“Come on, Dara, fess up. You don’t like snakes.”
She waited a beat, then let her shoulders slump in defeat. “Terrified is a better word.”
“Well, I’m not too fond of them myself. And I doubt we’ll even see one. But as long as we take the proper precautions, it won’t be a real concern anyway.”
Dara started to move up the trail again, but Zach’s hand on her arm stopped her.
“You want to take a break? You know, just sit and absorb the scenery for a while?”
Dara smiled over at him, even though she realized now she hadn’t been nearly as good at concealing her discomfort as she’d thought. “I hate to tell you this, but it all looks pretty much the same to me.”
Zach took hold of her shoulders and turned her around, then slid her pack off. “Come on, there’s a big rock over there with your name on it.”
“Oh goody,” she said dryly, glad to have the load removed, even if only temporarily. “And here I thought they were all in my shoes.”
Zach’s pack hit the dirt trail with a thud. Before she knew what was happening, he’d scooped her up in his arms and was striding off the path into the woods.
Dara didn’t have time to struggle, she barely had time to duck her head toward his chest to keep the low-hanging limbs from beating her senseless.
His breath fanned her cheek as he ducked down to avoid them too. “Sorry about that. But my hands are sort of full at the moment.”
Dara smiled against his T-shirt. Damn him for being so … him. And then she became aware of his hands wrapped around her thigh just above the knee, and the other one just under her breasts.
Her breath caught at the image of how his hands would feel if they slid up her body. One of his large palms could completely cover her breast. She suppressed a shiver at the thought of how the rough, warm skin would feel against them.
He slowed, then stopped a few seconds later. She lifted her head and found him staring down at her. Instead of the cocky grin she’d expected to find, he wore an expression she could only describe as … hot.
She gulped, suddenly needing to moisten her throat. His eyes told her his thoughts mirrored hers.
A small noise escaped her mouth as she tried to speak, only to find she couldn’t. Apparently he took her parted lips as an invitation. And the moment his mouth covered hers, she wasn’t too sure they hadn’t been.
His lips were warm, his tongue, when it pushed into her mouth, was firm and hot. She followed his tongue back into his mouth, angling his head to better receive her kiss. He groaned deep in his throat, and suddenly dryness was no longer her problem. Anywhere.
Her skin heated from the inside out, she felt every hair on her body lift as sensation after sensation rippled over her. Her moan answered his as he took command of the kiss, deepening it, expanding it.
The arm under her legs slowly pulled away, but he caught her to his chest and let her slide down his body. She moved closer to him, wanting to feel his contours mold to hers, wanting to know where he was hard and if it would feel as good as she expected pressed against where she was soft.
Her movements elicited another groan from Zach which vibrated against her mouth. He shifted, dragging her more tightly into his embrace. And she found his hardest place.
And when he moved against her, it was more than good, it was enthralling.
Zach settled her feet more firmly on the ground and slid his hands to the front of her shirt, never once taking his mouth from some part of her body. His fingers worked her buttons as his lips worked her neck. His hands pulled her open shirt from her shorts as his teeth pulled and sucked on her earlobe.
She gasped at the first tentative brush of his fingers against her nipples, then arched into his hand, wanting, needing full contact. He complied immediately.
His kisses moved slowly back to her mouth, taking a long, lingering taste that sent any practical thoughts she had left spinning away.
“I want to taste you, Dara.” He pushed her sleeves down to her elbows, forcing her hands to drop from his shoulders. Next came her bra straps, but the sports design wasn’t conducive to a trailside tryst. Dara groaned in frustration, but Zach simply stripped her shirt off.
“Take off your bra for me.”
His voice was rough, but the look in his eyes was so powerful, her hands completed the task with no direction from her mind. The air was cooler in the trees, but that wasn’t why she shivered. Lord, the way he looked at her.
No one had ever looked at her like he did. With such naked want, such need, such intent.
Zach was finding it next to impossible to keep from just pushing her up against the nearest tree, pulling her legs up around his hips and taking her right then and there. God knew he was long past ready. And if the look in her eyes was any indication, so was she.
But he forced himself to slow down, to take each moment for the separate thrill it was. She stood there, her hair wild and mussed, her shorts half open from his fumbled efforts to pull her blouse out. And her breasts. He forced his gaze back to her face and felt as if he’d just taken a running leap off the edge of a cliff. His heart dropped to his knees, the adrenaline sent another hot rush into his system, his pulse roared.
Never would he have thought that the expression in a woman’s eyes could be more erotic, more arousing, more totally captivating, than her naked body. But he couldn’t look away.
She took one of his hands and placed it on her breast. He shuddered. She moaned and shifted under his hand. In the next instant, he’d cupped her nape and pulled her hard against him, fusing his mouth on hers, pouring all the intensity of what she made him feel into that one kiss.
The rush he felt crashed over him with such strength and power, he thought he might actually come from just touching her, from just kissing her.
Her hand dove into his hair, and she hungrily returned his kiss. He felt her other hand slide down his chest to the button of his jeans. His better judgment warred with primal desire. Judgment won out. A split second before her hand could brush against him, he backed away from her.
Dara stumbled backward a step, her expression a bit wild and unfocused. She wobbled a bit as she bent down to retrieve her shirt, but she was moving away from him before he could reach out to help.
“Dara.” His voice was little more than a rough growl. “Look at me.”
She slid her arms into her shirt, keeping her back to him.
He curled his fingers into his palm to keep from reaching for her. “Please.” Her actions stilled for a split second, then continued. “Don’t hide from me, Dart.”
With a sigh of disgust, she gave up trying to button her shirt and turned to him. “I’m not—”
“God, you’re beautiful.” The words just tumbled out, heartfelt, soul-deep. Something deep inside twisted painfully when she automatically reached up and held her shirt closed. “I was looking at you when I said that. Not your open shirt.”
He couldn’t tell if her cheeks were red from his beard, or from a blush. Stepping forward, he slowly reached for her hair, softly untangling the wild snarls he’d created.
“I have a pretty good idea what you’re thinking right now,” he said quietly.
“No, you—”
“Shhh. I stopped you because I was about a nanosecond from disgracing myself. If your hand had moved even a quarter of an inch …” Now the blush was apparent. He smiled, feeling tender and protective and a whole bunch of things he didn’t want to analyze. “And I don’t know about you, but I had a different idea in mind for our first time.”
He watched her throat work as she swallowed. She started to speak, but stopped, looked away for a moment, then finally back at him. “I guess it’s sort of ridiculous to deny there will be a first time at this point?”
She smiled, and Zach laughed softly before growing serious. “Can you honestly say you don’t want to?” Zach wasn’t sure he was ready for her answer, so he didn’t allow her time to give him one. “I know you’re keeping so
me mental list in your head about the pros and cons of our having a relationship.”
She stiffened, and Zach stifled the urge to curse.
“One of us has to be sensible.”
“And it goes without saying it can’t be me, right?” Zach clamped his mouth shut before he said something stupid he’d regret forever. A moment later, he said, “I hate to break it to you, Dara, but we’re already having a relationship. Whether you want to or not. As long as we keep spending time together, this will keep happening. And it won’t be long before it’s a whole lot more than this. You know it and I know it.”
“Does it make any difference to you that I wish it wouldn’t?”
Bang. Dead center. The intensity of the pain took him totally by surprise. “Why?” The question was nothing more than a hoarse whisper. “Would it really be so awful? Am I such a poor bargain, Dart?”
She lifted shaky fingers and traced them over his mouth. Damn if his eyes didn’t burn. Why was this so hard? Why the hell did it matter so much?
“Honestly, Zach? I think the reason I can’t seem to stop this from happening is because a part of me wants it too. A big part. Badly.” The last word sounded as if it had been forced from her.
“Then what’s the problem?”
“The problem is that for you, this is …” She shrugged. “I don’t know, for fun, casual. Not serious.” She turned away. “I can’t explain it.”
“And for you it’s not? Is that what you’re saying?” He pulled her gently back around, keeping his hands on her shoulders. “Dara?”
She looked up at him, and the wariness he saw in her eyes tore at him. “I’m not real good at casual.”
“I’ve never felt less casual about anything in my life.”
“Maybe I know that too,” she said, so softly, he wasn’t sure he heard her correctly. “Maybe that’s why I keep making lists. So neither of us gets hurt.” She moved a step back. “And I think I’d rather have you as a friend forever, than a, than a …”
“A lover, Dara. You can say it. Lovers. And who says we can’t have both? Which brings us back to the original question of how we’d have one without the other. You know as well as I do what would have happened if I hadn’t stopped just now.”
Her eyes darted away, then suddenly her mouth curved in a small smile, then erupted into a soft laugh.
“What’s so damn funny?”
“Nothing.” She giggled again. “Which is just what would have happened. You said yourself if I’d touched you, you would have—”
“I know what I said!” He turned around, then found himself fighting the urge to laugh too.
Careful to keep his back to her, he said, “I’m trying to be serious here, Dara.” He heard her stifle a snort and spun around. One look and they both burst into laughter. They laughed until they each had to hold on to the nearest tree for support.
Several moments later, he walked to her and pulled her gently into a loose embrace. He released a deep sigh as she looped her arms around his waist and let her head drop forward onto his chest.
He lost track of how long he stood there with her in his arms. He tightened his hold slightly and leaned down to whisper in her ear. “Let it happen, Dara. Let’s just let it happen.”
Dara didn’t say anything, but a few seconds later she stretched up on tiptoe and kissed him gently on his neck. She moved her arms from around his waist and turned away from him.
He let her go, feeling oddly as if a part of him had just gone with her. He stopped short of helping her button her shirt. Just the knowledge that she wasn’t wearing a bra any longer would likely keep him in pain the rest of the way up the trail.
He found the bra dangling from a thin tree limb and unsnagged it, giving her plenty of time before he turned back to her.
“You still want to sit down for a while?”
“How much farther is it?”
“About a mile and a half.”
She raked her fingers through her hair, doing little to untangle the snarls, but quite a lot to increase Zach’s discomfort.
“Might as well get on with it.”
His cocky grin finally resurfaced, and he wiggled his eyebrows suggestively. “I thought that’s what we were just doing.”
Dara rolled her eyes as she brushed by him. “Get your mind out of the boys’ locker room, Brogan.”
He started after her. “Hey, I resent that!” he called out. “It’s at least in the men’s locker room by now.”
Dara flashed a smile over her shoulder. “Last one to the top is a rotten egg!” She took off toward the trail, her laughter ringing through the trees.
“Now who’s still in grade school, Dart the Dragon Colbourne?” he yelled.
She turned around and stuck her tongue out at him, then squealed when he took off toward her at a dead run.
Leaving her pack behind, she tore up the dirt path, but after the first fifty yards, her blisters screamed in protest. She raised her hands over her head and spun toward him. “I surrender, I—oof!”
Zach barely had time to duck his shoulder and scoop her up in his arms before trotting to a stop.
She braced her hands on his shoulders and looked down at him. They were both laughing between gasping for breath. He let her feet drop lightly to the ground and pulled her to him for a quick, hard kiss.
He groaned and rested his forehead on hers. “Dara, we’re going to have to talk about this, you know.”
“I thought that was my line.” She leaned up and kissed him again before pulling away. “I’m trying, Zach. Okay? But no talk, not yet. Give me a chance to get used to this ‘go for it’ mentality, first. It’s not as easy as it used to be.” She didn’t wait for his answer, just winked at him and started back down the trail.
Zach stood there watching her walk away and wondered just when his own “go for it” philosophy had changed to “grab hold and don’t let go.”
Dara studied the small dome-shaped structure Zach had just popped up. “You have the nerve to call that a tent?”
Zach grinned at her. “All the comforts of home.”
“If you’re Fred Flintstone, maybe.”
Zach rolled back on his heels and stood. “Aw, it’s not that bad. Besides, all you’re going to do is sleep in it.”
Dara thought his eyebrows might have lifted with a hint of a question, but she didn’t take the bait. She was working hard at not analyzing things, not thinking about her past or all the really good reasons she had for why Zach was the last man on earth for her. But it didn’t require much thought to know she wasn’t ready to share a tent, much less a sleeping bag with Zach Brogan. Or maybe she was too ready.
She shrugged and smiled with determination. “You have a point.” She bent down—way down—and peered inside the small tomblike dome. If she lay flat on her back and reached both arms out, her fingertips would brush the sides. “I guess I can always just change clothes inside my sleeping bag.”
“Hey, don’t turn yourself into a pretzel on my account.”
Dara mimicked his innocent expression, then said, “I managed to change clothes inside my sleeping bag when I was fourteen, I guess I can do it now.”
“I thought you said you’d never been camping.”
“I haven’t. But you’ve never had your survivalist skills truly challenged until you’ve lived through a teenage slumber party.”
“Speaking for all fourteen-year-old boys everywhere, I’m sure they’d love to give it a try.”
“You could speak for a fourteen-year-old boy.”
He pressed a hand against his chest. “Oh, she still scorches the heart.” Chuckling, he grabbed for her hand and pulled her down into his lap.
Dara shifted around until she could look at him, causing a reaction she’d have to be dead not to notice.
She was far from dead. Quite the opposite.
“So, why did you change clothes in your sleeping bag?” he asked. “Weren’t all the slumberers girls?”
Dara rolled her eye
s. “I hope you have many daughters, Zach Brogan. It would be the ultimate justice.” She ignored the odd expression that flickered in his eyes, though it caused a strange reaction deep in her belly. “But to answer your question,” she went on, “I was spending the night at Mary Beth Waters’s house. Mary Beth and her best friend Toni were, shall we say, early bloomers.”
Zach grinned, his gaze dropping to the front of her shirt. Only a small part of her wished she’d put her bra back on. A part that was amazingly easy to ignore.
“Well, speaking from, ah, firsthand experience—” Zach ducked and just barely missed her attempt to pull his hair. “Your blooms are quite wonderful, Ms. Colbourne.”
His smile faded from cocky to sincere, and Dara felt her cheeks warm. “Why thank you, Mr. Brogan,” she said, refusing to let things get serious. “Coming from an expert such as yourself, I’m flattered.” Wrong answer, she realized too late.
His smile faded altogether, but she quickly scrambled out of his lap. This line of conversation had gone on long enough. Dara was halfway across the clearing before she realized he was still sitting by the tent.
She turned. “Zach?”
Zach waved. “Right here.” Then under his breath he added, “Which is where I’m staying until I think I can stand again.” The way she’d torn out of his lap had left serious doubt that he’d be able to fulfill her prophecy of having daughters. Or sons for that matter.
“Come on, you said you’d show me where the kids could go fishing.”
Zach groaned. She’d traded her hiking boots for sneakers and Band-Aids back on the trail. Since then she’d fairly hopped up the remaining part of the service road. Gone was the woman who was afraid of heights and terrified of snakes. Except for the comment about the tent he’d provided for her in lieu of the portable condo she’d packed, she’d been all enthusiasm and bounding energy.
In short, he’d created a monster. Dart the Dragon had returned with a vengeance.
EIGHT
Zach slowly rolled to his knees and pushed to a stand. When he was sure he could walk without looking like he’d just spent a month on horseback, he headed her way.
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