by Lia Riley
I could stand still and she’d never spot me. The dying light of the sun is right in her eyes and I’m cloaked by shadow, camouflaged in a black jumper and dark green pants, blending into the forest. I know how to keep my body perfectly still. But sod it. I call out to her despite my better inclinations. Why? Because I’m a bloody idiot where she’s concerned. No sense of self-preservation.
“Here,” I say. Once. Loudly. If she hears and finds me, it’s meant to be.
There’s thrashing through the brush, and her beautiful face pokes from the forest a few meters away. “I followed your footprints. The ground’s muddy and…” She pulls up short, staring at the scene. It’s beautiful. I know this in an abstract way. The interplay of ice and rock is captivating. But despite the view, she’s the thing I can’t stop watching, even as my jaw clenches. She lied about me getting her off, and my wounded male pride hasn’t recovered. Not by a long shot.
“I woke and you were gone,” she says softly.
“Aye. Needed air.” Space from you. What a bloody joke to have had the best sex of my life be completely one-sided.
“Want to talk about what happened earlier?”
A bitter taste floods my mouth. “What’s there to say? You faked an orgasm.”
Her eyebrows vanished beneath her thick, side-swept fringe as color steals up her cheeks. “How did you know?”
A small brown bird flits through the low-hanging branches. I was born into the wrong species. I’d be happy living out here in the forest every day, where all I need to do is peck around for a nut or a berry. Fly above the tree canopy. That would suit me fine. “I could tell,” I respond at last.
“How, though?” she repeats, as if that part actually matters.
I glance to her, then away. It hurts to look for too long. “Glad to see you’re no’ denying it.”
“I…” She clears her throat. “No, I’m not. But no one has ever noticed before.”
“This wasn’t your first time?” That’s important for some reason.
Now it’s her turn to study the dark woods. “It’s every time.”
“You fake it every time?”
“I’ve never come during sex.” Her mouth grimly twists into an approximation of a smile. “No idea why.”
“So you’ve never…?”
“God, you want to know it all?” She throws her hands in the air. “Great time to start asking all the questions. Look, I can get myself off or whatever. I figured that out a long time ago. But I can’t”—she pantomimes the distance between two points—“leap the divide with a guy.”
I drag my hand through my hair. “Why don’t you ever say anything? Give the one you’re with a chance to make it better?”
“Because I… feel like a fraud.” She hugs herself. “Who wants to be with a girl who can’t orgasm? It’s humiliating. Guys want to be able to feel like they are with a girl who is a sex kitten in the sack. Not a no-hoper who is bad in bed.”
My laugh comes out a bark. “You’ll be bad in bed when pigs fly. No one who kisses like you could ever be otherwise.”
I wish I could say her startled look leaves me unaffected. That I’m not tempted to take her again right here and show her how good it can be if she will only teach me the way of her. “I’m no’ sure if I like you, but I still want you.”
“Sorry?”
“Me, too.” I know that’s not what she meant, but I’m still pissed as hell. “I’m sorry I met you. Sorry out of this entire park you came into this valley. Sorry I’m not thinking about my climb. Sorry that instead of focusing on La Aguja, all that I can think of is how badly I want to fucking kiss you again. Not like in the tent, but earlier by the stream.”
She bites the corner of her lip, worries it a moment. “What are we going to do?”
“We?”
She points at the gloom. “It’s almost dark. I can’t leave. I don’t have a tent. I’m stuck with you now, like it or not.”
“What bothers me is that you weren’t honest.” My voice rises, self-control slipping through my hands.
“I’m sorry, OK?” She is pacing now, her expression agitated. “I don’t know how to make this situation better.” She steps within reach of my arms—arms that outstretch of their own volition and bring her gently against me.
I can’t help myself.
“Me either.” And then I’m kissing her, trust be damned. Hell if I know why, but I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to be this close and not kiss her.
“What are you doing?” she murmurs, holding me tight. She couldn’t possibly hurt me—her arms don’t have the strength—and yet she brings me to my knees, wages holy war on my insides.
“Told you, I’m a fucking masochist.” I hate how she makes me feel, but I can’t walk away. The pain’s too sweetly addictive.
16
AUDEN
It’s hard to break free from Rhys’s consuming kiss, but there can be no more physical contact until we’ve talked this out. “It doesn’t feel like you’ve forgiven me.”
“I haven’t.” Rhys grabs my face, his palms nearly covering my cheeks, his broad fingers grazing my temples. “But I don’t care as much now.” He removes one hand and slides it under my shirt. Everything about how he looks, breathes, and touches is tinged with desperation.
“Stop. Please.” I try to control my shaking voice and trembling limbs. “We need to sort a few things out before this goes any further.”
A shiver passes through him as he withdraws abruptly, cool air replacing the heat from his body. “I should no’ have cursed at you.” His expression is troubled. “Mum didn’t raise me to speak to a woman in such a way.”
My feelings are in turmoil. I wasn’t honest when we had sex. And I still can’t be completely honest, not about how I almost stabbed him in the back. He’d never forgive me.
Almost doing something isn’t as bad as doing it, but still…
Rhys concentrates on the empty air before him with single-minded attention. “Come with me.”
“Where?” I freeze. It’s nearly pitch-black, and we’re alone in the forest.
“Do you trust me?” he asks me in a strange voice.
“More than you trust me,” I murmur.
“Down this rise.” He points into the gloom, to the glacier spread out at our feet.
“We can’t walk out on that!” My heart clogs my throat. “I’m serious. There are crevasses in those things. One wrong step and it’s game over, fall down a crack and break your back, never to be seen again.”
He gives a low rumble of amusement. “There aren’t crevasses down there. Well, there are, but not in the area below us.”
“Well, we could also slip and fall on the ice,” I say lamely. “Fracture a hip.”
He cocks a brow. “Or get struck by lightning.”
“Twice,” I say, finally smiling. “OK, I’ll go if you hold my hand.”
“Gladly.” He folds his fingers over mine and leads me with mountain-goat grace down the steep hillside. It’s as if his eyes are secretly night-vision goggles. I can barely see a single thing, and yet his every move is practiced and sure-footed.
When we get to the bottom, my heart pounds, not from exertion but pure adrenaline. “I can’t believe we didn’t fall.”
“I wouldn’t have let you,” he says softly, and I believe him. He holds my hand too tight.
Somehow in the last twenty-four hours, the story he lives and the story I live have merged. The words are scrambled and I suck at anagrams, but I don’t need to solve a complicated riddle to understand this guy is a walking, talking cry for help.
“What do we do now?”
He unzips his vest and settles it against the earth. “Lie on this, but put your head on the ice.”
“Um, OK.” I awkwardly sink to my knees, crawl over his polar fleece, and position myself. It takes me a few seconds before I realize what he’s trying to show me. “Oh, Rhys. Look at that.”
He lies down beside me. “Good, hey? Before the storm I
came here a few nights, listened to the ice.”
Below us is a frozen river, popping, crackling, and groaning in discordant rhythms, and overhead is another river, one made entirely from starlight. The Milky Way seems poured out tonight in all its sparkling splendor.
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs quietly, taking my hand again. “For losing my temper with you. Da used to carry on poorly when Cameron and I were lads. He was born in Scotland, but his father, my granddad, was a Methodist pastor transferred to a position in America. Da returned home in his twenties to rediscover his roots and met my mum. But something bad is inside him. Something that eats at him. In those days, he’d drink to deal with his darkness. That’s when he’d take up the yelling.
“One Sunday afternoon, he lifted a hand against Mum and she’d had her fill, threw him out and said never to return unless he was keen to be stuffed and mounted on the lounge-room wall. He found his way back to sobriety, but she never forgave him. Eventually, in some Colorado backwater town, he discovered a new cause to dedicate himself to and replaced whiskey with God. He wasn’t going to be content with being anything as mundane as a Methodist minister though. Da always needs to go a step further. He founded a church, the sort that handles snakes, natters in tongues.”
“Are you serious?”
He nods absently. “Religion’s no’ my thing. Or Mum’s or Cameron’s for that matter. But he’s still my da.” His thick brows draw together as he rises to pace with that deceptively lazy, loose-limbed gait. A casual bystander might be fooled into believing he was relaxed, but his jaw flexes tight, so sharp it could scratch glass. “I’m my father’s son. We share a bent for fanatical tendencies. I just so happened to have turned my capacity for zealotry to the mountains. Climbing is my obsession, keeps the worst parts of myself at bay.” His jaw clenches and releases. “But then… even that… Ah, never mind.”
He’s retreating again, going back to his dark places, the secrets I’m not supposed to know about. There’s only one way I know to move us forward. And it’s a risk—a big fucking risk. I turn and prop myself on one elbow. “I don’t want to be harsh, but stop and listen to yourself. Are you a character in a Brontë novel or something?”
“Excuse me?” His breathing slows, eyes fixed on me, not in anger, but shock.
“Hey.” I stand and clutch his arm. “I’m not trying to be a bitch. Really I’m not. But the best thing you can do is return that broody Heathcliff self-destructive act to the moors, stat.”
I don’t want to be all tough love when he is saying things that tear my heart, but he’s right about one thing. He’s lost, and the only thing I know to do, that might help, is to barge in from left field and use twisted humor against the angst.
A raspy breath huffs out of him. “Finished?”
I swipe a wisp of hair off my cheek. “Yeah, I think so.”
“You’re mad; you know that?”
I pick up a tiny piece of ice and lob it at him. “Maybe we’re all mad here.” Last night I jokingly asked if he was the wolf or the woodcutter. I still don’t have a clear answer. Rhys is dangerous, reckless, and more than a little wild. But I’m hooked, dangling on the end of this stupid line, and even though there’s little chance of our situation ending anywhere good, I don’t want to be anywhere else.
Something is happening here and I’m not sure what to label it. I like him, more than like him, but that’s crazy, right? Why am I even asking the question? Of course it’s nuts. This is a rebound, or at least a simple vacation infatuation.
That makes sense.
Not this other feeling growing deep inside me, pressing against my rib cage, heating me from the inside out.
“Aye, mad indeed.” He flashes a brief, rueful smile before running his mouth along my jaw. His kiss includes a graze of teeth, as if he wants to eat me whole.
I shiver from more than the ice. I can’t tell him that I am developing feelings. Or that those feelings mean I’m unable to betray him.
I can’t even tell him I know who he really is, because if I do, he’ll pull away, and I’m not ready to lose this. Whatever this even is.
“You’re an unwise idea.” He leans in to me, and his thickness presses just above my hip. At least one thing is out there in the open. He wants me. That part is growing increasingly obvious. “This is all terribly terribly unwise.”
“Yeah, probably.” My body gives up the fight, unable to resist reacting to his proximity. I’m wet, so extra sensitive that even the skim of my underwear feels like too much pressure.
He laughs then, and this time I don’t join in. I look up instead. Twilight is gone. Replaced by stars. The day is officially finished.
The end of the year.
We’re on a threshold, and maybe spending the next few days with Rhys will be a mistake. In fact, it’s most definitely going to be one. But I don’t care. I never chose the reckless road before this trip. Why not see what’s awaits further down that path? Besides, regardless of what I choose to do in this moment, I’ll be making all sorts of missteps next year, no matter how carefully I tread on the straight and narrow. Errors are inevitable. Maybe, in the end, our whole lives are nothing more than a sum total of blunders. So if I’m going to fuck up, let my mistakes be huge.
Let them be stunning.
Let them change my entire world.
We return to the tent, and despite all my expectations to the contrary, Rhys doesn’t touch me again. Instead, he falls asleep, hard and fast, like a log, rock, or any other big, hulking, inanimate object. At first I can’t believe it. Outside, furtive animals scurry in the undergrowth, and the deep hoot of an owl follows, the haunting call vibrating through the air. It isn’t until he jerks, in the way people do when falling asleep, that I know he’s really gone, no doubt mentally exhausted.
“Happy New Year,” I whisper to the night, to Rhys, to myself.
No nightmares visit him, and I’m willing to bet I didn’t sleep a wink, except that suddenly it’s light again and he is promising me coffee.
I crawl out of the tent, rubbing my eyes, and take the proffered mug.
“A peace offering,” he says.
I take a sip and nearly moan. The coffee is perfectly brewed. God bless this man. My thighs clench under the intensity in his gaze.
He’s set for us to go, backpack fixed with climbing rope and helmet strapped to the outside. I eye the coiled rope. Warmth spreads down my back. Hmmmm. Getting tied up by this guy wouldn’t be so bad. Tying him up might be even more fun. Imagine all that pure male virility under my free-roving fingers.
Whoa, whoa, settle down, homeslice.
The notion flounces to the back of my mind. But it does have a certain appeal. All the appeals. Still, I have to be able to make polite eye contact, and it will be awkward in the extreme to do so while having light bondage fantasies. Refocus. The mountains are pretty. The glaciers, yeah, super cool. But my lips traveling the ridges of the abdominal muscles hiding beneath his thin T-shirt—
“Auden!”
“Huh?” I jerk to attention.
He narrows his eyes. “Where’s your head at?”
“Um…” Up your shirt. “I don’t know.”
“You’re off with the fairies. I’ve been saying your name these last twenty seconds.”
“Sorry, yeah, I was way far away,” I mumble. Images of ripped, bearded fairies in loincloths dance through my head. I officially have a problem. A six-foot-two-inches-of-strapping-Scottish-man-flesh problem.
“Ready to go soon?” He finishes taking down the tent in quick, efficient motions. The campground is still empty this early in the morning. No one else had ventured into the valley and no more signs of Diedrick. Hopefully that rodent has gone well and truly underground.
“Yeah. Just need a few minutes. I’m going to be brave and take a quick splash in the stream.” If we’re spending a few days together, the outlook seems good we’ll get handsy. His hair clings to the back of his neck in damp tendrils. Looks like he’s cleaned himself
up, and I need to do the same.
“The river water’s cold but bracing. Wakes you up in a flash.”
“Noted.” I grab a mostly clean change of clothes from my bag and beeline toward the creek. What have I gotten myself into? Who is letting me hike with the cool kids? When will Rhys wake up and realize I’m Queen of Joe Average? Harper is the one with all the mad skills. When I first announced I was going to major in journalism, my sister had snorted at the dinner table before saying, “Congratulations.”
My parents acted like they didn’t hear the sarcasm, kept chewing their chicken casserole and discussing the weather. That night, while I was brushing my teeth, Harper appeared behind me in the bathroom, our faces the same in the mirror.
“Funny you’d go for a career where you’ll spend all your time watching things happen to other people,” she’d said in a tone that was anything but humorous.
Enough with this. I remove my clothes and wade resolutely into the water. “Motherfucker,” I grind out. Snowmelt is an excellent distraction. No more brain space is available to devote to what to do about Harper and her everlasting enmity. After all, I don’t know what I’m going to do today, and that’s right in front of me.
A sudden idea strikes me. I’m tempted to reject it out of hand, but it has serious merit. The more I don’t outright deny it, the more I think it’s exactly the right way to start the next chapter in my adventure before getting to La Aguja’s base camp. “Hey,” I ask Rhys as I return to the clearing. “Before we go, will you do something for me? Even if you won’t like it?”
“What is it?”
“Well, here’s the thing.” I pull my plastic comb from the top of my backpack and tug it through my loose, wet tangles. “You’ll say no if I tell you.”
“All right, I’ll save you the effort. No, then.”
“Where’s your curiosity?” I throw back. “Your spirit of adventure?”
“I can be adventurous.”
“Yeah, yeah, that’s what they all say.”
“You’re asking for trouble, lass.” His voice deepens, and I’m pretty dang sure my panties just melted. I’m afraid to look down in case I’m standing in a puddle.