With Every Breath (Wanderlust #1)

by Lia Riley

  I burrow back into his sleeping bag, hiding the peep show. “I’m a klutz. I should get some rest.” I’m not at all tired, and the hard ground has a subtle slant, makes getting comfortable a trick. But maybe I’ve had enough comfort. Life isn’t a Snuggie.

  “Do you mind if I keep the light on? I’d like to read for a while yet.” He picks up his book and unfolds a bent page.

  Yikes, my least favorite habit. “Not a fan of bookmarks?”

  “Don’t see the point,” he mutters. His voice is low, could even be described as velvety. I get that now, hearing him, the whole idea of a velvety voice. Some forward-thinking entrepreneur could package it up as Chanel Number Give It to Me, Baby.

  “I can’t fold pages,” I say. “It hurts my heart.”

  He arches a brow. “You’re a delicate flower.”

  “I just love books.”

  His other brow joins its friend. “Me, too.”

  “I might love them a teeny-tiny bit more.” I reach out and run my finger over the page. But it’s too late. Once you bend a corner, you can’t smooth the crease away.

  He regards me curiously. “You speak your mind quite freely.”

  I peel my eyes from his direct gaze. “No, actually, I don’t.” It’s strange that as much as he’s the kind of guy who should intimidate the crap out of me, he doesn’t. I don’t have a clue what that means.

  There’s a long pause. I assume he’s gone back to his book, but instead a quick glance confirms that he’s still staring.

  “You look warmer,” he says.

  “You’re really hot.” I cringe. “From purely a temperature standpoint.”

  He props his cheek in his hand. “What you’re saying is you don’t find me attractive?”

  “No!” As if I hadn’t feasted on his bare skin with my eyes for the past hour. As if he’s not the perfect specimen of the male sex.

  “Oh, so you do?” His tone is low, devastatingly gruff.

  My lips work soundlessly. Flustered doesn’t begin to describe what’s happening inside me.

  His full lips crook into an unexpected smile. “How’s that, then?”

  “Sorry?” My nerves, the second hit of Albuterol, and the proximity to a large male with a panty-melting accent is turning my brain to mashed potatoes.

  “My attempt at humor,” he says with a wink.

  He winked? “Oh, right.” I give a shaky laugh. “Yes. I’m going to give you a five out of ten there.”

  “That rated at least a seven point five.” He reaches for his book. As he ducks his chin, a thick scar appears on the side of his neck, disappearing into his shaggy dark hair.

  My stomach tightens as my smile fades. What happened there?

  “Good night, Auden Woods.” The cover blocks his face.

  I’ve asked more than enough questions for one night. He’s got me rattled, and it’s probably better if I try to get some sleep.

  “’Night, Rhys.” I roll away and tuck my knees against my chest. The tent shakes and the rain falls hard, but here I’m dry, safe, and protected, finding unexpected comfort in the arms of a stranger.

  Sleep is seconds from claiming me when strange tingles break out over my body. “Hey, do you feel—” Any other words are crushed as he hurls his large body over mine, sheltering me with his very flesh and bone.

  “Don’t move,” he orders. There’s a sharp crack, as if an ancient god flicked a whip across the heavens.

  “What was—”

  “Lightning, and bloody close, almost upon us.” His breath is hot in my ear. “Must have struck right outside.”

  “Seriously?” No point pretending cool nonchalance. My voice is three octaves too high. Half from terror and half because he’s squeezing out the little air left in my lungs. I’m slammed against him hip to hip, chest to chest, helpless as a rag doll. “Lightning? What are the chances?”

  Looks like Thor heard my prayer after all, just a little too late, and decided to answer a little too enthusiastically.

  8

  RHYS

  Don’t panic.” I’m telling myself this more than her. Our limbs are tangled and I surround her like a strange cocoon. Her nails dig into my shoulders, deep and desperate. Better to concentrate on that than the feel of her lips, the barely there brush of her mouth at the base of my neck. I push away. “I’m going to investigate, see if it struck a tree. Last thing we need is a great bloody branch crashing down on us.”

  Auden rises to her knees. “I’m coming, too.”

  “No.” The word comes out gruffer than needed. “You stay here.” The tent’s walls are whisper thin, but even a little protection is better than none at all.

  She sets her jaw. “Look, I can’t sit still and wait to transform into a human pancake. Let me try to—”

  “Not make a bad situation worse,” I snap. Shite, no point biting her head off. None of this is her fault. Not the storm or my own damn physical reactions. “There are no safe places outdoors right now. We’re in a wee depression surrounded by taller trees. It’s no’ ideal, but it’ll have to do in a pinch. If there’s another bolt, the biggest danger could be from lethal shrapnel.”

  “Lightning doesn’t ever strike the same place twice,” she protests, but I’m already unzipping the door and stepping into the howling gale.

  Can’t see shite. The storm’s noise fills me up, shrieking, mocking, groaning. It doesn’t want me here and assaults my body accordingly. I swipe my eyes and angle the head torch, trying to see where the bolt hit. If it struck the closest tree, with this wind, it wouldn’t take much to send a charred limb crashing down upon our heads. We were lucky, bloody lucky, to be missed, for there’s no help out here. No one to call. No one for miles to come running to our aid.

  My abdominal muscles tense as my heart kicks into the next gear. I hate bad weather. It’s too easy for my thoughts to slip back to that night I lost Cameron on the mountain, far too easy. Invisible snow stings my eyes, ice needling my sockets. Gusts slam me like a punch to the face. Time has a way of passing strangely up at great heights. A second can be an hour or vice versa. The dull pain throbbing across the back of my head was nothing to the way my vocal cords burned as I screamed my brother’s name again and again, hearing nothing answer but the mimicking gale.

  Who knows? Maybe it’s the same wind rushing past now, forever circling the Earth, taunting me.

  A hand presses against the small of my back and sends me vaulting forward. “Fuck,” I manage, turning. Auden is rugged up in her sodden rain jacket, hood pulled tight around her face, masking everything but those brilliant, haunting blue eyes. “Are you daft? Get back inside.”

  She hands over my Gore-Tex jacket. “You’re shirtless,” she shouts to be heard over the raging wind. “Don’t you go freezing, OK?”

  I sling it on. “Looks like we escaped.” My hair is drenched from the rain, and yet small hairs prickle at the nape of my neck.

  “Hey.” She stares at the sky. “Do you feel that?”

  Time slows down. The prickling spreads to the hairs on my arms. I step forward to do what? I have nothing to offer but the protection of my body.

  “Oh, shit, shit, shit. Again? Don’t we have to get down? Get small?” She grabs my hand and drops like a stone, curling into a ball. Her grasp yanks me off-balance, and I go down, too, seconds before a crash turns the storm to silence. For seconds nothing is audible but ringing in my ears.

  Only two thoughts rattle around my brain.

  Looks like lightning can strike the same place twice after all.

  This girl might have saved my life.

  What does this mean? And what debt do I now owe?

  I open my eyes and it’s dawn. I’m in a tent and another face stares into mine, close enough to distinguish each individual eyelash. The world returns in jagged pieces that I’m meant to fashion sense from. A storm. Rain, but not snow. The Andes. Not the Himalayas. Patagonia, not the Karakorum. Arms are wound around my neck. “Fuck.” I jerk back, throat constricting.
/>
  “You had a nightmare.” Auden peers at me with undisguised concern. “I’m not surprised after that crazy storm. Two lightning bolts? What are the chances?”

  She held me? What did I do? Or say? I can’t let down my guard in front of a stranger, especially not a bloody journalist, even if by some miracle she doesn’t know my name or story. A diversion is needed, and fast.

  “You a coffee drinker?” I sit and scrub my face, the coarse hair on my jaw rough against my palms. I’m close to sporting a full beard.

  “Sure, but—”

  “Good. Fair warning, I brew it strong.” I slide to the far end of the tent but our legs are still touching.

  “That’s music to my ears.” She stretches with a soft sigh, but holds my gaze. “Bring it.” Her dubious expression lets me know she won’t let this go easily. Who knows what I said in my sleep?

  “Hmph. I doubt you can handle it,” I mutter, turning my attention to the food bag. The last thing I need is anyone bearing witness to my tenuous grip on control.

  She narrows her eyes with mock ferocity. “You’d be surprised what I can handle.”

  I bite back an unwilling smile at the fractious tone. She’s got a wee bit of strop to her. A feisty lass is the best sort. And she just so happens to be named after the poet who penned some of my favorite verses. Mum’s an English teacher who used to make Cameron and me recite poetry by heart, mostly Robert Burns, a bit of Byron, but I liked W. H. Auden best. Mostly because of his “Musée des Beaux Arts,” where he writes about Brueghel’s famous painting Landscape with the Fall of Icarus. How the image perfectly captures the human condition, the way the world continues on despite tragedy.

  He describes how a farmer plows his field as a boy falls from the heavens, and it could very well be me and my mates sprawled on a couch, eating cereal while half-watching a refugee crisis unfold on the evening news. Or a stranger reading about me and Cameron on a news site before moving on to celebrity gossip or the day’s Nasdaq trading.

  “Hey.” Auden brushes my shoulder. The touch is so light it’s almost nothing at all. “What’s up?”

  I’ve been amiss thinking her irises ice-like. They are warm enough to melt the frozen sea inside me.

  “What are you thinking about so seriously?”

  “Life.” My chest is tight, doesn’t allow a full breath. “How we’re alone in our individual troubles.” I need to stay focused. Hard. Inside and out. No cracks. Climbers have a bad rap for being selfish, for walking past others dying on the mountain, to ensure their own success. But those people who talk shite have probably never been to the death zones, the places on Earth where it becomes impossible to breathe and your organs shut down. Death comes easily in those high places while people below continue on, pausing only to cast judgment on our actions above.

  The rain is down to a gentle patter. The wind still comes in strong gusts, but less frequently. I clear my throat. “The storm is ending.”

  “You’re not OK, are you?” she murmurs.

  “I’m good. Fine.” Not that I tell anyone anything, a journalist least of all.

  In the soft dawn light, her features are more distinct, and a tremor quickens through me. Auden has the kind of face you need to look at twice, and then a third time. On their own, her features aren’t particularly interesting, but combine them and the effect is extraordinary. A face I won’t easily forget.

  “Hey,” she says. “I know we’re not friends, or even really acquaintances, but I need to ask you something. And it’s the kind of something that you could blow off.”

  “Go ahead.” She’s going to ask regardless of my answer.

  “I don’t think you’re fine at all.” Her fingers graze my knee, and I flinch. “In fact, you’re really shaken up over something more than that crazy storm.”

  “Let it go.”

  “But I—”

  “I said leave it.” And there I am, raising my voice to a woman. Mum must be at home, sensing a disturbance in the force. I should apologize and—

  “Knock it off.” She says the words slowly, as if she’s trying on a fierce tone. It works for her, as if she’s channeled Mum, except that’s a thought tugging me in two different directions. I love and respect that hard-nosed woman who raised me something fierce, but I’ve also apparently struck up a mad sort of fancy for this girl.

  My pause is fuel to her fire. “I spent the last hour holding on while you thrashed about. It was like wrestling a crocodile.”

  There’s a question in her eyes. One I can’t begin to answer.

  The silence is long. “I never asked you to do that.”

  “You wouldn’t wake up. I tried. I shook you. I was—” Her voice cracks, and she sniffles. “I got a little scared.”

  I hate this, hate that she saw me as a broken, worthless thing. “I don’t even know you.” My voice is no better than a snarl. “You wandered up here off the main trail, out of your element, irresponsible, without a bloody clue what you were in for. So thanks for your opinions, but let’s leave it there.”

  “Has anyone ever told you, that you… that you… that you can be a real asshole?” She says the word in a rush, eyes wide, as if she’s surprised herself.

  “Aye, that and much worse.”

  She gives another of her long and searching stares, a wee witch, rooting out my secrets.

  “You know what I think?”

  “No,” I say. “And I don’t care.” I use my size to my advantage, taking up space in the tent. She doesn’t quell though. In fact, she pushes me hard, right in the chest. I’m not expecting that, and I fall backward.

  She doesn’t anticipate my capitulation and goes with me, smacking against my chest with a thud. “Don’t ever try that,” she says, not missing a beat.

  “What?”

  She raises a warning finger. “Intimidating me. You’re… you’re not even that good at it.”

  Now it’s my turn to stare. My temper is notorious. So why doesn’t this girl budge, give an inch? It is like the wind carried her here. It won’t stay to torment me, so it plonked her behind to do the dirty work.

  My legs are splayed open, and since I get hot when I sleep, I’m shirtless. She’s wrapped in my thermal top, too big for her petite frame. The neckline gapes, reveals the line of her clavicle, the dip of her shoulder.

  I set my hands to her hips, to move her away. I get the first part of the job done, but the second proves trickier to execute. “Mind shoving off?” As if she can move free when I’ve locked her in this grip against me.

  She purses her lips, her head tilting a fraction. “Here’s what I think. You’re all bark and no bite.”

  “Careful, lass. I bite.” My fingers clasp her a little harder.

  She takes hold of my hair as defiance flashes in her gaze. Closer, she comes. Her quickened breath warms my face. There’s a strangled noise. Shit, that’s me. A freckle punctuates the corner of her top lip. She bypasses my mouth and gives my jaw a sweetly sharp nip. “Bet I can bite harder.”

  I don’t move for a long moment, even after she wiggles free. When I sit, she’s unraveled her plait and is finger combing the wild snarls as if nothing has happened. And nothing has happened, even though my heart is doing a damn good job of bursting from my chest.

  Strange the way nothing can feel like everything.

  9

  AUDEN

  Fancy a wee dram?” Rhys unearths a battered silver flask from under a lightweight down jacket. “A sip,” he says, noting my blank expression. “I don’t know about you, but I need a drink.”

  “Somehow I don’t think that’s orange juice, is it?” It’s amazing how my voice comes out light and natural. Not like a person who just bit him. Jesus Jones on toast. What was I thinking? There’s no telltale mark through all that thick jaw scruff, but the taste of his skin lingers on my tongue.

  Simmer down, girlie. You can’t go around gnawing hot men like cobs of corn, no matter how tasty.

  “Talisker whiskey, single malt.” Hi
s Adam’s apple rises with a swallow before he thrusts me the flask. “Go on; try it. This is one of the world’s finest whiskeys, made in Skye.”

  “Sky?”

  “Isle of Skye. Where I was born…” He trails off, his gaze faraway.

  I take the flask and sniff the opening. Hard alcohol isn’t my thing, but it seems rude to refuse when he’s obviously having a moment. Besides, a stiff drink might steady my jacked-up nerves.

  My sip is tentative, but no matter, my esophagus revolts. I half swallow, half cough the searing liquid, twitching with an inadvertent shiver. Pretty sure some of that poison water travels into my lungs. My whole chest burns. I clear my throat and need to do it twice more before speech is possible. “I’m sure your island is lovely and everything, but you might need a better method to take a trip down memory lane.”

  “Aye, Skye’s lovely, all right. I haven’t been back for a long time now.” He closes his eyes, and my thumb itches to trace along the fringe of his dark lashes. They are a shade lighter than his hair, which is only a shade lighter than black. There’s no trace of a differentiating highlight anywhere. The thick strands gleam like a rich, polished ebony.

  He’s still talking. “… a land of razor-sharp ridgelines and dark water. The air holds a certain strange magic, forces your awareness. In such a place you never forget you’re alive.” He breaks off, eyes snapping open, locking on my own. “What is it?”

  “I’ve never met anyone like you,” I whisper.

  He makes a dismissive noise.

  My mouth drops open for a second. “Did you just snort?”

  He shrugs.

  Indignation douses my lust. Good, probably better this way. “Wow. I tell you something nice and you snort. How about that?” I reach for the corner of his tent and do a clothes check. My shirt is still damp but wearable. Happily, my pants are quick drying. I haul those under the sleeping bag, wiggling into the legs, tugging them over my hips. “One second you are reciting poetry, and the next you’re making that frowny face.”