by Jill Shalvis
dangerously alluring appeal that he didn’t need. “You look like you could use an umbrella,” he said.
“Umbrellas are for sissies.”
“How about jackets?” he asked. “Are they for sissies, too?”
“No.” The truth was, she knew her shell was shoved in the very bottom of her backpack. Somewhere. She was a lot of things, but organized wasn’t one of them, and she really wasn’t anxious for him to see the state of her pack.
Especially since his was perfect—obnoxiously so. “I like the feel of the rain on my skin.” Or she had, up until she’d gotten chilled to the bone, a fact she involuntarily gave away when she let out a full-body shiver.
“Harley.” He waited until she looked at him, which she didn’t want to do because she didn’t want to see him laughing at her. His eyes were dark, and full of lots of things, but he wasn’t laughing. “On my first solo trip, it snowed. In July. I walked in it for three hours in a T-shirt. I thought I was in heaven.”
Again their gazes held for a long beat, and as always when he gave her his undivided attention, heat slashed through her stomach. “What happened?” she whispered.
“When I got home, I had pneumonia.” He turned them so that he was the one backed up against the tree. He unzipped his shell, then pulled her into his arms. She leaned into him as he tucked her inside his jacket, allowing her to absorb his body heat.
Heaven, and hell. Heaven, because he smelled…yum, and felt even yummier, and hell because being up against him like that after avoiding contact for so long brought up memories she tried to only visit in the deep, dark of her dreams where secret fantasies reigned.
“You okay?” he murmured, his mouth to her ear, his breath a warm caress on her skin as he rubbed small circles on her back.
Was she? She could feel the steady beat of his heart beneath her cheek, could feel the lean hardness of his muscles, the way his hand was infusing her with his warmth as he stroked her. Startlingly, she realized she was so much more than okay. Forcing herself to shake off the haze of desire, she stepped free. “Yes. Thanks.”
His gaze dropped from her face to her T-shirt, then swept back up again, blazing with heat.
She looked down. Her nipples were two tight little dark points pressing against the white material as if begging for attention.
Perfect.
“Is this the part where you tell me that they’re just breasts?” he asked a little thickly. “Because I’ve got to tell you, Harley, they’re pretty fantastic breasts.”
“It’s not like you haven’t seen them before.”
He stared at her while the shock reverberated through her. Why had she said that? God. She whipped around to grab her pack but he snagged her by the back of the shirt and reeled her in like a snared fish.
“Look,” she said. “I have to—”
“Talk to me.”
“Yeah, that’s not what I was going to say.” She struggled against him uselessly. “Let go.”
“Goddammit, Harley.” Shrugging out of his shell, he wrapped her up in it.
The warmth from his body infused her and she sighed. Okay, she’d needed that. “Thank you.”
Not responding, he pulled out another shell from his pack and put it on himself, proving how much smarter than her he was. He wouldn’t let himself get wet and cold. He was too good for that. Then before she could grab her backpack and put it back on, he once again effortlessly pinned her to the tree, his face in hers. “For years you’ve avoided me or been pissed off at me. But now you keep saying things that give me the impression I’m either stupid, or missing something.”
She closed her eyes. “The latter.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere. And I’m not moving, you’re not moving, no one’s moving until you talk,” he said.
He wasn’t kidding. He’d completely immobilized her, which meant that once again he was plastered up against her and that meant her brain was functioning at less than ten percent. Far too low for rational decision-making processes.
The rain was still falling all around them, splattering on the ground with an oddly musical sound. The tree provided a good amount of relief. It was their own little cocoon, enclosing them, providing protection, creating an intoxicating sense of intimacy.
An intimacy that was increased tenfold by TJ’s gentle but firm hold. “This is ridiculous,” she said. “We can talk later. At home.”
“What’s ridiculous,” he said, enunciating her word, “is the fact that we’ve been tiptoeing around each other for forever now, and I want to know why. Whenever I get too close, you either snap at me or get all flustered, and if I touch you, we’re so combustible, we just about burst into flames.” He bent his knees a little to better see into her face. “I’m completely willing to go up in flames, by the way.” His smile was tight, his eyes dark. “But this first.”
Her breath caught. “This?”
“Yes. Let’s start with why you treat Cam and Stone like they’re blood, and me like the redheaded bastard stepbrother.”
“Well, I wouldn’t exactly use the word brother…” she muttered, drawing a breath. Not easy when she was plastered to him, chest to chest, belly to belly, thighs to thighs, and everything in between. “Please, TJ…just let it go.”
He dropped his head close, so close that his jaw brushed hers. The stubble there scraped gently across her skin and gave her a shiver. The good kind, dammit.
“Tell me,” he said in that quiet voice that tended to make people do exactly as he asked.
She curled into him. He smelled so good. So good that she maybe, sort of, kind of by accident, pressed her nose to his neck.
“Harley.”
His low voice rumbled from his chest, a soft warning she didn’t heed, and when she moved against him again, his grip went from gentle to something far more dangerous as he breathed her name again.
Unable to help herself, she pressed her mouth to his neck and felt him stir against her.
“You’re trying to distract me,” he whispered roughly.
Distract him, herself…
And before she gave too much thought to it, she opened her mouth on his throat, scraping him with her teeth, absorbing his rough groan.
And then…
And then he abruptly yanked himself free of her with a soft oath, pushing her behind him. “TJ? What—”
He strode from beneath the protection of the tree to the center of the clearing, his head cocked as if listening for something.
“What?” she said.
“Someone was standing right here, watching us.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.” He turned and pointed at her. “Stay.”
And then he vanished down the path.
CHAPTER 7
Harley waited a few minutes, but when TJ didn’t come right back, she went after him. He was a hundred or so yards down the trail, and when he saw her, said nothing.
Fine with her.
Speaking, sharing, emoting…all waaaaay overrated.
Finally, hands on his hips, looking torn between frustration and acceptance, he spoke. “Nice job on the staying thing.”
“Did you see who it was?”
“No, just a flash. A guy though.”
“The forest service told me I was the only one who pulled a permit for this weekend.”
He was quiet as he absorbed that, not looking happy.
“Back there, at the tree,” she said, “when you realized we weren’t alone, you pushed me behind you.”
“Watching your back.”
“Just my back?”
“I’ll watch whatever you want me to.” His eyes were smiling but his mouth was not. He was done playing. “Harley.”
“Let me guess. You’re sticking to me like glue.”
At that, his smile did meet his eyes. “The better to watch your back.”
They’d put their packs back on and had gone a few hundred yards when he spoke. “You still owe me a story.”
�
�Once upon a time there was this big, bad wolf who—”
“You know which story, smart-ass.”
Yeah. She knew. What she didn’t know was how to tell it to him.
TJ waited, but Harley walked in silence. He gave in to her silence because he could see that she wasn’t ignoring him on purpose. She was thinking.
“Why now?” she eventually asked. “Why did you kiss me now after all this time?”
The truth was easy enough. She was warm, funny, attractive. But she was also scary as hell. So though he’d wanted her, and had for as long as he could remember, it’d also been far easier on him to stay away.
Something he was going to have a hard time remembering now that he’d had a taste of her.
“TJ?”
“You want to play twenty questions, Harley? Because I believe you’re up on deck first.”
He took her next silence to mean a resounding “no thanks.” His cell phone vibrated, and he pulled it out of his pocket.
“What’s up?” Cam asked him.
“You called to ask me what’s up?”
“No,” Cam said. “I called to see if there’s anything you want to tell me.”
“About?”
“I don’t know. The weather. The Angels game. Or wait, I know. How about the client you cancelled on to follow a certain sexy blonde? Want to talk about that?”
TJ moved away from said sexy blonde for privacy. “No.”
“Everything okay?” Cam asked after a moment of contemplative silence.
“Yes.”
“You haven’t done anything stupid with the one woman in town that hasn’t fallen under your charms or between your sheets, have you?”
TJ gritted his teeth. Define stupid, he thought “No.”
“Do I need to come up there and show you how to catch her, then?”
More gritting of his teeth.
“Okay, then, glad we could clear all this all up.”
TJ shook his head. “Do you have a real reason for calling, or are you just running up the minutes for the hell of it?”
“We switched over to unlimited. And yeah, I have a reason. I wanted to see which of us back here at base have won the bet. See, we’re divided on whether you’ll come back with a just-laid expression on your face or if you’ll be bleeding.”
“Since clearly you don’t have enough to do to keep busy,” TJ said over Cam’s soft laugh. “Do the research on that new climbing gear we were looking at. And I need a detailed mapping for that Yosemite trip Stone wants to pass off on me. Oh, and then there’s a stack of paperwork on my desk—”
Cam stopped laughing, but the smile remained in his voice. “Ah, man, it’s been a long time since you’ve resorted to pussy threats to shut me up. So…you ready to admit you’re crazy about her or what? Inquiring minds need to know.”
TJ closed his eyes. The rain had stopped, and he tipped his head at the quickly clearing sky. “What you need to know is that I’m going to kick your ass when I get back.”
“Admit it. You’re gone over her. You’ve got it bad.”
“Fuck you.”
“Hey, it’s your own fault,” Cam said. “You laughed at love. Like Annie said, you tempted karma.”
“Sideways,” TJ told him.
Unperturbed about his impending death, Cam laughed out loud.
TJ disconnected, shoving the phone back in his pocket as he turned and came face-to-face with Harley.
“What was that about?” she asked as he pulled off his shell, rolled it up, and stuck it through an outside webbed pocket of his pack—because suddenly he felt quite warm.
“A question for a question, Harley. One hundred percent honesty at all times, no exceptions.” He was fairly confident she wouldn’t dare.
She looked at him for a long beat. “Fine.”
Well, if that didn’t surprise the hell out of him. He dropped his pack and she did the same. “Okay,” he said. “Tell me why you’re always mad at me.”
She drew a deep breath. “Maybe it’s because you talk to me in that voice, that low, husky, sexy voice that makes me feel like you’d like to sleep with me.”
“I would.”
Shoving her fingers in her damp hair, she turned in a slow circle. She couldn’t be more drenched, and she couldn’t be more beautiful, with her small, tight little body so perfectly outlined in nothing but that white tee and thin cargoes, both plastered to her like a second skin. “Harley—”
“See, that!” She pointed at him. “That voice right there, the one that says you want nothing more than to be inside me.” She turned away from him and so softly he could barely hear her, murmured, “When you already were.”
He couldn’t have been more shocked if she’d hauled off and hit him.
She let out a low sound that might have been a laugh but also sounded dangerously close to a sob. He recovered enough to grab her, turn her to face him, and haul her in close.
It wasn’t easy. She had temper and frustration all over her, in the stiffness of her body and the fierceness of the set of her mouth, but it was the shame and humiliation burning her eyes and cheeks that tore at him. “What?” he repeated hoarsely. “What did you just say?”
“Nothing. I said nothing.”
“Harley.”
“Oh, God. Please don’t make me say it again.” She closed her eyes and dropped her head to his chest.
He ran a hand up her spine, wrapped his fingers in her hair, and gently tugged her head up until she met his gaze. “We slept together,” she whispered.
Stunned, gutted, he could only stare into her liquid brown eyes.
“Although,” she said with great irony, “it should be noted that there was no sleeping involved.”
“What are you saying?”
“Long Lake,” she said. “The summer after your graduation.”
Vague images of being seventeen years old hit him, vague because he’d been stoned or drunk just about his entire senior year of high school. “What about it?”
“Remember that big camping party, the one everyone had to four-wheel up Pioneer Slate to get to?”
“Still not ringing a bell.”
“July Fourth,” she clarified.
He slowly shook his head, thoughts racing. He’d been wild and out of control, especially that summer. No mom and an abusive father did that to a kid. That summer had been the last of a long, misspent youth before he’d left for college in Colorado, where he’d studied as little as possible, met Sam, traveled extensively, and had gotten his first taste of the great, big world outside of the Sierras.
It’d been heaven on earth after the childhood he’d endured. “I camped and partied that entire summer,” he told her. “It’s all one big blur to me.”
She nodded. He knew she knew that. She knew a lot about him.
Maybe too much.
He’d thought he’d known a lot about her as well, but he was beginning to think that might not be as true as he wanted it to be.
