Thwack, thwack. He dug deeper at the ice, pushed his body harder, instinct the only thing stopping him from going over the edge into sweat.
He stood. Looked across the ice—his ice—and waited for his usual distance to take hold. The aloofness that let him separate things out enough to handle them one at a time.
Instead, all he could see were those warm dark eyes, open, defenseless—swirling with a mixed-up mess of emotions, with him at the center.
He wasn’t anybody’s sun. He didn’t want to be. He certainly shouldn’t be. A sun was warm, giving, constant.
The opposite of him.
Shit, it was dark out here. He reached to yank off his goggles, surprised to find that he wasn’t wearing them.
So, what the hell was—
A long, slow scan of the horizon confirmed what his eyes were trying to tell him: the sun was setting, melting into the earth like the world’s longest-burning candle.
Night had come to Antarctica.
He threw down the shovel, grabbed the bucket of ice, and stomped back inside to tell her about the sunset.
He shut the door and opened his mouth. “I like you.” Not what he’d planned to say.
She stopped what she was doing. “I like you, too.” Her words came out slower than his, more careful.
“Okay.” Relief spread through him, warm and slow. “Here.” He set the ice down, overcome by an absurd flash of himself as a caveman, throwing some freshly killed beast at his woman’s feet. An offering. “Make water. For you.”
Jesus, how eloquent. He rubbed his hand over his face, surprised to hear the tinkle of frost falling from his beard to the floor. He hadn’t been out there long enough to freeze over, had he?
Probably.
Goddamn, he was screwed, in ways he didn’t even understand.
“Be right back.” He threw open the door and paused at the explosion of color. Wait. He’d meant to show her. “Look, Angel.”
With a gasp, she hurried to his side. “It’s like a painting.”
He nodded. The colors sizzled on the surface, looking hot enough to burn a hole in the earth, but the second they disappeared, the temperature would drop. Thankfully for just a couple hours tonight, then more the next night and the next. Eventually, it would dip below the horizon and wouldn’t come back up until spring. Close to four months of darkness.
Did she know how cold it would get now? Did she understand how lucky they were to have found this place today of all days?
A glance at the awe on her expressive face told him that she knew.
Another wave of protectiveness overtook him and he moved to close the door, to keep the heat in, to keep her safe. “I’ll get more ice.” At her nod, he stepped outside, calmer than before, more accepting of his emotions, though he couldn’t begin to control them any more than he could stop the sun from setting.
He didn’t believe in fate or a higher power or any of that other crap, but something had brought them together here and now.
Inevitable. That was how it felt. And he was tired of fighting it. He wouldn’t win. He couldn’t. Not against this unavoidable pull. Even now, with a metal wall between them, he felt her tug, as sure as gravity, as inexorable as the ebb and flow of the tides.
As the last rays of light faded from the sky, he took his bucket and went back inside, floating on a warm wave of surrender.
Chapter 36
She was behind a curtain, taking a sponge bath. This would have been fine if she didn’t groan. In pleasure, Coop thought, though he stilled, head tilted, and waited for confirmation.
Within seconds, he was pure steel, big and heavy and hungry.
There’d been no room for lust in the enforced closeness of the tent. Here, though, in seconds, it overflowed, overwhelmed, overstimulated.
He collapsed into a chair and put his hands to his ears. He needed earplugs so he could stop hearing those noises. So he could stop picturing her back there, all warm and wet and fresh-smelling. Ready.
What felt like hours later, but was probably about eight minutes, she emerged, looking scrubbed and relaxed, rosy and happy. It was all he could do not to take her into his arms and soak some of that in.
Without a word, he grabbed his only change of clothes, the pan of freshly warmed water, and went behind the curtain to take care of his own business.
Which was even more of a nightmare than he’d imagined, because no matter what he did, he couldn’t get his erection to go down. He swiped himself with soap and choked back a noise. Another swipe, another sound barely swallowed.
Had she been doing this back here? Touching her own skin for the first time in days and reveling in it? Were her nerve endings this sensitive to every little thing? He could swear he felt the individual soap bubbles popping against his goose-bumped skin. Heavenly torture.
An uncontrollable sound broke from his mouth—a growl. Dammit. He would come if he kept picturing her lathered in soap, pleasuring herself and—
“You okay in there?” There was humor in her voice. Which was understandable, but it also made him a little bitter. How could she stand out there and listen to him suffer, with absolutely no idea of what he was going through? How could she just sit there and giggle, controlling his feelings, working his insides like a master puppeteer, while he stood here in anguish?
“How…” The sound of her voice made him still, breath solid in his lungs. “How should I set up these beds? Should I…” Do it. Do what you’re thinking. Don’t ask, don’t make me acknowledge this thing. Any more than I have. “Put them together?” Another long silence. “For warmth, I mean.”
The dam broke and his hand slid tightly down his cock, then back up. Could she hear the slick sound through the generator’s hum? “Prob’ly should.” The words came out as a grunt, punctuated at the end by a hard-fisted turn at the crown.
“Yeah.” Was she as breathless as she sounded or was he imagining that? “Definitely…safer.”
The camp bed scraped on the rough metal floor and he gritted his teeth against a wave of pleasure-pain, shooting up from his dick to the rest of him. Christ, this would hurt if he came. He couldn’t though. He couldn’t come with just a curtain between them. It would be—
“I might as well zip the bags together, too. I mean, I can see my breath in here, so…” A hiccup of sound. “For the best.”
His next “yeah” was more of a grunt than a word, and Jesus Christ, she had to know what he was doing.
* * *
Angel had dried off from her bath, but she was soaking. Not just wet, but heavy and warm and downright horny. Like back-seat-of-a-car horny. Like do-it-against-a-wall, just-put-it-in-me-before-I-die turned on.
And he’d clearly enjoyed bathing as much as she had.
He was out now, flushed and fresh and young-looking. A glance at her hand showed that she was visibly shaking. Nerves. Excitement. Anticipation.
Shoving it all down, she slid into the bag, turned on her side, and shut her eyes. Sleep would fix this. Or whatever else might happen.
It didn’t take long for him to join her, at once familiar and a stranger. The smell of his skin enveloped her, as comforting as fresh bedsheets, hot like sunshine on sand. She’d never forget this smell. Never.
He lay behind her, utterly still. No arm around her. Just breathing, a little lighter than his usual deep, steady rhythm—faster, too, maybe.
Was he nervous? Or was she imagining it? Projecting, probably.
Her neck grew warm from his exhalations. Was he drawing closer? Was that…
Angel shuddered at the feel of his lips on her nape, and though she wanted to press back into him, she forced herself to wait instead. Let him give without pushing too hard in return. He liked giving, her lone wolf, needed to take the first step in his own good time.
He moved in, set his chin on her shoulder, and whispered
, “I can’t…”
When he didn’t go on, she turned slightly to the right, enough to put the tips of their noses together. “Can’t what?”
“Can’t stop wanting you.”
“Why would you want to?” She swallowed, for the first time worried about what kind of terrible answer he might come up with.
Instead of something dire, he puffed out a laugh and rubbed his nose gently against her temple. “You mess with my self-control.” A pause and a shift and then his hand was on her hip, just resting there. Slowly, he stroked under her shirt, then up her waist, to where she was braless and more than ready. She gasped, he inhaled, the sounds harsh. “Afraid I’ll lose it.”
“You won’t be alone.”
“No?” Lightly, he held her breast, just held it, and it felt like the opposite of losing it. The Ice Man, weighing her, sussing her, assessing her. That sent a tingling rush down her spine, to the hot, heavy place between her legs. “You feel a loss of control?”
“Never…” She lost track of her words when his hand twisted to run the back of his knuckles along her achingly hard nipple. “Never had control to begin with.”
He paused, her nipple caught between two fingers, just trapped there, but even that arrested position was torment—no movement, no pull, nothing.
She couldn’t help the low sound that escaped her open mouth, which she had no memory of opening.
Painfully slow, he twisted his hand, just enough to tweak her there and everything inside her tightened, already gearing up for orgasm.
More rushed now, he let her go, reached down for the bottom of her shirt and pulled it to just over her breasts, exposing them to the cold air. His face turned, his mouth found the bare, tender skin just under her ear, and he licked her. “Shit happens when I lose control.” His busy right hand went from one breast to the other, squeezing, weighing, stroking. Every move still measured—cold, almost—and very, very focused.
What was it about the coolness of him that made her so damned hot? All stern and seductively scientific, as he melted her into a useless puddle of want, right here, in the middle of nowhere.
The center of her universe.
A light pinch to her left breast shoved a gasp from her lungs and pushed her bottom back into his crotch. He was hard behind her. And she was ready.
It was cold here, but they could take off their clothes for a bit without risking frostbite. And she wanted to.
She turned her head. “Ford?” His arm tightened around her chest, making her think of a kid with a toy he wouldn’t let go of or a dog with a bone who’d rather die than drop it.
“What?” Oh, he sounded mean. A good mean. Scary in a way that made her grit her teeth and push her breast harder into that proprietary grip.
“I’ve got an IUD. Not the copper kind. One of those…” Shut up. He doesn’t need the details. Or maybe he did. A man like him would want to know. “The plastic ones. With hormones.”
“Mm-hm.” She couldn’t see him, but she could picture his serious face, fiercely concentrated.
“So we can…have sex.” She paused. Had she gone too far? “If you want.”
“If I want.” A hard tweak, a press of his hips, and his hand ran over her stomach to the waist of her pants. “Is that what you want?”
Slowly, carefully, callused fingers went lower, and though she could have sworn his breath hitched when he didn’t encounter underwear, the hand didn’t waver. Down, through her curls, to where she awaited him, heavier and wetter than she’d ever been.
Quickly, as if he couldn’t wait any longer now that she’d broached the subject, he parted her lips, ran his fingers back and forth through all that moisture, and found her clit.
“Oh God. That’s good.” It was good. But it was just his hand and she wanted more.
She gasped when he picked up speed. Jesus, right to the point, wasn’t he?
“Is it?”
Bleary and confused, she half turned to where he hunched over her, close enough to see his eyes, intense and demanding. “Is what?”
“Is that what you want, Angel? Me inside you?”
Chapter 37
There were rules to sex. Rules that Coop had put into place in order to maintain the order in his brain. In his life.
And Angel was doing her best to bust right through them.
Step one: make sure she’s wet. Step two: hit the erogenous zones to get her wetter. Step three: make her come. Step four: slip on condom…and so on. Sex was great that way. Neat, reciprocal, consensual. Free of all that messy emotional shit.
While he wanted to turn this woman over, rip off her pants, and pound into her, he couldn’t and still be the man he’d fought to become all these years in Antarctica.
So he pushed her to the edge with his fingers, his only concession to his own pleasure the lazy circles his pelvis rubbed against her ass.
And this ass… He sighed, though the sound came out harsher than that. This ass was the stuff his dreams were made of. The ass of a woman who enjoyed her food. Who cooked it and tasted it and shared it with others. He tightened his hips, pulled his hand from between her legs, and yanked at her pants—two layers of fabric. With her help, he got them down, past the ass in question, and… Damn.
He gave it a light squeeze, just to feel the way it moved. “Got to calm down.” He was breathing like he’d run a race.
“Why?”
“Don’t want to get too worked up.”
“What’ll happen?”
His only response was a single shake of his head.
“Maybe I want to see you worked up.”
He squeezed her again, to still her, maybe. But of course, with her, it had the opposite effect. She undulated against him, half turning onto her back, forcing him back, too. And then, he just had to see her, so he unzipped the bag, letting in air so cold it made them both gasp.
Her breasts were big, their tips dark and tight. “Damn, you’re beautiful.” Beneath them, her ribs were visible, definitely sharper than they’d been back at the base. Two weeks of hard trekking would do that to a person. But he could picture the way she’d looked with more meat on her bones, and he liked it. He liked everything about her from the warm, bright sparkle in her eyes to the fact that she was kicking her pants the rest of the way off without any prompting. Her eagerness was a mirror of his—a magnifying glass.
And maybe, just maybe he could let loose with Angel. Maybe he could be himself. If he could find that person under the layers and layers of restraint.
“Yours, too.”
“Hm?” He blinked blearily.
“Your pants. Get ’em off.”
He hurried to do it, the movements awkward and rushed, and reminiscent of his first time. This sort of felt like a first time. Or the last.
They could die here, still miles from safety.
I want you before I die.
Half-naked, he settled in the junction of her legs, his erection between their bellies. Just as he was about to shift down to remedy that, she tugged at his shirt. “This, too. Off. Or up, if you’re—”
Cold, she’d been about to say. But he didn’t give her time. He was up, shirt shucked, then back over her before she could finish.
Her giggle snapped his eyes to hers.
“What?”
“You’re amazing.”
He frowned. Was she kidding? “What are you—”
“You were always such a detached jerk. On the outside.” When he opened his mouth to interrupt, she put a hand to his lips and stopped him. “But it was an act. I get that now.” Straining up, she put her lips to his and kissed him so tenderly he couldn’t hold himself up anymore. He sifted his fingers through her thick, soft hair and gave in. Gently at first, then deeper, their tongues playing, exploring, they finally learned each other’s faces in the murky light of this place. Their bodi
es did the same, shifting, sliding, pressing together. Skin to skin. Bliss.
They were in a shitty research hut in Antarctica, but it felt like a five-star hotel. In Paris, he thought. Or someplace like that. Wherever she wanted. Another deep kiss, a shimmy, a wordless promise. He’d take her there.
If they survived this, he’d take her anywhere.
When he opened his eyes, it was like he’d walked through a wall and come out the other side different.
“You’re crying.” He wiped a tear from her cheek with the back of his finger.
“No I’m not.” She smiled and he smiled back, wiping another tear as it leaked straight from her eye. The next one he kissed.
It took a while for him to notice the way her body twisted under his, seeking him out.
He lifted, shifted, then lost his air when her hand reached into the space between them and grasped his erection. She pressed it down, rubbed herself, covering him in her wetness, and notched him against her. Right where he wanted to be.
He emptied his lungs and pressed in. Slowly, caught in her eyes, in her body’s embrace, the slow, tight perfection of it.
One of them moaned.
“Feel so good,” he said.
She bit her bottom lip and nodded.
He couldn’t get purchase with his foot on the too-short cot, so he bent his knees, lifting her thighs, and pressed in. Oh God, that…that was better than his hand. Better than the first time. Better than any sex he’d ever had.
Another push, this one satisfyingly deep. All the way in, though he craved more—an amorphous, inexplicable something else that floated just beyond his comprehension.
But Jesus, Coop wouldn’t trade this for the world. Nothing about it. Not the struggle across the ice, not the moment he’d almost lost her. He’d starved for this experience. And he’d suffer again for it. Over and over, if he had to.
On that terrifying thought, he wrapped one hand around the edge of the cot, slid the other under her unbelievably fine ass, and completely lost it.
* * *
Angel couldn’t stop crying.
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