Loving Wild

by Lisa Ann Verge

  Something was changing. Something was changing inside her.

  “Casey…” he began again, obviously struggling for words. “I know we don’t know each other very well. Despite last night.”

  Color crept up her face. She bit her lip on the urge to tell him that he knew her better than any other living man.

  “But,” he continued, tapping the cellular phone in her hand, “I want you to pack this away for tonight.”

  A quiver of panic rippled through her anew. Her knuckles whitened around the phone. This was her backup. This was her way of protecting herself. She wasn’t so sure she wanted to surrender her fate, even in this small way.

  Where was Jillian now? Where were her rough-edged little comments about grief and recovery? Where were her barbed words that stuck in Casey’s head whenever she faced a difficult situation? Somehow, she’d moved beyond Jillian’s help. With a new clarity of thought, Casey realized that she’d taken the first real step out of therapy. And it all had something to do with this man standing in front of her.

  “Casey…” He raked his hand through his hair. “I’ve worked for over a year to set up this trip. This is our first real setback. Give me a chance to work us out of it before we call in the cavalry.”

  “Dylan—”

  ‘It’s not so hopeless. I have a sense of where we are.“ He tapped his temple with a finger. ”It’s all up here, all the twists and turns of the day. I can get us back to the canoe. It’s just going to take a little time. Give me twenty-four hours, and then you can do what you like.”

  She tightened her grip on the phone. She wondered if Dylan knew what he had just done. She wondered if he knew he was allowing her one step in the right direction, if she had the courage to take it. One day at a time. Twenty-four hours at a time. Jillian couldn’t have thought up a better ploy.

  She forced her mind to clear. She had to think straight. She took a deep, cleansing breath.

  “Okay, Davy Crockett.” She blinked her eyes open on the exhale. “You’ve got twenty-four hours.”

  DYLAN STRODE ALONG the dappled path. He caught sight of some moss growing on the north side of an oak and adjusted the direction of his steps accordingly. After a full day of wandering through these woods, he was convinced that if they continued trudging toward the southeast, they would eventually find the river they’d come from, and thus their abandoned canoe.

  Casey plodded dutifully behind him. She’d spoken very little since she’d told him about her husband last night. She seemed lost in her own thoughts and reluctant to share those thoughts with him.

  It had been a cold night in the tent, as well, and not just because of the unseasonable dip in the temperature. She’d slipped into the tent before him. When he’d entered, he had leaned down to run his fingers over her head. But she had given him such a soft, vulnerable look with those big brown eyes that he’d made himself back off. If the lady didn’t want comforting, he wasn’t going to force himself on her—even if he felt like crushing her in his arms and making all the hurt go away.

  He couldn’t imagine the hurt But he was beginning to imagine what Casey Michaels was made of. He was beginning to realize that she’d been through the fires of hell and—despite her confidence and outward calm—she had not emerged unsinged.

  He couldn’t help something else, too. He’d spent a lot of time grappling with an odd sense of jealousy. Jealousy of a dead man. It would almost be worth dying, to know that a woman mourned you as deeply as Casey mourned her late husband.

  He wanted to shake her free of ghosts and remind her how good it was to live. But, he thought, as he glanced up and noticed the lengthening of shadows across the ground, he wouldn’t get much of a chance to be with her if he didn’t find his way out of these woods soon.

  He paused, catching a glimpse of a knotted old oak just to his right. He stopped in his tracks and peered through the trees.

  Casey’s footsteps slowed behind him. “Dylan?”

  “Wait,” he said. “I recognize something.”

  He broke through the brush and approached the old oak. He remembered this tree—older than the others around it, as if it had not been clear—cut whenever the rest of these woods had been, a hundred years or so ago. A distinctive knot bent the trunk at about eye level.

  He scanned the surroundings, then caught sight of a sapling with a broken branch, and a narrow path beyond.

  He set his foot upon the path. Casey must have sensed his excitement, because she, too, picked up her pace. The farther they traveled along the path, the more sure Dylan got.

  A half-mile farther, as the sun cast the last of its golden light through the trees, he heard the gurgle of a river. He was carrying a hundred pounds on his back, but his feet felt light as he ran the last few yards. There, floating against the bank, was the canoe.

  “Casey—look.”

  She crashed out of the woods behind him, pale, disheveled. An angry pink slash marked her leg where she’d been scratched by a branch in their wanderings. Yet as her gaze fell upon the canoe her face lit up with a smile worth a hundred thousand bucks.

  She sank to the ground. The backpack landed first. She leaned back and used it as a pillow. She closed her eyes and stretched the back of her hand across her brow. She let her smile spread into a laugh—a nervous laugh that shimmered with relief.

  He shrugged his backpack to the ground, walked to her side, then fell to his knees to unsnap the fasteners of her pack. He brushed off the straps and set her shoulders free, then worked on the buckle at her waist. Her face glowed with a sheen of perspiration, and tendrils of her hair clung to her temples, her neck. He brushed them out of the way and met the softness of her amber eyes.

  “See,” he said. “I told you we weren’t lost.”

  Her smile lingered. Her chest rose and fell with the swiftness of her breath. “You’re wrong,” she whispered. “We were lost.” She reached up and traced the edge of his brow. “But you found our way out.”

  He searched her eyes and saw, if not a lusty welcome, then at least not a plea to be left alone. So he did what he’d wanted to do since she’d told him of her sorrow. He took her face in his hands and kissed her.

  She tasted of salt-sweat and heat. Her mouth moved softly beneath his. Her body flexed, arched. He felt her hands on his sides, clutching him harder, as the kiss deepened. He dragged the full length of his body atop hers and felt a rush of desire so strong and so fierce that he forced himself to pull away from her kiss.

  “I missed you last night, Casey.”

  He wished he hadn’t said the words. Damn his tongue. He was falling for this lady, too fast, too hard—and there was no reason why she had to know.

  She wound an arm around his neck and raised her face to meet his. “Let’s make up for lost time, then.”

  Her lips were hot, eager. He kissed her. Hard. Harder. He slipped an arm between her and her backpack, lifted her up, then yanked the pack out from under her. They rolled together on the ground until she lay on top of him. The grass felt cool and soft against his back. They were already damp with sweat, already hot from the exertion of hours of hiking through the woods, so he didn’t know whether it was the situation or the fresh rush of desire coursing through his veins that caused the change—that caused a kiss at first hesitant and gentle to turn as fierce and frenzied as if they hadn’t touched each other in weeks.

  He bound her to him as tightly as he could, opened his mouth wider to taste her, so he could feel her cheek against his chin, his nose across her cheekbone, her hair brushing his brow. She made a sound deep in her throat—a wild little sound, enough to make him crazed.

  He peeled her T-shirt off her body and tossed it away. He sank his teeth into the fleshy mound straining against the stretchy elastic of her bra. He slid his thumbs under the spandex of her running shorts and shoved them down, low enough so he could clutch the roundness of her bottom and force her hips against his loins.

  She arched in that reckless, catlike way she had,
forcing her tight little bottom up into his hands. He scraped his stubbly face across the thin elastic of her bra and found the peak of one nipple straining against the fibers and licked it. Again and again. Laving his tongue against her, feeling her whole breast tighten against his mouth. Then she tossed her head and made that little wild sound again.

  He clutched her closer, shoved his hands lower, forced her legs to spread, found the moistness and heat of her with the tips of his fingers.

  Then, suddenly, she pushed him away, clawed her fingernails over his abdomen, fumbled with the snap and zipper of his shorts. She plunged a hand under the band of his underwear and wrapped a grip around the center of his pleasure. And pulled. And pulled. Until he seized her arm, yanked it away from imminent danger and rolled her onto her back.

  “No.”

  She spoke the word softly. With one surprisingly strong heave, she rolled him onto his back again and made short work of his shorts. He lay there, breathing more heavily than he had all day walking fifteen miles with a hundred pounds of weight strapped on his back, his need quite obvious. She stood, and with the setting sun casting her figure in shades of gold, she peeled off what was left of her clinging clothing while he watched.

  Naked she fell upon him, swung a leg across his body, and made them one.

  He squeezed his eyes shut and grasped her hips at the first tight thrust.

  Ahh… She felt so good. She felt so right. They fit. As tight and close as two people could be. He curled his hand around her neck, and yanked her down so he could kiss her. So he could plunge his tongue into her mouth as he plunged another part of his body into another part of hers.

  Later, not very much later, she cried out, and bells went off in his head. He told himself, very sternly, that these were definitely not wedding bells.

  They lay for a long time upon the grass, their bodies glued together by sweat and the moisture of sex. He blindly traced the dappling of the last light of day upon her back, an excuse to hold her close. In the growing darkness, mosquitos rose from the shallow water, drawn to their heat.

  Dylan reached for his pack without nudging her off him and yanked the bottle of mosquito repellent from a side pocket. With long, even strokes he covered her body.

  She flinched and slapped the calf of her leg. From behind tangled hair she smiled at him and said, “You missed a spot.”

  “I missed a lot of spots,” he murmured, running his hand across her breast. “And if we don’t get into the tent soon, we’re both going to have welts in very painful places.”

  They rose from their unlikely bed, slipped on their clothes, and went about the familiar ritual of setting up camp. They had not chosen the best campsite, trees blocked the evening breeze from sifting in to blow away the mosquitos. So, as soon as they’d driven in the last tent stake, they resigned themselves to a cold dinner, bombed the inside of the tent with repellent, and zipped themselves in.

  He pulled out some shrink-wrapped hard cheese and salami and started cutting…but he didn’t have much of an appetite.

  He met her eyes across the glow of the lantern. “You realize,” he said quietly, “that we didn’t use a condom.”

  She lowered her gaze and nodded, once. “I know. Don’t worry, the timing is all wrong.”

  “Timing?”

  “I’m very regular,” she explained. “I’m due in a few days. I thought we could take a chance…and that’s about as much thought as I gave to it.”

  Then she lifted her gaze again, and he found himself caught in those hot brown eyes.

  “I wasn’t doing much thinking, either.” He sank his Swiss Army knife into the salami. “But we’d best not take any more chances.”

  “Well…you know that we’re running low, don’t you?”

  He knew she wasn’t talking about food. “So we’ll have to ration ourselves.”

  “We’ll be okay for a few days, anyway.”

  He knew better than to play baby roulette. How many kids had he seen in his high school who took a chance “just once,” and found themselves facing decisions hard enough for full-grown adults, never mind budding adolescents? And an urban school district sixty miles from Bridgewater had been struggling for over a year trying to decide whether to hand out condoms in the school. He was supposed to be a responsible adult. He was supposed to be a role model for the kids. Of course, the kids would never know about what had happened in the wilds of these woods.

  Still, he was finding himself wondering if his and Casey’s baby would have the same soulful amber eyes as the woman sitting cross-legged in front of him.

  God, he was a fool.

  Before he said anything he would regret later, he decided the safest thing to do was to change the subject. He held out a slice of salami balanced on the blade of his knife. “Casey, tomorrow we’re going to have to venture back into these woods, you know.”

  He saw the flash of fear. He saw, too, how quickly she hooded her eyes from his gaze.

  “Yeah, well, I figured we wouldn’t be staying here for the rest of the trip.”

  “You think you can handle it?” He sank his knife into the cheese. “You think you can trust me to find my way through this?”

  She met his eyes then, gave him a searching gaze—wary, unsure. He met that gaze evenly.

  Trust me, Casey. Trust me to get you out of here. Lean on my shoulder. I want your weight. I want your body. I want your trust. I want your…

  He wanted too much. He always wanted too much. That was what drove them all away. He was getting the feeling that Casey would give him almost anything—her laughter, her courage, her body—rather than give him her trust

  Then she took a deep, deep breath. “I think I can handle it,” she said in a soft voice. “For at least another twenty-four hours.”

  CASEY BURIED HER COPY of the map at the bottom of her backpack, along with the cellular phone. Jillian and all her twelve-step methods hadn’t prepared Casey for this situation. But somehow, Casey sensed that it was the right thing to do.

  In the two days that followed, as they tramped through thick woods and canoed across narrow streams, she felt strangely disconnected. She knew she should be utterly terrified. They still hadn’t found their way out of the woods. But since that evening on the banks of the river with Dylan, she felt as if she’d given something over to him. She suspected that something was called “trust.”

  So she’d followed him in silent detachment, touching his strong hand when he helped her across a ravine, holding his wide shoulders while they made love in the sunshine at lunchtime, listening to him discuss their next move, watching him peer, confounded, at the old map. She felt oddly buoyant. Light-footed. Calmhearted.

  She knew this strange sense of peace might be nothing more than a defense mechanism. A way to disassociate from the true situation. Whatever it was, it was keeping her going. That was all she expected from herself.

  Now, she gripped the worn handle of her paddle and twisted it according to Dylan’s commands, as they searched the banks of yet another narrow stream for some sort of marker. She watched the familiar flex of that broad back and felt a tingle deep in her abdomen.

  She had been right, that first night when they had made love. Dylan was a strong man, a good man. Whatever happened at the end of this adventure, she would leave it lighthearted. She would leave it a better person, a stronger person, for having known his touch.

  Then she would drive to Connecticut, to her sister’s house with her sister’s fine husband and two lovely children, and maybe she wouldn’t feel that familiar gripping sadness. For this time, she would have a story to tell that would ease her sister’s worry. Casey had slept with a brawny man through three weeks of a camping adventure. Casey was no longer dead to the world.

  “Casey?”

  “Hmm?”

  “If you don’t start paying attention, you’re going to rip a hole in the bottom of this canoe.”

  Casey glanced away from Dylan and realized the bow of the canoe was headed s
traight for the shore. “Oh!” She twisted the paddle and set them on a more even course.

  “So…” He glanced over his shoulder. His blue eyes twinkled with mischief. “What were you thinking?”

  “I was wondering when we were going to stop for lunch.”

  “It’s only ten o’clock, Casey.”

  “I know.”

  “How would you like some fresh fish?”

  “Fish?” She wasn’t much of a fish lover. She preferred crustaceans—shrimp or lobster, drowning in butter—but right now she would eat just about anything that wasn’t hard salami or dehydrated soup or freeze-dried beef stew. “You mean, real fish?”

  “Yep.” He gestured to a small cove just ahead. “I see a whole bunch of pike riding in those shallows. Should be a breeze to catch.”

  “You said you wanted to find that marking before sundown.”

  “Heck, we’re already three days behind schedule. Another couple of hours won’t matter.”

  She saw the twinkle in his eye, then twisted the paddle and headed them toward shore.

  An hour later Casey crouched over the fire, gingerly poking two very tender fish filets around a saucepan, trying not to let her drool sizzle into the pan. The aroma of roasted fish filled the clearing. She found herself remembering the smell of her mother’s house every year after her father came home from his salmon-fishing stints in the great Northwest. For weeks they would eat salmon, and the smell would fill the house.

  She’d always associated the odor with her father’s return from his trip. A time of great joy, despite the horrid stench. She hadn’t thought about that in years.

  She wondered where Dylan had run off to. He’d caught the fish with surprising ease, then boned and filleted them for her. She’d promised to cook them while he went off to scout the terrain. At the time, she’d been too thrilled by the prospect of fresh meat to think about the fact that she was alone in the woods.