by Zara Cox
My senses jumped, dark need clamouring through me so hard every inch of my body tightened with anticipation.
Futile anticipation. I had no intention of even probing possibilities. Not after the fucking fiasco with Stephanie.
There was a reason I’d retreated to my remote cabin in Alaska. A reason I’d welcomed the last-minute cancellation to my tight work schedule. When it came right down to it, the need to escape my thoughts and immerse myself in my work were the reason I’d grudgingly accepted what I thought would be a solo assignment.
Which was why I should’ve left Graciela Mortimer where I found her.
‘We’re here.’ I tugged on the reins with a sharp whistle and the dogs immediately slowed to a stop.
The mother and her three cubs were still on the large floe about a quarter of a mile away, finishing off the last of a fish meal. One of the dogs barked and the mother bear raised her head warily, eyeing us from across the distance.
I sensed Graciela approach, felt her invasive presence when she stopped next to me. The very fact that my every sense clamoured to look into those hazel eyes once more made me avoid her gaze.
‘Are they... We’re not disturbing them too much, are we?’
The question was soft enough to have fooled me had I not witnessed the circus I’d convinced her to dispatch. ‘Do you care?’
Stephanie would’ve inhaled sharply at such a blunt question, then, depending on whether she was in her false role or not, would’ve delivered icy condemnation or tears on command.
Graciela met my question with another imperious lift of her brow and a steady regard when I flicked a glance her way. ‘You really don’t like me, do you?’
There was another hint of a smile in the question, a suggestion that she didn’t care either way. It should’ve confirmed every impression I’d had of her. Instead, it disconcerted me. Did my opinion of her count so very little?
‘You don’t care whether I do or not so why bother asking?’ I countered.
Her sigh was long and exaggerated, another indication that she found me...vastly amusing. That she could grind me underneath those expensive snow boots she was wearing without a second thought.
Just as Stephanie had believed she could.
Another spoilt little rich girl, this one with a few billion to play with, who believed she could buy anything and anyone in sight.
More than a little vexed that I couldn’t detach as easily as I’d hoped from the events of the past few months, I headed for the sled, pulled back the tarp and lifted out my treasured camera and slotted a fifty-millimetre lens to it to capture the close-ups I wanted to start off with. ‘You want shots for the print magazine and videos for the digital version, correct?’
‘If it’s not too much to ask, yes.’ Again she sounded amused.
And I couldn’t help it. I paused in the process of unscrewing the lens cap and looked her way to find her glasses sitting on top of her head and her stunning eyes fixed on me.
Not a single picture I’d seen of the heiress had done her justice. She had a face that just begged to be photographed. As for her body, despite being under wraps from neck to toe, I’d seen enough pictures of her in the glossy rags Steph used to devour to know just what was beneath the outfit.
Graciela was taller than average for a woman but even though she only reached my shoulder she seemed...taller.
Larger than life.
But while I wanted to believe it was mostly entitlement—because, let’s face it, that shone from her eyes and bristled from every pore—there was more. Which again made sense, since she was the very definition of a wild child and went out of her way to prove it with her various antics.
Skydiving in nothing but a string bikini over Rio.
A three-day sex party with a premier league soccer team in a hotel in Mali.
The rumours that she kept a string of lovers across the globe...
The icy wilderness landscape of Alaska was the last place I’d expected her to turn up, thinking she, like Steph, was the kind to leave all the hard work she’d later take credit for to her minions.
I finished adjusting the exposure to compensate for the darkening sky and took an initial short burst of photos of the polar bear family. Then I swapped the lens for a sixteen-millimetre, for wide-angle shots, and took another burst.
Surprisingly, she remained quiet throughout, didn’t fill the silence with mindless chatter, which I appreciated.
‘Can the cubs swim at their age?’ she asked when I lowered the camera after five minutes.
‘If they’re more than a few months old, yes, for short periods. But with more distances between icy landscapes some bears have been seen swimming with their young on their backs.’
She nodded, her gaze on the ice floe. ‘Is it dangerous for them?’ she asked.
‘Danger comes from all angles in this environment. This is a slow-moving floe and surrounded by frozen land on three sides. The mother would be on the lookout to ensure they don’t drift too far.’
‘That’s great, but it’s moving...towards us.’
I curbed a smile as I swapped cameras and grabbed a tripod to set up more stills. ‘We’ll be gone before it gets to us.’
She nodded again, but her gaze grew speculative, shifting from the bears to the other floes. They varied in size from a few metres to ones the size of football fields, all broken away from the mass that would normally have stayed solid well into the new year.
‘Can I get a short video of the floes, too?’
‘Sure.’
She didn’t interrupt or badger me with questions once I got into the flow of things. Hell, she even took herself off a short distance away, taking out her phone to take pictures of the distant Alaskan Range and the beginning of the spectacular orange on white sunsets that graced this stunning part of the world.
She returned in time to witness the bears’ floe touch another one and the mother supervising her cubs jumping from their floating platform onto a larger one.
With one last warning look over her shoulder, the mother bear escorted her cubs away towards a jagged mountain peak.
‘How long before they go into hibernation?’
‘Another two or three weeks.’
She frowned. ‘They don’t look nearly padded up enough.’
I shrugged. ‘Probably because they have to travel farther distances to feed.’
As if on cue, a loud, sharp crack sounded. Camera poised, I swung around in time to capture the towering wall of ice break away from a glacier to crash into the lake.
The sound seemed to echo for ever, bouncing off the icy landscape in perfect surround sound. Beside me, Graciela gave a soft gasp. ‘God. That’s...’
I lowered the camera and glanced at her. ‘It’s breathtaking and awe-inspiring until you remember that it shouldn’t be happening?’
Her face shuttered, her brows creasing in a frown.
I wasn’t sure whether she didn’t like that being pointed out or whether she didn’t want to admit she was affected by what was unfolding before her eyes. Wasn’t she here after all because money had been thrown at her charity by people who could afford to contribute ten times more?
‘Do you want to be included in the video?’ I asked.
She remained silent for several seconds, then shook her head. ‘I’ll let the environment speak for itself.’
I throttled back my surprise. She’d just passed up the perfect opportunity to get in front of the camera. A camera manned by me. According to my agent, her PM hadn’t shied away from tossing his boss’s name into their phone conversations at every opportunity in an attempt to sway me. While I knew now he’d bent the truth to suit his purposes, I also knew most people wouldn’t pass up an opportunity to be photographed by Jensen Scott.
I came within a whisker of being impressed before I reminded myself t
his was just the beginning. Women like Graciela Mortimer wouldn’t overplay their hand with over-eagerness. If anything, she’d expect me to talk her into it.
She’d be waiting a long time for that. I ignored her, shooting a three-minute video in sharp focus, the white landscape capturing the stark story.
‘Are you ready to go?’ I asked once the echoes had receded and the equipment was packed away.
She nodded. ‘Where to next?’ she asked briskly.
‘Depends. Do you want to show all the gloom or is your piece aimed towards reminding people of the glory too?’
‘The aim is for more shock than awe but I’d like to use the time efficiently. So whatever’s closest.’
‘How about we kill two birds with one stone, so to speak?’
‘As figures of speech go, I wouldn’t have reached for that one. And for some reason I think you wouldn’t have either. Now I’m totally convinced you’re trying to get a rise out of me, Mr Scott.’
I was, and a small part of me cringed at the pettiness. ‘It’s Jensen.’
Again, one corner of her mouth tilted, drawing my gaze to the overfull lower lip. Its juicy plumpness and far too lickable curve. Almost in slow, torturous motion, a perfect picture slid into my brain of those lips wrapped around my cock, drawing sweet torment with every suck. I didn’t have a single doubt that Graciela would know just how to suck me off. She was far too confident in her femininity not to be an expert in all things coitus.
‘Is it?’ she taunted in answer to my offer.
I might have been attempting to rile her, but she was having a ball reciprocating.
‘Is there a reason you refuse to use my first name?’
‘I think we both know why.’
Why the hell was this friction turning me on? This wasn’t the type of interaction that got me off. ‘Look, I think we got off on the wrong foot—’
‘No. I think we got off on the exact right foot. I remind you of the baggage you’re attempting to shed by running off and hiding in the icy wilderness next to the Arctic Circle, and you don’t like it.’
Anger fired up inside me, even while I was thrown by her near-accuracy. ‘I’m not running anywhere,’ I bit out.
‘Aren’t you? Sorry, my bad.’
I snapped the tarp over the equipment with more force than necessary. ‘You don’t sound sorry at all.’
She shrugged. ‘I’ll work on my sincerity while we head for wherever you’re taking me next. Shall we?’
We stared each other down, with the friction and tension increasing with every moment that ticked by.
I’d had enough of that with Stephanie, each moment with her spent on the uncertain edge of judging a mood that could veer from icy indifference to volcanic.
Walk away.
The faster I completed this assignment, the quicker I could be rid of Graciela and the unsettling emotions she evoked.
Slowly, as if she’d read my intentions, her expression changed to one of steady assessment tinged with boredom.
Absurdly, that only riled me further, the need to ruffle feathers she’d effectively smoothed with a dismissive thought firing through me.
‘You get a kick out of being contrary?’
She shrugged. ‘Maybe. Or perhaps you simply don’t like the truth pointed out to you. Either way, we can still talk while we...sled. Is that what you call it?’ She gestured at the animals.
‘You know exactly what it’s called,’ I replied, noting absently that my heart was beating faster, my senses more fired up than they had been in weeks. ‘Pretending you’re less intelligent than you actually are may be a turn-on for other men. Not me.’
‘And you think that’s what I’m trying to achieve here? To turn you on?’
God, the way she said that, with the exact cadence engineered to stroke my cock. Did she practise it to get that perfect degree of hotness and craving?
I had a feeling she knew the exact effect she and her voice were having on me.
‘I don’t think you utter a single word or make a move without calculating the exact effect you wish to achieve.’
Like a switch her expression grew icy, her eyes dimming to a dull brown before she blinked and cast a disdainful glance at a spot over my shoulder.
I’d struck a nerve. For a moment I wanted to take back my words, but then I wanted to know just what I’d done. To explore that nerve, get to know it better. So I might know this woman better?
She’s only here for another day. You don’t move in the same circles so if you don’t want to, you won’t need to see her ever again.
That thought...dissatisfied. I wanted to know Graciela. If for nothing else, to satisfy myself that my instincts weren’t wrong about her. That my craving was misplaced. That she was another wannabe, unworthy of the name...
Dominant.
My senses jumped. Harder than before, my gaze falling once more to those biteable lips. To her clothes and what lay beneath. To how it would feel to receive her command to unwrap her, lay my hands on her bare skin, feel her silky pulse jump beneath my touch. Hear her voice hitch with arousal as she revelled in controlling my every desire.
Even if it was a matter of losing myself in a woman just for the hell of it, with no agenda or deeper meaning, I was up for that.
‘I don’t believe I’m paying you to stand around and work out my IQ, Mr Scott.’
Keep your money. This one’s on the house.
I swallowed the words. I was richer than I’d be able to spend in one lifetime, courtesy of a life-changing photograph taken on a faraway continent. I’d been doing well before the photo that had propelled me to fame and fortune had set me up for life. I didn’t need her money, true. But I suspected a gesture like that would impress her even less. Not that I was out to impress her. And really, why the hell would I want to cut my nose to spite my face?
More axioms, Jensen?
I cursed the mocking voice and gestured at her to get back on the sled.
Disdain and designer sunglasses firmly in place, she hopped back into her seat.
The next destination was forty minutes’ sled ride away and, save for a quick stop to water the dogs, we completed it in silence.
Killik Falls was a natural waterfall cascading from a tiny blue lake cradled in one of the many glaciers situated between Prudhoe Bay and Utqiagvik. The sight of the blue water bursting through a wall of ice was a stunning phenomenon, a fact evidenced by Graciela’s gasp when I pulled the sled to a stop near a flat plateau on one of the glaciers.
‘Wow, that’s breathtaking.’
I let out a relieved breath, noting annoyingly that I’d hoped the sight would please her as much as it’d pleased me the first time I saw it. ‘Yeah.’
She stepped off the sled, sliding off her shades to get a closer look. When she glanced at me there was only curiosity in her eyes. ‘It all looks great. So why here?’
‘It should’ve frozen over two months ago.’
Her face cleared, leaving behind a solemn look. ‘Ah. I see.’ She took in the snow-dusted fauna around the lake while I took out my equipment. ‘How long has that been happening?’
‘Steadily for the past ten years.’
Her lips tightened, but she didn’t answer, her gaze flitting over the landscape to pause thoughtfully on the waterfall. ‘That’s...disturbing.’
Suddenly, I didn’t want to film the waterfall. I wanted to capture her reaction, the way the failing light teased shadows and light over her features.
She would be an interesting subject to photograph. My fingers clenched around the camera, the insane urge to aim my lens at her, zoom in close and catch every emotion, swelling higher with each moment. It grew strong enough to zap alarm through me.
‘Perhaps we should get on with it?’
I didn’t reply. Wasn’t sure I wanted to interact with
her while in the throes of...whatever this was. Instead, I went to work, getting a vast array of shots so I didn’t miss a thing. When I was satisfied, I put my equipment away and glanced at my watch.
‘Gloom or glory?’ I asked. I had a site for either in mind I could squeeze in tonight, and her brief had called for five location shoots. While the cracking glacier earlier had been a bonus, I was technically required to do three more. I glanced over at her, caught the shiver she tried to hide. ‘Or are you ready to call it a day?’
Her gaze shifted to the covered equipment at the back of the sled. ‘Did I spot a tent in there?’
I frowned, inexplicably tensing. ‘Yes. Why do you ask?’
‘Did you plan on spending the night on the snow?’
‘Not tonight.’ And certainly not with her in tow. The last thing I needed was her kind of distraction.
‘When?’ she pressed.
‘At some point. When you’re not here,’ I added pointedly.
Again she surprised me by smiling where I’d expected her to be offended. She approached, not stopping until our bodies were six inches apart.
‘Guess what my favourite game is, Mr Scott,’ she murmured, her voice low, husky and sensually loaded enough to achieve its aim of curling tight around my cock.
‘Winding people up?’
‘Wrong,’ she breathed. ‘That’s my second favourite. My first is Tug of War. Care to know my percentage on wins?’
‘Sure. Enlighten me.’
She leaned up and in, until our condensed breaths mingled. And fuck if that didn’t heat my blood. ‘It’s high, Mr Scott. Very high.’
‘Very high doesn’t mean one hundred per cent. Which means on occasion you lose.’
Her smile widened. ‘Perhaps. But you’re contractually obliged to give me what I want.’
‘Or what? You’re going to fire me? I’m the best,’ I answered, with a tinge of well-earned arrogance. ‘Your PM told you that or you wouldn’t have hired me.’
‘Nothing as melodramatic as firing you. More along the lines of thinking you wouldn’t want to deny a client’s reasonable request. Would you?’
‘I’ve yet to hear what this reasonable request is.’