I whipped around and stared at him, my eyes wild.
He looked at me. Looked at the view. “It’s okay,” he said at last.
I shook my head. “No. N-No, it’s not.” Suddenly, I was close to crying. I was shaking with cold and I was shaking with shock and I was shaking with holding back panicked tears, and all three were mixed together.
He stepped closer, close enough that he towered over me. I looked up into those big blue eyes. “It’ll be okay,” he promised. That accent again that matched the landscape.
I didn’t fit here. But he did.
His palms cupped my shoulders, warm even through my soaked suit. A few strands of hair must have come loose from my braid because his thumb found them plastered to my wet cheek and he pushed them back out of the way. “It’ll be okay,” he said again.
And I believed him.
“But we’ve got to get warm,” he said. “We’ve got to get out of this rain.” A hand slid from my shoulder to my back, guiding me. “C’mon.”
He pulled me into step beside him, his arm settling around my waist. Not knowing what else to do, I let him lead me across the forest floor, picking our way between trees and over logs. I felt ridiculous, next to him. One of his big strides would have equaled two of mine, but he kept it slow so that we stayed together, the side of my body pressed against his. He kept looking at me, checking on me, and I realized he was worried about me. That maybe I was more than just scared and cold, that maybe I was in some sort of...shock. All I knew was that I felt numb. Stumbling along beside him, my face running with water and maybe tears, it felt like it was all happening to someone else.
He led me to a cliff face: at the bottom, there was an overhang which formed a shallow cave. He pushed me inside and then, a hand on my shoulder, he guided me to sit. He could be surprisingly gentle, for such a big guy.
I instinctively checked around for bugs—I hate anything that scuttles—then sat on the bare rock hugging my knees. After so long in the rain, being out of it felt amazing. I rubbed my face again and again, trying to get rid of the sensation of water running down it.
Meanwhile, Boone had collected armfuls of dry branches and twigs from the corners of the cave. He piled them up expertly and struck one of the emergency flares from the plane. A second later, the fire roared into life, bathing us with orange light. When the warmth hit me, it felt so good I actually cried out. I hadn’t realized how cold I was.
It was only as I started to thaw out and calm down that I realized how out of it I’d been. I looked up to find Boone watching me carefully.
“Better?” he asked.
I nodded. Then, “Sorry.”
“For what?” He went quiet for a moment, regarding me from under his heavy brows. I kept thinking about what Marshal Phillips had said: how Boone barely talked. He must have said more to me, in the last few hours, than he had to another living soul in the last few years. At last, he said: “You just got a little spooked. Most people wouldn’t be doing half as good as you are.”
Hunched over the fire, with his long hair and the flickering light throwing shadows across his massive body, he could have been some barbarian from a thousand years ago. He matched the landscape outside, where nothing had changed in all that time. I’d wandered into his world.
When he stood, unfastened his jacket and peeled it off, I didn’t really think anything of it. The plaid shirt beneath the jacket turned out to be a cut-off, showing the thick swells of his shoulders and biceps. But then he began to unfasten that, revealing a triangle of hard, tan flesh beneath a soaked white t-shirt. As he popped the buttons one by one, that triangle turned into a valley and then into a deep, shadowed cut between two huge mountains of muscle. I swallowed as the shirt came off completely. Dime-sized pink nipples topped those swells of muscle: God, each pec seemed as big as my head. Hard and yet soft, warm and solid—
Then he grabbed hold of the hem of his t-shirt and hauled the wet fabric up over his head.
I quickly looked into the fire, my heart suddenly pounding. I could feel him looking at me but I didn’t dare look up. I didn’t need to see him. The image of his body was burned into my mind: shoulders that looked even wider, now he was topless, cantaloupe-big muscles that narrowed and then flared to the next bulge and the next, my eyes were rising and falling as if on a rollercoaster until they hit the broad, veined, expanse of his forearms. His chest was so broad...the way those twin swells curved out, you’d need both hands to explore even one side. When he bent over his back, too, was heavy with muscle. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on him but I figured he must be twice my weight. He was the solidest man I’d ever seen. And now I had to sit there and try not to think about him leaning over me, pushing me back onto the bare rock, as he brought his lips—
“You too,” he said.
I looked up. Oh God, he had his hands on the belt of his pants. “What?”
“You need to take your clothes off too.”
It took a second or two for that to process. “What?!”
He drew in a breath. “You’re freezing. You need to warm up.”
“I’m warming up,” I said. My voice came out as a squeak.
He shook his head. “The wet cloth is sucking out all your body heat. You need to strip off, dry off, dry your clothes, then put it all back on.”
I gaped up at him and a war started in my mind. On one side of it was shock and outrage and even a little amusement, that he actually thought I’d strip off in front of him. On the other were the messages coming in from every part of my body: my numb feet, the frozen muscles of my back, my head that throbbed from being cold for so long. They told me that he was right. The fire was comforting and I could feel the warmth on my face and hands but it didn’t penetrate my sodden pant suit. I was getting colder, not warmer.
“Kate,” he said. And deep in my brain, a whole flurry of green lights went on as I heard him say my name. It felt good. Like everything else he said, it seemed to come from way down deep, escaping from under layers of granite. And he said it firmly: an admonishment, a chastisement. Stop being silly. That did something else to me: along with all those green lights, a trail of cherry-red ones blazed into life, ones I never even knew existed, flaring and pumping out shameful heat in a line that led straight down to my groin. Something about that firmness short-circuited me in a way no New York guy had ever managed. But there was a softness there, too. That concern I’d seen in his eyes, mirrored in his voice. He was worried about me.
I spend every waking moment showing how tough I am. I don’t get many people worrying about me. I swallowed and looked away, suddenly flushing, and then looked breathlessly back at him.
“Kate,” he said again. “Take off your clothes.”
10
Boone
As the words sank in, she looked up at me, her expression unreadable. God, she was as good with people as I was bad with them. She should have been a damn poker player: I had no clue what was going on in her head. What do you expect? She’s FBI. She spent her life negotiating and interrogating.
And I was a big, clumsy lunk who’d said maybe five words in the last year, until today.
Our gazes were locked on each other, neither of us willing to look away. She didn’t want to do as I said; I wasn’t going to let her freeze to death.
Little rivulets of water were still creeping down her forehead from her soaking hair, tracing the shape of her cheekbone just like I wanted to with my thumb. Her jaw was set, her full lower lip pouting just a little as it pressed against her upper, droplets of water gleaming like jewels.
I’d never understood what the word imperious meant. I did now. She looked like some medieval warrior queen, ready to lead her people to victory. Fearsome...and beautiful.
The look she had, with everything pulled back and buttoned up and locked down tight...that only made it better. I had this overwhelming urge to just release her: not just her clothes and that braid of dark hair but her. Because sometimes, when she looked at me, it felt l
ike all that restraint was just there to keep something wild and powerful and scalding hot under control.
I wanted to have her. I wanted to push her down on that hard rock floor, peel those wet pants off her legs and her panties with them, fill my hands with those high, pert breasts and just—
I got that. I understood that. Hell, I couldn’t even remember when I’d seen a woman in the last year, let alone be close enough to one that the scent of perfume and warm female skin filled my senses. She was gorgeous. Of course I wanted to fuck her.
But I wanted to kiss her, too. And that, I didn’t understand. I’d left all those parts of me behind, years before, when I’d come home to Alaska. I knew I’d never have that life again. Yet whenever I looked at her, I felt this deep, irresistible pull—
Get a hold of yourself. I had to get her down off this mountain and then slip back into hiding. Things could go back to how they were before I made that fateful trip to Koyuk and got arrested. But first, I had to get her warm.
“I’m not doing this to see you naked,” I told her.
And prayed she couldn’t tell that I was lying.
11
Kate
I could tell he was lying.
Not all the way. If he’d said, “I’m not just doing this to see you naked,” it would have been the truth. I knew on some level that he was right: if I didn’t shed the wet clothes, I was in serious trouble. But in the flickering firelight, I could see the lust in his eyes. It shot through me like an electric charge, setting off little powder kegs of how dare he and I don’t even know him and he’s a fugitive.
But the charge wound its way right down into my depths, hissing and sparking, and when it reached my groin it triggered a huge, silent detonation that filled my whole body with heat. He wants me.
Not in the way men in the FBI wanted me, with their toying and planning and careful seduction, where only half of it was about me and half was about bagging themselves a female agent. Boone wanted me the way men have wanted women for millions of years, hot and deep and primal. After the way he’d looked at me in the airport and on the plane, I’d been sort of ready for that from him. What I wasn’t ready for was my own reaction. He was some mountain man who hunted and climbed mountains and slept under the stars. He was meant to be primitive. But I wore a damn suit. I’d thought that meant all the primitive stuff was long gone.
It wasn’t. That part of me had always been there, lurking deep, only ever teased by the men I’d met as they danced intricate dances around it. Now I’d met a man who tapped right into it and it was rushing to the surface like black, hot oil.
He wanted to see me naked. And I liked it.
I stood and shrugged off my suit jacket, the fabric so sodden it had gone shiny. For a split second, I looked at it, thinking about the laundry care instructions and how I should be careful not to ruin the shape—and then I caught myself and just wrung it out, water splattering to the cave floor. I bent and laid it right by the fire and then—
As I rose, I caught his eye. Saw his gaze flick down. I followed it.
My blouse had gone translucent and my white bra wasn’t much better. The dark shadows of my nipples were clearly visible through the fabric, especially with the cold turning them into hard, puckered nubs that pushed out through the material.
I swallowed and stood, turning away from him. But as I stood, I crushed my thighs together. My fingers worked their way down the front of my blouse. How had he done this with his shirt so easily? Had he been able to feel me watching him the way I felt him now?
I reached the last button. I can’t. But already, the fire felt better now that the heat was only coming through one layer of fabric. It would feel amazing on my bare skin.
My bare naked skin.
I peeled my blouse off my shoulders and down my back, shuddering at the touch of the wet cloth. But immediately, I felt the heat lick my back. I wanted to turn around but that would mean….
It’s just like wearing a bikini, I told myself.
I looked down at the sodden, almost transparent fabric. I thought of Boone’s eyes. It wasn’t like wearing a bikini.
I stepped out of my shoes. Unfastened my pants. They were cut loose on the leg but the rain had plastered them to my thighs and calves and I had to drag them off inch by inch. The whole time, I could feel Boone’s gaze on my bare back. Right on the clasp of my bra, as if he was trying to burn through that last offending scrap of clothing.
I wrung out my blouse and pants and laid them next to the fire, too, still with my back turned to Boone. I was very aware of the way my panties were clinging to the cheeks of my ass...but even more aware of what they’d look like from the front.
Be confident, I thought. I planned it out, the way I plan everything. A neat, quick turn, then I’d drop and sit down on my ass, knees together and up, breasts pressed against them as I hugged them. Very little would be on display. Yes. I’ll do that.
I turned around—
He was standing there watching me, his hands still on his belt. As if he’d been standing there the whole time. As if he was transfixed.
And I just stood there in my underwear, watching him watching me, and forgot how to move. Every inch of my skin was damp and super-sensitive. One moment, the forest breeze would blow through the cave and hit my flesh and it would goosebump; the next, the breeze would drop away and the fire would warm me, sending throbs of heat deep into me. It should have made me gasp and twist and shudder but I didn’t move. I felt as if I’d been turned into a statue by his gaze.
He held my eyes for a second before he moved down over my neck and shoulders, down to the breasts I always tried to hide at work, to squeeze and compress under jackets because I didn’t want it to be about me being a woman. Suddenly they were there, exposed in tissue-thin, wet fabric, his gaze like a lover’s hands as it caressed them. I swore I could feel him lifting them, squeezing them, his thumbs grazing my nipples….
Down. Down over my stomach, down past the hollow of my navel, down to where my hips flared and the fire lit my pale thighs with streaks of orange and gold. His eyes followed every line, every curve.
And then his gaze was going back up, up to—
I caught my breath. I could feel him there, his eyes locked right on that translucent triangle of white fabric between my legs, on the dark shadow of hair and the hint of lips—
I sat, hugging my knees. How long had I stood there? A second? A lifetime? I inched closer to the fire. It was much, much hotter, like this: I could feel it evaporating the water from my skin and slowly pushing back my bone-deep chill. But inside, a different heat was swirling. I felt almost heady: shocked and appalled and...proud? I stared into the fire, my breathing gradually slowing down. I must have been damn near panting the whole time I was standing there and I hadn’t even realized it.
Then I heard the rattle of a belt buckle. I’d forgotten that he was undressing, too. I kept staring at the fire as he kicked his boots off and then lowered his pants. But the flames were moving, flickering, and beyond them I could see gray jockey shorts, soaked through and clinging, outlining a hard ass and—
I quickly looked down. And tried not to think words like thick. Or long.
I waited for him to sit. But he lifted his hands and I saw his shadow on the cave wall hook his thumbs into the waistband of his jockey shorts and—
I didn’t consciously move my gaze, but suddenly I was looking up, right at him—
The shorts fell around his ankles.
My heart was a bass drum in my chest. My face flushed and prickled but, with every passing second, the heat soaked inward to my core. Him naked, me as good as. Me sitting, eyes upturned towards him, him towering over me and, between his legs—
God. Stiffening. Rising. Thickening and swelling as he looked at me, the balls beneath it so full and heavy—
I dropped my gaze and stared so hard at the fire, the light hurt my eyes. I only looked at him when he was safely sitting, the flames between us hiding everything
below his chest. Then I let out a long breath, the dangerous, scalding heat inside retreating.
But it didn’t disappear. It stayed there, just under the surface.
We sat there in silence as our clothes and bodies dried. He seemed comfortable to just sit like that, gazing at me across the fire. To me, it was maddening. I’d never spent so much time in another person’s presence and not filled it with chatter.
But as minutes turned into hours, my mind started to change. All of the banter and jokes, the little games and double-talk that filled the dates I’d been on...it all started to seem ridiculous. Smoke and mirrors to hide the real reason for us being there, the one that Boone could communicate just fine with his eyes. I started to relax. And as my body warmed, sitting there with my thighs pressed together, looking at his naked chest...it wasn’t uncomfortable at all.
By the time our clothes were dry, though, reality had started to set in. He wanted me. I wanted him. But that didn’t change the mess we were in. Shouldn’t we be talking about how the hell we were going to get out of here? And it didn’t change who we were. He was a fugitive, for God’s sake, and I was an FBI agent.
I had to say something, anything, just to end the silence that was getting way too comfortable.
“Do you really not talk to people for months at a time?” I blurted. It was the first thing that came into my head.
He nodded. Not proud of it, not ashamed of it. As if that was just how it was.
I tried to imagine living like that...and couldn’t. I met his eyes across the dancing flames. Why did you run, I wanted to ask. What prison sentence could possibly be worse than this self-imposed exile? At least in prison you can have visitors. At least a sentence would eventually come to an end. Had he been planning to hide in the mountains forever?
He looked quickly away, then stood and started pulling his clothes on. “We should move,” he muttered.
Alaska Wild Page 5