by Jill Shalvis
Always.
“It’s just the way it is. Lift your foot.”
She complied, and he tightened the other boot as well so that she’d stay in them for the next few hours of climbing. Her fingers were still in his hair, but more so than that was the fact that his head was at her crotch level. If he turned his face, he’d be within two inches of where he’d wanted to be since he first saw her in his bed. A ridiculously immature thought, but he couldn’t seem to help it. “Try that.”
She walked a few steps and turned back. “I feel like a duck.”
“That’s natural. You’ll get past it.” He took her hand and pulled her in close, tipping up her chin to meet her gaze. “And as for the other choice…I do want you. So damn much.”
“You don’t have to say that—”
“I want to kiss you,” he said quietly. “Touch you. I want to do things to you, all night long.”
She stared at his mouth, hers falling open.
“I want to feel your heart pound for me when I’m inside you. I’m sorry I wasn’t clear on that. I’ve been unclear on a lot of stuff lately, especially with you because I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Misguided,” she murmured, her voice a little thick. “I take care of myself, Cam.”
“You do. I know that. You’re so strong, but I…Look, I wasn’t completely honest. You do scare me. Okay? You scare the hell out of me.”
She nodded. “I could hold your hand.”
He let out a low laugh and drank in the sight of her by moonlight, trying to fit into his world. Fitting into his world. “Just so you know, you are truly the most amazing woman I’ve ever met.”
“Thank you.” She took the last step between them. “Oh, and one last thing.” She kissed him, one quick, hard, very nice kiss on the lips before pulling back. “That’s what you’re missing out on by being afraid of me. Just so you know.”
When she’d walked away, Nick leaned in. “I’m glad to see I’m not the only idiot in residence.”
Still reeling, Cam lifted his middle finger and scratched his nose with it in Nick’s direction. While Nick laughed, he called out to the group. “Everyone ready?” He struggled to gather his thoughts. “We’ve got three miles to cover. At the top, we’ll stop for pictures. Hopefully the sky will stay clear and you’ll get a great shot at the full moon.”
“So romantic,” the woman with her boyfriend whispered.
And she was right. It was incredibly romantic. Cam slid Katie a quick glance, and found her looking at him.
Nick leaned in to Cam again. “It might be scary up there. Need me to hold your hand?”
“Nick?”
“Yeah?”
“Shut up.” Cam led the way, with Nick taking up the rear, still chuckling at the both of them.
For Katie, the snow hike started off easy enough but quickly turned challenging. Even so, it was hard not to be completely awed by the night. The moon shined down on the snow, bouncing the reflecting light over the snow-covered trees, the mountains. She’d never paid much attention to the night sky in Los Angeles. Or to the daytime sky, for that matter. Either it was a dingy blue, thanks to the smog, or it was a dingy black, also thanks to the smog.
But here.
God, here.
Here in the Sierras, the sky had a million different looks, from pale purple in the dawn, to an eye-popping blue midday, to the blackest of black at night, and every single one seemed so large, so stunning.
Sort of like the man who was leading her hike right this very moment.
I want to do things to you…
Just thinking about his words had her breath coming faster, and Cam turned his head to check on her. “I’m good.” As long as I don’t picture you doing things to me…
But she did picture them as they kept going. And going. And going…As Cam promised, after a few minutes, she no longer felt like a duck as they all moved up the same hill he’d taken her up once before, in the Sno-Cat.
This time, under her own steam, it was a challenge. Her breath was huffing in her chest, making little white puffs of clouds with each exhale. They walked single file, the trail didn’t allow for anything else. Stone had warned her that snowshoeing up this particular mountain was pretty much a solitary experience, but that had appealed.
The couple in front of her, John and Sally, had a flask filled with something they kept passing back and forth, which made them giggle with increasing frequency.
Cam turned back often, checking on everyone, and each time he locked gazes with her, her heart stuttered.
He wanted to do things…and she wanted him to do those things…He kept a close eye on Sally and John, too, probably because after an hour, John was completely hammered and kept tripping over his own feet. Twice Nick had leaned past Katie to tell him to be careful.
Cam did the same from the front.
But John—Sally called him “Sweetie Pie”—wasn’t listening too well. He wasn’t obnoxious or rude or anything. In fact, he was quite happy and jolly. But he was definitely not heeding any advice.
The trail became increasingly narrower, with a sharp rock wall to their right, and then a decent drop to their left. When “Sweetie Pie” began to sing show tunes, Sally merely laughed. When he added in dance moves, coming extremely close to the edge several times, Katie held her breath. “Careful,” she begged him, adding what she hoped was a pleasant smile when she wanted to tell him not to be stupid. “Don’t fall.”
“I won’t,” he said just as one of his legs buckled. Katie shoved him clear of the edge at the same time he wrapped his arms around her for balance, but both of them wobbled and teetered, and Katie’s life instantly flashed before her eyes. Another time and place, another cliff…
As the panic hit her, her last coherent thought was, she was going to die before Cam could get her naked, and that was just really, really unfair.
Chapter 15
Cam whipped around to see John grabbing on to Katie for balance. Heart in his throat, he dove past the others as Nick did the same from the rear, both getting there at the same time, shoving the locked together snowshoers against the rock only a fraction of a second before they would have fallen off the edge.
Cam lifted his head and eyed the drop-off, which was at least thirty feet—good enough to have cracked more than a few bones. Fucking idiot.
“I’m okay, I’m okay!” This from Sweetie Pie Drunk Ass-hole John. Accompanying this declaration was a loud belch that smelled like a bad combination of Scotch and sewer. “Whew, doggie.” He let out a goofy smile as he fanned his hand in front of his face. “That’s not good.”
Sally laughed and helped pull him off of Katie. “You okay, Sweetie Pie?”
Cam put his hands on Katie’s hips, holding her still when she would have gotten up. She’d taken John’s full weight, and Cam’s and Nick’s as well. “Take a minute. Are you okay?”
“I think so.” But she didn’t give him her usual megawattage smile. She sat up, holding her arm close to her chest as she peered over the edge. She didn’t quite go green but close enough, and he knew she was probably only a minute away from hyperventilating. “Oh God.”
Crouched beside her, Cam blocked her from the view of the cliff, as well as the others, giving her a minute to collect herself.
“I’m fine.”
“Just sit another minute. Bad memories, or something more?”
“I think just memories. Dammit.”
Not convinced, he reached for the zipper on her jacket to get a look at her arm.
“No, it’s fine. Fine,” she repeated when Cam started to speak. The others had shifted close to check on her. “Look, if I don’t keep going, then I let the idiot take this away from me—No offense,” she said to John, who shook his head, suitably sober now.
“None taken. I am an idiot.”
Katie looked at Cam. “I’m good to go.”
Because she wasn’t a quitter. Not even close.
Using her poles, she struggled to get to
her feet, never easy in snowshoes so he helped her, then hugged her close to him. “You’re still shaking.”
“I’m okay.” She peered over his shoulder at the drop and swallowed. “I’m okay,” she repeated, but he hugged her in tight anyway, letting her have the illusion of telling him when he knew it was herself she was talking to.
“Hey, I’ll take the merry couple back,” Nick said. “He’s not fit to get to the top.”
The others decided to go back with their friends, and Cam looked at Katie. “I’m sorry.”
“No, I can still get there.” Her eyes blazed with determination, tugging on something deep inside him, making him want to give her whatever she wanted.
He knew what was on the top of her list. It was on top of his list too.
“Please.”
Ah, hell. Cam looked at Nick.
“I’ll take her if you want,” Nick offered. “You can take the others back.”
“No.” Hell no.
Nick sighed. “Some guys get all the luck.”
As they climbed, Katie’s lungs felt like they were going to burst, but when Cam asked her if she wanted to stop, she said no and managed to keep going, even if she was breathing like a lunatic. When they finally crested the top, she staggered to a halt at the view. “My God.”
The land had leveled out, revealing a 360-degree view that quite simply took whatever breath she had left, admittedly not much. The thin, icy air was still barely soughing in and out of her lungs as she shook her head in disbelief. “It’s like being on top of the world.”
Cam came up beside her, and as if he knew exactly how she felt, how awed, how small and insignificant they were in the whole scheme of things, he didn’t say a word, just let her take it all in.
“It’s the most gorgeous thing I’ve ever seen.” She turned to look at him. He stood there tall and strong and vital. Tough. Silent. A virtual rock whenever she’d needed one, and definitely not the quitter he thought he was, and she amended her thought. He was the most gorgeous thing she’d ever seen. “Well worth the terror of getting here.”
He dropped his backpack, then pulled hers off as well, making her sit on a rock outcropping before crouching at her feet to unhook her snowshoes. “Don’t try to walk around up here without those,” he warned as he tugged off his gloves, shoving them into his pocket. “That whole drunken fiasco never should have happened. I could have killed him.” Cam looked into her eyes, his own dark and troubled. “Are you really okay?”
Unable to help herself, she cupped his face and kissed his jaw. “So fierce and protective over the woman you don’t quite know what to do with.”
“I know you’re still fighting the memories.”
“It’s better. So much better.”
“Are you sure?”
“Very.” She began to stand up, but he held her back.
“Just sit still a minute.”
“Why? You want to have your merry way with me?” she teased as he reached up and unzipped her jacket.
“I’m checking on your arm.”
“It’s fine—” But she hissed out a breath when he pulled her arm out of the jacket and then pushed up her sleeve, which was stuck to her arm by her own blood. “Oh boy.”
“You must have gotten scratched by one of the poles when you fell.”
Her head swam a little. “I don’t like blood.”
“Just a scratch,” he repeated calmly. Reaching up, he turned her chin away, back to the amazing view. “Just keep looking at the moon. Look for falling stars.”
She tipped her head up and gasped when she actually saw one. “There!”
“Make a wish.”
She closed her eyes and did just that, and when she opened them again, he was looking at her.
“What did you wish for?”
“You believe in wishing on falling stars?”
“Yes.”
She smiled. “The stoic, pragmatic Cameron Wilder, a dreamer, after all.”
He let out a low laugh. “On my way back to Wishful, the night I met you, I wished on one. And if you tell anyone that, I’ll deny it.”
“What did you wish for?”
He met her gaze. “To feel something.”
She held her breath, caught, lost in his eyes. “Is it working?”
“I think it just might be.”
She felt her heart click and lock into place. For him. “I wished for great sex. Tonight. And if you could tell my guide, I’d really appreciate it.”
With a rough laugh, he nudged her chin upward again. She blinked the sky into focus, the way it lit up the entire valley floor below with a bluish tinge—“Ouch!”
He’d sprayed her with something from the first-aid kit in his backpack and was now pulling out some gauze and tape. He ripped a piece of tape off with his teeth, then held it there while he wrapped her up, but not before twice again having to nudge her face away. “There.” He smoothed down the tape. “Good as new.”
“Then why does it just now hurt?”
“Aw, let me see.” Shocking her, he leaned in and kissed the bandage. “Better?”
She stared into his eyes. “No, I think it needs some serious TLC.”
His gaze heated, and as always it put her own insides on a slow, delicious simmer as he obediently leaned back in and kissed the spot again, then an inch above her bandage.
And an inch above that. “Better?”
“Not yet.”
With a soft huff of laughter against her skin, he tried pushing her sleeve up higher on her arm and couldn’t, and while she battled disappointment, he proved just how resourceful he could be by reversing his efforts and slowly pushing the sleeve down from above while holding her gaze prisoner.
The shirt gave way, slipped off her shoulder, and only then did he break eye contact and once again lean in, pressing his lips to her bare skin.
She sucked in another breath.
“Cold?” he murmured against her flesh.
Was he kidding? He could have stripped her naked out here in the thirty-degree night and she’d have still been sizzling hot. “No, don’t stop making me feel better.”
On a half groan, half laugh, his lips trailed up her shoulder, ending up in the crook of her neck, which gave her a set of goose bumps that still had nothing to do with a chill and everything to do with sheer lust. She tugged off her gloves and slipped her fingers inside his jacket.
“Katie—”
“Dream on if you think you’re going to back off now in some misguided protective gesture. Yes, this is big and scary and new, for the both of us, but we’ve tried ignoring it and can’t. Let’s try something else, Cam.”
“I don’t—”
“Don’t say you’re a quitter, because the man I’m looking at has been dealt some pretty rough blows and he’s still standing. The quitting thing is bullshit, Cam. And don’t try to tell me you don’t feel this thing between us either.” She looked politely at the bulge behind his zipper.
With a groaning laugh, he pressed his forehead to hers. “I was going to say I don’t have any way of protecting us from being seen.”
