by Bella Blake
The last mile is rough going. Casual hikers don’t even know about it, which is a good thing. It takes some experience to navigate over the minefield of boulders and the nearly vertical drop that descends the steep ridge to the small, secluded plateau.
A short stone cairn, nearly overgrown with brush, is the only indicator that we’ve reached the hidden path. When we leave the trail, she follows me, and it’s a good thing I know the way by heart, because all I can think about is how much I want to shove that little white tank top up and lick every inch of her.
An hour later, we reach the plateau and habit takes over.
I’ve been a guide for too many years to not fall into a routine. I point out a few different spots where she can put up her tent, then I go to my preferred spot. I always put my tent up first, that way if I have to argue about how to set up a tent, at least I don’t have to set mine up in the dark.
But when I turn to offer Megan help, she’s almost done.
I watch as she uses a rock to hammer in the last stake. She looks over her shoulder at me, and I feel my heart stutter. I don’t know if I’ve ever guided someone who didn’t need my help.
We fall into a rhythm that baffles me with how natural it feels.
We both fish our tents out of our packs then set the bags out of the way. She immediately begins gathering twigs and branches while I dig out a pit for a small fire. There’s something about her pretty French manicure getting all dirty—and her not caring a bit—that makes me want to pull her against me.
Soon enough, we’re sitting across from each other on rock slabs, a fire crackling between us, eating a quick dinner out of meal pouches.
“Well,” she says as she sticks her spoon into her empty pouch, “it’s not exactly restaurant quality, but it’s a lot better than I expected.”
“Just avoid the breakfast ones,” I warn her as I scrape the last bit of my own meal out of the foil pack. “Dehydrated scrambled eggs are barely redeemable even with hot sauce.”
I finish the last bite and offer to take her empty pouch. It’s fast work to pack the trash and give a quick rinse of the silverware. I hand her the spoon back, holding onto it a second longer than necessary as her fingers brush mine. She looks up at me under those long eyelashes, a playful smile on her lips. I walk back to my stone perch before I do something rash, like kiss her.
“So, don’t take this the wrong way,” I start, eyeing her inquisitively, “but you don’t strike me as the type of person who really needs my services. You seem to know your way around the forest. And I can tell you hike regularly with the way you were keeping up with me today—that’s no easy feat.”
She gives me a casual shrug, but I can see a hint of blush on her skin. “Yeah, you got me there. Truthfully, hiring you was more for my best friend, Vanessa, than anything. She’s not really the outdoorsy type, and it made her feel better knowing we’d be with an expert.”
My interest in Megan is growing by the minute.
A woman who can handle herself in the woods certainly doesn’t need me by her side, yet here I am. Curiosity gets the best of me and I can’t help but ask, “Then why didn’t you ditch me after she dropped out, if you don’t need a wilderness guide?”
She shrugs again, looking out at the view as she rubs her palms on her knees. “I’m not as familiar with this part of the mountains as where I usually hike, so I figured it couldn’t hurt to have a guide. Plus, it seemed rude to cancel last minute. And... now I’m kinda glad I didn’t.” Her voice grows softer as her eyes meet mine.
“I’m glad, too,” I confess. “It’s been really nice, just the two of us.”
I love the coy smile that curls on her lips at my words. My pulse races as we stare at each other over the flames. The muscles in my legs tense up as every nerve in my body scream at me to go over there and kiss her. I wasn’t planning to make a move on her this soon, but God knows I want to.
Maybe, with that sexy, playful gleam in her eye, she’ll make a pass at me first. If she does, it’ll be on like a damn contest, and it won’t just be the view taking her breath away tonight.
But a moment later, she presses her lips together like she’s trying to keep from saying something, and she turns away. “Looks like clouds on the horizon,” she says, gazing out over the land.
“Yeah, it might rain hard tonight,” I say, studying the view myself. I can see why Hugh was concerned.
The sky to the west is painted with pinks, oranges, and purples of a gorgeous sunset. But to the north, there are gathering clouds with large hot towers rising into the air and the horizon is tinged with grey and deep blues—signs of the promised storms. As we watch, silent flashes of light erupt in the far distance. Those storm cells are packing some serious lightning.
“You think so?” she asks, those pretty lips turning down with a hint of a frown.
“Those storms will probably move in overnight, but you should be fine with the rain fly over your tent. If it starts to thunder, though, it’ll be loud.”
She shivers at my words, and I raise an eyebrow. “Not a fan of thunder?”
“Not particularly,” she admits with a sheepish grin. “Thunder means lightning, and that’s bad news.”
“The good thing about this spot, nestled between these two ridges with the mountain at our backs, is that we’re not too exposed,” I tell her in a reassuring tone.
It takes all of my iron will to not offer to let her stay in my tent tonight.
Neither of us will sleep if that happens.
Megan runs her eyes over me again, like she’s thinking the same thing, and my body instantly responds. I keep my gaze steady and run my tongue lightly across my lips as I stare at her.
I know it’s not just the fire making her skin flush. Her legs shift and she rubs her thighs together while running her hands through her long hair as though she’s nervous. She turns her face towards the sunset again, giving me a gorgeous silhouetted view of her, but I can see the little side-eye glances she sends my way because I never stop watching her.
She runs her hands over her arms and legs, caressing herself as though she has goosebumps from being under my intense gaze. I’d happily take over that job—any excuse to touch her, really.
Just as I stand to make my move, fat, hard rain drops start falling, and Megan jerks as they splatter against her face. She shields her eyes with one hand and squints at me through the rain. For a fleeting moment, disappointment washes across her expression, then she rises to her feet.
“I guess it’s time to turn in,” she squeaks. She flees into her tent, zipping it up with haste as I huff out a breath.
Even though he can’t control the weather, I curse Hugh like the storms are his fault. I’m positive it would have been only a few more minutes before I could have had her wrapped in my arms and finally tasted those pretty lips.
Grumbling inwardly, I cover our campfire with several layers of dirt before climbing into my own tent. If there’s a silver lining here, it’s that maybe it’ll rain hard enough tonight to wet everything down and lower the risk of wildfire breaking out.
The light raindrops patter against my rain fly, but I swear I hear a sensual moan coming from Megan’s tent, and it sends every ounce of blood to my cock. My mind fills with the thought of her touching herself just a few feet away from me, of her wishing it was my hands on her, my lips against hers, my cock filling her.
Another moan reaches my ears, and this time the sound is unmistakably erotic. I shove my hand into my sleeping bag and grab my aching cock. I bite my lip to keep quiet as I stroke myself. Between listening to Megan pleasure herself and imagining I’m the one bringing her to ecstasy, I come as quick and hard as a bolt of lightning.
She hits her own peak a moment later, and I lay in the dark, listening to her catch her breath as my pulse slowly returns to normal.
All I know is that tomorrow night at the cabin, I want the full experience—and I’m gonna do everything in my power to make that happen.
5
MEGAN
“Megan.”
Chase says my name and I look up to see him crawling over me, a devious smirk on those sexy lips of his, taunting me with a promise of good things to come. I hear the zipper groan as he opens my sleeping bag. I should tell him to stop, that I came on this trip for hiking and not hookups, but he’s too hard to resist.
“Megan,” he says my name again, louder, but he’s taking his time getting my sleeping bag off, and I want to shove it down to get his body against mine as soon as possible.
I’d taken my pants off before slipping into my bag and fantasized about this very scenario as I brought myself to orgasm, hardly able to stop myself from crying out his name as I came. And now here he is, wanting me—God, I’m so glad I shaved my legs before coming on this trip.
“Megan!”
A strong hand shakes my shoulder and I blink.
I look up to see Chase’s face poking through the door flap of my tent, my legs still properly tucked into my sleeping bag. He’s wearing a headlamp, the light pointed up, filling my small backpacking tent with an eerie glow.
Dammit. It was just a dream.
“What’s going on?” I ask, alarm rising in my chest as I struggle to sit up.
“We need to go,” he says, pulling my tent flap open wider. “A fire’s broken out, and it’s spreading like crazy. Shove food and water in your bag and get dressed, now. Leave the tent and sleeping bag. We’re out in five minutes.”
He disappears and with him, the light. Panic swiftly replaces the lust in my heart and I scramble to get out of my bag.
Twenty seconds later, the top half of me is dressed and I’ve somehow managed to put everything on right-side out. I push my legs back into my pants, then stomp my feet into my boots. Thankfully, I’d kept almost everything tucked away in my backpack, so other than shoving my water bottle, bug spray, and paperback into the top, there isn’t much else to do.
I throw the bag out of the tent and crawl out after it. I hesitate, looking back into the tent, considering my sleeping bag. It’s my favorite—a special order I saved up to get last year.
“We gotta move, Megan.”
Chase is buckling his pack’s waist straps and I see he’s abandoned his own tent. I push up to my feet and dig my own headlamp out of a side pocket on my pack, pulling it on to hang around my neck. Next is my pack, which I hoist up and slip on quickly, then I’m ready.
“Where do we go?” I ask, my heart pumping in my throat.
This plateau is high in the mountains, nestled between two tall ridges, but we’re still surrounded by the thick forest, all of it just kindling to a wildfire.
I’m not looking forward to a midnight scramble down the boulder field we came up yesterday, but being roasted alive isn’t a better option. I turn to look out over the same gorgeous view we’d enjoyed together at sunset and immediately cover my mouth in horror.
The entire valley is on fire.
It looks like we woke up next to a portal to Hell.
“Don’t panic,” Chase says as he grabs my hand and turns me to face him.
He’s so calm that I can’t help but feel like we’re going to be okay, that together we’re going to get through this. He puts both hands on my shoulders and dips his head to look me in the eyes.
“You good?”
I nod quietly, not really sure I’m actually good, but I’m not at the edge of a panic attack, either.
“Okay,” he says with a kind smile, probably trying to reassure me. He lifts his hands away and motions at the dark mountain rising above us. “I know a route that’ll take us higher on the ridge and out of the tree line. We can’t go back the way we came—that trail won’t be passable for a few days at least.”
The sound of a low plane buzzing the ridge makes us look up, both of us squinting into the dark. It passes overhead and we watch as the shadowy silhouette of the small-engine plane flies over the inferno below us.
My mouth drops as I see people jumping out of the plane, their parachutes black against the orange fire. Most of them move away from us, gliding down towards the flames.
One doesn’t, though.
We watch in horror as the lone parachutist twists, trying with futility to right their course, but they’re only pushed further away, sailing directly into the face of a high ridge to our north—the same direction Chase wants us to climb. A moment later, we feel the heat billow across our skin as the wind shifts, likely the same gust that separated the jumper from the rest of the crew.
“We’ll see if we can find him,” Chase says, already on the move. He reaches back and tugs my hand, pulling me after him. “I know most of the smokejumpers around here. If we can find whoever landed, they’ll have a radio and they can get us out.”
“This is insane,” I mumble, tightening the straps on my pack with my free hand.
My mind is reeling from the shock of waking up to the nightmarish landscape nipping at our heels, but I don’t protest as Chase leads me away from the plateau. Instead, I lean into the adrenaline pumping through my veins and manage to keep up with his grueling pace as we begin a steep climb.
I’m not sure how long we hike, all I know is that we go at it hard, scrambling up the mountain as fast as we can. Strong wind buffets us the entire time, which doesn’t bode well for keeping the inferno in the valley contained. During a particularly strong gust, I reach up to my head out of instinct, only to remember that I left my hat in my tent.
Well, it’s a goner now.
When we pause for just a moment to get a swig of water, I survey the scene. The fire doesn’t show any sign of stopping. The glowing inferno below has expanded significantly since we set off from the plateau.
The higher vantage gives me a view of the direction we hiked along yesterday. I trace our route back with my eyes and spot the place where I snapped a few panoramic pictures, the peak barely lit by the slice of moon hanging in the sky. Below it, there’s nothing but the orange glow of fire.
If Chase had taken us back down the trail towards our cars, we’d have been trapped. A huge swatch of the forest I so peacefully admired as we hiked through it is now completely consumed by flames.
Right now, he’s single-mindedly focused on getting us to safe ground. The polite dance we were doing yesterday, keeping a physical distance between us, has flown right out the window now that we’re in survival mode.
Earlier, he didn’t hesitate to grab my hand and hold me tight when a small rockslide swept my feet out from under me. He caught me before I tumbled more than a few feet and pressed me against him so hard I could hear his heart pounding. The rough bark of the tree he wrapped his other arm around to keep us anchored in place left his skin scraped and bleeding, but he didn’t even seem to notice.
When we finally untangled, both of us were breathing hard, and it wasn’t just from the rockslide. But there’s no time for flirting, or anything else right now, so we brushed off and pressed on.
He’s pushing me to my limits, but I resolve to keep up with him and listen to his orders. He’s the survival expert and he knows this area far better than me. Plus, he’s done a damn good job of keeping me alive so far.
I tuck my water bottle away, turn my back to the flames, and continue our climb, keeping my gaze on Chase the entire time. Yesterday I watched him because of how hot he is, but now my eyes are glued to him because my life is in his hands.
Something about that makes him even sexier.
It’s like he’s my own personal hero in a Highlander romance. Except he’s not in a kilt, this is real life, and the danger is terrifyingly real.
At last, we reach the crest of the ridge and the ground flattens out. It’s still dark, and even though the deep blue tint near the horizon tells me the sun is rising, the smoke is clouding the sky.
I move closer to Chase, feeling safer in his presence.
“I could have sworn he landed over here,” he mutters as he scans the ridge, the glow of his headlamp only penetrating the darkness
so far.
I flick on mine again and focus the beam into the strongest setting, a narrow band of light sweeping against the shadows of the forest as I look for any sign of the smokejumper. We walk slowly forward, scanning the sides of the steep ridge. I try not to look down or get too close to the edge—a fall here might not kill me, but we can’t afford any injuries.
“Hello!” Chase cups his hands around his mouth and shouts. “Smokejumper!”
There’s no response. In fact, it’s eerily quiet. No sounds of insects or birds, or any of the normal hum of a happy forest. Just the sounds of our feet crunching against small rocks and twigs.
He turns to me, momentarily blinding me with his headlamp. “Start yelling and keep yelling until we find them. Maybe they need help.”
“Okay.” I nod and swallow, trying to wet my throat. I suck in a deep lungful of air and project my voice as loud as I can. “Hello! Is anyone there?”
Chase faces one side of the ridge, shouting loudly, and I do the same on the other side, both of us pausing for a few seconds in between shouts to listen for a reply. He moves ahead of me along the ridge, and I follow at a slower pace in case we miss hearing something.
On and on we yell, my throat growing rough as we carefully walk along the top of the mountain.
“Smokejumper!” I keep shouting, but soon my words barely croak out.
I pause for a moment and stop to take my pack off. I need water, otherwise I’m going to be useless.
Kneeling on the ground, I crouch over my pack to fish out my water bottle. I unscrew the cap quickly and lift it to my lips when a hand reaches out of the darkness and snatches it from me.
I’m not ashamed of the fact that I yelp and jerk backward, falling on my ass. I didn’t realize Chase had made his way back to me. His headlamp must have died.
I look up at him, illuminating his familiar features with the dimming glow of my own headlamp. He’s guzzling my water and there are dark streaks on his neck and arms.
