by Kara Braden
So Ian trailed through the little piles of snow and mud puddles, staying well behind her, and tried to be patient, but finally the cold and silence got the best of him. He stomped forward to where she was standing under a tree, surveying their surroundings with her field glasses.
“We’re not going to starve,” he said, his voice sounding absurdly loud in the silent forest, though he kept to a normal speaking volume. “Is there any sensible reason for us to stay here, when we could instead be back at the cabin, having sex?”
Cecily had begun to turn, most likely to reprimand him for startling the game animals who weren’t there anyway. Then she dropped the field glasses, leaving them to swing against the strap around her neck, and started to grin.
Ian glared.
Instead of backing down, she laughed. “I take it that counts as a romantic proposition, coming from you?”
The laugh seemed to slip beneath his skin, winding through his ribs and around his heart, pushing away his boredom and irritation.
Ignoring his fierce glare, she set her gloved hands on his waist, compressing the down parka to pull him close against her body. Her kiss was cold and hot at once, soothing his mood that much more. As if of their own volition, his hands came up to circle her shoulders, and the last of his pique slipped away under the teasing swipes of her tongue.
When the kiss ended, he asked, “Does this mean we can go back?”
To his limitless frustration, she shook her head. “No, but I think I owe you for last night.”
He blamed the cold on his inability to immediately see her intent. When she pushed him back, he almost tripped, startled. He scanned her face for any hint of anger or panic, but all he saw was sly amusement. Then his back hit a tree. Drops of water fell on his hood and rolled down the waterproof fabric, and the thick layer of down cushioned him from feeling the bark.
She kissed him again, pressing her chest against his, rising up on her toes to better reach. Despite heavy boots, he slipped on the tree roots and caught her arm for balance, remembering at the last moment to avoid her right shoulder. Then he almost slipped again as she dropped to a crouch in front of him, and her hands, now bare of gloves, slipped up under his hip-length parka to find his belt.
The last of his irritation vanished in a white-hot flash. Cecily was wonderful and brilliant, and even Ian could never predict what she’d do next. He dug his boots into the dirt between the tree roots and let his head fall back against the bark, closing his eyes in anticipation.
Then he almost yelped in indignant surprise. “Cold hands!” he snapped, sucking in his gut to avoid the icy touch.
She laughed, looking up at him. “I wasn’t planning on using my hands.”
Oh.
Ian’s shiver had nothing to do with the cold. He thought about asking if she’d changed her mind about the condoms, but then decided there was no sense in talking at all. She opened his jeans, used icy fingers to tug down the waistband of his boxers, and licked at his cock just once. The contrast of freezing air and her hot tongue sent liquid fire boiling up from his gut, up through his spine, and into his brain, destroying all rational thought.
He reached down to touch her hair, but couldn’t catch hold with his gloves on. Her laugh drove away the chilly air before her mouth followed, taking his entire half-hard cock into her mouth at once. Then she had to draw back as Ian went from halfway to entirely there in what felt like a single heartbeat.
“You’re perfect,” he whispered, fighting to keep his balance only because falling would mean she’d stop. “Cecily, you’re wonderful. Oh, fuck.”
She laughed without stopping, hands clenching on the backs of his thighs for balance. She was in an awkward crouch, not on her knees on the damp earth, and she kept having to pull back to breathe through her sniffling from the cold. He didn’t dare move, though all he wanted was to thrust forward into her mouth. He had no idea how he’d gone so quickly from fatally bored to so aroused that he wouldn’t notice if a bear attacked, except to ask it to wait and let him finish.
Then she found her balance, resting one knee on his boot, and it hurt enough to momentarily distract him until she took his cock deeper, fighting her gag reflex and swallowing until her nose pressed against his body.
“Oh, fuck. God, Cecily, don’t stop. Please,” he grated out, aware in some distant way that his voice had taken on overtones of pleading. “Please, don’t stop.”
Thankfully, she didn’t even hesitate but kept at it instead, letting the gentle press of his hand guide her to move faster, taking him another fraction of an inch deeper into her mouth. Ian tried to gasp out a warning, but his mind had stopped functioning.
He came in a flash of blinding pleasure and affection he’d never even imagined, because love had never been tied up with sex for him. If he’d been able to speak, he might have let his thoughts—his feelings—escape, but it was all he could do to breathe. He didn’t even flinch when cold fingertips brushed his abdomen as she pulled up his boxers, fastened his jeans, and then fumbled to get his belt buckled in place.
Cursing the gloves that made his fingers clumsy, he tried to help Cecily to her feet, but just ended up uselessly petting her parka. Laughing at his efforts, she fisted her bare hands into his jacket and kissed him, slow and sweet, filling the air with the warmth of their mingled breath.
“Thanks for last night,” she whispered against his lips.
All but purring inside, Ian crossed his hands at the small of her back, holding her close, ignoring the rifle and field glasses trapped between their bodies. “Can we go hunting again tomorrow?”
Chapter 18
November 2
As the little aircraft taxied to a stop, Ian glanced sidelong at Cecily, who was busy with the controls. Tension had crept into her body and expression over the last hour as Little Prairie Air Traffic Control had guided them through the crowded airspace—well, crowded compared to Pinelake. Now, he could almost see the protective walls surrounding her. Necessary as they were, he hated them. He wondered if they’d ever truly be gone, or if she would simply learn how to better hide them.
“You don’t have to do this,” he insisted.
“After yesterday?” She laughed tightly and shook her head. Then she unlatched the door, letting a blast of cold air into the warm passenger compartment. Quickly, he zipped up his parka and exited his side of the plane.
He huffed, breath steaming in the frigid air, and fumbled his gloves out of his pockets as the chill settled into his fingers. Little Prairie wasn’t nearly as remote as Pinelake, but that meant nothing when it came to fighting against the bitter chill. They’d discussed the trip to Little Prairie last night and this morning, and she’d absolutely refused to change her mind. She’d even gone so far as to tell him he could stay back at the cabin—as if he’d send her off alone?
Absolutely not. Especially not when she was doing this for his benefit, not her own.
So he walked beside her, trying to find the right space to offer comfort and support without crowding her. She led the way to the small terminal, where a security guard checked their identification and allowed them to enter. She looked around, then headed in the direction of a sign that promised car rentals. “You have a driver’s license, city boy?”
Ian grinned, wishing she’d take off her sunglasses so he could see her eyes. “Yes, though driving in Manhattan is a futile effort. Makes it easier to steal Preston’s car when I go on vacation, though.” He was relieved that her answering laugh was a bit closer to normal.
Soon enough, they were in possession of a set of keys to a Ford Taurus and a paper map. Cecily followed him out to the parking lot and opened the map. He stopped looking for the car and glanced at the map. He’d been carrying his cell phone out of habit. Now, he powered it up and was relieved to see he had signal. As his phone started syncing with a backlog of emails and messages, he opened his navigation and
said, “GPS. What’s the destination address?”
“GPS? Really?” She turned away from the map to stare at the phone.
With anyone else, Ian would have asked sharp questions about living under a rock or in a dark cave. “Don’t you have a—of course you don’t,” he said, momentarily caught off guard at the idea of someone in this modern age who owned an airplane, even a little one, but not a smartphone. And with no television and minimal Internet access, it was all too possible that she’d never even seen one.
He handed the phone to her, hit the lock button on the key fob, and then followed the sound of the horn to their car. He unlocked the doors and opened Cecily’s. She gave him a tense smile of thanks, offered him the phone, and got into the passenger seat.
As he circled around to the driver’s seat, he scanned his notifications. Over forty texts and twelve voice mails. He got into the car with a sigh and started the engine, reopening the navigation app. “Just put the health clinic address in here, and it’ll tell us where to go.”
“Civilian GPS,” she said with a little shake of her head. She prodded uncertainly at the on-screen keyboard. “I never thought it would happen.”
***
“This is the only reason to come to civilization,” Cecily declared as she pulled open the door to an unfamiliar fast food restaurant.
Ian glanced skeptically at the gaudy red scrawl on the side of the building. He’d never been one for fast food, even in college. “Who’s Tim Horton?” he asked, following her inside.
“Poor thing, you,” she said mock-sadly. Despite the fact that the unremarkable beige restaurant was crowded, with three-quarters of the plastic tables occupied, she walked right in without hesitation.
Noticing that she was rubbing at her arm, he asked, “Did they take blood?”
She nodded, darting a glance at him as she got into line. “Yeah, but that was easy. You get used to it in the military. I ended up getting a birth control shot instead of pills. It’s a little sore.”
He moved a hand to the small of her back, and gave her a grateful smile. Despite having lived in isolation for seven years, she’d insisted on STI testing for herself. At the rehab clinic, the doctors had taken his blood every week, or so it seemed, and STI testing had been part of his intake screening.
The smell of coffee distracted him. They moved up the line to the counter, where he was faced not just with coffee but with an array of doughnuts and pastries. Fifteen minutes later, he was riding a fantastic sugar high, washing down the remains of his third doughnut with rich coffee. Cecily grinned at him, having taken the more traditional route of starting with chili, saving her doughnut for last. Faced with a boring chicken panini of his own, he eyed her doughnut and lifted a hand.
“Yes,” she said, giving him a warning glare.
“Hm?”
“Yes, I am going to eat that.” She kicked his shin under the table. “Eat your lunch. We’ll get more to go, if you want.”
He turned and smiled at her. “You know me so well,” he said and picked up his sandwich. A bite proved it to be almost as good as the doughnut had been, which seemed somehow wrong. “Is this why you chose to come to Little Prairie?”
“Hm? Oh. No, this is a chain. They’re all over Canada,” she said, scraping her spoon in the bowl to get at the last of her chili.
“And yet, you live in the one town in Canada that doesn’t have these?” he asked, using the sandwich to point at her still-untouched doughnut.
With another affectionate nudge, she promised, “We’ll come back whenever you like, at least until the snow sets in.”
“Do you need to come back for the test results?”
She shook her head and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “We’ll go to Pinelake Monday or Tuesday and use the phone at the airfield.”
Ian nodded, hiding his disappointment at having to wait—though when he thought about it, the shot would require a week or so to take effect. So he finished half of his sandwich, and then changed the subject, saying, “I spoke to Preston.”
She swallowed her bite of doughnut. “Oh? How is he?”
“Good. Meaning overworked, but he’s not happy unless he’s busy,” Ian said with a wry smile. “He also said that if I didn’t pass on his greetings and gratitude, he’d shoot me, so there’s that.”
She grinned. “He’s a sweetheart.”
“That’s one word for it.”
Chapter 19
November 7
Cecily bagged her second deer barely an hour into the hunt, thanks to an unlikely shot of opportunity. She’d been just ten yards away from the group of does when the wind blew just right and the snow cleared enough for her to see the herd, brown fur blending seamlessly against winter-bare brown trees. This time, she let Ian field dress the carcass, and he took to the task with grim determination.
By late afternoon, they were back at the cabin, carcass dressed and butchered, meat packed away in the deep freezer. Cecily made tea and set a pot of stew to reheat. When she heard a slap on the table, she glanced over at him and saw he’d dropped her paperback onto the kitchen table.
“There’s a sequel. There has to be, with that ending,” he complained as he sat down. He twisted so he could put his feet up on Cecily’s usual chair. “It’s not the one you’re writing now, though.”
“I finished the sequel this summer. Don’t have a final copy yet,” she answered apologetically. “I got the proof but had to send it back.”
He huffed in irritation. “And you don’t have an electronic copy.”
“Actually, I do. It’s—” She blinked, watching as he pushed his chair away and left, long strides taking him back into the living room. A moment later, she heard the desk drawer open. “—on my laptop,” she finished, amused, and pulled the tea bags out of the mugs.
“The battery’s dead!” he called. “What’s the point of having a laptop if you’re going to let the battery run down?”
“I don’t actually use it, in case you haven’t noticed, except to email my publisher.” She frowned, stirring sugar into his tea with loud clinks of the spoon. She’d set up a new email account for her writing, mostly so she wouldn’t have to deal with messages from old friends from her past life.
She checked the fire in the stove, trying to gauge if it was hot enough to scorch the bottom of the stew, and then brought the tea out to the living room. Ian had made a mess of the desk, stacking his laptop on her in-progress stack of manuscript pages to make room for the second laptop, with the power cord draped over the box of blank paper on the other side.
“You don’t even have a password?” he asked.
“Why bother? You’re the first person to touch the thing beside me since I bought it, and you’d probably guess any password I thought up,” she said, finding a clear spot for his tea, well away from the manuscript.
“True.” He smiled at her. “The code for your gun safe is three-one-oh-three-four-six-one-six. Does it mean anything?”
“Other than the fact that you’re terrifying?”
With a huff of amusement, he turned, saying, “It’s a simple trick. One of my clients showed me. I’ll show you.”
Thinking it involved the laptop, she leaned in just as he rose. His elbow hit her arm, jostling her, and hot tea splashed everywhere, soaking through her button-down shirt and jeans and his sleeve.
The cup fell from her hand. She backed away and hit the couch with bruising force, overwhelmed by the memory of hot pain searing through her, pain she couldn’t control, couldn’t stop. She clawed her shirt away from her skin, panic rising up in her chest. She heard a footstep. Harsh voices shouted at her too fast for her to understand their words, every shout punctuated by more heat. More pain. She lashed out with a clumsy kick as she reached back, shoving something out of her way to make room to fight or escape.
“Cecily!”
&n
bsp; The sound of her name—her first name, rather than her rank—cut through the suffocating, disorienting fear that gripped her. Ian, she thought, and the panic receded a notch. Dizzy, she crouched down so she could sit on the floor before she lost her balance and fell. She took a deep breath and heat seared into her skin, over her ribs, threatening to drag her under again.
“I’m fine,” she said tightly, more for her own benefit than Ian’s. Her fingers burned, clenched around the cooling fabric, but she could breathe. She knew he was nearby, just a few feet away, giving her the space she needed.
She opened her eyes, staring at the floor, and took a few more breaths. Her pulse started to slow, and a tiny, incredulous part of her mind thought that this hadn’t been so bad. Her shirt was still warm under her hand and cool where she’d pulled it away from her body, allowing air to flow. It couldn’t have been more than two minutes, start to finish. Maybe less. That was a hell of a lot better than two hours.
He moved, not to approach Cecily but to leave the room. She closed her eyes and leaned against the wood slats forming the back of the sofa. She had to find a way to stop this from happening. Ian would only tolerate this for so long before he left, and she’d be alone again. She was alone now—a thought that threatened to pull her under once more.
Then he returned, settling down on the floor nearby, a foot of space carefully left between them. “Take off your wet shirt,” he said, holding out her warm bathrobe.
Her hesitation lasted less than a second. She tried to undo her shirt buttons, but her hands were shaking from the adrenaline still flooding her system. The harder she tried to steady herself, the worse the trembling became, until finally, embarrassed, she said, “Ian…”
Without a word, he leaned over and unbuttoned her shirt. He let her pull it off and took it. Cecily fought to tug the robe over herself, shivering from the cold air on wet skin.