She smeared on ointment, then applied Band-Aids, and covered them with a clean pair of wool socks. She wiggled her feet inside the socks, testing. The thick knit didn’t rub on anything.
“Didn’t you break those boots in before you came out here?” Ryan asked.
“No.” And she’d pay for that today. But she wouldn’t make that mistake again. She’d caution her clients about it too. Jill finished dressing, and started in surprise when Ryan’s hands closed on her waist.
“Hey.” He turned her around to face him. His dark eyes met hers. “Are you upset about last night?”
“Upset? Why would I be upset? Consenting adults. Yadda yadda.” She gave him her best bland expression and hoped she looked unmoved. Underneath it, she was all too aware that she was far from unmoved. She’d been dynamited and blown across the alpine meadows, where bits of her were still scattered and waiting for her to collect them into some kind of cohesive whole again.
“I shouldn’t have let things go so far.”
“What was too far?” Jill looked back at him, trying for the brazen look she’d been able to pull off yesterday, but today it wasn’t just her feet that felt raw. “The fact that we had sex? Or the fact that it wasn’t the vanilla variety?”
A hint of a scowl crept into his expression. “You were all in favor of kink last night.”
“Ah. So it’s the non-vanilla.” Jill patted his chest. “It was an experience I’ll never forget.” There was a little too much truth in that statement, so she pulled away and turned her back to him. Ostensibly so she could put away her first-aid supplies.
“Jill. Dammit, look at me.” Ryan put his hand on her shoulder, turning her.
“What do you want, Ryan?” Fury bubbled up inside her. He’d made her want, damn him. She’d been fine until she met him. She would have continued to be satisfied with undemanding, uncomplicated sex, but that was all over now, because now she knew what she’d been missing.
It was like having good dark chocolate. One taste, and you were ruined for cheap imitations forever. She could buy dark chocolate anywhere, but Ryan was a taste she couldn’t indulge so easily.
He didn’t flinch from her reaction. “I want to know that you’re okay.”
“Oh.” She deflated like a helium balloon left in the sun all day. “Right. I’m fine. Thanks for asking.”
His jaw tightened. “You don’t sound fine. And you were out of bed before I woke up this morning.”
Jill blinked, amazed that he’d mention that. “I got up because I woke up wrapped around you like ivy on brick. If I’d stayed there one more minute, I wouldn’t have stopped at cuddling. Since it’s going to take half the day to get to our next site and I am not the world’s greatest hiker, I thought that would be bad. So I got out of bed.”
“I didn’t mind having you wrapped around me like ivy on brick.” Ryan tugged her toward him. “I don’t mind getting a late start, either.”
“Oh?” Jill let herself be urged closer. She was already ruined for lesser experiences, what could it hurt to go back for another taste of him?
A series of sounds outside the tent made her freeze. “What’s that?”
Ryan cocked his head, listening. “We might have some visiting bears.”
“Bears!” It was a scream of a whisper. Jill would have screamed for real, but she was too afraid of instigating an animal attack by making the wrong kind of noise.
“It could be elk.”
If he’d meant that to be reassuring, it wasn’t working. She’d read about elk in rut attacking people. Jill huddled closer to him. “What do they want?”
“They live here,” Ryan pointed out. “They don’t want us. Wild animals avoid people, as a rule. We didn’t leave anything out that would attract bears. You didn’t pack any food items that weren’t sealed or canned, right?”
“Right.” She’d followed his instructions to the letter, as if her life depended on getting it right. She’d figured it probably did.
“Then nothing to worry about. We hang tight, and they wander off.”
She let out a thread of a whimper. It was unworthy of the woman she was trying to become, but she couldn’t change everything all at once.
Ryan folded her close, and she burrowed into him as if he could keep her safe. “This sucks,” she whispered. “If I get eaten by a bear, I want a refund.”
His shoulders shook with silent laughter. “I don’t know how you expect to claim one under those circumstances.”
So she was irrational. Apparently that was the new her. She’d gone from placid and serene and predictable to dizzying peaks and drops, a roller coaster of emotion.
The sounds quieted. Ryan opened the tent and pronounced the coast clear, and Jill finished putting her boots on before she crawled out to meet the day.
The sight that met her eyes was so beautiful, it almost hurt. A rolling carpet of green dotted by wildflowers. Distant glacial peaks. The sunlight sparkling on the lake.
And against the backdrop of all that grandeur, Ryan squatted to start a fire. He was all lean muscle and grace, like a predator. He fit in the wilderness setting. He wasn’t out of place here like she was. He was in his element, and it showed.
Jill watched him, feeling an ache somewhere in the vicinity of her heart.
He turned his head and caught her looking. He held out a hand, and she came toward him because she couldn’t do anything else.
Ryan looked up from starting the fire to find Jill’s eyes on him. She’d been different since that last time. Hell, he’d been different, and he knew it. He’d gone feral on her in bed, and he didn’t blame her for going quiet and watchful.
He wanted to go back in time to the previous day and punch himself for not being sane and rational about the sex. Sex was a basic need. He should have been able to satisfy the need without going to extremes. Instead, he’d done what he’d done, and now Jill was wary.
Ryan held his hand out to her before he could stop himself. Stupid. She wouldn’t take it, wouldn’t come close. But then she did, and a tightness in his chest eased as if he could only then draw a full breath. Her fingers felt cool and slender in his. She was so feminine and graceful. Pretty. Soft. He’d looked down on her for that yesterday, probably because even then he’d wanted what he knew he couldn’t have and he’d tried to erect a barrier.
She wasn’t of his world. She was a city creature, at home in the noise and bustle of traffic and soaring constructions of glass and steel. He felt hemmed in by those buildings. She probably felt swallowed by the emptiness here. She’d never encounter a bear in Chicago, either.
“I didn’t kiss you good morning,” he said.
Her gray eyes darkened like the sky before a storm. She leaned closer, tilting her face up to his.
So. Whatever insanity gripped him, it was mutual. That was something. She’d been right there with him last night, lost in a haze of sexual frenzy. Ryan told himself that made it all right as he brushed a kiss against the corner of her mouth. He didn’t take it farther, because he didn’t trust himself to stop.
Jill breathed out a soft sigh and rubbed her cheek against his after he ended the light, brief kiss, leaning into him and winding her arms around his waist. “Will we hear the glacier today?”
“Yes.”
“I can’t wait.”
She sounded dreamy and wistful. Ryan drew back to look down into her face. Her expression was soft, but her eyes were clouded.
“Are you too sore to hike? We could take it easy today.”
Jill shook her head. “No, I’m good.” Then she gave him a look that was both knowing and self-deprecating. “If we hang around here, we’ll be back in the sack in about ten minutes. Given a choice between you and the trail, I think the trail’s going to be easier for me to handle.”
“Should I give you the tent to yourself tonight?” Ryan asked the question in a calm, level tone, but his gut knotted while he waited for her answer.
She blinked at him in surprise then hurt
flickered over her face. “I think I can manage not to attack you while you sleep.”
“Not what I meant.” Ryan lifted a hand to cup her cheek, tucking a strand of silky hair behind her ear in the process. “I don’t want you to be afraid that I’ll pressure you for more than you’re comfortable with.”
“Maybe you have amnesia,” she said after a minute. “I was the naked person bouncing up and down on you saying, ‘Harder, more’.”
“Maybe we both had a little case of too much abstinence mixed with full moon fever,” Ryan suggested.
“That’s probably it,” Jill agreed, but the complete lack of conviction in her voice gave away the lie. She didn’t believe it. Neither did he. But she’d also told him last night that she didn’t want to talk about it. Didn’t want to analyze or discuss. He’d given her an opening, she hadn’t taken it, and he should take the hint and quit while he was ahead.
Girls were supposed to want to talk about this shit, and Jill was every inch a girly girl, but apparently he was only good for screwing in the dark. He wanted to yell at her for not wanting to talk to him about her feelings, and that was so insane, he could only stand there wondering what had happened to his mind.
He’d lost it. That was all.
Maybe at some point he’d find it on the trail. Anything was possible, and nature was nothing if not good for restoring sanity.
They had breakfast in silence that wasn’t completely free of strain, but she sat close beside him and twined her fingers with his while she ate with her opposite hand. Small things, but their importance rocked him.
He wanted her close. Wanted her hand in his. Maybe because the sexual intensity had been so unexpected, so explosive, and it was still there under the surface. The non-sexual touches became more important, a way to ground themselves.
The alternative, that he couldn’t be near her without needing to touch her in some way, didn’t bear thinking about. That would mean what he wanted went beyond chemistry and physical needs, and while he might be destined to be attracted to the same type of woman, he was capable of learning from his mistakes. Plants and people needed the right environment to thrive, and Jill’s environment was urban.
Jill rotated her shoulders under the now-familiar weight of her pack. She was getting used to it, if that was actually possible, although now that she knew how much pressure extra weight put on her joints and muscles, she vowed to never put on a spare twenty pounds. A backpack she could take off and put down.
She was getting used to following Ryan along the trail too. They’d come around a curve, and he’d gestured for her to look back. She’d turned and caught her breath at the view of another smaller lake, hidden until they looked from the right angle.
She wasn’t used to sights like that, and maybe she never would be. She wasn’t used to what Ryan did to her, either. He stripped her person down to the bare essentials, sort of like the packing list he’d given her.
At least he didn’t treat her as if she was some kind of slut the morning after. Instead, he almost treated her as if she were a doll he was afraid he’d break.
A flash of anger heated her from the inside. She wasn’t a doll. She wasn’t going to fall apart because he touched her, or because he wanted raw, hard sex. She’d wanted it too. She didn’t know how to tell him that, though, so instead she rolled up her sleeping bag and shouldered her pack and followed him over the High Divide. Maybe that would show him.
Or maybe she’d wear herself out walking and not have any energy to spare for thinking.
The trail entered a forested ridge, and then a vast basin opened. She thought she could see bears harvesting berries on the hillside, and elk in the meadows. A little farther and Ryan led her around to an overlook. They stayed there while Jill fished out her digital camera and snapped images of Seven Lakes Basin.
“I don’t know why I’m bothering,” she told Ryan when she put it away again. “No picture can capture this.” The panorama was too big, the scale too vast.
The trail got steep after that, and Ryan slowed down for her. They picked their way carefully along, making a series of switchbacks while Jill deliberately kept her eyes on her feet and didn’t look down.
When they came out onto open trail again, the view took her breath away. Blue Glacier rose up like something out of time, and she heard an unfamiliar low rumbling sound. “Is that the glacier?”
“Yeah. Told you we’d hear it.”
“It’s incredible.” Her voice came out hushed, as if she thought the icy mass might hear and be offended. Ridiculous, but she couldn’t help it. No wonder people had traditions of seeking holy men in high places. They were closer to something eternal here, something that made her goals seem small and unworthy.
Then again, was it a bad thing to want more people to experience this?
She’d come here to be changed by her outdoor adventure. She hadn’t expected that change to be accelerated by her trail guide, but the journey would have transformed her regardless.
She was out of reach of cell phones and Internet access. No messages, no voicemail or email, no news, no noise. No measuring herself against the competition, wondering how she was doing. No stressing about numbers. The sheer barrage of data she waded through every day seemed mind numbing now in this vast silence.
She could hear herself think. She could let go of thinking and just look out across the distance and drink in the expansive view, letting it alter her perspective.
So she did.
Ryan stood beside her and slipped his hand around her waist. She leaned into his side, liking the solid feel of him and the fact that she was free to touch him, at least for another day. For now, she was connected to him and to this place, part of something larger than herself. However temporary that might be, the memory would be hers forever.
“Thank you for bringing me here,” she said into the deep quiet.
Chapter Seven
“Come on,” Ryan said. “We can take a short trail to the summit of Bogachiel Peak. You can see ships on the Pacific from there.”
“Define short.”
“Maybe two tenths of a mile.”
“It’s not the distance, it’s the terrain,” Jill said, but she followed him because she wanted to stand on a mountain peak and look down at the ocean.
It was a short trail, and the view from the peak did let her see the Pacific. Jill pulled out her camera again and used the zoom feature, panning around to look at ships, at Mount Olympus soaring up to the sky, and two men burying a container.
She snapped a picture, and when they looked up, she waved.
“Who are you waving at?”
“Geocachers,” Jill said. The sport, which involved going to a remote location, hiding a sealed stash, and recording the GPS coordinates for treasure hunters to locate, had come to her attention when she’d researched this trip. “They’re burying a container. I bet not many people find that one.”
Ryan grabbed her wrist. “Give me your camera.”
“Okay.” She did so, then yelped when he pulled her back down the trail, much faster than they’d come up, back towards the main High Divide loop. “What’s the hurry?”
“Geocaching isn’t allowed there. Environmental protection rules. You can’t go off the trails and you can’t disturb the plants.” Ryan stopped and hit the playback feature on her camera, then thumbed through the series of images she’d captured. Which meant he’d see the one she’d taken of him, but he didn’t say anything about it, so neither did she.
“There.” He paused and enlarged the image he wanted. “Shit.”
“What? They buried something where they weren’t supposed to. They’ll get fined, right?”
“They’ll get fined, all right. You just photographed a drug drop.”
“A what?” She stared at him, feeling her stomach turn to granite.
“Drugs,” he snapped as if she’d gone deaf. “We’re coastal. We’re also a border state. That makes Washington an entry point. You just took a pictur
e of drug runners and their stash, and waved at them.”
Her mouth formed an O of horror. “They’re going to kill me.”
“Not if we beat them down the mountain.” Ryan shut her camera off, stuffed it into her pack, tightened his straps, checked his boots, and did the same to hers.
“How are we going to do that?” Her heart thudded in her chest and her leaden muscles felt watery.
“We’ve got a head start. We’re at the halfway point on the Divide loop. We’re past the dangerous part, where we could’ve hit snow. Now we run like hell down the other side of the trail, hope we’re in better shape than they are, and hope they don’t shoot us.”
Jill swallowed hard. “That seems like a lot to hope for.” She wasn’t in better shape than a lot of the women who beat her to bargains at the year-end clearance sales.
“We have a few things in our favor. They won’t know which direction we’re going on the trail. They might guess wrong, and take the slower side with the switchbacks. They might split up to cover both sides. And it’s harder than you might think to hit a moving target, especially from a distance, when a lot of points on the trail won’t allow for a clear shot. The terrain gives us a lot of cover. Finding a person in the wilderness isn’t easy, even if they want to be spotted. I’ve done enough search and rescue work to know.”
“Okay.” Her voice sounded thin.
Ryan planted his hands on her shoulders. His dark eyes bore into hers. “You can do this. Watch where you step, don’t fall down, keep moving.”
She could do this. Ryan said so, and he was the expert. She nodded dumbly, and then they were running through the wilderness with something a lot scarier than bears behind them.
“Does this happen a lot?” Jill panted out as she did her damndest not to stumble.
“Never. Usually the highlight of a trip is spotting a rare bird.”
Just their bad luck, then. Or rather, her bad luck. Ryan had been an innocent bystander, she was the idiot who’d waved. But drug deals belonged in cities, not in the middle of a national park. Who the hell would have expected that?
Adventure Lover: Take Me, Lover, Book 3 Page 5
