripper at a farm-themed party," but it would have to do.

The apron covered my front adequately but left my back and the curves of my backside largely exposed, save for the thin black lace strip of the thong.

The kitchen was a challenge in itself. I'd never actually cooked anything more complicated than microwave popcorn.

Back home, we had a housekeeper who handled all that, and my college years had been a blur of meal plans and takeout.

But how hard could it be? Eggs, bacon, maybe some toast?

People made breakfast every day without burning their houses down.

I located a cast iron pan that weighed approximately as much as a small child and set it on the stove.

The ancient appliance had actual knobs instead of digital settings, with faded numbers that might as well have been hieroglyphics.

I cranked one to what seemed like a reasonable position and prayed for the best.

The refrigerator yielded a carton of eggs and a package of bacon that looked like it had been butchered on-site. I stared at the raw ingredients with the uncertainty of someone facing a bomb they needed to defuse.

"Cooking," I muttered. "Just like chemistry class, except edible. Supposedly."

I laid several strips of bacon in the pan, which immediately began to sizzle and pop alarmingly. Grease splattered my bare skin, and I yelped, dancing backward.

"Okay, so the heat's too high." I adjusted the knob, then cracked three eggs directly into the same pan because multitasking seemed efficient. The result was a disturbing swirl of clear egg white infiltrating the bacon grease.

Smoke began to rise from the pan. That seemed... suboptimal.

I located a spatula and attempted to separate the congealing mass, only succeeding in breaking the yolks, which bled yellow into the increasingly concerning concoction. More smoke billowed upward.

A popping sound drew my attention back to the bacon, where the grease had begun to bubble ominously.

One particularly enthusiastic bubble burst, sending a tiny spray of grease directly onto the burner's flame.

A blue-orange flash leapt up the side of the pan, and suddenly the entire bacon-egg catastrophe was engulfed in dancing flames.

A shrill beeping suddenly pierced the air, making me shriek and drop the spatula. The smoke detector—a device I'd failed to notice on the ceiling—was now screaming its displeasure at my culinary experiment.

"No, no, no!" I frantically waved a dish towel toward the ceiling, which only seemed to push more smoke toward the sensitive detector. The beeping intensified.

The bacon was now definitely on fire. Small, admittedly, but unmistakably flames where bacon should be.

My gaze landed on a red canister mounted on the wall—a fire extinguisher. I'd seen them used in movies. How hard could it be?

I grabbed it, fumbling with the pin as the smoke thickened. With a triumphant yank, I freed the safety mechanism and aimed the nozzle toward the flaming pan.

The resulting blast of white foam was so powerful it nearly knocked me backward.

It hit the stove with the force of a firehose, sending a plume of foam not just into the pan but across the entire kitchen.

The blast ricocheted off the hard surface of the cast iron, creating a blizzard of white that coated everything within a six-foot radius—including me.

By the time I managed to stop spraying, the kitchen looked like a snow globe of catastrophic failure. Foam dripped from the ceiling, the countertops, and my body. The fire was out, but so was any hope of a seductive breakfast scenario.

I stood in shock, spatula still clutched in one foam-covered hand, when the door burst open.