Boom! The walls rippled with the force of another angry gale.
“Why?”
“Old injury.” She forced a smile, hoping he’d let it go. “My feet, however, feel like they’ve been steamrollered.”
“Can’t be that old,” he yelled close to her ear.
“What?” She watched him, frowning.
“Your injury.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re only what, in your twenties, so—”
“I’m thirty-one. How old are you?” The entire conversation had an odd edge confined in such close quarters yet yelling to be heard through the hard-pellet sound of ice to nylon.
“Thirty-eight.” He tapped her foot through the bag. “Muscular or skin?”
“Huh?” It took her a second to realize he’d gone back to her injury. “Oh. Little of both.”
He nodded and turned to rifle through the first aid kit. “Your nose okay? Fingers? Toes?”
“Um…” My butt’s bruised—not to mention my ego—from all the times I bit it out there. “Legs are sore, but I can handle that. Just muscular.” She leaned forward and indicated the place at her waist where her harness had rubbed her raw. “Chafed here.”
“Okay. Let’s see ’em.”
She stilled. “See what?”
“Your feet, for starters.”
Her head had barely begun to shake from side to side when he stopped her with a flat look. “Fine. Here.” She shouldn’t have been disappointed when he handed her a pack of ointment and bandages. Especially not after protesting his attentions. But she couldn’t help it.
“Check ’em, rub ’em, and wrap ’em. You don’t want an infection in this cold.” His eyes slanted to hers, a translucent, unimpressed blue. “Did mine already. Can’t afford a delay.”
“Right.” Feeling chastised, she grabbed the package and ducked her head into the big sleeping bag. It wasn’t easy to peel off her socks and fix up her raw feet in the tight space, but she managed. And thank God, because the damage was worse than she’d realized. Not quite blistered, but close. Just applying moleskin and bandages hurt. She couldn’t imagine how walking would be.
With her feet bandaged, she grabbed her belongings and followed Ford out onto the ice.
Outside, the clouds had lifted, but the wind tore at them, worse than yesterday. It tried to yank the tent from her hands, worked her hair out from under her hat, made packing up the sleds into a contact sport. As unpredictable as a sea of currents, it whirled one way, then another, in an ever-changing waltz that made her head spin.
They awkwardly strapped up and buckled into their skis, and Ford took off, as impervious to the gale’s harassment as he was to everything. He’d run until his battery ran out. No hesitation or intimidation for the Ice Man. No worrying if he’d make it.
She wished—
To hell with that. She hadn’t come this far to stand around wishing for things.
“You wanna play?” she whispered into the next taunting blast, too annoyed to feel silly or embarrassed.
This was about survival. About putting one foot in front of the other, sucking air into heaving lungs, stealing what little oxygen the atmosphere gave up, and spitting it back out again. The sound of her own breathing in the relative quiet of the ski mask reminded her of her own inexorability. Her own strength, dammit.
Nose running, eyes streaming, lungs working harder than they ever had, she leaned into the wind, forging her own path, the way Ford did, with every step. “Let’s play.”
Bent almost double, half-blind, single-minded, and hardly blinking for fear of losing him, she followed her companion’s tall red form straight into the coldest depths of hell.
Chapter 23
Coop spent another day leading them through hell, trudging on while the wind stripped them of humidity and humanity, serenading them with its harsh, atonal requiem. Their requiem, if they weren’t careful.
He was a realist. This continent had killed and it would kill again. It was the idea of who would be killed here that did him in. He could handle the idea of his own mortality. It was Angel Smith’s that perturbed him. She was too vital and full of life to die.
Or at least she had been before this fiasco started.
Now he surreptitiously eyed her as she ate. Her movements were heavy, exhausted, despondent. How could they not be when skiing ten miles out there required the energy of twice the distance? Three times? They weren’t skiing so much as pushing against a constantly compressing wall. Stuck in a trash compacter, like in one of the Star Wars movies.
One of the old ones, from a time when he actually watched films.
His eyes slid to the side again. What kind of movies did she like? Thrillers? No. He couldn’t see that. But he could picture her getting into those family food movies where you came out craving hugs and homemade Italian pasta.
“What do you watch?”
She blinked, owlish and blank. “Hm?”
“You like movies?”
“Oh.” She stared at him, features blurred by the delicate swirl of steam rising from rehydrated food. “Don’t watch much.”
His lips went down at the corner. “Huh.” Wrong again.
After a few more seconds and another bite or two, she set her bowl in her lap. “What do you mean, huh?”
“Don’t watch much either.” He half shrugged. “Lost interest at some point.”
Her nod was slow and thoughtful. “People tend to watch stuff at night, you know? I’ve always worked at night. And here…” She pointed her spoon vaguely to the side. “I was in that kitchen sixty, seventy-five hours a week. Not much downtime.”
“Yeah.” He had a sudden flash of what it would be like to take Angel to the movies. They would crowd each other, since even as a teenager, he’d been too big for those seats, knocking knees into the seat in front, rubbing elbows with the person beside him. For three out-of-body seconds, he smelled the popcorn, felt his salty, buttery fingers grazing hers in the oversized bucket, heard her low, happy laugh at whatever was happening on the screen.
He, Ford Cooper, the man who ran from crowds and closeness, who couldn’t stand loud noises or excessive stimulation, could see himself there—with her.
Was he experiencing Winter-Over Syndrome? It could turn a person erratic, forgetful, slow. And he’d seen it firsthand. Shit, they’d even had psychiatrists spend winters at Pole to study its effects. Was this what Winter-Over Syndrome looked like for Coop? Wishing for things so outside his wheelhouse that they couldn’t possibly be real?
“What’s your favorite movie?”
He’d been so lost in his fantasies he jolted at her words.
“Will you think I’m crazy if I say The Thing?”
Her hiccupped laugh rang out like wind chimes in a hurricane, and shit, he wanted to bottle that sound. “Yes.” She sparkled, her smile wider than he’d seen it in days, her face relaxed. It flipped a switch in him, made him crave smiles and sighs the way an addict craves opiates.
“What about you?”
“Me?” She snorted, leaning forward as if sharing a secret. “My problem is that I’ve never been able to pick just one of anything. I love it all. Food, movies, music. I mean, my favorite black-and-white movie? That’s The Maltese Falcon, hands down. Actually, no, because I’ve always been a sucker for Cary Grant. But then you add Christmas movies to the mix and…” She shrugged, as if giving in to her own excess. “See? Depends on the day, my mood. Where I am…”
Her words faded away as she stared off at nothing. Exhausted, like him. Battered by this place.
But not beaten.
They finished dinner, cleaned up, and went about getting ready for bed.
“Better take care of those feet,” he said.
A low sound of protest emerged from inside the sleeping bag, where Angel had already taken up res
idence. “Can it wait till the morning?”
“Frostbite’s not something to mess with. Let’s see them.” He didn’t intend to sound quite so bossy.
“I’ll do it.” Her words were slurred.
“You can barely move.” He held on to the kit, obstinate—and something else. Responsible, maybe. “I saw you limping out there. Your knee’s bugging you. Don’t deny it.”
She threw him a glare, but surprised him by complying.
He took hold of one slender foot and stripped it gently but quickly, since even in shelter, the risk of frostbite was real. It was light in his palm and mostly warm enough to alleviate his worry, though her toes were chilly. He touched each one. “Any numbness?”
She shook her head.
With great care, he peeled the bandages off, cleaned her skin, and reapplied fresh ones where needed, slipping the sock back on before starting the whole process with the other foot.
He couldn’t say exactly when it occurred to him that he held her naked foot in his hand, but once the realization popped into his head, it wouldn’t go away. Hung around like an itch he couldn’t get to.
A foot, for God’s sake. Ridiculous.
But the foot didn’t feel ridiculous right now. He gently squeezed it and expelled a harsh breath.
It felt…improper. Especially in comparison with the rest of her fully clothed body. And secret, somehow. He knew things about her now. He knew her second toe was longer than the big one, that her arches were high and elegant, her skin already roughened from two days of marching in the freezing desert air. He knew she’d put on a bright red nail polish at some point. It’d worn mostly off, but it made her toes look like candy. And he’d never craved sugar so badly.
The best course of action, now that she was all bandaged up, was to give her back her foot.
But he couldn’t.
Instead, he ran his thumb along the central curve, pressed forward beneath her toes, then down to her heel. The sounds she made were—he swallowed—obscene. A shocked gasp that urged him to look her way. He didn’t, though, because if their eyes met, he might have to stop.
And that was the last thing he wanted to do.
Another rub, deeper this time, bearing down on aching muscles. But it didn’t sound like pain when she moaned, low and guttural, and though he knew better, he let his eyes slide up her body to her face.
He froze. He’d never seen anything hotter—not on-screen or in the throes of sex or in his darkest fantasy.
Mouth open, eyes closed, cheeks flushed, everything about her screamed pleasure. Just to be sure, he stroked back and pressed again, wanting—no, needing—to know which notes this spot would play on her ever-changing face.
And she didn’t disappoint. Every feature cringed, slowly, sensually, in a magnified expression of pleasure-pain. Sweeping up to caress her toes now was sheer torture, because he was hard—shocking in this cold—and her reactions, though subtle, were more intimately real than any peepshow.
He could’ve gone on forever, rubbing, rapt, eyes glued to her face as she showed him just how good he made her feel, picturing how amazing she’d look if he were kissing her, or—
Her eyes popped open, ensnaring his in their velvet trap.
Everything went quiet, stilling as if the storm had taken a breath. Or maybe it was him going a little deaf, like when his ears needed popping in a plane. Except he could hear the things happening in this tent. Could feel and smell with overwhelming precision every fine detail blown up under a microscope.
They shared a couple hard inhale-exhales, the tension between them as palpable as the frigid temperature.
The press of his fingers lessened, his caresses slowed, until he did nothing but grasp her foot while she just as steadily held his gaze.
“That feels amazing,” she said in a bedroom whisper that he could feel deep in his bones, though it couldn’t possibly be loud enough to hear.
Her mouth closed and his attention flicked down, watching her swallow with something awfully close to hunger before sliding back up to find her eyes boring into him.
And, just like that, the bubble popped.
Everything came rushing in—the unbearable noise, the killing chill, the too-intense, sizzling stimulus of this connection.
As if stung, he released her foot and backed up until he couldn’t move any farther. There was no escape, nowhere to go.
He had to get out. Blindly, he put on whatever clothes he found, then his boots and coat. He tore open the zipper and went out, not once glancing her way.
Outside, he went to work with the shovel, as if he’d dig clean through to the Arctic. It wasn’t until he almost broke a sweat that he slowed down long enough to admit what had happened.
He’d touched her, felt her skin, seen her pleasure, and it scared the living hell out of him. She’d burn him if she got too close. And he wasn’t sure he’d survive it.
Chapter 24
She watched, completely flabbergasted, as he booted and suited up before heading out again.
After a few seconds, a sound came to her, through the two layers of tent fabric and a million coats of whiteout. She cocked her head and listened to the shovel. She looked around: water, food… They had what they needed.
What the hell?
When he didn’t return after a good chunk of time, she wrapped up and went out.
“What on earth are you doing?”
He stopped, back bent, breathing so hard she could see the cloud from five feet away.
“Back inside, Angel.” He didn’t even straighten up when he spoke to her, just stayed there, stiffly bent, frozen as if he needed her to leave before he’d move again. “Please.”
“Why are you doing that? We have water.”
“Need more.” Lie.
“I’ll help, then. Then we’ll both go to bed.”
She cringed at the domesticity of her words, while he made a weird, hoarse strangled noise.
“I can’t be in there right now.”
Claustrophobia, she thought.
Or he hates me. That was the likelier of the two, considering the way things had started between them. But hadn’t the last few days changed that for him the way they had for her? Weren’t they a team? Did he not like her even a little?
“It’s me, isn’t it?” Her voice was higher than she’d have liked. She hated how weak it sounded in front of this man with his big muscles and bigger brain.
He shook his head slowly, then surprised her by saying, “Yes.”
It sent a punch to her gut. If she’d been back home or at the station or any other place, she’d have spun on her heel and taken off. But here, there was nowhere to go.
“What’d I do?” Don’t cry. Don’t do it. Don’t show him you care.
“What’d you…” He finally straightened and stormed a few steps closer—close enough for her to see that every hair on his face was frost-rimed. It made him look older, and also, in a weird way, terribly mortal. Even he couldn’t win against this weather. “What’d you do?”
“Yeah.” She nodded, swallowing back the tears. “So I don’t do it again.”
“So you don’t…” He shook his head and turned away, muttering, before looking back at her again. “You’re so…much.”
She stepped back as if he’d hit her. “What?”
“You’ve got to be hard to survive this place, Angel. And you’re not. You’re all softness.” He waved a hand at her, then turned away. “It’s already sucking the life out of you. What’ll I do if you…” He shuddered. “If you don’t survive this?”
Slowly, fueled by shock, her mouth dropped open.
With a frustrated huff, he threw down the shovel and moved closer. “You know what happens if the ice takes me, Angel? Nothing. Not a thing. I’ve been out here almost every day for years. I like it here. I belong here. I fu
lly expect to end my days on the ice. But you, with your…” He waved at her. “Curves and lips. That laugh. The way you dive into people and experiences and eat up the world like you’ll never get enough. When you look at me like you did in there.” He pointed now, emphatically, at the tent. “Like I’ve just saved the damned planet. Like you want me to—” He cleared his throat, seemingly speechless.
What was he angry at exactly? Was it that he couldn’t protect her? Couldn’t keep her alive? But, wait, did he like those things he’d mentioned? Her body, her laugh? Her?
He was as confused about this attraction as she was. The realization hit her like a frying pan to the head. Which meant he definitely felt it.
All the times he’d ignored her at the station, put his head down and pretended not to hear, or walked in the opposite direction when he saw her coming: attraction. Unwanted, apparently, but attraction nonetheless.
“You like me,” she finally said with a grin.
And, though she had no idea why, she could tell that he was not happy about it. At all.
* * *
This wasn’t supposed to happen right now. Or ever.
He should’ve known with the foot thing. Should have stopped it right away. In this deadly environment, the last thing he needed was to lose it.
What went entirely against his grain was that he didn’t want to resist her. And, a whiny little voice inside him asked, if we’re not going to survive this anyway, then why the hell should I fight it?
Unbidden, a wave of tension stronger than anything he’d felt in a decade swept up, grabbed his body, his emotions, and every last bit of control and sent him the last three steps to where she stood, probably freezing in the polar night.
“You…” Dammit, his voice wouldn’t survive this trip. But he’d say what he had to say. He’d say this at least, and then he could stop talking. He grabbed her head, except with his thick gloves and her hat and hood, he didn’t get a drop of her heat. Which was good, probably, though he craved it the way he craved food at the end of each day on the ice. “Listen.”
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