by Jill Shalvis
“I’m fine.” She pushed up on her hands and knees and sent him a rueful smile. “Really.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, but if I’d known that’s all it’d take to slow you down, I’d have fallen sooner.”
He tried not to notice her smile as she stood up and brushed herself off, the way she flashed a small dimple on her left side and how her eyes were warm—the warmest, most beautiful eyes he’d ever seen.
She looked upward as the rain started to hit them with a new intensity. “Uh-oh.” She shoved her hair out of her face, leaving a streak of dirt across one jaw. She had another across her chest, and a hole over one knee.
She no longer looked quite as perfect and untouchable. She was looking more like the Sara he’d once known, warm and approachable and sweet—and something inside his chest tightened.
Not. Good.
He went to turn away but she put her hands flat on his chest. With dirt on her jaw and hair having fallen over her eyes she looked earnestly into his face. “Sam, please. We really do need to talk—I need to talk. To you.”
The skies opened up and dumped on them.
CHAPTER 6
The rain actually felt like it was slicing her skin, and tipping her head up, Sara realized why. It was freezing rain. Even as she thought it, Sam grabbed her hand.
“We’ve got to go back,” he yelled over the next shuddering boom of thunder that nearly had her leaping out of her skin now that he was no longer touching her, kissing her as if his life depended on it. “Come on!”
“The ranger station is closer!”
“Sara—”
“Please.” She gripped his shirt, feeling the heat of his body radiating from beneath, the hard play of his muscles. They were already drenched, and his shirt clung to him like a second skin.
Her blouse did the same to her. It was cold and getting shockingly colder, and she instinctively took a step to close the gap between them, unconsciously wanting to hug up to some of his body heat. But she nearly collapsed to the ground at the unexpected pain that shot through her ankle when she put weight on it.
He caught her and stared down into her face accusatorily. “Bloody hell, you are hurt.”
“No, I—”
“Sit.” Urging her down to a rock, he once again crouched at her side and ran his hand down her leg and when he got to her ankle, she sucked in a breath.
He lifted his head, water running in rivulets down his face. “Dammit.” In spite of the gruff tone, his hands were very gentle as he pulled up her pants leg to take a look.
“It’s okay,” she said.
“Liar.” His jaw tightened at the already mottling skin. He let her pants leg drop and sat back on his heels, shaking water out of his face. “Goddammit.”
“Really. I’m fine.”
“Really?" he repeated a bit roughly. “You’re fine? You can walk all the way back to the trailhead?”
She was shivering. Shaking with cold, but also so much more. She looked into his beautiful, taut face, and at those intense eyes. She was hurting him, and she’d done enough of that for a lifetime. But she needed to get through to him, and not just with her body. She needed to make her past right if there was ever going to be a future for them.
Lightning flashed again, followed immediately by a crack of thunder that came so loud, the ground shook beneath them, rumbling like an earthquake.
She shrank back, nearly falling off the rock.
“Okay, you win,” he said grimly, watching her not just with anger, but also concern. “We have to get out of this storm.” He turned his back and for a minute she thought he was walking away, but then he said, “Hop up.”
He was going to give her a piggyback ride. She wrapped herself around him, taking in the wonderful feeling of his broad, sleek back plastered up against her torso.
“Let’s hope the storm is over soon,” he said tightly.
It was selfish of her but she hoped for the opposite, knowing the longer it lasted, the more time she had with him. He hadn’t walked away… She set her head on his shoulder, knowing she should have realized he’d never walk away from her. He wasn’t the type of man to walk away from anyone. “I was afraid you’d never forgive me.”
“I’ve forgiven you,” he said wearily, heading farther into the woods. “I just haven’t forgotten.”
CHAPTER 7
“Sam? Are you sure the station is this way?" Sara whispered in his ear. “None of this looks familiar.”
“I’m sure.” He tried not to think about the brush of her lips on his earlobe, or how it made his heart race.
At the firehouse, he was known for his calm, easy cool, his ability to stay unruffled in any circumstance. Give him a fire and people in danger, and he was the man to get to them. Give him any damn emergency, and he could handle it.
But give him Sara, a willowy little thing, just a woman, and he lost his cool.
He’d lost it the moment he’d set eyes on her again.
She clung to his back as he walked, her legs wrapped around him, tucked into his arms, which were supporting her. He felt as if he could feel her breasts boring into his back, feel her belly rising and falling with each breath. And then there was the way her legs were spread around his hips…
“Hey, the rain is slowing,” she said in relief as she shivered.
It seemed incredible to him that not too long ago he’d been blessedly asleep. And warm. And now, crazy as it was, they were actually in danger. “Because it’s going to change to snow.”
Even as he said it, it happened. A rarity here, but snowflakes were floating down now, much lighter and easier than the rain before had been, but a bigger problem because they were already as wet as could be. They needed to get out of this. Correction, he needed to get them out of this.
“I can walk,” she said, reading his mind.
“Uh-huh. But I can walk faster.” He’d get her to the station, where they’d wait out the storm, and then he’d be done with her.
“At least the thunder and lightning are gone,” she whispered, then paused. “You remembered.”
“Remembered what?”
“That I was afraid of the lightning.”
He said nothing to that. Truth was, he remembered everything.
“I remember things about you, too. What we meant to each other. How you asked me to marry you.”
“You left me the next day,” he said before he could stop himself.
She went quiet so long he didn’t think she’d respond. “I was afraid of what you made me feel.” She sighed in his ear. “Of how much I loved you.”
Ah, hell. He didn’t want to go there, he really didn’t. “We need to conserve our energy. By not talking.”
But she didn’t listen. “I had no experience with it. No reference point. And those are just excuses, I know that now.”
Not just excuses. She’d grown up in foster care, had been abused several times before being unceremoniously ousted from the childcare system at age eighteen and sent out on her own. She’d not had a single successful relationship in her life except for him and he knew it, and remembering that had his heart turning over and exposing its underbelly. “I know, Sara.”
“I panicked.”
And then ran. He got it. He even understood. But it didn’t change anything.
She sighed and adjusted her grip around his neck, her soft breath against his jaw. “I really think the station’s that way…”
If they went that way, they’d get lost. And that was not on his agenda for the day.
But then again, she hadn’t been, either.
CHAPTER 8
“I know where the station is,” Sam said cooly.
Sara listened to his even, unruffled voice as he trod through the snow, now coming down heavily enough to crust over the both of them.
She was wrapped around his back like a pretzel as he carried her piggyback style up the mountain. He had his hands on her legs in a way that was required for this type of hold.
It shouldn’t be turning her on.
But it was.
He was.
And then there’d been that kiss.
Holy smokes alive, that kiss. No matter what he said, or what he claimed, they still had chemistry. In spades. It gave her hope that she could still get through to him. That they still had a chance.
She was still quivering from the taste of him—from having his hands all over her, and she was still breathless, though she wasn’t even walking.
But Sam’s breathing hadn’t changed even though he was carrying her. “Sam?”
He didn’t answer.
He’d rather be anywhere else. She got that, loud and clear. She even deserved that. But he deserved better than how she’d treated him five years ago, and until she told him so and apologized, until she faced all her wrong turns she’d taken in her life—and there had been many—she couldn’t go on and make the right turns.
That’s what Sam represented to her, a chance to make the right turn for once. All she had to do was get him to listen, to understand, to forgive. To believe in them—in her—again.
Once she had that, she was good. She believed it. She had to.
“There.” Breathing only slightly elevated now, Sam stopped and she opened her eyes.
Through the slashing snow, she saw the abandoned ranger station in front of them. It hadn’t been used in its professional capacity in fifty years or more, and the decay of the small wooden hut revealed that.
Once upon a time, in the not so distant past, it’d been used in a very unprofessional capacity. It was here where Sam had made love to her for the first time. Her first time ever. And as such, it looked like a castle to her.
Sam was letting go of her legs. She slid down, extremely aware of his hard, tough body, and concentrating on that, she set her foot down wrong and ended up on the ground.
With an exclamation of surprise and apology, Sam turned and crouched down, reaching for her.
She reached for him at the same time, seeped in the memories from all those years ago, their first time here, when she’d been so eager for him she couldn’t stand it. Back then, he’d laughed with her, in delight, in affection, in heat.
And she held her breath, needing him to laugh again now.
CHAPTER 9
Sam stared down at Sara. They were on the ground, the wet ground, with snow falling down over the top of them. He was soaked to the skin, had an ex-girlfriend holding him to her, in fact was smiling up at him with dreamy eyes, reminding him of all those other times she’d looked at him like that, just before he’d stripped her naked.
But she’d walked away from him.
She’d stayed away.
And now, after five years, she was back, stirring up a bunch of messy feelings he did not have time for.
She stroked a cold finger over his chin. “You didn’t shave this morning,” she murmured. “Probably not yesterday morning, either, huh?”
He couldn’t take his eyes off her face. There were specks of dark blue dancing in her gray eyes. She was flashing her dimple, which he had the most ridiculous urge to kiss, and then there was that faint scar on her chin from the time one of her foster brothers had tossed her across a room.
His stomach clenched. She’d had such a rotten childhood, which had left her thinking that she was incapable of trusting and opening up, incapable of having a real relationship—but he’d proven her wrong on all accounts.
And then she’d bailed on him. “I’ve been sick,” he said.
“Are you okay now?”
“Define okay.”
“I’m sorry.” She flashed a small smile. Her hand was touching his jaw, stroking back and forth. “But I like it. I used to love how it felt on my skin.”
The words made him insta-hard. “Sara—”
“The way you used to touch me… I never really thought about how good it was, other than to marvel at it. I figured everyone felt like this when they were with someone.”
If that had been true, he’d have found someone else by now to let back into his heart. But though he’d dated plenty, he hadn’t. Instead, he’d put his heart into firefighting, and told himself that what they’d shared had been simply a fluke of youth.
“But that wasn’t how it was,” she whispered. “No one ever made me feel the way you do.”
“Panicked?”
“Before that. You made me feel special, Sam. You made me feel beautiful. You pushed me to be the best I could be, and you believed in me when no one—" Her voice went even softer. “When no one had ever believed in me. I felt safe with you, and even more than that, I laughed with you. I miss that, Sam, most of all. The laughing.”
His throat felt like he’d swallowed sandpaper. He’d always known what he meant to her. That’s why he’d never seen it coming when she’d walked away without a word.
But she wasn’t walking now. Nope, she lay beneath him, looking up at him like he was her entire world, and in spite of the snow falling over him, he melted. Dammit.
“Did you miss anything about me?" she whispered.
Yeah.
Everything.
CHAPTER 10
Sara looked up at Sam as he lay over her in the snow, waiting for a response.
Instead he shifted as if to move off of her, but she put her hands on his arms. He was a hero, putting his life on the line every day as a firefighter, but he didn’t look so strong and sure at the moment.
Instead, he looked befuddled and confused, and quite sexy because of it. All her hopes rested on that look—if he was confused, that meant he still had feelings for her. She just needed to get him to realize it. Now, before he pulled away again.
“We’re wet,” he said. “Freezing. You’re hurt—”
“It’s just my ankle. Come on, Sam.”
“Come on what exactly?”
Forgive me, let me in… That’s why she’d done this today, brought him here. To apologize. To ask for forgiveness. To feel laughter and joy and hope again. To see if he would truly let her come home.
But maybe she had to start smaller, with something far easier for him to feel.
Passion. Yeah—now that particular emotion had always been one thing they’d never had to strain for. So she drew in a quick breath of courage and sank her fingers into his wet hair. “Meet me halfway…” she whispered against his mouth.
And then he did, and they were kissing.
At the low, rough groan that produced from deep in his throat, she knew she’d done the right thing. She might be having a hell of a time apologizing to him, or making him understand why she’d walked away and come back, but she had no trouble at all with this form of communication. Not with him.
Their mouths remembered each other. Remembered and clung, their tongues doing the age-old slow glide and dance that she wanted their bodies to do.
His body wanted it, too, if the erection behind his button fly was any indication. God, she’d missed this, missed him, and she arched up, wrapping her legs around his hips, opening herself up to him so that he could rock against her.
And he did, sliding one hand down the length of her thigh, adjusting it so that she was even more open to him, allowing him to slowly thrust against her. She gasped with sheer pleasure and clutched at him, and he went still.
“Okay what the hell is this?" he muttered, and dropped his forehead to hers.
“Our bodies remembering each other. Wanting each other.”
“I don’t.”
She arched up against his hard-on. “I beg to differ.”
He slowly shook his head, his eyes dark with hunger and desire and confusion. “Okay, so I don’t want to want you.”
She had one hand still in his hair, the other at the small of his smooth, sleek back, and unable to help herself, she skimmed her fingers beneath his shirt, knowing he loved to be touched.
A low sound of pleasure escaped him as his gaze met hers.
“My body knows yours, Sam. Yours knows mine.”
“It’s been
five years.”
“Which means we need more than a minute to reconnect. Let’s go inside, Sam, and talk.”
He closed his eyes. “Sara.”
“What are you afraid of?" she asked when he hesitated. “That I’ll have my merry way with you in there?”
At that, he out-and-out laughed, the sound warming her heart, and for that one moment in time, they smiled at each other, both remembering the times that they had had their merry way with each other, just inside that door.
CHAPTER 11
Sam found himself drowning in Sara’s sweet, laughing eyes. He couldn’t believe he had her in his arms and he was smiling. Or that her fingers were stroking his back and he was letting her.
He should pull away.
Get off of her.
Tell her off.
Something.
Instead he lay over the top of her, bracing his weight on his forearms, which were resting in the snow—snow!—and he wasn’t feeling the chill.
Instead, a heat was working its way through him, starting at his toes and ending with parts that had no business getting all warm and toasty.
Irritated with himself, he pushed to his feet and turned away from her to hide the fact that their little tussle hadn’t been all annoyance on his behalf.
He was still hard.
He decided to attribute that to the fact that it’d been a few months since he’d last had sex.
Uh-huh, and he also believed in the Tooth Fairy.
Dammit, he knew it was Sara. Her turning him on, her driving him mad with those memories of them together—the ones he’d shoved deep down to keep him from hurting.
And now she’d returned. Bringing them back to the surface.
Well, too bad. He didn’t need her back in his life, screwing with his head.
And his heart.
No thank you. Been there, bought the T-shirt. He knew this road, and even though she’d said she’d changed, he wasn’t sure he could risk her veering off the track and leaving him in the dust a second time. “We should just go back.”