Uncharted

by Adriana Anders

“Four days.” Shuddering hard, she spoke into his ear. “We’ve got to stop meeting this way, Elias Thorne.”

  All he could do was laugh.

  Chapter 29

  Leo had never been this rash in her life. She’d taken risks—hell, she lived for them—but a cliff’s-edge, soaking-wet make-out session on the brink of hypothermia was just plain idiocy. Yet when Elias barked, “Clothes off,” his voice sounding like he’d scraped it up the side of the mountain, her immediate reaction wasn’t refusal.

  She wanted to get naked, to press her body to his and soak him up.

  When he began pulling off his own wet clothes, she realized he wasn’t telling her to strip for him. He was doing it for survival.

  Embarrassment and disappointment wound through her and she tugged off her hoodie, started to wring it out—pointless, given the downpour—and went on to the next layer, and the next, laying them out as flat as she could, until there was nothing left to protect her cold, clammy skin.

  The elements raged. Wind, frigid and angry, whipped around them, into the recess and back out, slowed only by the waterfall hemming them in.

  Without speaking, he grabbed her hand and led her to the very back of the indentation, lugging his pack behind him.

  He threw her a tiny camp towel and wiped himself off with brisk, rough movements. Getting dry seemed impossible with this level of wet and cold. The bastard wind wasn’t helping at all, the way it threw water their way, like a cruel practical jokester.

  Muttering insults to the elements, she grabbed the tarp Elias shoved her way. Together, they stretched it out, fought to keep it low, and somehow got a sleeping bag spread on top of it. Still too damp to climb in, they anchored the bag with their bodies and pulled out more layers. Another bag, the fur.

  “Go ahead!” he yelled. “Be right there.”

  She opened her mouth to protest and let it drop when he rubbed his towel over Bo. Right. The dog, who looked more like a drowned rat than a canine, didn’t protest the treatment for a second.

  Teeth chattering, Leo turned to the backpack.

  “What you doing?”

  “Getting…clothes.”

  “You sure you need them?” The question whipped through the air between them.

  She stilled, stark freaking naked, and stared at him for a good five seconds before dropping the bag, shoving it to the side, and sliding deep into their nest.

  Well, I guess that’s that. Nerve endings on fire, she drew the covers up and over herself, and watched him work. The blanket did nothing to tamp down her desire when it raked over her tender nipples, drawing them into painfully tight points. Even the hard ground beneath her made her ache in ways she didn’t understand. Or maybe that was all him.

  It wasn’t possible to make out details in the dark, but she got the impression the man wore his nudity the way he’d worn his parka—completely at ease. There was nothing awkward or ridiculous about the sight of him leaning down, scrubbing at the dog, everything out in the open.

  Deep inside their shelter, that image flashed back over and over in her mind. Solid and sturdy Elias, wiping down his dog in the nude. That shouldn’t be sexy. It shouldn’t, but by God, it was. Like made-to-order porn, featuring the world’s most efficient, capable, and competent man taking care of another creature.

  How on earth would she handle these close quarters with the man after witnessing that? After…everything? Her skin felt stretched and sensitive, like it could barely contain all the want running through her muscles and bones.

  And she’d just agreed to sleep naked with him. She shook at the realization. The night before last, getting into the bag that very second had saved their lives. He’d been dead to the world when she’d undressed him, after all, and still a stranger. Skin to skin had been a last-ditch bid for survival.

  Up here, tonight, with her nipples beaded hard and the heavy weight of want in her belly, things were not the same. At all. She was damp from the rain and soaking wet from wanting him.

  She shut her eyes, but still he was there, branded on the backs of her lids, thick muscles bunching and rolling, rain sluicing off him, hair plastered to his head. She couldn’t possibly have seen single beads of water, shining like diamonds in his chest hair, but damn if she didn’t remember it that way. And his shoulders… She swallowed, thinking of how hefty they were, like his thighs, how strong they’d looked. How strong they were. Because the man was a freaking Goliath.

  A moan escaped her lips as she shuddered deeper into the still-cold sleeping bag, waiting for him to come and complicate things.

  Afraid of what would happen. Wishing he’d hurry.

  ***

  After feeding Bo, Elias urged her to take up a spot in the blankets at their feet, and slid in before pulling the thick wad over their heads and shutting out the world. The last time they’d done this, Elias had been unconscious.

  This time, he was fully aware of every detail, from the clammy press of her skin against his, to the perfect fit of their bodies, to the pain of too-cold blood sluggishly ebbing through half-frozen veins.

  Leo’s breath heated his chest—the only spot of warmth aside from the dog at their feet. Until the foot warmers he’d thrown inside, wrapped in a few insulating layers of clothes, slowly worked their magic.

  Bo shifted, grumbling in the way that meant she was happily settling in.

  A shudder at a time, their shivering diminished, Leo’s teeth stopped clacking, and even then, she didn’t move, didn’t give him an inch of space.

  Her whispered “Elias” made his hand tighten on her back, his no longer numb fingers sensitive to the point of pain.

  “Yeah,” he breathed against the top of her head.

  “You do that a lot?”

  His muscles tightened in preparation for whatever she’d ask. “What?”

  “Sucking face right after almost dying? This is, what? Our second or third time?”

  His lungs released, his belly jumped with a surprised laugh. If hypothermia had really set in, she could have stopped his heart with that question.

  “Just with you, Leo.” He listened to her breathe for a few cycles and then, though he was afraid, he asked, “You?”

  “Every single ti—” She must’ve caught the hitch in his chest. Or maybe she felt all his muscles go tight because she got real serious real fast. “Never. I told you that before.” Another long, hot exhale, the air between them like a sauna. “You’re my first.”

  And last, he wanted to say, but that seemed way out of bounds given their short acquaintance. Acquaintance. Yeah right. What they had was knowledge of each other—deep and raw and almost painful.

  It hurt him right now, in the chest, the throat. Just her presence made his insides dance.

  He should let go of her. Should make his limbs obey, slow his pulse to a reasonable rate. He should force his lower half to retreat, given the hardness growing between them.

  He’d just opened his mouth to suggest they get dressed after all and eat something, maybe separate their bed in two, when her voice cut through, each word reverberating past his rib cage to thrum at his heart. “I want to do it some more.”

  He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t budge, couldn’t believe he’d actually heard the right words. One second she was mad that they couldn’t keep their hands off each other and the next, this. “Say that again.”

  “I’m done fighting it. Kiss me, Elias. Heat me up.”

  Those words burned his skin the way her eyes would if he could see them, searing their way from his scalp to the soles of his feet. His cock was a brand pulsing against their bellies.

  There’d never be a better invitation, at least not one he was dying to accept. Before the next heartbeat, he was on her.

  Chapter 30

  Leo had tried just about everything within reason. She’d smoked some things and drunk her fair share.
Her thirst for speed made her face incomparable danger—on her bike, in the air, on missions with her teammates by her side. She’d shot at people, taken enemy fire, performed daredevil feats that most wouldn’t consider.

  Yet somehow, this was the biggest risk of her life.

  Not because she’d put her body in peril, but something else. Something she’d never realized hung in the balance. Leo had desires, like everyone. Bodily needs. A thirst for life. Opinions. She sought thrills and experiences. But usually that was it. Emotions weren’t involved in any of it. And her heart had certainly never been part of the equation before. This new reality scared the hell out of her.

  “Where?” Elias asked, the question blasting through the tight, dark space.

  “Where what?”

  “Where do you want me to kiss you?”

  Ooohhh. He was handing that first belly kiss right back to her. Her skin prickled at the possibilities.

  Then she got to thinking… Where had she meant when she’d asked for a kiss? On the lips, obviously. But then the question opened things up until—oh hell, the options seemed endless.

  That was the thing with this man—he was one big surprise. Unexpected. Abrupt. Unknown. The world was bigger when he was around.

  “Where were you thinking?” she breathed, not flirtatious but curious. Dying to know. Out of nowhere, scenarios blasted to life—every inch of her skin screamed to be touched.

  One big hand left her back, scattering goose bumps in its wake, and slowly, methodically dragged a fiery path down her spine to the curve of her ass, around to her hip, where it clenched for a split second before moving on. He shifted away just enough to run his fingers between them and down, to stroke the curly hair at her mound.

  A startled oh left her mouth, more air than voice, and his hand responded as if they weren’t two beings but separate parts of a whole—two ends of a taut cord. He dipped a single finger between her legs with the slightest, quickest of touches, barely skimming her lips, though it set her off like a tuning fork, its echo shimmering in the dark night.

  By the time she caught her breath, his hand had left her soft center to travel up over the round rise of her belly, sinking into her bellybutton—just a swirl—then to her rib cage, where it took in the rise and fall of her breathing. Not breathing, gasps. She was panting and moaning, and when his callused skin reached the underside of her breast—the soft part that had never had this many nerve endings—she grunted. Like an animal.

  He cupped her there, held her, as if this spot, this body, this exhausted shell were somehow precious.

  She wasn’t precious or fragile, not the way this massive hand made her feel in this tight, warm space. She was tough, hard as nails, fast, furious, and ready to face anything.

  It didn’t make sense when his fingers drew a sob from her lips. And they hadn’t even reached her nipple yet, so she couldn’t blame it on hormones or lust or the magic of that hypersensitive place. It was the spot between her breasts that he’d claimed now—a place no one ever noticed during sex. A place that had no nerve endings as far as she knew. And yet, his sandpaper hands showed her otherwise.

  I’ll kiss you here, they said. And here. The promise grazed her nipple, drawing a whimper, the sound like nothing she’d uttered before, and then coasted up, up to her collarbone, which he learned as if he’d been meaning to for a while.

  A while, she almost laughed at that idea. As if they’d known each other for longer than the time it had taken to get here.

  But then that thought deserted her, flew away like a balloon in the air when he cupped her chin, his hand so large it cradled her jaw and her ear and made her feel tiny before his beard brushed her face, and then his mouth did the same, and she was gone.

  Drawn into this kiss as quickly as the others, scorched by his intent, consumed by his want—and hers, if she was honest. She’d never wanted a person like this, never craved these sweet, tiny touches.

  And he’d barely touched her, barely moved, just brushed those dry lips to hers, giving her the time to move, to take over like she usually did.

  But she didn’t. Why would she when giving herself to this man’s slow, tender mastery was every bit as dangerous as jumping off this cliff?

  Without consummating the damn kiss, he pulled back, making her grasp at his shoulders like someone dying of thirst, scrabbling for purchase, power, a drop of control. Then he was back. Just his nose, skimming hers, pulling in her scent as surely as she was his, lips following in its path, up, to kiss her eye, then back down, with the slow, calm patience of a man who’d lived alone for a decade. A man with no expectations.

  But she wasn’t like that. She craved million-mile-an-hour winds, sought adrenaline like a drug, and jumped from airplanes, all while wishing for more, more, more. Nothing had ever been enough.

  He backed up, forcing a muted scream from her throat until his hand wrapped around it, loose but secure, and—oh no, oh no, this was it, what she’d needed all these years. Her sex went heavy, flooded with warmth and wetness, and she wanted to scream at him to move.

  This glacier-slow control was the steady bass to her wild treble. It should have been discordant, but it only grounded her, kept her in her body when she’d always sped her way to completion.

  “Slow down, Leo. Let me do this my way,” he rumbled, like something older than the earth’s crust.

  When she shivered this time, it wasn’t from the cold or even from stimulation, but with recognition. This…him…together. The primitive rightness of this man’s touch was like hydrogen and oxygen coming together to make water. More than the sum of their parts.

  ***

  In this world, there was nothing as soft as Leo Eddowes, nothing half as sweet. The most fearless woman he’d ever met, who faced her own death with humor, whose spine was strong as diamonds, while her brain was just as sharp, had somehow opened up, giving him her soft, tender core.

  And he was in absolute awe.

  With reverence, he took her mouth, her heat, this emotion filling the air between them and gave her everything he had.

  Though, really it wasn’t much. Rough hands, tired muscles, bones that felt worn down to nothing.

  With chapped lips, he explored her soft cheek, the straight line of her jaw, the tender skin beneath her ear. The noises she made were incredible. Low and sexy, breathless with wanting.

  Wanting him.

  And fuck if he wasn’t hard enough to plow through the damn bedrock beneath them.

  “Do it, Elias. Kiss me for God’s sake.”

  Her words surprised a laugh from him, along with something else—something not quite so bright and sweet. Something feral and animalistic. A bestial desire to make her do things his way.

  He threw a leg over hers—startled to realize in an offhand way that Bo had left their nest a while ago—and pinned Leo to the hard ground.

  “No,” he whispered right into her ear.

  When she tried to move her hands only to find her wrists trapped, her surprise was palpable, vibrating through his chest as surely as her long, thready moan. She reached with her hips, her breasts, tried to bite him with that mouth, and for a few, drawn-out seconds, he could do nothing but shut his eyes and breathe. That or he’d embarrass himself all over her belly.

  Which was probably the way this would end anyway, given how long it had been. And how badly he wanted her.

  Once he’d gotten as much control as he could on the situation, he let his hungry inner beast take over, let his blood thicken and his pulse slow.

  With the speed of lava easing from the earth, her wrists tight in one of his fists, he lowered himself back on top of her, let her feel his heavy erection, and then rose when she tried to kiss him again.

  He could get addicted to this power—the power of a strong woman wanting him, showing him, and fighting him just enough to prove it.

 
“More,” she demanded. “Come on, Elias. Let me feel you… Give me a…”

  She opened her legs wide and his body reacted like he’d been electrocuted.

  He was the one who grunted this time, the sound punctuated with a quiet “damn” when he encountered all that wetness. The very real possibility of slipping inside her made him go very, very still.

  Not because he didn’t want it, but because he needed it so bad.

  If he didn’t kiss her again, didn’t get his fill of her taste, then he’d do something irrevocable.

  He bent, put his mouth to hers, and lost his ever-loving mind.

  Chapter 31

  For the first time, Leo got it—what it meant to want something more than life. To crave to the point of endangering herself. It was how she’d felt just now, as Elias withheld himself. She’d thought that it would go away when he kissed her.

  Silly woman.

  Just a kiss. Lips, teeth, tongue. It wasn’t so much to ask, no big deal. Where was the danger in that?

  Here was the answer. Right here. Because kisses weren’t supposed to be all-consuming, but this one was. It tore her open, made her feel things she’d never acknowledged. Or even understood were there.

  They were pressed together, writhing, the sleeping bags and blankets in serious danger of taking off in the wind, but she wasn’t cold. At all. She was nothing but a ball of hot, searing sensation.

  And now she wanted more. Him, inside her. Her body bucked, reaching for him. And like before, he lifted up, pulling out of the way.

  “I want you, Elias,” she muttered against his lips. “Want you so bad.”

  His “Yeah?” was a deep bass. “Want you, too.” He took a long, slow breath and nuzzled the side of her face like he had all the time in the world, like he could do this for hours, days, years. “But we need a condom.”

  “In your pack.”

  “You found those, huh?” He made another low, happy sound, close and intimate. “I’m too happy to move.”

  She inhaled his warm breath, listened to the wind, which hadn’t been there a second ago, had it? And homed in on the scattered rap of rain on the top layer of fur.