Austin had a route he liked, a short but sweet ascent to a 360-degree view untouched by crowds or ski lifts.
He heard Sam breathing steadily beside him, but she didn’t once flag. He had a feeling she wouldn’t slow down no matter what. When they stopped to rest, Austin promised Sam he knew a great massage therapist in town.
“Her name’s Claire, she works on my leg once a week. I’ll call when we get back. You definitely shouldn’t leave before making an appointment.”
Sam seemed excited by the prospect, but immediately Austin wished he could take it back. He didn’t want to talk about Sam leaving, not while the snow sparkled in the sun and the diamond white of the valley spread farther below them with each step they climbed.
Not that the first part of what he’d said was any better, letting her know his weaknesses, drawing attention back to his leg. He was getting sloppy, careless. Letting her in just so he’d feel justified later in pushing her out. He hated it when she asked, “You get a massage every week?”
But when he told her it helped loosen him up after all the skiing he did, she seemed to accept the answer without question, and he didn’t know whether that was better or worse than someone who demanded to know every little detail about why, how, how long. It had taken him forever to tell Claire how he was really injured, even when, every week, she reminded him she couldn’t properly treat him if she didn’t know the problem. He’d sort of hated her for asking even though she was just doing her job.
They climbed until there was nothing but snow-covered rock, just them and the snow and the sky. Austin’s legs burned, but it was the kind of pain that didn’t actually hurt. He grabbed her hand for the last few steps. “Look up,” he said.
She gasped.
With no trees to get in the way, the wind was strong, sending plumes of snow into the air. But they were so warm from the climb it felt good, the cold on their faces balancing the heat radiating from their pumping hearts. Austin pointed over the vast expanse of the Cascades, white peaks pointing up to the sky.
“Some days you can see to Canada, to the mountains farther north.” He shifted his finger west. “And the Olympics, on the other side of Seattle. Mount Rainier is down that way. And then all of this.” He stretched in a wide 360, taking in the expansive view. “All of this is why I’m here.” He looked down at her. “This is why, no matter what the Kanes do, I want to keep my part of the woods untouched. I can’t control the entire Cascades.” He laughed. “But I can control that.”
“It’s beautiful,” Sam said. “It’s breathtaking. I can’t even say what it is. There aren’t any words.”
“They say what’s his name, the guy who started the whole thing, the one who used to own the company—”
“Bill Kane,” Sam said.
“They say he traveled all over these parts and drafted the blueprints himself, deciding where to build. He didn’t want to just hire out some contractors. He had this whole vision, or whatever you want to call it, of what he was going to do.”
Sam didn’t answer. He went on.
“But I don’t understand how that’s possible. I don’t understand how anyone could come here and look at this view and think, Hey, here’s a great place to build.”
“You really love it here,” Sam said quietly.
A soft noise escaped from the back of Austin’s throat. “Maybe the problem is me.”
“Maybe it’s not a problem,” Sam said. “Maybe it won’t turn out like you think.”
“I know Gold Mountain needs help. I know it needs money, and new equipment, and that if it wants to compete with the other resorts and keep its doors open, it has to expand. But everything I’ve read about the proposal is focused on new roads, new hotels, amenities for people who don’t even live here.”
He looked over at Sam. “I’m sorry, I’m yammering.”
She shook her head. “No. It’s enough up here to make you think.”
“I’m glad you like it.”
She lifted the goggles, so he could see the dark flash of her eyes, the way she seemed to look not just at him but through him, into some deep place he thought he’d long ago closed the door on.
“I get that you don’t share these things with just anyone. I want you to know that I know that, and it means something to me.”
He didn’t have a response, so he pulled her close to him, his arms tight around her, both of them looking over the great, open world splayed down below. He could look at this view for hours, forever, and never get tired of it. The mountains changed in every season, with every snowfall. He liked the shelter on Gold Mountain, where he felt safe, on solid ground. But he craved the expanse of the peaks, feeling the pull in his chest as though he were about to dive into nothing. The trees and sky and rock called to him the way the racecourse once called to him, taunting him with possibility. Teasing him with promises of flight.
“I can see how important this place is to you,” Sam went on, linking her arm through his. He watched the breath come from her mouth, the beauty of her warmth in the middle of the cold. “But things change. Everything changes. The things we love—they never stay the same. And even if we think we know what happens next, we think we’ve got it all figured out, it never works out like we’d planned.”
“It’s not that I don’t want this place to change,” he argued. “It’s how it changes. It’s what it changes for. There’s so much need here. Kane Enterprises is right—there aren’t enough jobs. You heard Jesse—his kids are in Seattle, Bellingham. We lose talent to Portland, Vancouver, all over the place. The whole point is that Amelia has the talent to leave. That’s what people aspire to. Going away.
“We need jobs, and opportunities, and things to keep people here. But I don’t think that has to take the form of a giant resort that caters to rich outsiders. The whole point is that this place is stunning, accessible, has tons to do year-round, yet it isn’t super built-up or a giant traffic jam. I’m sure Kane Enterprises has done its research, and the proposal’s been approved or however that works. Obviously the other parties have been willing to sell, and the community is going along with it. But that doesn’t make it right, Sam. That doesn’t mean the people here have really had a choice.”
“But don’t you think Kane Enterprises is thinking about sustainability and has plans for roads that won’t lock everything up?”
Austin shook his head. “They’re not thinking about this from the perspective of people who live and travel here. They’re seeing the map from the top down instead of from the inside.”
Sam squirmed around in his arms. He wondered if he’d said something wrong. “How do you know that? Why would you think the worst-case scenario is the one that’s gong to come true?”
Austin couldn’t help laughing a little at that. “Experience. But I’ve followed what Kane has done elsewhere—in downtown Seattle, in that development along Puget Sound, in the San Juans. Did you hear about that uproar on Bainbridge, when they knocked down the ferry building and built that whole monstrosity?”
“That makes it so much easier to get to and from the island,” Sam pointed out.
“That puts twice as many people on the ferry so the company makes twice as much, as do the Kane-owned parking garages, and the vendors who now have to buy permits from Kane. And then when they get to the island, there’s no place to put all those people. It’s like an amusement park ride.” He turned toward her, agitation making his heart beat like a drum. “There’s the land that’s going to be destroyed so some people can have a second or third luxury home or whatever, but there are additional costs, too. My friend Abbi is a naturalist, she has tons of information about wildlife disruption. And I spent my undergrad studying this area, environmental management, that sort of thing. I know I sound dopey, but it’s just—does Kane have anything in its plans to reduce waste, make the lodges low impact, cover additional snowmaking needs? Anything? Because nothing we’ve seen of the proposal deals with any of that and I’m…”
He looked d
own at his hands, embarrassed by his outburst. The duct tape around his fingers was peeling. He’d have to apply another layer—preferably not when Sam was around.
Sam cocked her head and looked at him intently. “Say you had unlimited funds. Money is no object. You can do whatever you damn well please. Say you’re head of Kane Enterprises and have all their resources at your disposal. What would you do here?”
“Oh, man.” He laughed. “I think we’d freeze to death before I got through that whole list.”
“You actually have ideas?”
He was hurt that she sounded surprised.
“I just told you I studied this.”
“I thought you, uh, skied.”
He raised an eyebrow. “I can do other things, too, you know. After my ski career tanked, I was still young. Clearly I had to do something. I came to Washington for school and got my degree in environmental management. I only lasted a year in an office, but hey. At least I tried.” He turned to look at her. “It’s not like I haven’t thought about this. I live here. My whole livelihood depends on the mountain. So I definitely have ideas about where to put the new runs, set up facilities on the mountains, what the condos can be like. I just think it can be done without, you know, completely destroying so many people’s property.”
Sam nodded, but something about how closely she was paying attention, as though his thoughts actually mattered, made him feel ridiculous for talking like this at all.
“But it’s not like anyone would listen to me,” he said with a sigh. “What with the whole fact that I don’t have unlimited funds and am very much not a Kane. The only reason they want to talk to me is to strong-arm me into selling. Or something—I don’t know. It’s weird they still haven’t called.”
He picked up a clump of fluffy snow and fashioned it into a ball, but when he threw it, the whole thing fell away like a dandelion puff, the snow drifting before the ball hit the ground.
Sam kissed his cheek. “I’m listening.”
Then she took a ball of snow and shoved it in his face.
The surprise of cold and wet made him shout and he was on her in an instant, pinning her down, the two of them throwing snow at each other like they were kids having a brawl on a snow day. They laughed until they were shrieking from the snow dripping under their jackets and scarves. But as they raced back down the trail they grew warm again, panting, flushed, and breathless as they climbed back on the snowmobile.
“I bet the Cascade has a nice hot tub,” Austin mused, starting the engine.
Sam sat behind him and traced a lazy finger over his back. “I was just thinking about that fireplace of yours. A little more private?” She reached around with her other hand and squeezed the inside of his thigh. When he groaned, she went farther. All that fabric between her hand and his cock and still she was making him hard. It was the way she touched him, panting in his ear, grinding her body against his back.
“You can’t do this to me,” he groaned.
“Can’t?” Sam flicked the flesh of his earlobe that stuck out under his hat. “That sounds like a challenge.”
“Oh, no, you don’t.” Austin turned the engine off. Fast. Even Sam paused in her ministrations, not sure what he was about to do.
Good. She couldn’t always be in charge all the time. Not that he minded the way she’d thrown him on the sofa and done exactly what she wanted with him. Nope, he hadn’t minded that at all, and the thought of her breasts in the firelight was almost enough to make him pause, wait, take her back to his place before fucking her fast and hard with every ounce of pent-up need.
But he didn’t want her to spend the ride down planning what she was going to do to him. He wanted her unscripted, unplanned. He wanted her now.
They were warm enough from the hike that they didn’t have to get inside right away. And anyway, what he had in mind wouldn’t take long. Austin slid off the front of the snowmobile, pulling Sam down with him.
“What are you—” she started, but when he turned her so she was facing the snowmobile, her back to him, it was clear. He pushed her shoulders down to bend her over the seat.
“Doesn’t get more private than this,” he grunted as he reached around and unzipped her ski pants, shimmying them over her ass. Sure, they were out in the open, exposed to the world. But there was no one around. No one to hear her moan his name.
She had on a sweet pair of wine-colored panties, and he almost hated to slide them over her curves. But the sight of them pulled down around her thighs with the ski pants was even better. He unzipped his pants and pulled out his cock, throbbing already from the sight of her bare ass bent over the snowmobile, her clothes partway down. Her body was warm, heat radiating from exertion and desire. He slid a hand between her thighs and yes, she was wet, quivering, squirming to press her clit into his palm.
But he pulled away. He wanted her desperate, panting. He wanted her to need this fuck.
“I’ll get cold,” she moaned, holding fast to the seat of the snowmobile as she bent over. But she didn’t make a move to stand. She didn’t give any indication that she didn’t like knowing he was getting off just watching her bend over for him.
Austin stepped closer. “I’ll keep you warm,” he whispered as he used his body to cover her, her ass pressed up against his cock.
“That’s it, baby,” he urged her, sliding his cock along the beautiful cleft.
“Please,” she whimpered.
“Please what?”
“Please fuck me.”
He pulled a condom out of his pocket. It had seemed silly at the time to bring one, but damn, was he glad for it now. He put it on and used his boot to kick out her legs wider. That alone made a groan escape from her lips, and he knew then that she wanted it like this, hard and fast, him taking her just how she’d taken him last night, without holding anything back.
He pressed the tip of his cock to her and she inched back, coaxing him in. He waited, filling her with anticipation, and then he plunged into her.
Sam gasped. Quickly the cry turned into a moan, low and throaty, the sound of desire itself. Austin steadied himself with his hands on either side of her, gripping the seat of the snowmobile, and started to fuck her. The snowmobile rocked, but it was sturdy and stayed upright, no matter how hard Sam shook.
“Come,” she commanded. “Come inside me. Please.”
His only response was to hold on to her shoulders, pressing her down while giving him the leverage he needed to drive even deeper. Her cries carried across the open expanse, but he didn’t care. There was no one around. And even if there were? He still wouldn’t have cared. There was no longer anything in his world besides her body and the tension building inside him.
She could feel it, too. “Please,” she said again, a gasp, her breath coming in short bursts as she held on. “I need you.”
The three little words were like a jolt through his system, and he came as if on command, as if her words had unlocked something he couldn’t contain. A force ripped through him and he let go with such completeness that he was shuddering afterward, slumped over her body, pressing her tight to him. He slid out of her and wrapped the condom in a tissue to throw away later. But when he pulled up his pants, he wished for a second that they’d actually waited and were inside so he could stay like that, holding her, feeling her heartbeat and the steady rise and fall of her breathing.
But they weren’t inside, they were out in the snow and he’d just fucked her over the back of a snowmobile, and even though it had just happened it was hard to believe it was real and not some fantasy. Sam pulled up her pants and turned around, her cheeks flushed, lips raised in a coy half smile.
He reached for her, pulling her to him and kissing her because that was all he had when there weren’t any words left to say.
“Damn,” she finally whispered, eyes sparkling.
“We aren’t done yet,” he said, sliding his hands between her thighs.
She groaned, but in the end she shook her head. “How abou
t that fireplace? Something warm for me to look forward to.”
Austin drove the snowmobile back as fast as he dared. He could feel her clinging to him, rubbing against him, building the anticipation so that as soon as he flicked her clit with his fingers, his tongue, the tip of his cock, she would come.
His frustrations from that morning seemed like a lifetime away.
Chapter Fourteen
As soon as they started up Austin’s truck, Sam pressed her fingertips to the heat vents to warm her hands. She didn’t know how she felt about everything Austin had said, but at least she better understood where he was coming from. She was probably supposed to be thinking through how she could use that to convince him to sell, by showing him what wouldn’t change and reassuring him of the measures Kane Enterprises was taking.
But mostly she was thinking how refreshing it was to talk to someone so passionate. So principled. Someone with more on his mind than the numbers in the latest contract or how he was going to look with Sam on his arm.
She was also thinking about how cold she was. The trip had been worth it, but damn did she need a hot shower and some of that cocoa Austin had brought her on the first day they met.
She needed that massage he’d been talking about, too. She was sore from skiing, hiking, fucking. Clenching to hold on. She was thrilled when they got back to Austin’s and he called to make an appointment with his friend Claire for that afternoon.
“So she’s good?” Sam asked as she took off her wet boots and tossed them by the door. “Will she take out my knots and not judge me for my horrible posture from hunching over the computer all day?”
Austin laughed. “Yes to the knots, but I can’t promise anything about judgment. She’s the nicest person you’ll ever meet, though. Quieter than Mack, so don’t worry, you’ll be able to relax.”
Make Me Stay (Men of Gold Mountain) Page 13
