Melting the Ice

by Loreth Anne White

  “My thoughts exactly. You need to rest. And it doesn’t look as if anyone has the cabin booked for tonight. There’s wood, and I have sustenance.”

  “And that, I need.”

  “Why don’t you unpack the food? It’s in the pack. I’ll get a fire going out here.”

  He looked out over the jagged horizon. Those mushrooming white clouds he’d seen earlier were now clustering, dense and black, in the distance. “It looks like the weather will hold for some time yet. We can move into the hut later.”

  “What about getting that vial you found to the lab?”

  “It can wait.” It had to wait. He needed time with Hannah. He had a sense it was running out. And he wasn’t ready to let go yet. “I can get it down to Vancouver tomorrow morning and have a same-day result.”

  Hannah yanked open the top of the backpack still wallowing in thoughts that had flooded her brain as she watched the sow fend for her cub. She believed there was more to life, more than propagating the species and fending for your young. There was friendship, love. It wasn’t just the way of the wild, dammit. Humans were more evolved. Weren’t they?

  She must be more tired than she thought. Rex was right. She was personifying. She shouldn’t confuse that battle between the sow and the black beast with her own life. Yet she couldn’t ignore the symbolism. It butted against her brain.

  She looked up at Rex gathering wood, building a fire, his muscles defined through the woven fabric of his shirt. There was a wildness about him, a dangerous feral quality.

  How could she expect, or even dream, of love from a man who didn’t know love. His family, his father had rejected him. Like that male bear, the colonel had left Rex’s mum to feed and shelter him until he was barely old enough to go his own way and carve out his own territory. Alone.

  Hannah sensed that the concept of real love, family, was absolutely foreign to Rex. The only real family he’d known was the military. He did his duty. He did what he believed was just and for the greater good of man. He did it out of an honorable sense of duty. But not out of love.

  And that wasn’t good enough for Danny. Or was she just being selfish? Maybe she owed Rex a chance to be the father the colonel never was. Would he even want that chance?

  Oh God, in one day Danny would come home. She had choices to make. She scrunched her eyes shut, squeezing back the emotion that pricked there, and dug into the backpack.

  She touched glass, cool and smooth.

  The devil.

  He had planned this.

  Hannah pulled out a bottle of red wine. There was also a blanket, her fleece, a tin of smoked oysters, crackers, cheese, French bread, a container of wild blackberries. A sleeping bag. So this is what he’d been hefting about all day.

  “Rex.”

  He looked up at the sound of her voice.

  “You’re wicked.”

  He grinned, a devilish slash of teeth white against the shadow of his sculpted jaw, eyes dancing as bright as the flames licking the wood to life.

  Chapter 12

  H annah laid the blanket out near the fire and took two plastic wineglasses from Rex’s backpack. “Look at all this. There’s got to be a romantic buried deep in that hard heart somewhere.”

  He just winked at her as he uncorked the bottle. Wine burbled rich and red into the glasses, the fire cracked and shot sparks of bright orange high into the thin Alpine air.

  The far-off indigo in the dome of sky was deepening as the blackness of space crept in for the night.

  Hannah leaned back on the roll of sleeping bag propped against a rock and sipped her wine. There was no other sound. Just the pop and crack and whisper of flames. The air was tinged with wood smoke and the scent of old snow and ice. She could see the first star of the evening.

  They ate in intimate silence, as if afraid to speak into words the turmoil of emotions each housed in their bodies. Hannah’s feelings were beyond the shape of simple words. They were too complex. Too big. What they both needed was time. Time to be with each other. Time to understand.

  Time she didn’t have.

  Time he would never have.

  To speak now, at this perfect moment, would bring reality crashing in. She just wanted to savor it. Drink it in. While it lasted.

  She lay back, her face turned up to the heavens pricked with pins of light. The moon was rising, an enormous, pale, luminous shape. It was monstrous, so close. She could make out the pocks and craters. It bathed the far-off glacial peaks in an eerie glow. Hannah felt like a speck in space and time. Insignificant.

  She started as Rex leaned over and brushed a plump blackberry against her lips. She opened her mouth, took it in, crushing the wild ripe flavor between her teeth. His eyes spoke to her as he took a berry between his own lips, watching her as he crushed it in his mouth.

  Then he leaned down above her. Pressed those berry-stained lips against hers. The taste of wine and wild ripe fruit, the scent of smoke, it made her senses swim. Her blood coursed warm through her veins.

  His kiss was gentle, lingering, searching, questioning. It brought tears to her eyes. Sweet pain.

  “Hannah?”

  “Shh, Rex.” She raised two fingers to his lips. “Not now.”

  He nodded, reached out, wiped the wetness from her cheeks and lay back beside her. Together they watched the heavens, fingers laced, fire spitting.

  By the time they moved into the cabin, an Alpine wind was whistling softly through the flue of the woodstove and roiling black clouds had blocked the rising moon.

  Rex stoked the fire and turned to face Hannah. Her hands were raised, untying her hair. She let it fall, soft and gold, down onto her shoulders.

  She was an angel, teaching him to feel. To want. She made him yearn for things he’d never dreamed possible. Not for him.

  She was wearing the large T-shirt he’d brought for her. The swell of her breasts pressed against the soft white fabric. She was kneeling on the sleeping bag he’d laid out on the floor in front of the woodstove, her legs sun-browned and bare beneath her.

  Rex knelt down behind her. The glow of flames flickered and wavered against the cabin walls, making shadows dance. The wind moaned gently through the flue.

  From behind he slid his hands up under the T-shirt. He stopped just under the swell of her breasts. He leaned forward, whispered into the fall of her hair. “How’s your rib, Hannah? You doing okay?”

  She just nodded, leaned slightly into him.

  “You were pretty tired coming back up the mountain.”

  “I feel more rested now. It’s just so much has happened—”

  He nuzzled against the smooth warmth of her neck. “I know.”

  “Rex, there’s something I have to tell you. I—”

  He slipped his hands, one over each breast feeling the soft, heavy weight of them. Her nipples reacted immediately to his touch, spitting hot fire to his groin.

  He held her, whispered into her ear. “What did you want to tell me?”

  She gave a small shiver. “Nothing. It can wait.” Her voice was thick, throaty. Aroused. It fueled the need growing tight against his clothing. His chest felt tight. Oh, how he needed this woman.

  She reached, hands behind her back and found the buttons of his shorts. Her fumbling there took the blood from his head. All his heat settled into an almost painful throbbing desire between his thighs.

  She found her way through the buttons, slipped her hand into his shorts. He tried to speak. It came out a low groan. He stood to free himself of his clothing and then he bent to lift the T-shirt from her body.

  The sight of her stole his breath.

  She knelt, in front of the flickering warmth of the flames, in white panties, breasts bare, dusky nipples pointed. She looked up at him, her lids heavy with need over those leonine eyes.

  He knelt slowly down behind her and ran his fingers from her neck firmly down the ridges of muscle that cradled her straight spine. She shivered under his hands, arching her back. He coaxed her to kneel
forward on hands and knees. She took his lead, holding her chin high, hair splaying down her back. He slowly removed her panties, ran his hands over her, kneading, squeezing her full, soft, firm buttocks.

  She moaned, arched farther, exposing the mound of rough gold curls between her legs.

  The sight of her like that swallowed him in primal need.

  He slid his hand over that mound protruding out from between her thighs and felt her heat. She moved against his hand, parted her knees wider, dipped her back farther, opening herself wider to him.

  He stroked those engorged, swollen lips until she glistened with desire, until his fingers were slick with her need. Then he thrust his fingers deep into her. She pushed back, onto his hand. Her moan was feral. His need wild.

  He took her like that. Mounted her. Rocked into her as she braced with her hands against the force of his thrusts, breasts bouncing in the flicking light.

  The heat sang in his core as he plunged repeatedly into her. She threw her head back, arching her back, her hair a wild mane. And he heard her noise. Animal, as wave upon blinding wave crashed over them. The sound was deafening in his ears.

  Sated, they lay together, in silence, as the flames in the woodstove slowly died to glimmering coals and the depth of night closed in. The wind was more plaintive now, a low wail. A loose board clacked intermittently against the Alpine hut. Through the little window, ripples skittered across the surface of the tarn.

  Rex had a sense time had run out. Something between them had crested. He didn’t know what lay on the other side. He rolled onto his side and looked at her.

  She smiled up at him. But he could see a sadness in her eyes.

  He brushed her cheek with his hand. And he knew then that he wanted to come back here, to the White River Mountains, in the winter. He wanted to ski wild down the slopes with her, cut through fine powder as deep as his knees, to hear her laugh at the spray of fine crystals against her cheeks. He wanted to spend nights in deep snowbound backcountry huts. To make infinite love.

  But there was the Bellona Channel. There was her safety.

  Choices.

  Scott had made a choice. He’d taken a wife and they’d borne a child, but Scott’s job had cost them their lives. He couldn’t take that road. Not after having seen what happened to Scott. Not after that letter he got threatening Hannah’s life in Marumba. He couldn’t have both, Bellona and Hannah.

  Choices.

  He lay on his back and looked up at the rafters of the wooden hut. For the first time ever, he thought about the possibility of leaving Bellona. A lifestyle change. He couldn’t do fieldwork forever. He’d have to face that sometime. Old injuries were acting up. And there were young guns bucking for a crack at his position.

  This golden angel resting at his side had opened a door. Just a crack, but through it he glimpsed something. Something he had never dreamed possible. A life, a future with love.

  But he needed time. To work it all out. Perhaps he could come back and spend time with her in the winter. They needed to bridge the pain of old wounds.

  “Rex.” She sat suddenly up, sleeping bag pulled around her, voice still deliciously thick from passion.

  “We need to talk, Rex.”

  He lifted himself up onto one elbow and studied her face. Her lips were still stained from berries, swollen from his kisses.

  “Yes. We need to talk.”

  “This job you do. I have to ask, what can you tell me about it? What can I know?”

  He knew this would come.

  “I can’t talk about it, Hannah. I need you to understand that.”

  Her eyes bored into his. “I don’t.”

  He hesitated. “I work for a covert agency. You were right. The Bio Can thing is a cover, but I can’t go into specifics.”

  She looked away.

  “Hannah, it’s not just about me. Others depend on the secrecy, the loyalty of this organization I work for.”

  “And you can’t even tell me what ‘this organization’ is called, after all we’ve been through, after the fate Amy suffered?”

  Rex felt sick. This woman had worked the world as a foreign correspondent. She was no babe in the international woods. He couldn’t lie to her. If he wanted to be with her, he’d have to trust her. Implicitly. But even then, he could be putting her life in danger, like Scott’s wife. Like Scott’s kid.

  “You don’t trust me, is that it?”

  “I trust you. God, woman, I care for you more than anything in the damned world.”

  “Then why can’t you be open with me?”

  “Because I can’t dammit! Because you’ve scrambled my radar. You’re taking me places I am unfamiliar with right now. I don’t know the boundaries. I need time.”

  She reached out, grabbed the voluminous T-shirt, pulled it over her head. She wrapped her arms tight over her knees and stared into the dying embers. When she spoke, her voice was low, with an edge he hadn’t heard before. “Why’d you leave me that night, Rex?”

  He reached forward to touch her. She shrugged him off. “Why?”

  “I had to.”

  “Your job?”

  “Yes.”

  “I see.” She faced him square, chin set in defiance, her eyes narrowed. “It’s been good, Rex. The sex.”

  “Hannah. I want to be with you. Always.” The words came out of his mouth before his head had formed them. They came from his gut. But they were true. More true than anything he’d said in a long, long time.

  Her eyes widened. “What?”

  “You heard me. Be with me.”

  She blew out a breath in frustration. “All these years, Rex, and you walk back into my life and tell me this.”

  “I just need some time. To work things out.”

  She was studying him, her eyes probing. “What about kids, Rex? What if we ever wanted children? Would you just get up and leave in the night because the job called? Would your children not see you for years?”

  Rex Logan, Bellona agent, felt suddenly lost. Hollow. Afraid even. She was pushing his boundaries back into black uncharted territory. He’d seen it coming. Yet he felt himself instinctively closing up in defense.

  “You see,” she said, moisture welling up in her gold eyes. “It can’t work. Ever. This job you do, it is your life, your family. There’s no room for more. Please don’t try and take any more from me.” Her lashes were wet with tears but her voice was determined.

  She’d pushed him into a corner. He didn’t like that. It made him want to lash out. He was angry. With himself for getting them to this point. With her for having this power over him. She’d had that power the moment he’d first seen her in Marumba.

  Now as he looked at her, amber in the fading firelight, he felt as if he was on the edge of losing her forever. She was slipping from his grasp.

  Her eyes held his, glinting, waiting for him to speak.

  He felt a tightening in his chest. Panic? It was something he never let in, yet here it was. He was afraid to lose her. Couldn’t lose her. Emotions he’d long learned to keep in check were seeping, simmering, bubbling to the surface. Like the molten core of a volcano finding its way to light.

  “Hannah, I want more. You’ve shown me there is more. I’m prepared to make changes. But give me time to try and wrap things up, sort them out. I need to think about this. I need to see if I can make it work that we can be together.”

  “Don’t do me any favors, Rex.”

  “Christ, Hannah, I’m trying here. I want to be with you. Forever. I love you, damn it!”

  She sat back, as shocked as he was at the words that had come from his lips. A fat tear slid down her cheek. She stared at him.

  He reached and wiped it gently from her face. “I want to make it work,” he whispered. “Like I’ve wanted nothing before, Hannah. Help me make it work.”

  She took his hands. “You mean it, don’t you?”

  “I mean it.”

  “Then you will tell me why you walked that night.”


  “I had to.”

  She sighed. Looked away. “And children?”

  God, when she moved, she sure moved. She was covering years of ground here. He was thinking of just one step. One little step at a damn time.

  Kids. He thought of Scott’s child, dead. He thought of himself as a boy. He had vowed he would never visit the same kind of lonely pain on a child. Yet the thought of her bearing his children was intoxicating. He hesitated before speaking. “Kids were never part of my plan.”

  Something shuttered in her eyes.

  “Hannah, I don’t know how to be a father.”

  Something shifted in her features. She was closing him out, slipping from his fingers as he watched. He reached out. She gently pushed his hand away and lay back, silent, closing her eyes. Tears slid out from under her lids.

  He didn’t know what to say. Hell, he didn’t know what he felt. He had no idea what had just happened. He lay back beside her, unspoken words hanging thick and heavy in the dark air. The loose slat of wood banged louder against the hut, insistent. The whine of the wind in the flue rose, plaintive, as the storm moved in.

  She didn’t know how long she had lain awake, the black cold of night creeping in around her as the embers died a slow death. She had listened to his rhythmic breathing for what seemed like hours, wondering at his capacity to sleep. She must have fallen asleep herself, sometime close to dawn.

  Now in the harsh dull gray light of morning, she knew she couldn’t tell him. She couldn’t bring herself to tell him about her son. His son.

  He didn’t want kids. There was no room in his life for her, let alone a ready-made family. She did not want her little boy to face the kind of rejection Rex himself had. And she did not want to live the life of her mother, waiting for a man she craved with every pore in her body, while he toyed around the world carrying secrets he’d never share.

  She had to amputate herself from him. Now, while she still could. Before the cancer of this relationship consumed her. Then she had to work at rehabilitating herself—again. Except, this time she would never let him back in. This time she would be the one who walked away. For good.