by Jill Shalvis
effort, but she shot him a considering look over her shoulder. “You know what, Mr. Smart-ass?” she murmured. “I think I will.”
Now he paled.
And she smiled.
Another mission accomplished, he thought, but as she turned her back to him to gather kindling for the fire, his smile fell away. Because he…was not relaxed. He had questions, lots of them. Most centering around the little bombshell he couldn’t stop thinking about.
They’d had sex.
Jesus Christ, he’d had sex with Harley, his greatest fantasy come true, and he was too much of an idiot to remember any of it.
Harley came back with a load of twigs and branches in her arms. She kneeled in the center of the clearing and started with the small twigs, graduating up to sticks, crisscrossing them over each other so the hot air would rise through them and help them catch. Then she set a big log on top before she lit the kindling, and he opened his mouth to correct her.
But she was frowning, concentrating deeply, and muttering to herself as she worked, looking frustrated and chilled, and so fucking adorable he shut his mouth.
He’d had her. Naked. Beneath him.
And he didn’t remember.
Yeah. That was going to haunt him for a damn long time to come.
In spite of not letting the kindling catch fire before she put the big hunk of wet wood on it, the fire actually smoked and flickered. He watched as she kneeled there in the dirt over the small flame, blowing on it, babying it along with soft coaxing murmurs that cracked him up, and then blowing some more, which didn’t crack him up but made him hard.
“Look,” she said triumphantly, turning to him, catching him staring at her mouth. “I got it.”
“Nicely done.” His voice was hoarse, and he cleared his throat. “You’re going to change now, right?”
She turned back to her fire and watched it proudly.
“Let me rephrase,” he said. “You are going to change now.”
She shot him a look over her shoulder. “I knew you were too alpha to sit there and follow directions for long.”
“I’m not all that al—” He stopped at her get real look. “Fine. Am I allowed to get up and move closer to the warmth?”
She smiled. “Sure.”
Except just then, the fire died.
“Dammit,” she said.
“Maybe you didn’t talk to it enough.”
She shot him a look and he let out a laugh. “It’s not your fault, Harley. Everything’s wet.” He opened his pack and pulled out a bag of Fritos.
“Hungry?” she asked.
“Yes, actually, but not for food.” Even in the dark he could feel her blush. “The chips are my emergency fire starters,” he explained.
“Get out.”
“I’m serious. All the grease makes them highly flammable.” Crouching beside her, he removed the big log from her pile, then opened the bag and placed a chip beneath the stacked kindling. He lit a match and set it to the chip, which immediately lit.
“Wow.”
He waited a few moments until the pile was really flaming before he added the log.
“Neat trick,” she said.
He stared at the flames. “It was Sam’s.”
She was quiet a moment. “You learn a lot from her?”
“Yes. But mostly what not to do.” He smiled because the ache from her death had dulled, leaving just good times and good memories. “I loved her, but she was wilder and more reckless than even me.”
She raised a brow, looking amused. “That’s saying a lot.”
“Yeah.” And it’d been the death of her, literally. She’d died due to her own negligence and not being properly prepared for the turbulent waters on the river. She hadn’t been wearing the proper gear, and when she’d hit a rough rapid and gone under, she’d drowned.
For TJ, it’d been a senseless tragedy and an unwelcome wake-up call.
He’d been prepared, maybe overly so, for every single trip since. “She discovered the Frito trick by accident one night,” he said softly, a fond smile curving his mouth. “We were out of food and it’d been raining buckets for days. We had one match left, and one bag of Fritos, which we used to build a fire. Afterwards, starving, we tried to convince ourselves that being warm was better than full, but truthfully it was a toss-up.”
Harley smiled, but reached out and squeezed his hand. “So that trick was hard earned.”
“Yeah.” Leaning back, he looked up at the sky. Perfectly clear now, it was littered with stars like diamonds on a blanket of black velvet. Not a single cloud, which meant no more rain—and boded well for sleeping in the open. “You sure you’re not frozen solid? You really should change.”
“I will.” Harley pulled out a can of soup. “I know you intended to be back home by now, so you probably don’t have food. I’ve got chicken noodle.”
“I’m okay.”
“TJ, I’m not going to eat if you don’t. And besides, I’m still in charge. You’re eating.” She’d been rifling through her backpack as she spoke. “Uh oh.”
“What?”
“Might have spoken too soon. Can’t find my can opener.” She began to unload her pack, pulling out the maps, her GPS tracking unit, a bottle of lotion, a hairbrush, a pair of pink bikini polka-dotted panties that just about gave him heart failure, and a paperback. The cover was a scantily clad woman in the arms of a soldier, whose shirt was wide open.
“A camping handbook?” he teased.
“It’s a historical romance, from Skye. She said I need to read it and broaden my horizons.”
“Read it out loud and broaden both our horizons.”
She eyed the cover. “You’d have to put me in chains to get me to read that out loud to you.”
He held out his hand for the book. She winced, clearly not wanting to hand it over, but she eventually did. He read the back cover copy. “‘He’s been released from his bonds to the government, but she’s only just begun her servitude—willingly.’” He looked up and grinned. “Turns out that chains might be the perfect accessory for this book.”
“Ha.” Face flaming, she yanked it out of his hands and stuffed the thing back into the bottom of her pack. “I’m sure I have a can opener in here somewhere.”
TJ pulled out his utility knife, opened the can, and set it in the middle of the flames to heat up.
“You’re good.”
“Just practiced.”
Harley eyed his backpack with envy. “What other magic necessities do you have in there?”
Condoms, he nearly said, but he was fairly certain she wouldn’t consider that a magic necessity. He pulled out an apple, which they shared with the soup.
TJ had spent a myriad of nights just like this one, out in the open, a fire crackling, the wind rustling the trees, the night insects humming. It always brought him peace. Tonight, however, he wouldn’t have labeled his mood peaceful. More like…revved up. “You warming up?” he asked, knowing she was because her cheeks began to go from pale to rosy.
“Actually, yeah, and it’s making me tired. I know it’s early, but I’m going to hit the sack.”
He stood and added wood to the fire while she opened her sleeping bag and spread it on the ground. “Going to sleep now means you don’t have to talk to me,” he pointed out.
“And that.”
Saying nothing, he watched as she crawled into her sleeping bag. He opened his bag and spread it on the opposite side of the fire. He’d just slid into it when Harley asked, “How come you even have your sleeping bag when all you were planning was a day trip?”
“I like to be prepared.”
“That’s pretty prepared. That’s almost…overly prepared.”
“I told you about Sam. You know there’s a lot that could happen out here. Even a sprained ankle could lead to me being stuck overnight. Or a rockslide could hold me up, or having to go straight to a rescue, anything.”
“Or a childhood acquaintance coming out here alone, making you f
eel that you have to keep an eye on her.”
He said nothing to that.
“I imagine you’ve seen and heard it all, and rescued half of them,” she said.
“Probably.”
She was quiet a minute, then began rustling about like she was having a wrestling match with herself.
“Everything okay in there?” he asked.
“I’m fine.”
Of course she was. She had “fine” down to a science. She was quiet for all of two seconds. Then he heard her swear softly.
“Problem?” he asked.
“Yeah.” A bare arm appeared, her shirt dangling from two fingers. “This needs to dry.” She tossed it to the log they’d just vacated.
Then she did the same with her pants.
He found himself holding his breath, hoping her underwear was coming next, praying her underwear was coming next.
But his luck wasn’t that good.
Finally she seemed to settle down, and he spent the next few minutes picturing her in the sleeping bag in only her bra and panties.
He wondered if they were silky.
Or lace.
Maybe she wore a thong…
God. He had to stop the self-inflicted torture. “You okay now?” he asked, hearing the huskiness in his own voice.
“Yeah.”
Her voice was husky, too, as if she knew what she did to him and maybe, maybe he did something to her, too.
“Good,” he managed. “Glad you’re okay.”
Because he wasn’t.
Not even close.
The mountains were never silent, and that night was no exception. The wind whistled through the treetops. Animals rustled. Crickets chirped.
But he got a big, fat nothing from the woman across the fire from him. After a long minute, he let out a breath and told himself she wasn’t going to climb into his sleeping bag the way she’d climbed into his truck all those years ago.
Because apparently a guy only got lucky like that once in a lifetime.
CHAPTER 9
Harley tossed and turned, but no matter what she did, she couldn’t get warm enough. “Dammit.”
“What?”
“N—nothing.”
“You’re cold.”
She sighed at TJ’s low, knowing voice from across the flames. If she lifted her head, she’d be able to see him by the fire’s glow, which would be a bad idea because he looked gorgeous by the glow. She’d been noticing all night. She’d been noticing other things too, like how the muscles of his chest and arms flexed when he tossed wood onto the fire. Or when he did things like wrap her in his jacket and slice an apple with his knife and offer it to her.
Hell, who was she kidding? He looked gorgeous when he breathed.
And they were alone up there, on what felt like the top of the world.
At the sound of movement, she lifted her head in time to catch TJ rise from his sleeping bag. He’d removed his shirt and wore only those faded, battered Levi’s, disturbingly low on his hips. She watched as he cranked up the fire with minimal effort on his part, his body like poetry in motion, oozing testosterone and sex with every heartbeat.
“That should help,” he said, poking at the flames with a big stick, those muscles she loved bunching in a way that made her mouth water.
He was edible all half naked like that. He could give a dead woman an orgasm.
And she was far from dead.
He added another log and crouched low, stick in hand, watching the flames. His hair fell over his forehead, curling at the back of his neck. He hadn’t shaved that morning, and probably not the day before either, and he looked almost impossibly handsome as his eyes flicked to her. “Better?”
She blinked. “Um, what?”
Still hunkered down in front of the fire, he let out a breath. “You’re still a popsicle, aren’t you?”
“I’m still a popsicle,” she whispered.
“I’m not.”
Oh boy.
“You could come over here and we could share body heat.”
Uh huh. And that wouldn’t be all they shared either. Not with the amount of crazy chemistry they had.
There was a rock under her hip.
And she couldn’t feel her toes.
She curled into a ball and told herself to ignore both the rock and the shivering of her limbs. She managed it, too, for at least half an hour after she’d heard TJ slip back into his sleeping bag. But then came a howl, long and eerie, and she jerked. Just a coyote. Probably one of hers. They don’t attack humans.
Mostly.
Another cry, sounding more like a mountain cat. She gasped, leapt out of her sleeping bag, and in nothing but her bra and panties, dove into TJ’s before she could take another breath.
Just as she’d known it would be, his sleeping bag was higher quality than hers, far cushier, bigger, and toasty warm.
TJ hissed out a breath when she pressed her icy feet to his, but otherwise didn’t say a word, just wrapped his arms around her and pulled her in against him.
He’d stripped out of his jeans, but wore boxers, and was deliciously warm. “Cold?” he asked quietly. “Or scared?”
She tilted her head up and met his gaze. His hair was still over his forehead, almost in his eyes, pretty much inviting a woman to push it back for him.
To resist, she tightened her fingers in a fist against his pecs, which didn’t really help since he was built like a kickboxer, all hard and lean and mind-bendingly perfect. She took a deep breath, which meant she inhaled his scent. Problem was, in spite of his being outside all day long, he smelled like rain and mountain and man, and so…yum it made her take a sniff, and then she couldn’t seem to stop herself. She was breathing him in like he was her private stash of crack.
He ran a hand up and down her back. “Harley? You hyper-ventilating?”
“No,” she said weakly, and dropped her forehead to his chest. Oh, God. Big mistake. Because her mouth was only a fraction of an inch away from his skin. If she so much as breathed, she’d have her lips on him—oh look at that, she breathed.
A lot.
TJ let out a long, shaky breath of his own. “You’re shivering.” He ran his large, warm hand down her arm until he reached her hand. “And your fingers are ice.” He held them in his, gently rubbing his thumbs over her skin.
Harley closed her eyes. Getting into TJ’s sleeping bag had been a bad idea. Such a bad, bad idea she moved to get out of the bag, but he tightened his grip. “Shh,” he said, and giving up the resistance, she pressed her face into his throat and let her eyes drift shut. Her teeth were chattering and she was shaking, though honestly, she was no longer certain it was just from cold.