She dropped her head back with a groan. “You’re a tease, you know that?”
“I need you to come for me, Carrie. Right now.”
“I’m trying, but you keep interrupting me.”
“No—I mean it.” He moved against her, every muscle in his body taut, his cock throbbing, his blood coursing, his heart so full it almost hurt. “I need you to give me everything you’ve got.”
“You already have it all, you idiot. You always have.” Still, she followed his directions and gave herself over to him. For the next sixty seconds, he allowed himself to think of nothing but Carrie—her pleasure and her beauty, the way she held nothing back—until her orgasm ripped the sounds from her throat and drew his own release forth.
He was shaking and sated, panting from the exertion of loving this woman, but that didn’t stop him from rocking back on his knees, frantically grabbing for his clothes. “Holy shit. I think you might have—”
Her eyes grew wide as she, too, heard the bark sounding from a distance. “No. It can’t be.”
He fumbled with the zipper of the tent, only half-dressed but frantic to get outside. It wasn’t possible. Finding his dog couldn’t be as easy as letting himself love Carrie with everything he had.
But it was. And it could. And there, at the edge of their camp, barely visible against the swirling snow, was Mara.
Chapter Ten
Both Mara and Jenga lay curled up in Scott’s lap when the rest of the team returned from their search.
Carrie’s reaction to seeing the dog appear on the fringes of their camp, her hesitant tail wagging, her poor body matted with ice and clumps of snow that had to add at least ten pounds to her already burdensome walk, had been to burst into tears. And then promptly get dressed, because her nipples had been about to snap off.
But these guys? Exhausted and cold, coming in after a four-hour march in the wilderness? Smart-asses, every last one of them.
“You knew where she was this whole time, didn’t you?” Ace fell to the ground, his body making a lumpy, misshapen snow angel. “Bastards.”
“None of the work, all of the glory. Typical.” Max dropped his pack with a sigh.
“It was the north trail, wasn’t it?” Nate swore, but his beaming face counteracted his vehemence. “I knew we should have started there. Always go with your gut—I have such a hard time with that one.”
“Carrie found her,” Scott said, smiling. He’d been smiling nonstop for the past hour—it alternated between a huge grin that lifted her up off the ground and sent her flying, and a quieter, inward-directed calm she wasn’t sure she’d ever seen before.
Peace. That was peace.
She patted the side pocket of her parka, where Voodoo Scott and Hairball Mara lay comfortably nestled together in the warmth of her body heat. She’d taken a moment to shove what remained of the hairball inside the doll’s broken chest cavity. It probably wasn’t necessary—from the way Mara kept whimpering and licking Scott’s face, and the way Scott kept allowing her, it seemed pretty clear they had no intention of letting each other go—but Carrie wasn’t tempting fate. Not again.
“Carrie did it? You weren’t walking on that ankle at the time, were you?” Ace looked up from his spot on the ground. “I told you—elevation and ice packs. We still need you to fly us home.”
She was glad the cold made it impossible to blush. “Oh, I wasn’t walking.”
“It was the funniest thing,” Scott said, and she could hear the mischief in his voice. Playful and gruff, just like a puppy. “Remember the other night at the poker game, when I said she makes that sound—”
Carrie squeaked and ran over to his side, prepared to slap a hand over his mouth, but he was ready for her, and he ducked so she would have to go through his pack of animals to get to him.
“Are you seriously hiding behind your dogs right now?”
“You wouldn’t hurt poor, neglected Mara, would you?”
She turned to the rest of the team, all of whom were watching them with varied levels of interest and amusement. “Don’t listen to a word he says. Mara came to us. She was drawn by the sounds of the camp.”
“You mean she was drawn by the sounds of you howling.”
“I do not howl, you jerk.”
“Mara thinks you howl.”
“It’s more like mewling. I’m a kitten. A sexy kitten.”
Scott’s eyes—those dark, sleepy windows that pulled her in and made her feel whole—flashed, and she shut him up the only way she knew how. With a kiss.
In the background, she could hear Max and Ace and Nate heave a collective sigh as they began the monumental task of packing everything back up so they could head home again. They were getting really good at this discretion thing.
“You should go help them,” she said as soon as Scott let her go enough for her to catch her breath. “I need to mentally prepare to get us out of here. I want to make my last flight count.”
Scott frowned. “You don’t know that it’s the last one. There’s still time.”
He sounded so concerned—not for the dangers of the wind, but for her future—she couldn’t help but tease his lips back into a smile. “I think I’ll be okay either way. You aren’t the only one who learned a little something about himself out here.”
It was true. This could very well be the last flight she ever took, but she no longer felt as if her world would crack open if that happened. She was a good pilot, yes, but she was also a good leader, a good rescuer, a good friend.
Flying wasn’t family. These guys were.
She fell into another burst of enjoying this particular part of her family, embracing the dogs and the man as one. Scott alternated between yelling at her to be more careful with his animals and refusing to let any of them move an inch out of his reach, his commands so loud she almost missed hearing Nate’s voice a few minutes later.
“You know, the more time I spend with them, the more I can’t decide if they hate each other or love each other,” he said.
“Oh, it’s love, bro,” Ace replied. “With those two, it’s never been anything else.”
Epilogue
Scott hung up the phone and pressed his head against the window, enjoying the cool press of the glass against his forehead. After spending three full days living and breathing snow, his house felt like a sauna by comparison.
“How’d it go?” Carrie’s arms wound around his waist, her chin propped on her shoulder. “Is your dad coming over to join our Die Hard marathon?”
“Not this time,” Scott said, and stayed in place, letting the familiar sensation of Carrie’s embrace comfort him. “But Newman was over, and it sounded like they were enjoying themselves.”
“That’s good.”
Scott nodded. “I might go over there later. Just to say hello and maybe take a few cans of Ace’s cranberries.”
“That’s nice.” She hesitated. “Do you want me to come along?”
Yes. Wholeheartedly. Without reservation. “Would you?”
“I can’t think of any other way I’d prefer to spend Christmas than with your family.”
They stood that way for a few minutes, a portrait of unprecedented calm, taking a quiet moment before they returned to the living room where a loud, messy, nontraditional holiday celebration was in full swing. Ace and Max were out there reciting the entire movie by heart while most of the rest of the SAR team complained in the background. Lexie was reported to have dumped an entire plate of cookies on their heads.
When he and Carrie finally did pull apart, it was because the kitchen door swung open to let in a fluffy grey-and-white husky, diligent in her pursuit of her family even though she hadn’t fully recovered yet. Dehydration and exhaustion had stripped her of some of her natural exuberance, but Scott expected her to make a full recovery. Already, she was coddled to unhealthy levels and allowed to sleep in the bed with him and Carrie.
Well, not all the time. There was something seriously wrong with the way his dogs reacted
to the sounds of that woman’s pleasure.
“Who’s the sweetest girl?” Carrie dropped to her knees and began bestowing Mara with a profusion of kisses. “Who wants to open her presents early?”
“I thought we agreed not to do presents,” Scott said. “You told me that the FAA letting you keep your license was enough. You wept tears of joy. You said nothing I could do would ever top your tears of joy.”
She flashed him a grin as she got to her feet. “Oh, don’t worry. I didn’t get you anything. This one is for her.” And then she proceeded to grab a box from the counter, lifting the lid to reveal a pile of garbage and discarded dust bunnies.
“What the hell kind of present is that?”
She didn’t answer him, just lifted out three small bundles of hair, which, upon closer inspection, were revealed to be twisted into some kind of weird shapes. “Mara, I want you to meet your new siblings. JoJo, Hijinks, and Rex.”
“Those aren’t her siblings, Carrie. They’re lumps of hair. And when the actual animals arrive, they’re my newest training puppies. Not pets.”
She continued ignoring him. “Do you want to keep the puppies, Mara? Should we make Scott keep the puppies?”
Mara wagged her tail in enthusiastic agreement.
“You’re spoiling her. One more week of this, and she’s going to be a useless contribution to our team.”
“I think he wants the puppies, Mara. I really do. I can hear it in his voice.”
He groaned. “Carrie—we are not keeping every dog that comes through here. I don’t care how many weird, crafty hairballs you and Lexie make.”
She finally looked up at him, laughter in her throat and on her lips. “Too bad it’s not up to you. You won’t have any say in the matter once—” she extracted something more from the bottom of the box, “—Voodoo Scott arrives!”
Oh, hell no.
Scott made a lunge for the battered doll—his chest bandaged with pink duct tape and nothing below the waist but plastic, skin-colored briefs—but it was too late. Voodoo Scott started rolling around on the ground with the hair, falling into declarations of ecstasy at his suddenly expanded family.
He wasn’t the only one to fall. Feeling left out, the living, breathing Scott also dropped to the ground, finding himself fully claimed by the enthusiastic kisses of the woman he loved and the dog he was determined never to let go again.
He felt like the luckiest man in the world.
Thanks
Thanks for reading Off the Map. I hope you enjoyed it!
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Off the Map is the second novella in the Winter Rescue series. The books in the series include In the Clear, Off the Map, and Out of Reach (Winter 2015). I hope you enjoy them all!
And if you’re interested in learning a little more about the Winter Rescue series, including a first chapter excerpt from In the Clear, please turn the page.
In the Clear Excerpt
Chapter One
For a full twenty seconds, Lexie thought the vibrator in her purse had somehow managed to turn itself on. Again.
She held a wineglass to her lips and feigned an interest in the oaken undertones or whatever it was people were always going on about. It was as good a cover as any as she wormed her stocking-clad foot across the restaurant carpet, searching for the traitorous purse. Her oversized rainbow handbag held lots of illicit things—at least three unpaid parking tickets, a tube of lipstick she’d accidentally stolen from the drugstore and meant to return, a tiny bottle of vodka for emergencies of a social nature.
Honestly, her silver bullet was the least offensive of the bunch. Or it would be, if she could get to the darn thing and stop it from shaking the whole table. Vibrators with faulty on-off switches had to be the worst manufacturing defect of all time. Anything sending unreliable electrical impulses should be banned from nearing a lady’s nether regions.
“Sorry, guys. That’s me.” Fletcher looked up from across the table, a sheepish grin quirking the corner of his mouth. “I need to take this.”
Lexie deflated on the spot, sinking into the chair and taking a healthy swallow of the Merlot. Oak, schmoak, whatever. It tasted like alcohol, and that was all that really mattered right now.
“Go and…do what it is you do.” She gave a magnanimous wave. “Pimp or illegally remove kidneys or whatever. Honestly—who even carries pagers anymore?” It was easy to joke now that it wasn’t her electronic device acting up.
“A doctor,” Sean provided. Her brother nodded as if that made perfect sense, even though they both knew Fletcher Owens was the last man on earth who would willingly wield a scalpel. The sight of blood made him queasy.
Lexie snickered. “More like someone is being reined in by his sugar mama.”
“It’s neither of those things,” Fletcher said.
And that was all he offered. As he always did when the Mysterious Pager of Mystery went off, he said nothing but enigmatically sauntered away to make a phone call in private.
Lexie got up to follow him, but was checked by her brother’s hand.
“What?” she asked with faux innocence. “I have to use the ladies’ room.”
“Then hold it. Let him attend to his business in peace. You know he doesn’t like us making a big deal out of his work.” Her brother’s pale blue eyes—so much like her own—narrowed, and he kicked her shin with his pointy dress shoe.
“Ouch.” She reached down and rubbed the offending body part. “You can’t tell me you aren’t the least bit curious what it is he does when the pager goes off. Superhero? Mob hit? It would be so cool if it was a mob hit.”
“There is something seriously wrong with you if you wish a life of crime on my best friend.”
There was no mistaking his tone or the annoyingly proprietary way the words came out. My best friend. As though Lexie hadn’t known Fletcher as long as he had. As if she had no place in the land of manliness they shared.
Well, she did have a place. Or, rather, she could have a place, if she finally carved a few inroads that direction. She was finding it surprisingly difficult to approach Fletcher with her request, and not just because Sean rarely allowed her a moment alone with him.
It was weird, asking a man out for a kind-of-but-not-really-a-date. Especially when that man was someone you’d known almost your whole life.
“I’m just saying it makes sense,” she said. “It’s always the quiet ones you have to be careful of. They say Jeffrey Dahmer was a perfectly normal guy to the outside world.”
“Lexie.” Sean’s voice was firm with the sound of the big brother coming out to play. Five extra minutes of freedom from the womb, and that somehow made him King of All the Wisdom. “Think about what you said.”
Heat flushed to her face. “I’m not saying he eats people. I’m saying there’s no way to know everything about someone. We all have secrets.”
“People only have secrets from you because you’re incapable of keeping them.” Sean pulled the wine bottle across the table, well out of her reach. “And lay off the sauce. There’s probably some emergency at work they need him for.”
“Really? An emergency? And they called Fletcher?” Now it was her turn to drip disdain all over the pristine white tablecloth.
She wasn’t being mean—at least not intentionally. It wasn’t that Fletcher was a bad guy to rely on in a pinch, but the likelihood of disaster at the used car lot where he worked was pretty low. And even if someone had hijacked a decades-old minivan or plowed through the plate glass window with one of the mopeds, they’d probably call the owner or manager to handle things.
Fletcher was the guy they’d call afterwards. To clean up.
Reorganize. File the police report and insurance claims. He was meticulous and quiet and always, always in the background—the man you could count on to hold the fire hose for you while you ran into a burning building. The man who’d drink coffee with you afterward and tell you it would all be okay.
“Stop being so nosy,” Sean warned. “Would it kill you for once to keep your mouth closed and your fingers out of the pie?”
“But I like pie.” She liked all kinds of desserts. And gossip. And having people open up to her about their lives. She also liked Fletcher a heck of a lot more than she cared for Sean right now, which was why she was trying to gather up the courage to ask if he’d be her plus one at her work function in two weeks.
She didn’t know why she hadn’t thought of it before. A whole day in Fletcher’s company without Sean and his smug proprietorship taking over. Then maybe she could start throwing my best friend around with such arrogance, too.
Of course, she said none of that. By the time she’d formed a suitable retort, Fletcher was returning to the table. She took him in at a glance, the sight of his slow, careful walk such an ingrained part of her life it barely registered anymore. He was tall—really tall, the kind of tall that came with taunts and jeers growing up—but he didn’t fall back on the unfortunate habit most gangly, shy men had of hunching his shoulders to make himself seem smaller. He was a solid oak in the middle of a forest. The maypole everyone else danced around.
Tonight, he looked much as he always did, what with the meticulous khaki pants he paired with some kind of T-shirt, a frown that seemed to linger a second too long—they were all just there, part of him, unquestionable and comforting. Why should Sean get to keep all of that for himself?
“Well? Has the pager made its demands?” Lexie kicked his chair out. Unfortunately, she hadn’t yet put her shoe on, and the toe of her favorite gray tights snagged on one of the splintery edges of the chair leg. As she pulled back, she felt the unmistakable tickle of a run forming from toe to thigh.
“Oh, monkey balls.” She reached down to unhook her toe. Turning her leg in order to examine the path of destruction, she had to hike up the back of her skirt all the way to the control top panel to find the end of the run. “This is the third pair I’ve ruined this week.”
Off the Map (Winter Rescue #2) Page 13
