by Jill Shalvis
into her bared ones. The thick cotton of his pants felt soft against her skin, the muscles beneath those cargoes not even close to soft. Nope, they were rock hard.
And that wasn’t all that was hard. She had to touch, had to, so she glided her hands down his chest—
“Oh no, you don’t.” Taking her hands in his, he lifted them up to either side of her head, pressing in so that she could feel his erection. “I’m not going off early again. This time it’s about you.” Dipping his head, he ran his hot gaze over her.
She knew what he saw. Her shirt had risen up on her thighs, most likely revealing at least some of her sunny yellow bikini panties. The knowledge that she was so exposed made thinking all but impossible. “I told you, I got plenty out of tonight.”
He touched his forehead to hers. “I need another chance here.”
“So this is an ego visit? To prove your sexual prowess?”
He paused at that, and she waited for a line from him, a charming, arousing line that would melt her panties right off, as if they needed any more melting. He could have done it too. He was the master of charm when he wanted to be, and she already knew she was helpless against it.
But in a move that startled her to the bone, he went with complete and bare honesty. “Yeah.”
She stared at him, moved in spite of herself. “You don’t have to prove anything to me. You should know that by now.”
“I don’t want to prove anything at all, I want to show you.” He nudged a thigh between hers, gliding along the bare flesh of her inner thighs, brushing her panties.
Her breath caught audibly.
“I want to make you feel some of what I feel when I’m with you,” he told her.
Halfway there, she could have said—if she could have spoken, that is. As far as charming went, and arousing, it didn’t get better than this, but what drew her, what made her melt, was that he wasn’t just giving her a line at all.
He meant it. “Again, then,” she murmured.
“And then afterward, maybe I’ll be able to breathe around you.”
“You can’t breathe around me?”
“No, and I need to be able to breathe, Katie.”
“So you think afterward, it’ll all go away? This attraction? Is that how it works for you?”
“Yes.” Then he kissed her. Completely. Thoroughly. And good God, the man could kiss. He kissed all her thoughts right out of her head; then he kissed the bones right out of her body. He kissed her until she couldn’t have even said her name to save her own life.
It went on, long and hot, deep and wet, his tongue stroking hers, his hands letting go of hers to stroke her body as well, for how long she didn’t know. And when they came up for air, she could only stare at him.
Not breathing any too steadily himself, he offered a self-deprecating smile that went straight to her heart. His hair was messed up from her fingers. She’d gotten his sweatshirt off, his shirt unbuttoned. Her hand was over his heart. The hair on his chest was soft compared to the hard, hot flesh beneath. His pants were half undone, and the sight of his ripped abs upped her heat several million degrees.
Closing her eyes, she set her cheek to his chest and felt the beat of his heart thumping in tune to hers. “I’m awfully worked up here, Cam.”
His hand came up to her head, the other stroking down her back, slipping into her panties. “That makes two of us.” He squeezed her butt, then dipped lower, his fingers unerringly finding her and ripping a hungry sound from her throat as she spread her legs for him.
“God, you’re sweet.” He bent a little, seeking her mouth with his again as he touched her. “So damn sweet.”
“Not that sweet,” she managed, pushing his shirt the rest of the way off his shoulders. He bunched hers up to her waist to take in her skimpy panties. “Ah, man. First pink, now yellow—” His hands were shaky as he continued to lift her shirt up, letting out another of those sexy raw groans when he revealed her bare breasts. “Look at you,” he murmured.
“Listen, I know we already rushed—Ohmigod,” she choked out when he rasped a tongue over a nipple, then drew it into his mouth. “Rushed things, before, on the mountain—”
He made his way to her other breast and her eyes rolled back in her head. “Cam—Please. Oh, please—”
Her rushed, breathless words seemed to unleash him.
Them.
In less time than it took to draw in her next breath, he had the shirt off over her head, sailing across the room behind him, and his fingers hooked in her panties, tugging them down.
No slouch, she got his pants to his thighs, freeing his essentials.
And, oh God, his essentials…He was big and hard and hot, and her being so naked while he was still relatively clothed was a shocking turn-on. But before she could take the time to fully admire what she held in both her hands, he’d crouched down and gently spread her legs farther; then he leaned in and put his mouth on her, stroking her with his tongue.
Her bones liquefied. She dug her fingers into his shoulders for an anchor in her spinning world while he added his fingers to the mix, sliding one inside her as he flicked his tongue over the current center of her universe. Her hips pushed at him in slow, rocking circles that she couldn’t control. “Cam,” she gasped, on the edge, the very edge, and when he responded by sucking her gently into his mouth, she took a flying leap.
She was anchored upright by his hands on her hips, which turned out to be all that kept her from sinking to the floor. When the blood pumping through her veins dulled to a low roar, she blinked her vision clear. His eyes were blazing with male satisfaction, while his entire body practically vibrated with tension as he straightened, a condom in his fingers. Her hands bumped into his as she tried to help roll it over the length of him, but all she really accomplished was making herself hotter. Him, too, if his heavy breathing and the sheen of sweat on his brow meant anything. He lifted her up, thunked her against the door, and then with one thrust was inside her.
Filling her nearly to bursting.
God, oh God. He began to move and she moaned at the withdrawal, gasped at the delicious return as he held her trapped to the wall for his achingly slow thrusts. His hold on her hips prevented her from speeding him up, or from taking any more than he gave. He was in charge, completely, and the knowledge of that had her toes already curling. Somehow he managed to hold her off, dragging things out, stroking her with careful, purposeful thrusts that suffused her in mindless pleasure, taking her higher and higher, until she could barely stand it. “Cam—”
At the panting sound of his name on her lips, he made a rough sound, the muscle in his jaw bunching. “I know.” His mouth was at her ear, his breath rough and uneven as he stroked her with those fierce thrusts that kept pushing her up and outside of herself. “God, I know.”
Yeah, He was lost in her. And she was completely lost in him as well. Lost, and she tightened her arms and legs on him, holding him to her, which didn’t prove to be necessary because he had her as she exploded like a supernova. He had her and wasn’t letting her go; then suddenly she realized she wasn’t lost at all.
But found.
Found, right there in the dark, damp aftermath, against the door, gently cradled by the strong, silent Cameron Wilder, the man who, in spite of her promise to the contrary, she’d most definitely begun to fall for.
Cam woke up suddenly in the dark. He and Katie hadn’t managed to get more than a few feet from the front door, where they’d made some wild crazy love that he was still exhausted from, and were sprawled together on the couch. A tight fit, but he realized she was crying, sobbing, as if her heart had broken, which was what had woken him. “Katie?”
“No.” Her voice was raw and filled with wrenching grief, writhing as if held back by something. “No, they’re not dead, they’re not, they’re just trapped.”
He pulled her in tight, stroking her damp hair back from her face. “Katie, you’re dreaming.”
“They’re not dead.” She
dug her fingers into his pecs. “Please don’t let them all be dead!”
“Baby, come on. Wake up.”
Her eyes flew open and she went stiff in his arms, breathing like she’d been running a marathon.
“Just a dream,” he repeated softly, and when she jerked out of his arms, he reached past her to turn on the lamp.
Her eyes were glassy, glazed over. Her skin was clammy and pale. She broke his heart. “Katie—”
“Water,” she said, her hand on her throat. “I need some water.”
“Okay.” He got off the couch, went to the kitchen for a glass, and when he came back, she was burrowed under the blanket he’d tossed over them an hour ago.
She didn’t move, but he didn’t believe she was already asleep. He sank back to the couch and slowly pulled her against him. She went willingly, pressing her face to the crook of his neck.
He stroked his hands up and down her body to try to warm her up. “Do you do this every night?”
“It’s getting better.”
In other words, yes. “Katie, do you ever talk about it, because maybe that would help—”
“No.” She shuddered. “It wouldn’t.”
She dreamed about the people who hadn’t lived, was tortured by the fact that she had, even as she’d used the entire experience to try to better her life.
And what had he done with his accident? An accident that had been his own fault, an accident where no one else besides him had been injured? He’d felt sorry for himself.
Talk about humbling. Heart hurting for her, he stroked her hair, her back, waiting until he knew she’d drifted back to sleep for real.
But it was a long time before it came for him.
Chapter 17
The next morning, Annie chopped tomatoes for that night’s spaghetti sauce. Knife in hand, she looked around for something else to chop dead just as Cam came in the back door. One look at him, at the sleepy-lidded eyes and the unmistakable and utter lack of tension in his body, and she knew. “Are you kidding me?”
“What?”
“Don’t what me,” she snapped. “It’s my turn for sex, dammit!”
He went directly to the pot, but she lifted her knife in his direction and he backed off.
“No one eats my food until I get mine.”
He arched a brow. “Should I tell Nick to put more men on the job?”
“You joke when I’m holding a knife on you?”
He lifted his hands in surrender, and she jerked her chin toward the door. “Stone has a group that needs a guide to take them ice picking up Tenneman Falls. You’re it.”
“I know. He just paged me out of bed.”
“Oh, boo-hoo.” She kicked him out of the kitchen, then sagged against the counter. Her life was out of control.
Her love life was out of control.
Her marriage…
Dammit. She’d always known this would happen, that she’d somehow muck everything up, because like the rest of the Wilders, she was always on a hell-bent mission to self-destruct her own happiness. It pissed her off. She slammed the knife into another tomato.
She could blame her mother and father, the alcoholic misfits who’d had no right having children. Or she could blame a system that let kids suffer.
But since she’d so adamantly refused to let Cam be a product of his environment, she knew she couldn’t very well do it either. So she’d raised herself, so what. And so when she’d finished that, she’d raised Cam, too, and then she’d gone out and gotten herself the life she wanted.
The end.
Only she’d still managed to continue the cycle and destroy that life, because apparently some of her parents’ genes lived deep inside her. God, that royally pissed her off. She grabbed a few green peppers and slammed her knife into those as well.
She really missed having a man in her bed to ease some of this tension. She missed having someone hold her close, someone to make her laugh, make her purr.
Warm her feet.
She missed waking up knowing she could have a quickie if she wanted. She missed cooking for someone who was hers, heart and soul.
She missed the skinny lug, dammit, missed everything about him. He really had some nerve taking this divorce thing so seriously.
Okay, that was her fault too. She’d pushed for it. Pushed and pushed, only wanting him to push back, even once.
She shoved the peppers aside and looked for something else, but there was nothing but his coat hanging on the hook by the back door, reminding her that he was here, within touch, and yet untouchable.
They really had stopped seeing each other, and God, that hurt. But dammit, she was turning forty, not dying. She wanted romance. She wanted to be wooed. Was that so wrong? Had she grown unattractive? Somehow lost her sex appeal? She looked down at her new clothes. No. She had it going on, and she needed him to see that, now.
Right now.
She washed her hands, grabbed Nick’s spare coat, jammed on a knit hat, and headed out. It was snowing, natch, and she sank into the fresh snow as she headed around the back of the lodge to the equipment garage.
The side door was locked. She glanced at the KNOCK FIRST sign, but the compressor was on, not to mention Nick was probably wearing his iPod blasting at decibels uncharted, so knocking wouldn’t do her any good. She trudged through the snow to the front of the garage, punched in the key code, and waited as the electric garage door began to lift.
Just as it did, a gust of wind blew up, knocking some branches of the trees above her. They completely unloaded, dumping snow on her head. “Perfect,” she muttered, swiping her face. When she could see again, Nick stood there in the opened garage door, hands on his hips, glaring at her. He wore threadbare jeans and a Cal sweatshirt shoved up to the elbows. He looked rumpled, edgy, temperamental, and dammit, sexy. “I was painting,” he grated out. “Until you open the door without so much as a knock, sending snow and gook and stuff inside, and now I’ll have to start over.”
She blinked more snow from her eyelashes as she mentally erased sexy from the list because she refused to be attracted to a complete ass. “Well, excuse me for trying to—”
“What? For trying to what? Ruin my day? You need to yell at me some more? Ignore me? What? What was it that couldn’t wait until I was done that you had to barge in here without knocking and ruin the paint job?”
Well, dammit. She was going to lose it. She recognized the tell-tale signs easily enough—burning throat, stinging eyes, tickle in her nose.
But hell if she’d cry in front of this unfeeling, unsentimental bastard. “Sign the damn papers!” And with that, she whirled away, heading back toward the lodge, where she was going to make a big batch of brownies and eat every single one in celebration of her impending divorce.
For two days, Katie pretty much smiled through her work. She couldn’t think, not with all the glowing she was doing. Mostly nothing distracted her from numbers. Mostly, numbers were the only thing that had ever made sense in her world.
And then she’d come to Wilder Adventures.
Met Cam.
Fell for Cam.
Slept with Cam.
Okay, so there’d been no sleeping involved, and she knew damn well that in his mind, what they’d done had been nothing more than a relieving of the tension.
But he was wrong.
It’d been more.
Far more.
She’d been here for three weeks, three of the best weeks of her life, thanks to a certain sexy guy who’d shown up on her doorstep two nights ago and taken her to heaven and back with his body. She could use a few more nights like that, but he’d taken a trip to Tenneman Falls.
She’d hoped to spend more time with him before she left, but that time was running short. Maybe she should wish on another falling star…. Laughing at herself, she picked up the deposit bag and headed for the bank. Her car handled itself just fine on the clear roads, though when she got into Wishful, she couldn’t park in front of the bank because of a hug
e mountain of pushed snow. Instead, she had to park in front of Wishful Delights, from which