What if she hooked her fingers into the waistband of those sweats, then slid them slowly down his hips? She could put her hands on him, her mouth, her tongue. Her eyes drifted shut, her breathing caught, and her knees felt weak as water. She wasn’t about to get any closer to him, but she damn well wasn’t stepping away.
“Kat...” She heard the purr in his voice. “Why don’t we make it strip poker?”
Her better sense, always apt to appear at the most inopportune moments, suddenly returned. She almost tripped over her own feet backpedaling and did stumble over a thatch of crabgrass as she trotted across the lawn in her aerobic shoes. “Maybe I will take that walk,” she tossed over her shoulder as she made a beeline for the trees.
She thought he’d laugh, had her shoulders all tensed to ward off that mortifying blow. But she heard only the chuckle of the stream and the soft breeze sighing through the trees.
* * * * *
As Kat stepped into the same clearing with its termite- infested log for the fifth time, she realized there was a reason she’d never become a Girl Scout, aside from her aversion to wearing green. In her view, there was something extremely unnatural about nature, what with all the thorny bushes, nasty bugs and verminous chipmunks. If woman was meant to go tromping through the woods without a smart phone, God would have never invented the integrated circuit. Not that God had invented it exactly, but surely such a miracle of the modern world came to be through His guidance.
The real issue here was that she was hopelessly lost. While in a car driving down the highways and byways, she had an unerring sense of direction. But on foot in the wilds of Mt. Ranier National Park, she was disoriented the instant she stepped off the cabin’s landscaped front lawn.
She’d digested the two bites of Sugar Crunch cereal she’d downed at breakfast and her stomach rumbled its displeasure. How long before hunger turned to desperation and she started gnawing on tree bark for sustenance? The beady-eyed squirrel chittering at her from a branch overhead had better watch out. He’d be on a spit roasting over a crackling fire before he could say his squirrelly prayers.
That’s if she had a clue how to make a spit or start a fire or even catch Mr. Fluffy-Tail. The smirk on the gray rodent’s face told the tale. That squirrel knew it was perfectly safe around someone as wilderness-challenged as she was.
She groped in the pocket of her sweats for the hundredth time. There must be another chocolate mint in there somewhere. Still the same crumpled tissue and the cellophane wrapper from her last foray. The tissue she wouldn’t part with in the event she had to use the brush as an alfresco Porta-Potty. The wrapper might come in handy to catch rainwater. If it rained. If she didn’t die first of hunger or squirrel bite.
Energy sapped, she sagged onto the rotted log, hoping the termites wouldn’t mistake her rear end for lunch. How long had she been out here? She squinted up at the sun, completely at a loss as to how to interpret the hour based on its angle in the sky. Who learned how to tell time by the sun in this day and age? Clocks were everywhere and everyone had a watch. Of course, hers was on the nightstand in the cabin’s upstairs bedroom, but if she’d remembered to strap it on, she wouldn’t be peering up at the sun now.
She dropped her glare-spotted gaze back to the log, then whined in faint protest as a muscular foot-long lizard swaggered toward her. This was a lizard’s lizard, a chocolate brown behemoth. Kat would no more face down that wide-bodied reptile than she would a Rottweiler.
She jumped to her feet. “Hey, bud. The log’s yours.”
The lizard yelped in response, with the cry of an affronted toy poodle. Kat retreated a couple more steps. “I didn’t mean to intrude. You want dibs on the termites? You won’t hear any complaints from me.”
Another high-pitched bark from the lizard, then it scurried out of sight under the log. She’d prefer to keep something that big and scaly within eyesight, but she wasn’t about to go search it out. She’d just walk on in the other direction.
She’d no more than turned on her heel than the crunch of heavy footsteps sent a jolt of terror through her. That wasn’t another lizard tromping through the underbrush. A creature making that much noise had to be massive. Was it a bear? Mountain lion? Sasquatch?
She’d be toast in a confrontation with a bear or mountain lion, but she might have an even chance against Sasquatch. Using the same keen powers of observation that enabled her to discriminate between the raspberry creams and the nut chews in a box of assorted chocolates, she scanned the surrounding area for a weapon. A crumbling tree limb leaning against the rotted log seemed her best option. She grabbed it up and held it at the ready.
With a shriek, she tossed it aside when a weevily-looking insect crawled from the branch to her pinky. Unarmed, she struck what she hoped would pass as a karate pose, at least in the animal kingdom. Sucking in a breath, she faced her potential attacker.
She swung her fist an instant before Mark pushed through the screen of trees into her clearing. Fueled by adrenaline, her fist kept going and would have left a wicked bruise on his cheek if his reflexes hadn’t been hair-trigger. He snatched her wrist with her knuckles a millimeter from that fine masculine face. He held on tight, no doubt due to an entirely understandable sense of self-preservation.
The moment he loosened his grip, she threw her arms around him. “Thank God you’re here.”
* * * * *
Mark stood there in the sunlit woods, his arms full of Kat, her body slender under the roomy sweat suit, her scent faintly chocolate. If he’d known his reception would have been this enthusiastic, he would have come after her sooner.
Nuzzling her hair, he let his lips brush lightly against her ear. “Are you okay?”
She shivered and Mark was pretty damn sure it wasn’t just from fear. “I’m fine,” she gasped out. “Just a little scary to be lost for so long.”
For so long? “I’m sure it was. Ready to go?”
She leaned back a little, but she didn’t pull away. “You know the way to the cabin?”
Lord, he wanted to lie. Just wander the woods with Kat, find a deserted glade, do a little au natural frolicking amongst the trees...
But payback would be a bitch when she found out the truth. “I guess you got a little turned around.”
He took her hand and tugged her the direction he’d come. He held back a tree branch as she ducked under it. “Did it take you long to find me? It feels like forever...”
Her words trailed off as he led her a few steps right, then left, then back onto the verdant green lawn surrounding the cabin. “This can’t be.”
He battled the urge to laugh. “All those trees do tend to look alike.”
“But I’ve been gone for hours.” She clutched his arm, turning his wrist so she could see his watch. “Forty-five minutes. I’ve been gone forty-five minutes?”
“You were frightened.” A chortle worked its way up his throat and it took an iron will to squelch it. “I’m sure it seemed longer.”
She dropped his arm and confronted him. “Are you laughing at me?”
He coughed to cover a burgeoning guffaw. “Why would I laugh at you?”
She planted her hands on her hips and looked ready to belly- butt him. “Because you think I’m an idiot. You think I’m so damn lame I can’t set one foot in the woods without losing my way.”
His laugh-o-meter gauge was close to topping out at crisis levels. If he didn’t divert the humor impulse, he’d be rolling in the grass and Kat would be so pissed at him, she’d hide in her room and refuse to show her face the entire weekend. Catastrophe loomed and he could only think of one way to avert it.
He kissed her.
* * * * *
Kat had about half a second to duck before Mark made contact, then maybe another second or two before things got serious. She sailed past both deadlines without so much as putting up a token resistance. She’d learned four years ago just how lethal Mark’s kisses were. She knew the risks, the cost/benefit analysis, the price-to-e
arnings ratio. If pecks on the cheek from her elderly Aunt Bessie were junk bonds, Mark’s kisses were blue-chip.
Chocolate chip. Thick, sweet fudge. Dark bittersweet with a hint of mocha. The smoothest, most delectable Bordeaux cream center.
She held him in a death grip, her heart hammering in her ears. His mouth moved over hers restlessly, his heat melting into her, the moist taste of him jacking up her senses until she thought she’d explode. He hadn’t tried so much as an exploratory tongue battle, teasing her instead with just his lips. Here she was ready to wrap her legs around his hips and he was being shy.
She tried to make the first move, extending the tip of her tongue, running it along his lower lip. He just sucked at her, one hand against the back of her head, the other making a slow exploration of the hem of her sweatshirt. When she attempted to plunge deeper inside his mouth, he edged away, tracing an agonizingly slow trail along her cheek, her jaw, to her ear. He was being damn annoying, withholding a full-on tongue war, and she would have objected if her legs hadn’t turned to vapor the instant she felt his wet kisses in her ear. Maybe she’d complain in a moment, once the oxygen that had vacated the general vicinity returned.
He’d worked his hand under her shirt and started up the groove of her spine. He had to know she hadn’t bothered with a bra this morning; she was pretty much mashed against his chest. When his fingers grazed the middle of her back then hesitated, she could almost see the images in his mind. His hand over her breast, his palm stroking the tips until they were tight and sensitive, his other hand between her legs...
He shifted his focus to her mouth again and his tongue plunged inside. She couldn’t moan, couldn’t so much as gasp for air. Her skin burned, her nerve endings did the screaming for her. She was about to come just from a kiss.
He felt it in her, had always been so wickedly attuned to her physical response he could arouse her with the touch of a fingertip. Now he reached down and grabbed one leg, hooked it up over his hip, then widened his stance and wrapped her other leg around him. His hard length molded against her, pressed into her. She didn’t have a chance.
He swallowed her first cry with his mouth. He drank up every shudder, each ecstatic convulsion as she rocked against him. She exploded like Mt. Ranier, molten rock flying into the heavens.
Bit by bit, her brain returned from its forced vacation and became aware of the awkwardness of her position. Her heel was jammed into his butt, his T-shirt was balled up in her hands and his face was pushed into her neck. Her body was still alert as a puppy and eager for part deux, but the cold chill of hindsight had its own agenda.
“Lordy,” she muttered to the crystal blue sky. “Oh, Lordy.” Shell-shocked and idiot-brained, she let go of his T-shirt and pushed against him. He let her go readily enough, gently lowering her to the ground. He kept his gaze fixed on the grass at his feet as she straightened her sweatpants and jerked her shirt back around her hips.
“Well,” he said, the single word a low, enticing rumble. Damned if she didn’t want to jump him again. Just the thought of what they could accomplish horizontally in a bed had her heart racing. “Well...”
He lifted his gaze. “Should I apologize?”
“Ah...well...” A prickling heat rose in her cheeks, no doubt an allergic reaction. To Mark. She managed a marionette-style shake of the head. “N-no. Not at all.”
His blue eyes were so intense, she thought she’d shatter just from the visual contact. “Should we go inside?”
Yes! Yes, yes, yes, yes! She shook her head so hard, she thought it might fly off her neck. “No. No. At least not to...”
“I thought not.” He jammed his hands in the pockets of his sweats, the move drawing her gaze there. He obviously hadn’t benefited from their lawn interlude the way she had. “I’m going to take a walk.”
He headed off into the woods, broad shoulders stiff as...well, stiff. A twinge of guilt tickled Kat, but it wasn’t quite enough for her to shout at him, “Hey, let’s do the deed!”
She stood there long after he’d disappeared among the trees, mortified, abashed, but oh, so mellow in the aftermath. Lord, that man could kiss.
* * * * *
It just wasn’t natural, Mark decided, for a man to be driven so crazy-horny by a woman in a baggy gray sweatshirt. Maybe there was something just a little bit twisted about him that made thick shapeless fleece a turn-on.
He pushed on down the skinny ribbon of a trail, dodging red cedar branches and Douglas fir deadfall, wild blackberry brambles scrawling angry red scratches on his arms. A foxtail was poking his bare ankle and his already laboring lungs wheezed from the quick pace.
How the hell had one little kiss gone so far so quickly? Kat had outdone herself with her lightning response. She’d never been a woman who needed much foreplay unless they were on their third go-round. But her stellar performance this time had been mind-boggling.
He’d nearly bitten his tongue in two to keep himself from following in her footsteps. He hadn’t come that close to coming in his pants since he was a randy fifteen-year-old. Even now, when his leg muscles were pleading for oxygen and he was sweating buckets, it was a struggle to divert his attention from Mr. BVD’s full alert.
Out of deference for his heart, which was threatening to go out on strike, he staggered to a stop in a thicket of willows. Hunched over, hands on his knees, he huffed and puffed and prayed he wouldn’t keel over and become compost on the forest floor. He supposed there was an outside chance Kat would come looking for him, but he didn’t place too much confidence in her ability to find him.
Besides, he couldn’t die here and never have the opportunity to kiss Kat again. Of course, even if he made his way safely out of the forest, odds were he’d expire as an old man before she allowed his mouth anywhere near hers again. But dead men kiss no lips, so it behooved him to maintain the minuscule probability that the opportunity might arise by staying alive.
Regaining his second wind, Mark turned back the way he’d come. As he trudged along, his mind drifted back to dangerous territory, Kat and what she might be doing. What if she’d had a change of heart after he’d left? What if, even now, she’d stripped down to her birthday suit and waited for him in the downstairs bedroom? He could picture that all too clearly. Kat wriggling under the sheets, a come-hither smile on her face, one finger crooked and beckoning...
Without realizing it, his pace had quickened again, his heart rate galloped and his chest heaved like a bellows. Who needed Big Macs with Kat around to put such a strain on his cardiovascular system? The woman and her soft, slender body, silky black hair, crooked smile, was a cholesterol-free menace to good health.
And God, he couldn’t wait to see her again.
Chapter 8
Kat wandered back inside, still in a daze, without two thoughts to rub together. The cabin fairies hadn’t cleared the bowl of Sugar Crunch from the kitchen table and the sucrose- laden flakes drooped limply in a sea of milk. In deference to her dentist and all his hard work keeping Kat’s teeth cavity-free, she poured the soggy mess down the sink. Then, when she realized the sink had no garbage disposal, she slopped handfuls of the gunk back into the bowl so she could dump it in the trash.
How the hell had it happened? One moment she was feeling like a complete fool and working up a good, old-fashioned pique in self-defense, the next she was in lip-lock with her ex-husband. Only microseconds later, she was coming apart in his arms, from just a kiss and a well-timed hip thrust.
Egad, was she really that hard up? She hadn’t even noticed the lack of sex the last two years, with all the grief she’d gone through with sinking sales figures and Chocolate Magic failures. She enjoyed the bedroom bop as much as the next girl, but just the thought of reentering the dating scene gave her heartburn. It was so much simpler just to stay home with a good book and a well-charged bedroom appliance.
It wasn’t supposed to work this way. She should have been outraged, should have shoved him on his tokhes and slugged him. Kissing him
back should not have been part of the program, let alone an orgasm. Geez, she might as well have a big red “come” button where Mark was concerned.
Rinsing sticky cereal from her hands, she considered her next move. There were two basic choices. Stay put and wait for her father to return her Camry or hike into Ashford and try to rustle up some kind of car service. Since the roads were well-marked between here and town, she felt pretty confident she would find the way. But slogging ten miles just to avoid facing Mark again seemed pretty extreme. Not to mention the wimp’s way out.
Okay, she’d stay. So how would she handle it when Mark returned? She started for the stairs, ticking off the possibilities.
Option one, ignore him. If she could pretend cabin fairies existed, she could imagine her hunky six-foot-one ex didn’t. If he spoke to her, she’d pretend it was the cabin shifting on its foundation. If he touched her again, that was just a breeze against her skin. If he kissed her again, or rubbed himself against her, if he put a hand on her breast—
As she stepped inside the bedroom, she scratched option one off her list as completely infeasible. No one had that much imagination.
Option two, acknowledge what happened, but declare it was a Big Mistake. Yes, she came. Yes, it was on her top ten list of incredible experiences and Ms. V nestled between her legs still tingled with the aftershocks, but truly, they never shoulda. Surely Mark would agree...
Or would he? Kat flopped down on the bed and scrunched the pillow under her head. What if Mark got all boo-boo–faced about it? What if he regarded a mistaken orgasm as a blow to his fragile male ego? Then he’d be moping around the cabin making her feel guilty because she hurt his feelings and she hated feeling guilty.
Thumbs down on option two. She’d had quite enough of Mark’s sad, puppy dog eyes. Women, the more emotional gender. What a crock.
Option three, acknowledge what happened, admit it was glorious, but, she would declare with a touch of ennui, she’d been there, done that. There was no need to revisit old territory, return to the old stomping grounds, begin again the beguine.
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