by Stacy Gail
“Oh, shit,” she heard him mutter, sending her stomach plummeting to her ankles and her freak-out factor into the stratosphere. “You’re not afraid of heights, are you?”
“You’re asking me now?”
“My timing probably could be better.”
If they survived this, she’d kill him for the laughter in his voice. “I don’t have a problem with heights. It’s having the cables snap and us crashing to the ground that I’m not comfortable with.”
“No need for the drama, Mia. That’s probably not going to happen.”
“Probably?”
“What can I say, I’m a hopeful kind of guy.” His arms had moved to encircle her, and even though this tucked her more completely into his body with her head coming to rest just under his chin, she still knew he was smiling. “Before we plunge to our deaths, what do you want your last act of life to be?”
“I think my last act will probably be peeing myself.”
His chuckle vibrated in his chest, and the sound of it had the strangest ability to warm her from the inside out. “I said, what do you want your last act to be?”
Her mind filled with possibilities, and all of them had to do with her tongue and his body. “Um…”
“You’ve got a sad lack of imagination if you can’t come up with anything.” His hands slid up to rest under her jaws, angling her face up to his. “I can think of a few ideas.”
“Like what?” It was out before she could stop it.
“Like…this.” He dropped his head to gently nip first at her upper lip with his teeth, then her lower one, before closing his mouth over hers completely for a deep, deliciously invasive kiss that made her suspect tongues were weighing heavily on his mind as well. “And this.” He unzipped his ski jacket, took her now-cool hands and slid them under his sweater and black T-shirt he wore underneath, and pressed them to his bare skin. He felt so good and warm she stepped into him to run her hands over his back, savoring the glide of his taut, smooth flesh under her palms. Hard muscle flexed beneath her touch, reminding her of a cat begging to be petted. Luckily, she was in the mood to indulge in some first-class petting. “And… this.” The back of her jacket lifted, along with the fleece pullover and cotton cami, and a warm hand pressed against the small of her back. His other hand moved between them, and her breath caught when she felt the button of her jeans pop.
Her brain froze.
She should stop him.
She shouldn’t let his hand edge under her jeans the way he did.
She shouldn’t let that hand work its way past the silky barrier of her underwear like it did.
She shouldn’t thrill at how flesh sizzled against bare flesh as he squeezed her ass, the tips of his fingers digging into her as he lifted her up to grind against the unmistakable hardening of his cock.
But she did. She let it all happen.
And she had zero amount of regret to show for it.
His mouth captured hers, and she could only thank her lucky stars that he was such a phenomenal kisser. No doubt he could do other things with equal mastery as well.
That thought excited her as much as having his hand on her ass, and she couldn’t stop from moaning into his mouth as exquisite tension deep in her belly began to burn. That heat bloomed outward until her entire body lit up with its fever. Another kind of heat began to throb between her legs, her intimate tissues swelling with a need so fierce the thought of shoving him down on the icy floor and pulling his clothes off seemed like a viable option. It didn’t matter that they were suspended above a frozen landscape and it was only five degrees out. What mattered was that she wanted him. It had been one hell of a long time since she’d been that hot for a man, and she didn’t want to let that fire go out.
Except that wasn’t exactly true.
She’d never been this hot for a man.
Not Jackson.
Not anyone.
Maybe it was because she hadn’t had sex in over half a year and she was overdue, but she didn’t think that was the case. She’d never gotten so excited by Jackson’s touch that she’d been moved to think about wrestling him to the ground and turning his clothes into fabric confetti. Not only would he have thought that was uncivilized behavior, he simply wasn’t the kind of guy who inspired that level of hunger.
Quinn was.
Lucky, lucky her.
She shifted so that one of his knees fell between hers, and the heat of him was intoxicating. She surged closer to that warmth, raising one leg so that her inner thigh dragged along the outer line of his, and the friction of that rough caress made her head swim.
God, she loved the feel of him.
He made a sound deep in his throat, and it was a hungry rumble of approval that was so innately masculine it made her shiver. He sank onto a seat with the gondola’s window at his back and brought her with him, his mouth never leaving hers. She settled over him, moving so that her knees were on the bench on either side of his hips, the juncture of her thighs settled firmly over his hardened flesh. It was both a perfect fit and a viciously uncomfortable position to be in. The barriers of their clothing—and the necessity for those clothes, thanks to how freaking cold it was—made sitting as intimately as they were almost unbearable. But she didn’t want to move off of him, either. No matter how crazy-frustrated she got, not touching him would be so much worse.
“Do you know what I want to do?” His mouth moved against hers, not backing away to speak, so she could feel every syllable with her sensitized lips. “I want to pull my cock out and bury it inside you, Mia. Bury it all the way in, until all you can feel is me, and all I feel is you, and neither one of us knows where I end and you begin. You feel how hard you make me?”
He thrilled her so much her breath gave an audible hitch. “You feel…hot. And big. Impressively big.”
“You know it, baby.” Hard hands gripped her ass and rubbed her rhythmically against his bulge, and the heat and fleeting pleasure that hinted at so much more made her rock her hips fluidly against him, searching for more. “Big is exactly what I am. Big enough to fill you up and make you come so hard you forget how to breathe. Big enough to make you beg for more, even when you can no longer move.”
The promise in his tone dissolved whatever remaining defenses she had, and she was left with nothing but the undeniable fact that she’d been conquered. “You’d have to be pretty damn big to make all that happen.”
“My woman wants proof. I get that. See for yourself.” He caught her hand in his and wedged it between them. A pleasantly pained groan ground out of him as she took her time molding her hand over the substantial mound of his denim-covered cock, and her imagination went wild at what she thought she was feeling. Abruptly he moved her hand before she was ready—and certainly before she made sure he was fully satisfied—but when she looked up to protest he was already shaking his head. “Fair’s fair—I get to see how sweet and hot I think you are.”
“I’m enough to make your eyes roll into the back of your… ohhh.” Her bold statement fizzled out when his hand took advantage of her loosened jeans and delved into the front of her panties. Well, well. The man definitely knew what the hell he was about. With quick efficiency his long fingers had parted the folds of her sex to slide along her slick channel, and suddenly every nerve in her body seemed connected to where he touched.
“My sweet Mia. You’re so wet for me.” His voice was a rough purr, tickling along her spine until she shuddered with delight. There wasn’t a better sound anywhere than an aroused man, and when that aroused man was Quinn Kingfisher, that sound was sublime. “You want me bad, don’t you?”
She moved against his hand, wanting him to hit the bull’s eye, but he dodged her. “Yes, Boom. Yes.”
His mouth caught hers even as he pressed up and circled her clit, making her body jump while she whimpered into his mouth. A flare of pleasure flooded her system, only to ebb as he once again went still.
“Say it out loud, Mia. Say you want me bad.”
&nb
sp; Her fingers tangled in his magnificent hair. “I want you bad.”
He rewarded her by circling the sensitive nub relentlessly until her head fell back on a soft cry.
Then he stopped.
“Say my name.”
Damn it… “Quinn.”
Again he moved against her while his teeth nipped along the side of her neck. She held him to her while her hips undulated against his stimulating hand, feverishly chasing after the glimpses of hot pleasure he kept giving her. But again he stopped, and she had to consciously will herself not to pull his hair out by the roots.
“Look at me, Red.”
She did, eager now to do anything he wanted, as long as it meant she got her reward. He gave it to her, but it wasn’t nearly enough.
“Whose hand is in your panties?”
“Yours. Quinn’s,” she added when nothing happened. He stroked her hard enough to make her muscles tighten with an excruciating tension that had her intimate tissues throbbing and her breath heaving her in short, panting bursts.
Holy crap, he was killing her with pleasure.
“Who do you want inside you?”
“You, Quinn. You.”
“Who makes you feel this good?”
“You do.”
“Do you want to fuck me?”
“Yes.”
“Good girl,” he murmured and massaged her in an ever-increasing rhythm designed to make her crazy. It was so hot, the friction of his knowing, magical fingers, and she couldn’t get enough of it. Her nerves were alight with it, her skin flushed with the heat of it. She couldn’t hold still, the delight he created was so immense, and her whole body writhed with the relentless rhythm he’d set for her. Sweet, shattering delight ballooned inside until that was all there was and there was no room for anything else, not even air or thought.
Then it burst all at once, that crushing tension suddenly released in an orgasm was so fierce it bowed her back and flung her head back hard enough for her hat to slip off, unnoticed. Nothing was in her world except Quinn and what he made her feel, and as she gasped and cried out her pleasure, it slowly dawned on her that it was his name that she called.
His name. No one else’s.
Just the way Quinn had wanted it.
“You shouldn’t have moved my hand away from you, you know.” It took a while for her to pull the blown-apart pieces of herself back together enough to form a coherent sentence. Somehow her chin had come to rest on his shoulder, her face half-buried in his hair, and she couldn’t stop herself from nuzzling its silken softness. God help her, if she could get away with doing that for the rest of the day, that day would go down as a perfect one in her book. “It might have gotten a little messy, but at least you’d still be feeling one hell of a lot better than you must be feeling right now.”
“The first time I come with you, it’s going to be deep inside you while we’re in a big, warm bed with lots of time and lots of privacy, and I’m going to keep you up all night just to make sure you’ve got it straight in your head who’s fucking you.”
“You don’t have to wait for that.” She heard the words come out of her mouth without her permission, but when she analyzed them she came to the conclusion that she stood behind every syllable. “There’s nothing stopping you now except you.”
“And the five degree weather. Even if that kind of thing isn’t hell on even the most raging hard-on, I’m still not such a selfish prick that I’d be okay with exposing your fragile skin to that kind of cold. You don’t make sacrifices for me,” he went on flatly when she opened her mouth to tell him she wouldn’t mind, and the determination in his tone and the fire in his eyes stopped her in her tracks. “You don’t ever put me ahead of you when it comes to fucking, or anything else, for that matter. There’s no way I could get off and enjoy it if I knew you were doing something like that, so that shit’s never going to happen.”
Something warm and effervescent burst in her chest, an exquisite brilliance shimmering inside that she couldn’t put a name to. It was so wonderful, so powerful, it ached all the way to her soul. “You just put me ahead of your own needs.”
“My choice. My gift to you. Don’t ruin it.” His attention slid to a point outside the windows, and a grimace crossed his face before he reluctantly helped her shift off his lap and onto the bench beside him. “We’re almost up to the Landing now, so now is as good a time as any to hit the pause button. But when we get back,” he added, his voice dipping low as he brought a hand up to sift through her hair, “we finish what we started. And then we start some more.”
Her innate sense of fair play had her nodding before she considered what agreeing to that meant. It meant she just said she’d sex it up with a man she’d only known for only a few days. Even if she set aside the complication that Jackson represented, hopping into bed with a man she barely knew wasn’t her style.
But that didn’t matter.
She didn’t give a damn if it made her slutty or the leading candidate for the Worst Judgment Ever Award. She was going to have sex with Quinn Kingfisher.
And it was going to be spectacular.
After making sure her clothes had been put back together and her cap and mittens were in place, she watched with Quinn as their car slowly approached the gondola house perched atop a plateau on the snowy mountain. The view from there was as breathtaking as she’s imagined it would be—an untouched sea of pure white blanketing the steep, craggy face of the mountain. Up this high, there were just a few islands of evergreens heavily laden with snow before the tree line eventually thickened into a wall further down the mountain. Ski runs had been cut through the trees and imposing terrain like delicate white ribbons strewn over the mountainside.
Gorgeous.
When she stepped off the gondola and out onto the scenic overlook deck where the sun dazzled her, she nearly choked on the icy, thin air. Her lungs burned, working to eke out as much oxygen as they could from what she’d taken in, and she held her breath until the worst of it had passed.
But even if she’d passed out, she still wouldn’t have missed this moment for the world.
“Here it is—my number-one favorite spot in all of Whiteout Mountain.” Clearly acclimated to the thin air, Quinn offered a parting wave to a bundled-up worker in the loading area and joined her out on the deck that had already been cleared of snow. “What do you think?”
She squinted against the glare of the sun on the white landscape, moving to the edge of the deck to rest her hands on the thick wooden railing as she looked out at the valley below. “This might be the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen.”
He came to stand behind her to pull her back against him, his arms circled around her. “Just about all of my favorite childhood memories happened here. This mountain has always been my family’s playground,” he went on to explain when she looked back at him. “I learned how to ski and snowboard here, how to rock climb and mountain bike, how to fish and how to track. This place, this world, has been a part of my family for countless generations. I’m tied to it with my heart and soul, and I want everyone who comes here to feel a little bit of that when they get this view of it.”
She looked down at the resort far below in its cradle of snow. “Believe me, they will. You’ve done an amazing job, bringing your vision to life. You should be proud.”
“I wasn’t alone, though there were times early on when I felt like I was. This venture is completely different from every other business the Kingfisher family’s gone into.” There was something so jarring in his tone that she turned in his arms to watch the emotions play across his expression. There was a lot to see—frustration, a hint of bitterness and always—always—a world of determination. “Ever since I was a kid I wanted to share this mountain and all it had to offer with the rest of the world. But time and again I was told that’s not what Kingfishers do. We’re masters at the adult gaming world,” he expanded, telling her what her aunt had already uncovered. “My grandfather and his brothers founded one of t
he first casinos in Montana, and the family’s since branched out to four casinos with nearly a million square feet in gaming space, and two of those casinos are also hotels—though none of them are even close to the level of Whiteout.”
“Holy crap,” she breathed faintly. “Nearly a million square feet? Are you trying to turn Montana into a second Vegas?”
“We’d never waste precious water in the desert like they do,” he said, and his disgust was echoed in the way his lip curled back. “Giving a shit about preserving this environment was one of the reasons why I sold my shares in the family business and bought this land.”
“What do you mean?”
“Some big shot developer rolled into town a couple years back, sniffing around my own backyard and talking about turning Honey Pot into the next Vail or Aspen. Whiteout Mountain’s not on any reservation land, so there was no way I could block him from turning my favorite part of the world into a three-ring circus. So I sold everything that had to do with the family business and bought the area out from under him.”
“Wow, talk about a gamble.” She tried to wrap her mind around the insane level of courage it took to make that financial leap, when just the thought of it freaked her out all the way to the soles of her boots. “It’s kind of ironic that you’ve developed Whiteout Mountain just as that developer wanted to.”
“I’ve done it in a way that didn’t fuck up the land or pollute the air and water. Look around you—do you see any shitty little beehive condos cluttering up the mountainside? Roads and convenience stores and gaudy signs everywhere you look? Hell, no. All you see is what’s supposed to be here.”
“True enough.” She didn’t look around like he’d invited her to. For some reason she couldn’t look away from his face. “It’s amazing.”
“I’m glad you think so. I kept everything as pristine as possible while still sharing my love of this mountain with the rest of the world. But that took a lot of scratch, and that was something my family didn’t think was worth it.”