by Tracy Wolff
“No shit you’re cool. That’s why your teeth are chattering.”
The crooked smile becomes a full-blown grin. “You think you’re pretty smart, huh, Ophelia?”
I think of Harvey. Of the mess I helped make back in New Orleans. Of the way standing too close to Z makes my breath catch even though I know better. “Smart’s not the first adjective that comes to mind. Now, let’s get going before you turn into a Popsicle.”
When he still makes no move to follow me, I move closer. Wrap an arm around his waist. God, he really is freezing.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” His way-too-cold hands reach up to cup my face in a way-too-familiar gesture. After the way we left things Friday night, it should piss me off—I don’t like being touched at the best of times—but somehow it doesn’t. The concern I can see in his eyes makes me feel good. Safe, even, and I haven’t felt like that in more months than I can count.
“I’m fine,” I tell him one more time, and this time it feels like the truth. “You got here before he could do anything but annoy me.” I push against Z’s waist to propel him forward, and this time he actually moves with me. “Thanks for the rescue, by the way.”
“I wouldn’t exactly call it a rescue.”
“Oh, yeah? What would you call it, then?”
“A helping hand. You were holding your own pretty damn well. Besides, I’m not exactly the type to rescue damsels in distress.”
I’m not so sure about that.
He stopped for me at the bus stop, then drove all the way up to the employee housing, out of his way, just to make sure I was safe.
He stopped when we were going at it, when no other guy would have, just because he realized I wasn’t into what we were doing.
And now this. He pulled Harvey off me. He stood between us. He made sure, before he did anything, that I was okay. Much as I’d like to agree with his assessment of himself, much as it would make things easier, I have to admit he feels a little bit like a hero to me. Which only makes all the shit that’s gone down between us seem even stranger.
We don’t say anything else until we get back to the lodge. I don’t know what to say, and I guess Z doesn’t, either. Nothing that’s happened in our messed-up relationship so far could have prepared me for the fact that he’d be the guy stepping up to stop me from being raped.
“Take your pants off,” I say as the door to my room closes behind us.
He turns to me with a teasing look. “Aren’t you at least going to buy me dinner first? I’m not the kind of guy to just get naked.”
I roll my eyes even as I reach for an extra blanket from the cupboard next to my bed and toss it to him. “You’re exactly that kind of guy, as Friday night proved. And as charming as the thought of you naked is, I was thinking more along the lines of preventing hypothermia rather than having my wicked way with you.”
“So you say, but we both know the truth.” He snaps the blanket in the air a couple of times to unfold it. “Not that I mind.”
“And here I was afraid of offending your delicate sensibilities.”
He laughs, loud and long. As he does, the sensitive, worried guy from earlier fades away, only to be replaced by the cocky bastard that most of the world sees when they look at him. The transformation should annoy me, but strangely it doesn’t. Not when he smiles at me and says, “I like you.”
“I like you, too,” I answer brusquely, determined not to let him see how off-kilter being around him makes me feel. “Now get changed.”
“If you insist.” He reaches for the tie at the top of his pants and undoes it.
“Stop!” I screech, whirling around to face the wall away from him. “What is it with you and taking your clothes off in front of people? There’s a bathroom right through that door.” I point blindly.
He chuckles. “What’s the big deal? It’s nothing you haven’t seen before. Besides, nothing’s showing. It’s way too cold for me to go commando.”
I don’t answer him, just groan and cover my eyes with my hands. Now that I’m not trying to have sex with him to get rid of him, I can’t believe he’s stripping in my room. Right in front of me. This is what I get for trying to return the favor he did me.
A half-naked Z in my bedroom.
My stomach flips a couple of hundred times at the thought, and unlike outside with Harvey, it’s not such a terrible feeling. Which just makes the whole situation feel worse. Remi hasn’t been dead quite a year yet, and here I am thinking about Z naked. Not just about having sex with him for expediency’s sake, but about kissing him, touching him, letting him touch me.
He’s everything I don’t want in a guy, everything I know to stay away from, and yet I’m standing here wondering what I’m missing by staring at the wall and not at him.
Just goes to show how screwed up my judgment really is.
“You can look now. The wet clothes are off.”
I realize my mistake as soon as I turn around. Z didn’t tell me that he was covered, only that the wet clothes were gone. And they are. But the blanket I gave him is crumpled on the floor at his feet and he’s standing there, watching me, wearing nothing but a pair of black boxer briefs and gray socks with a small hole over his right baby toe.
For long seconds I can do nothing but stare. He should look ridiculous with his socks all slumped down like that and his toe poking through, but he doesn’t. Instead, he’s gorgeous. All long and lean and bronzed and muscled. And hot. So fucking hot I can feel my entire body catching fire at the sight of him. The quivering in my stomach moves lower and it takes every ounce of willpower I have not to touch him. Or, better yet, lick him.
He’s got his snakebites in this afternoon, and suddenly I want to know what the little silver balls will feel like against my lips when I kiss him. If I kiss him. Which I won’t. I’m done with adrenaline junkies just asking to get killed. And even if I wasn’t, the glimpses I’ve seen of him—of the scars on his body and the ones that lurk beneath his pretty-boy facade—scare the hell out of me. So that’s it. I’m grateful for what he did, but I’m done. Finished. I’ll dry his clothes, but then he has to go.
“Give me your stuff,” I tell him in the most I’m-so-not-impressed-with-your-beautiful-body voice I can manage. Of course, it’d probably be more convincing if I could catch my breath. “I’ll run down and put everything in the dryer.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I kind of do. It seems ungracious to let you freeze to death after you kept me from turning into another statistic.”
“Hey. That asshole wasn’t going to hurt you. I wouldn’t have let him.”
“I know.”
Instead of wrapping up in the blanket I gave him earlier, he reaches for the tangle of blankets on my unmade bed, pulls the top one off, and winds it around himself. Then he buries his face in it and pulls a deep breath in through his nose. My whole body goes hot when I figure out what he’s doing. He picked that blanket so he could smell me on it, so he’d be wrapped in my scent.
The thought does all kinds of crazy things to me, gives me all kinds of feels I just don’t want. It’s all I can do to keep from ripping it off him again. But then I’d be faced with that chest and those abs and all those gorgeous tattoos.
At this point, I don’t know what would be worse.
The smirk on his face tells me he knows exactly what I’m thinking. Of course he does. How could he not when girls drop at his feet wherever he goes?
Forcing my sudden attack of lust back down to wherever it came from, I gather up his clothes and a couple of dollars in quarters and run them down to the employee laundry room. When I get back, he’s standing in front of my bookshelf, my battered copy of Catcher in the Rye in his hands.
Why am I not surprised? Of course he’s a Holden Caulfield fan.
“You like this book?” he asks, his voice so casual that I know he’s really interested in the answer.
“Yeah. Do you?”
He shrugs. “I’ve never read it.”
“Not even junior year in high school?” I ask, surprised. I thought rich boys like him were all about fancy schools.
“I was never much of a student. By the time I was fifteen, I’d been kicked out of every major private school in Park City and Salt Lake City.”
Now that doesn’t surprise me at all. “You’d probably like that book, then.”
He glances at the innocuous red-and-white cover. “Oh, yeah? Why’s that?”
“The main character, Holden Caulfield, gets kicked out of a bunch of schools, too. He’s pretty much one of the best antiheroes ever written.” I move into my tiny little kitchen, which is really just a minifridge, a microwave, and the Keurig Remi bought me for Christmas last year. “You want some coffee or hot chocolate or something?”
“Yeah, sure.”
I gesture to the little carousel I’ve got that holds all the different K-cups, but he’s too interested in the blurb on the back of the book to notice. “You can borrow that if you want,” I tell him.
Immediately he puts it down. “No, that’s okay.”
“You sure? It’s a great story. With that book, Salinger proved—long before U.S. pop culture figured it out—that antiheroes actually make the best heroes.”
Now he looks at the book like it’s a king cobra that’s got him in its sights. “I’m good. I’ve never been much of a reader.”
“I didn’t used to be, either.” I pop my favorite kind of coffee into the Keurig, then hit brew. If he doesn’t like it, he should have told me what he wanted.
“Really? With a name like Ophelia, I kind of thought you’d be all about reading.”
Because I can sense the tension in him, I go with the change of topic. “Nope. Not really.”
“So, what changed?” he asks. At my blank look, he continues, “To get you reading? You’ve got a lot of books here.”
I think about those long weeks in the hospital, the longer weeks lying on the sofa at home, just waiting to get stronger. Just waiting for the pain to go away. It never did.
“It’s a long story.”
His usually cocky smile is gone, and in its place is an intensity that takes my breath away. “Seems like we have a lot of those between us, don’t we?”
“I guess we do.”
He catches my eye, holds my gaze for long seconds. “We going to do anything about that?”
Just the thought has my breath hitching in my throat. “I don’t know. I don’t … think so.”
He nods, like that’s exactly what he expected me to say. Then again, I’m pretty sure it’s what he would say if I asked about his secrets, so why wouldn’t he expect the same from me?
“Tell me something else, then.”
I gaze at him warily. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. Tell me something, anything, about you.”
“Why should I?”
“Because if you do it, so will I.”
I can’t help smiling. “A little I’ll-show-you-mine-if-you-show-me-yours?”
It’s only when he grins that I realize what I said—and what it sounds like. He doesn’t call me on it, though. Instead he smiles innocently and says, “I’m all for quid pro quo.”
But I can see his eyes, can see the way his pupils have dilated and his irises have turned a deep midnight blue. This is a bad idea.
Yet I can’t stop myself from smiling back. Any more than I can stop the words tumbling out of my mouth.
“I hate Brussels sprouts, cold weather, and guys who think they can have whatever they want.”
Chapter 13
Z
She’s playing with me. Ophelia’s playing with me, and I don’t know why it matters so much—it’s not like I’ve ever been very big on playing—but it does. It really fucking does.
I pick up my cup of coffee, take a long sip as I contemplate how I’m going to respond to what she said. Then, just as the smile on her face starts to fall—like she thinks I didn’t get what she was doing or something—I say, “I like peaches, fresh powder, and girls who don’t take shit from anybody.”
She laughs. “I like peaches, too.”
“I know.”
“How?” She stops in the middle of brewing herself a cup of coffee to look at me in surprise.
“Because you smell like them. Taste like them.” I hold the blanket out a little in front of me so she can’t see that just the thought of kissing her makes me hard. “When I first met you, I thought you were from Georgia.”
For long seconds she doesn’t answer. When she finally does, her voice is low. Husky. Like she just tumbled out of bed and into conversation with me. I like the sound of it. “Where are you from?”
“Park City, born and bred.”
“Really? I didn’t think any of the boarders were actually from here. I thought you guys moved here to train.”
“Most do. But Ash, Cam, Luc, and I were all raised here. We were boarding practically before we could stand.”
“Really?” She looks fascinated, so I continue.
“Yeah, though my dad put me on skis first. So much classier than snowboarding.”
“Still, he must be proud of you, right? You’re one of the top-ranked snowboarders in the country, about to take a shot at the Olympics.”
Shit. I should have known better than to bring up my dad. I never do, except with my friends, so the fact that he came up so easily with Ophelia kind of shocks me. Because it does, and because I feel like I need a little time to regroup, I take my coffee and head back over to the couch/bed.
Ophelia follows me, and though she sits next to me with no hesitation, there’s an awareness that sparks between us, one that only makes my dick harder—as well as my resolve to keep my hands off her.
“It’s my turn to ask a question,” I tell her, after pulling my attention away from her pink lips and pinker cheeks.
“Go for it.”
“If you hate the cold, what are you doing here? Because it’s obvious you didn’t come for the slopes.”
“I needed a job, and since my aunt and uncle manage Lost Canyon, they—”
“Alex and Penny are your aunt and uncle?”
“Yeah. You look shocked.”
“No, not shocked, just … Why aren’t you living with them instead of over here in the employee lodge?”
“They offered, but I chose to live here. They’re my family, but we’re not close.”
“Why not?”
“You do realize that you’ve asked three questions, right? Not just one?”
“Yes, but you only answered one of the questions, so I don’t think the fact that I asked three counts.”
She narrows her eyes at me. “I think it does.”
“Fine. You ask me three questions and I’ll pick one to answer.”
“Technically, I answered two.”
“Yes, but you didn’t finish answering the first one—”
“Because you interrupted me!”
I shrug, try to look as innocent as possible. “Rules are rules, you know.”
“What rules?” she demands. “We never set any rules.”
“That doesn’t mean there aren’t any. I’m making them up as we go along.”
“Oh, really? And why do you get to make up the rules?”
I pretend to be shocked she even has to ask. “Because it’s my game.”
She frowns at me for a minute, then says, “You’re a real jerk, you know that?”
“I do. Absolutely. Never pretended otherwise.”
She rolls her eyes, then reaches out to fake-punch me, but I grab her fist in my hand, gently pry her fingers open. Then, because I can’t stop myself even though I know it’s a bad idea, I press a kiss to the center of her palm.
Her eyes jump to mine, and for a second I think she might kick me out, blanket and all. God knows after what happened the last time I was here, I wouldn’t blame her if she did. But then she reaches her hand up to my face, traces my upper lip and then my bottom one with her index finger. And I
know I’m not going anywhere.
“How come your room is so bare?” I ask. “There’s nothing personal in here at all.”
“That’s four questions and I never even got my one!”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Because you don’t deserve an answer.”
She starts to move away, but I grab her wrist, hold her in place. Then I open my mouth and suck her finger gently inside. Her breathing turns erratic and her eyes go forest green on me. Thank God. Though it’s only been a few minutes, it feels like I’ve been sitting here—aroused—for hours, while she just continued on, blissfully unaware. It’s not a predicament I’m used to.
Before I can do—or ask—anything else, her other hand comes up, cups my cheek, and for long seconds we just sit there, our eyes locked on each other’s. It’s strange and exhilarating and a little terrifying all at once, and there’s a part of my brain screaming at me to look away. To just back away.
I threw myself off the side of a mountain today, boarded terrain no one’s ever boarded before, and I swear it was a million times easier than this. And yet I don’t move. I barely breathe. I can’t. Because what I see in her eyes, what I see of her, is so fascinating, so heartbreaking, that for the first time in my life, I’m more interested in knowing about her than I am in my own self-preservation. It’s a strange feeling, and a confusing one.
I’m not sure how long we sit there just watching each other.
Long enough for twilight to turn to full dark outside her window.
Long enough for the wind to kick up and snow flurries to turn the air a bright white.
More than long enough for me to ask myself what the hell I’m doing … and to tell myself to get the hell out of Dodge.
In the end, I don’t go anywhere, though. I can’t, not when she’s looking at me like that, all trembling lips and wide, wild eyes.
“What are we doing?” she finally asks softly.
“I have no idea.”
“Me neither.”
And then she’s leaning forward, her lips brushing tentatively against my own.
There’s a part of me that wants to grab her. That wants to plunge my hands into her hair and just hold her in place as I explore every inch of her mouth. Every inch of her body.