by Jill Shalvis
“It’d be so much easier to wait out the storm here.”
Yeah. Smarter, too. He knew this because he was normally a smart man.
But not today.
Tense, he reached down a hand to help her up, noticing that she was careful to keep her weight off her ankle. She was shivering now, her teeth chattering together, and now that they weren’t warming each other up, he wasn’t all that far behind her.
Not good. “We’ve really got to get out of this.”
“I agree.” She drew a tremulous smile. “So let’s go inside.”
Where they’d once made love in wild, sweet abandon on the ranger’s desk. He remembered everything about that day, how they’d been hiking and stumbled onto this place, how he’d pulled her clothes off one piece at a time, nibbling every inch of skin he revealed, taking them both to heaven and back. “We’re only going in there to wait out the storm and dry off. That’s it.”
She offered him a sweet smile through chattering teeth and blue lips.
Dammit. So not good. With a sigh, he turned to the door.
CHAPTER 12
Sara was hugging herself, trying to keep smiling, determined to remain positive, but her spirits were lagging.
She’d gotten Sam alone, gotten him up here in the mountains and then to the deserted ranger station.
Where they’d first made love.
She’d hoped doing so would make him remember their good times and forget that five years ago she’d walked away from him without a word.
Yeah, she really needed to make him forget that part. Or at least ask him if he’d meant it when he’d said he’d forgiven her. Because if he really had forgiven her, maybe they still had a shot. All she had to do was ask, but it stuck in her throat. Fear stuck it in her throat.
Because what if he didn’t?
Or what if he couldn’t ever forget and always doubted that she could do long-term?
Don’t be a coward, a little voice whispered in her head. You need to do this, you need it to go on and forge a real life for yourself, with real relationships.
She wanted that so badly. “Sam—" she began.
Instead of answering, he put his hands on the door. It was locked, as it had been all that time ago. He tested it, then put his broad-as-a-mountain shoulder to it and pushed.
As it had all those years ago, it gave way.
And something within her did, too. God, she loved to watch him be the hero. She always had. He was so…fierce. Determined.
Protective.
At the sound that escaped her, he glanced over at her. He was drenched, his T-shirt clinging to his torso, outlining his every hard muscle, of which he had many. His pants, baggy, heavy with the rain, were low on his hips, low enough to reveal quite a bit of navy-blue knit boxers, and she was having a hard time not staring at him. His face was wet, his eyes dark and unreadable on hers. “What?”
“Nothing.” Except just watching you breathe is a turn on.
“It’s something,” he insisted.
“Okay, it is something. You’re something. Which is why I need to talk to you—”
“Stop it.” He shook his head and shoved open the door, looking inside before stepping back and gesturing her in ahead of him.
Always the gentleman.
As she limped over the threshold, she felt his hand—big and surprisingly warm—on the small of her back, guiding her, and she pretended it was him wanting to comfort her rather than making sure she didn’t fall again and cause him even more trouble.
Together they viewed the small one-room structure. The desk was still there, right in the middle. The elephant in the room. As she stared at it, her body heated from the inside out, remembering the day he’d laid her back on it, naked, exploring her body in a way that still made her knees wobble whenever she thought about it.
Obviously not remembering the same thing, he turned to her with his hands on his hips. “Talk quick,” he said. “Because the minute it stops coming down, we’re out of here.”
CHAPTER 13
Sam was well aware of the fact that he was being an ass, a really big ass, but he was at the end of his rope. Hell, he’d slipped off the rope and begun to drown.
Metaphorically speaking.
In reality, he stood in an abandoned ranger station with the storm blowing outside, the hauntingly beautiful Sara standing before him, water dripping off her in rivulets as she shivered so hard he thought her teeth might just rattle out of her head.
His instinct was to protect. To fix the problem. To haul her gorgeous ass close and warm her with his own body heat.
Yeah. He was definitely drowning.
But none of that was going to happen. It couldn’t happen. He’d been down that road once before with her and all he’d gotten from the trip had been a bad heartache.
She’d made him love her and then she’d dumped him, and while he’d forgiven her—hell he even understood her, he hadn’t forgotten. Didn’t know if he ever could. Maybe if she could prove to him that she’d changed, that she was capable of sticking around and fighting for what she wanted, that would change. Thing is, he had no idea what she wanted now, particularly from him.
Watching him, silent, she began to unbutton her blouse.
His heart stuttered. “What are you doing?”
“You’re a firefighter. You know the first-aid basics. We have to get out of our wet things in order to have any hope of warming up.”
Mesmerized, held into place by her every movement, he watched as she shrugged out of her blouse and set it over the back of the lone chair in the room. Her bra was white, cut dangerously low, and thanks to its wet state, utterly sheer.
Yeah. He was in trouble. “Sara—”
“You’d better strip, too, Sam. Your lips are turning blue.”
Funny, but as she unbuttoned her pants, he was feeling anything but cold. “Don’t—”
Too late. She let the wet pants drop, leaving her in a matching set of white bikini panties.
Also sheer.
He swallowed hard and actually began to sweat, if that was even possible. “Sara—”
But he broke off with a strangled breath when she turned from him to add her pants to the back of the chair, revealing a world-class ass—and the fact that the panties weren’t bikini cut at all, but a thong.
God. “Sara.”
She turned back with a questioning smile and he lost every single word in his brain. Complicating matters was the fact that she was still shaking, almost violently now, and when she stepped toward him, he found himself opening his arms and letting her press up against him.
All those wet, soft, beautiful curves.
And since he was no saint, not even close, he groaned, and when she went seeking his mouth, he bent his head and kissed her.
CHAPTER 14
They were both drenched to the skin, but at the touch of Sam’s warm mouth on hers, Sara trembled from an inner heat, not the cold. She couldn’t help it. Having him hold her was more than she’d dared wish for these past five years.
He ran his hands up and down her bare, goose-pebbled arms, and then, with his mouth still on hers, stepped back only far enough to tug up his wet shirt.
They had to take their mouths off each other to get the shirt over his head but then they were back to the kissing.
And oh God, the kissing.
Kissing Sam was like kissing no other. His mouth was firm, generous, and he knew how to use it.
Oh, did he know how to use it.
And then there was the delicious, heart-stopping fact that she was now bare skin to bare skin with the most beautiful male torso she’d ever had the pleasure of touching. She couldn’t stop herself from running her hands over him—his chest, his shoulders, those flat, ridged abs that she suddenly wanted her mouth on. When her fingers played in the waistband of his dripping wet jeans, he sucked in a breath and she slid her hands inside.
He was fully erect, straining for release, and she nearly collapsed to the floor
at the hot, velvety feel of him in her hands.
“Sara.” His voice was low and rough. And filled with something she wasn’t ready to hear.
Regret.
He was going to stop.
No. No, she couldn’t bear it. She needed him as naked and vulnerable as she felt, because then, maybe then, she could remind him of what they’d had, and he’d be more able to listen and understand.
And forgive.
So she began popping open the buttons on his Levi’s. With a groan, he backed her to the desk until her butt hit it. Then, still kissing her, he lifted her up to it, pushed her legs open, and stepped between, all while still kissing her. Which worked for her. She couldn’t seem to get enough of his mouth. And her hands couldn’t get enough of his body, running up and down, all over him. The only bad thing was his cold, wet jeans. They were bothering her, so she shoved them past his hips.
He nudged her bra straps off her shoulders and tugged her bra down, then let out a raw sound of sheer pleasure at the sight of her wet breasts. Urging her down onto the desk, he spread her out so that she was sprawled before him. She watched his wet head make its way down her body, taking a breast into his mouth as his fingers hooked into her panties.
Yanked.
Leaving her completely nude. Lifting his head from her breast with an audible loss-of-suction sound, he lowered his blazing gaze to take in all that he’d unwrapped, surveying the picture she must have made, laid out for his perusal.
She’d spent most of her life hiding from being seen.
But now, with him, there was no hiding. And she didn’t want to, not from him, not ever again.
CHAPTER 15
Sam took in the sight of Sara lying there for him, all glorious creamy skin and warm, soft curves. It’d been five years but he knew every inch, every nuance, every dip and angle of her, and it all came back to him and he leaned over to taste.
“Sam,” she gasped, slipping her fingers into his wet hair and tightening her grip when he licked a nipple, then nibbled his way down her quivering belly to a thigh, which he kissed. And then the other.
And then, wanting to drive her as out of her mind as he was, between.
With another gasp, she tightened her fingers even more. She was going to make him bald before his time and he didn’t care. He nibbled at her, licked her like a lollipop, just light, grazing teases until she was panting beneath him, out of her head.
Perfect.
And when he had her that way, poised on the very edge, he slowly, purposefully, sucked her into his mouth.
She bucked and came for him, in a glorious explosion of breathless cries, her hips mindlessly rocking, her hands slipping out of his hair to fall weakly at her sides.
Straightening, he was trembling, too, but not from the cold. He wasn’t sure what came next, if she’d want him inside her, if he wanted inside her—
Hell, scratch that. He definitely wanted inside her. But even he wasn’t a big enough asshole to assume it, and for once, she’d fallen quiet. He started to pull away but she sat up and reached for him, wrapping her fingers around him, stroking, then guided him home—
And then he was inside her.
God. Inside her.
And she was wrapping her arms and legs around him and he was moving, thrusting in and out of her as if he hadn’t been with anyone in years.
And it felt that way. It felt like this was his first time in five years, and that he was home.
Home.
“Sam,” she whispered in a voice thick with hunger and passion. “God, Sam.”
Yeah. He knew. Being buried deep inside her body, her breasts plastered to his chest, not even a fraction of an inch of space between them, was both heaven and hell. Heaven because he never thought he’d ever feel this way again, and hell, because after this, he wouldn’t.
But that thought threatened to have reality intruding, so he shoved it away and let himself get lost in the feeling of her, how she was contracting around him, milking him, making his toes curl.
She pulled his head back to hers and took his mouth. Yeah. Hell, yeah. He kissed her long and wet and hard as he moved within her, absorbing her cries, his own low, helpless moan—creating a body heat that might have been generated from fifteen-thousand BTUs but instead came from their own chemistry.
“Ohmigod, Sam. I’m going to—Again—”
Yeah. Him, too. It was like a freight train, he could have stopped it but it might have killed him in the process, so he buried his face in her hair and let himself fly off the edge with her.
CHAPTER 16
Sara came back to earth with a slow, dazed smile. That. That was what had been missing from her world—Sam deep inside her.
She was flat on her back on the desk with his welcome weight still overtop of her. She could hear his ragged breathing, feel the way his heart still hammered in his chest.
Unable to stop herself, she hugged him tight, loving the feel of his warm, hard body, loving that he hadn’t quite caught his breath yet.
So he could climb a mountain in a storm, carrying her no less, and not get breathless, but when he made love to her, he did. Her smile turned into a dopey grin, and she felt ridiculously happy, an emotion that had been in scarce supply for far too long, she thought as she kissed his shoulder.
And then, because she apparently couldn’t help herself, she bit the spot.
When he sucked in a breath, she let out a low laugh and licked it, trying to soothe the ache.
He went still, and then lifted only his head.
Uh-oh. She saw the sanity returning to his eyes and knew. He was going to withdraw, both physically and mentally. He was going to go back to the cool-headed Sam, the man who looked at her from inscrutable eyes and didn’t give anything of himself away.
Which, after leaving him without a word five years ago, was pretty much what she deserved—but it wouldn’t make it any easier to take.
He let out a low sound that might have been a groan or a laugh, and tried to withdraw but she wrapped her legs around his waist and held on. “Not yet. Oh, please don’t go away yet.”
“I’m not going away, there’s nowhere to go.”
“I meant mentally. You were going to retreat mentally, which I understand, but I wish you wouldn’t.” Turning her head from his shoulder, she put her mouth on his throat.
He sucked in a breath and bowed his head, returning the favor, kissing her jaw, trailing more kisses up to her ear.
It was more than she could have hoped for. He was more than she could have hoped for, and her eyes fluttered closed as she gave him all the access he needed.
“I just wanted to say that I came inside you,” he murmured. “Is that a problem?”
She was on the pill, if only because she liked what it did for her skin. She’d always thought it was a silly reason, but right now, she’d never been happier about her decision. “Not a problem,” she whispered, and rocked her hips.
Inside her, he began to get hard again with a groan.
“Sara—”
“I don’t think our bodies are finished with each other.”
“No?" Testing that theory, he pressed his pelvis to hers, showing he was already fully erect again.
“See?" she whispered triumphantly.
“Sara…”
She reached for him, and he met her willingly, even forcefully, and just like that she was lost in him again.
Lost, even as with him, only with him, she was found.
CHAPTER 17
Sam lay on the floor on his back staring up at the ceiling of the old abandoned ranger station. There was no window but he could still hear the wind. And he had a soft, curvy naked female curled up against his side, sound asleep.
Yeah. Probably, he should never have gotten out of his bed that morning. But if he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have made love with Sara.
Twice.
He wouldn’t be feeling his heart crack open and reveal itself for the death blow.
Again.
> She stirred, and then her face appeared over him, her beautiful face, and she gave him a tentative smile that said she was ready to talk. “Hey.”
He braced himself. “Hey.”
“About why I texted you.”
“Sara—”
Coming up on an elbow, she put a gentle finger to his mouth. “Please,” she whispered. “It’s important to me. It’s why I brought you here.”
“I was thinking maybe it was to fu—”
With a shocked laugh, she covered his mouth with her entire hand, tightening it to muffle the rest of that sentence. “It wasn’t for that, though I can admit that was a fairly nice perk.”
“Fairly nice?" Light, he told himself. Keep it light. “That was some of my best work.”
She laughed and pressed a sweet kiss to his jaw. “Sorry. You’re right. Fairly nice wasn’t even close. How about mind-blowingly perfect?”
“Okay then.”
She grinned, and damn if he didn’t feel a smile tug at his mouth as well.
“It was better than all of my memories of you combined,” she said. “And those memories are pretty damn spectacular.”
He stared into her warm eyes, remembering what she was remembering, and felt his smile fade. “Why are you here?”
Her smile faded, too. “I’m here to right my wrongs, Sam.”
“Wrongs? You rob a bank?”
She rolled her eyes. “No.”
“You forget to pay your taxes?”
“No. You know what I did.” She looked down at his chest. “I left you.”
“Which was unfortunate for me, but not necessarily a wrong.”
She dropped her head to his chest, let out a shuddering breath, and lifted her face again. “I came back because while Paris was great and fun for awhile, it wasn’t home. And I realize that I have no clue what a real home is, but I know that the closest I ever got to it was with you.”
His heart kicked hard.
“I’m not blaming my past. Those growing up years…well,” she said with an easy shrug that broke his heart. “They were what they were and they made me who I am, but I didn’t learn a lot about relationships.”
