Mouth set in a determined line, she walked to the edge of the mud, her bare feet sinking into the earth. She took a giant step forward, and her foot disappeared with a loud sucking noise into the mud. Thick, dark brown, watery, goopy mud that rose past her ankles as she put her full weight on that leg.
“Ugh. It’s freezing.”
Upper lip curling away from her teeth, she hunched her shoulders but moved her left leg to join her right. “And really, really gross.”
Harley held his breath. One false move, one comment in the wrong tone of voice and she’d flee. She glanced back over her shoulder at him, and he prayed the sketchpad braced on his lap would hide his harder-than-the-surrounding-tree-trunks cock.
Was he enjoying the show? Hell, yeah. Would he get a face full of stinking black mud and lose his Hineahuone if she read it on his face? Hell yeah again.
“Sorry.”
“No, you’re not.” Bree grimaced and sank to her knees.
She cupped a palm full of mud in both hands. With a sigh, she swiped her hands down her thighs, leaving behind thick smears of mud.
Yeah, he wasn’t the slightest bit sorry.
He must’ve made an involuntary sound, a groan crushed out of a body in the throes of all-consuming lust, because she froze mid-transference of mud to stomach. Her lips curved, just the tiniest dimple in the corner. But enough to know she’d spotted something obvious that Harley had missed.
Bree was the one in control here, not him.
Without lowering her gaze, Bree scooped up another handful of thick, peaty mud, squeezing it between her fingers before slicking it over her right breast. Her nipple immediately budded from the contact—he knew it must be cold, because a rash of goosebumps spread over her skin. Helpless to move, blood AWOL from his brain and rushing to his groin, Harley could only stare, mesmerized as Bree spread handful after handful of mud all over herself.
When she rose up higher on her knees and coated her inner thighs with the stuff, so close to heaven…well, thank God she wasn’t wearing a bikini, or he might’ve embarrassed himself.
“More?” she asked.
“Yeah.” He licked dust-dry lips and glanced down at his sketchpad, where the only thing he’d drawn in the last few minutes was a jerky line where his hand had skidded off the blank page. “Get it through your hair, too.”
He expected resistance but instead received a kittenish smile. “Am I not dirty enough for you, baby?”
Harley forgot how to language. Only another rough moan slipped from his tongue as she gave him a saucy wink, laughed and lay back in the mud. She stretched out her arms and legs and squelched them open and shut.
“Mud angel,” she said. “Oh. My. God. This is the craziest thing I’ve done in years.” She propped herself up on her elbows, filthy water streaming out of the tangle of her hair—which was no longer blonde but caked brown with a variety of twigs and leaves in it.
“Where do you want me?”
His cock surged against the fly of his shorts. Now. Here. Muddy and so fucking sexy it made his balls ache.
“Like that,” he said, gripping the edge of the sketchpad. “Don’t move an inch.”
Harley’s pencil flew across the page. He couldn’t keep up with the overload of images added to imagination that flowed through him. The flames that hadn’t caught earlier now exploded like a chunk of wood tossed carelessly onto a bonfire. Gone was the stiff and emotionally guarded woman who wouldn’t make eye contact with him. In her place was Hineahuone, beauty created from raw elements. She looked at Harley the same way he imagined Hineahuone looked at Tāne, the son of Ranginui and Paptuanuku, the man who had sculptured her from mud and breathed life into her mouth. She claimed him as her creator and lover with her bold, possessive stare. Showed her humanity with the hint of vulnerability in slender fingers reaching out to touch Tāne’s face.
“Tilt your chin to the left and bend your knee up a little—no, too much, down a fraction—there. Hold still.”
Page after page of sketches, until Hineahuone was affixed in his brain in 3D, as real to him as the woman shivering in the mud. Harley’s pencil stilled, and he laid it on the page where he’d been obsessing about the bumps of her ribs and the lush curve of her breasts—all for research, of course.
“You should’ve told me you were getting cold,” he said.
“It’s f-fine,” she said without breaking the pose he’d ordered her into five minutes earlier. “Keep g-going.”
Harley slid the sketchpad and pencil back into his bag, withdrew his smartphone. Bree’s eyes slitted above the splattering of mud specks on her cheeks—he’d been generous enough not to insist she put the mud on her face.
“P-photos weren’t part of the deal.”
“Just a few shots. You know I’ll need them once I start with the oils. I swear nobody but me will see them.”
“One t-toe of my m-muddy body appearing on s-social media and you’re a d-dead man,” she said. “Hurry u-up.”
He fired off a couple of shots, got her to change positions twice and then returned the camera to the bag. Aiming a long glance in her direction, he bent to strip off his boots and socks. Followed that by snagging the back of his shirt and pulling it over his head.
Her brow furrowed, cutely flaking off some of the dried mud. “W-what are y-you doing?”
“Being prepared.” Harley dropped the shirt onto his backpack and then crossed to the edge of the mud pit. “For the inevitable.” He extended his hand.
“The inevitable?” Her cold, wet fingers gripped his.
“When you exact your revenge by pulling me down into that disgusting muck with you.”
Her trembling mouth spread into a wide smile. “I like a man who’s prepared,” she said and tugged hard on his hand.
Harley barked out a laugh as he tipped forward, cannonballing ungracefully into the mud. Freezing water soaked through his shorts as he floundered for a moment, trying to find purchase in the slipperiness in order to flip onto his back. He managed to roll over an instant before Bree pounced on him.
“You were picturing this payback the whole time, weren’t you?” he asked, laughing—and certainly not complaining—as Bree straddled him and swiped mud into his hair.
“Oh, this isn’t payback,” she said, wriggling her bottom higher up his body so she sat on his stomach, pressing on both of his shoulders to keep him pinned in place. He could’ve dislodged her king-of-the-mountain position with very little effort—but the view from down here? With her mud-coated breasts swaying temptingly close to his face and her thighs spread over his abs? Bloody unbelievable.
So far her version of payback was aligned with his version of best, nature-encounter, ever.
Bree brushed a whisper of a kiss against his lips. Even the cold, muddy water dripping onto his jaw couldn’t dampen the sizzle of heat running through that quick touch of their mouths.
“This is payback.”
She lowered her head again, her tongue darting out to flick against his lower lip. At his moan, Bree repeated the action, but this time allowed her parted mouth to hover within a whisper of his. Muscles in his neck pulled taut with the effort to not strain upward and claim her lips, to not draw her into the type of deep, soul-wrenching kiss he so desperately needed.
He needed? Since when did he ever desperately need any kind of kiss from a woman? When did he need a woman, period? Harley’s gaze zeroed in on her lowered lashes as she delicately teased and tormented his mouth with more feathery-soft kisses.
Since Bree. Since all roads drew him back to Bree.
“Dammit,” he said.
Her lashes fluttered open, and he caught a glimpse of raw emotion flicker across her eyes before she shut them and kissed him speechless. Awareness of petty annoyances like the rock jabbing into his ass-cheek faded to the background as Bree slipped her sweet tongue into his mouth and dragged him under. Nothing but the press of her mouth to his and the weight of her body as she melted onto him could distract him from
having her in his arms. Her breasts flattened against his chest as she stretched out on top of him. To hell with the mud and the first cool drops of rain pinging against his legs.
The sound of a throat being cleared came loudly from somewhere behind them. Bree rolled away with a squeak, sending a splatter of icy mud onto his stomach, which only an instant ago had been warmed by deliciously hot, skin-to-skin contact. Harley flipped onto his front and returned the grin of a man in his fifties in full hiking gear standing at the opposite side of the path. Slightly behind him, the man’s blushing female companion didn’t quite know where to look.
“Are you just fossicking around in there for yer sheila’s tonsils?” the man asked in a strong Australian accent. “Or do you need a mud-wrestling referee?”
Harley chuckled. “Kia ora. A referee sounds good. My sheila cheats.”
Something smacked his ass with a wet slap. “I do not cheat.”
But Bree didn’t correct him about being his “sheila”, and a little glow of warmth spread in his heart region. Like it or not, she was his woman.
“Get back into it then, mate. Looks as if you don’t mind a bloody bit if she cheats.”
The hiker and his woman squelched through the mud beside them, the woman keeping her crimson face aimed at her boots and muttering, “Sorry—sorry!” as she hurried past.
Harley gave them a casual wave, all relaxed-like as he remained flat on his belly with a hard-on not even cold mud could dissipate. Bree, he discovered with a quick sideways glance, knelt beside him, scraping mud clumps off her skin—with her gaze deliberately avoiding those of the two hikers.
The duo finally cleared the boggy patch and headed around the curving path, taking them out of sight.
“Fair dinkum, those Kiwis take that naturalist shit too bloody far.” The Australian’s voice drifted back to them on the breeze.
Harley went to turn toward Bree intending to take up where they’d left off—some more wrestling sounded fun—when her hand gave the back of his head a shove. Face-first into the mud.
Payback complete.
Chapter 15
The pause between Harley lifting his face from the mud and the first clot of mud thrown gave Bree a moment to catch her breath after the man’s kisses had completely stolen it.
Not much of a pause, as a second handful of mud followed the first and splattered against her shoulder. Harley had always refused to treat Bree and her friends like delicate flowers when they’d played touch rugby on the beach or shoved each other off the wharf in summer. While he’d never been rough, he hadn’t pandered to them being smaller or female.
You play against a Komeke, you play with everything you’ve got.
Bree was again breathless, but this time with laughter, by the time the rain pelted down in earnest.
“Truce,” she said.
Harley grinned, exposing the only part of him that wasn’t covered in mud.
What the pair of them looked like, she refused to consider. And even more so, she refused to dwell on the pounding of her heart that pumped bubbles of pure joy around every part of her body.
“You surrendering?” he asked.
“Temporarily.”
He stood, mud splattering back down into the churned-up mass that had once been a track.
Tarryn, one of her friends and employed by the Department of Conservation, would kill them if she heard about their antics on the track she helped personally maintain. When she heard about their antics. A story featuring two half-naked people rolling around in the mud would be too good of a tall-tale for the Australians not to retell at Due South this evening. It wouldn’t take a local long to figure out who had been the stars of that little peep show.
A month ago, the thought of people gossiping about something as scandalous as strait-laced Bree Findlow being caught in a mud-covered cinch with Oban’s original bad-boy would’ve had her comparing flight costs to South America.
Now?
Harley held out his hand, and this time, Bree allowed him to haul her upright. He patted her butt with a familiarity that she was loath to admit she liked—but she did—and squelched out of the mud to his backpack.
Now she was pregnant with Harley’s baby and facing the not-so-quiet speculation from locals for the rest of the time she and the child remained in Oban. What was fooling around in a mud puddle when they’d soon have juicer gossip to dissect when she started to show? Once she was alone and walking around town without the baby’s father by her side?
Bree and Harley cleaned up as best they could with a couple of water bottles. Dressed again, they walked back to the tiny clearing and remained in comfortable silence on the short ride back to town. He pulled up outside the gallery, and Bree climbed off the bike—which was covered in muddy streaks, since the two water bottles hadn’t gone far.
She removed her helmet and grimaced at the inside, then handed it over to Harley. “Ford’s going to kill you.”
“It was worth it.”
“Since I don’t want your untimely death on my conscience, you can use the hose around back to clean up his baby before you drop it off.”
“Thanks.” He slanted her an indecipherable look from behind his visor. “But it’ll only get filthy again when I hop on to return it.”
“Come and have a shower at my place first. I’ll rinse out your shorts and throw them in the dryer.”
His eyes crinkled in the corners. “We could save water and shower together.”
“You’re such a problem solver—but no. I’m going upstairs to shower alone while you return your brother’s bike to its pristine condition. You can come up afterward; I’ll leave the door unlocked.” And before Bree could change her mind and peel him like a banana from his wet clothes, she turned and raced for the studio door.
***
Bree broke records in her shower, even though it required three shampoos to get the last traces of mud from her hair. After drying off, she wrapped a fluffy white towel around herself and opened the bathroom door. Harley stood in her hallway, a newspaper sheet trail leading back to the stairs. Muddy water ran down his bare chest and soaked into the waistband of his sopping-wet shorts—which sat waaaay too low on his chiselled hips—and dripped onto the floor.
“Did you hose yourself down, too?” And the Dumb Question of the Year award goes to…
Of course he’d rinsed with the freezing water out of her hose. Most of the mud that had made him look like a body double for a B-grade, horror movie swamp creature had disappeared.
He shook out the last two pages of newspaper and positioned them one after the other toward the bathroom doorway, sending her an arched eyebrow when he rose to his full height again. “You want my man-card now or later?”
“Later is fine.” Bree’s voice came out a little high-pitched, but she blamed that on him taking two steps toward her. Man-card or not, Harley’s wet, sexy, and giving off testosterone-y-waves body made her realize just how very naked she was under her towel.
“I didn’t want to trek muddy water all over your clean floors because last time I was dirty, you threatened to make me lick it clean, and, ah”—he skimmed a finger along her neck, close to her hairline—“you missed a spot.”
Harley’s touch, in combination with the word “lick” uttered in his rough, deep voice, rendered Bree paralyzed. The only part of her able to move were her toes curling on the floor.
“There’re extra towels on the shelf if you need them, and watch out for the mixer, you have to jiggle it to the left or you’ll get doused with freezing water and…” And she was babbling. Bree kept a firm grip on the towel edge and side-stepped away from the bathroom door. “And you’ve used my shower before, so you probably know that. I’ll let you get on with it.”
The smile Harley offered as he took her place in the bathroom dried up every last droplet of water on her body—not to mention in her mouth. A sexy, you know you want me smile that wasn’t cocky as much as quietly confident. A smile that said that no matter how scre
wed up things were between them, their chemistry was still a flame-to-gasoline explosion waiting to happen, and complications weren’t enough to stop that basic reaction.
“Thanks,” he said and closed the bathroom door in her face.
Bree’s jaw sagged, her inner voice instantly adapting the sassy tone of a sitcom drama queen with a did you just see what he did? Oh, no he didn’t! She glared at the door harder, as if telekinesis would force Harley’s hands to open it and say something like, “Get your dirty-girl ass in the shower with me.” Then she’d pretend to be insulted and a tiny bit resistant. He’d ignore it and grab her hand, dragging her into the shower. Then in a fusion of lust and hot water, he’d do her up against the wall.
Sounds of trickling water and an off-key rendition of “Eye of the Tiger” drifted through the door. Ford had acquired all the musical ability; her twin was completely tone deaf. She blinked. How long had she stood there, thinking about sexing up Harley in the shower—and worse, thinking Harley was her anything.
She leaned against the wall and prepared Sensible Bree for a furious debate with Slutty Bree on whether she should or shouldn’t walk into her bathroom and offer to wash Harley’s back. And by wash, she meant soap him up until he was six foot of sexy, slippery man-flesh and then climb him like a power pole.
It wasn’t much of a debate. Sensible Bree collapsed like a house of cards under the weight of Slutty Bree’s argument. One, she kinda, sorta, okay, she loved sex with Harley. Two, surely she’d earned a Get Out of Jail Free card that meant a shower quickie didn’t really count. And three—Bree slipped inside the bathroom, losing the towel in a puddle at her feet—cleanliness was next to Godliness.
Bree padded across to the shower stall, the glass walls of which were splattered with sudsy bubbles and some darker dots of mud. Neither substance prevented a mouth-watering view of Harley’s naked back, bubbles streaming in rivulets over the cut muscles either side of his spine, his biceps and shoulders bunching as he dragged both hands through his hair, rinsing out the shampoo.
Drawing Me In: A New Zealand Secret Baby Second Chance Romance (Due South Series Book 7) Page 21