The way his skin feels under my palms—taut, warm, alive—makes it hard to remember I was supposed to be the one springing into action. The rooster definitely notices my failure—he’s already cackling victoriously from the shelter of my peach trees.
My legs are starting to feel like jelly, shaking from the cold, maybe, or maybe from the proximity of his bare chest. Maine breeze or not, the temperature of my blood is dangerously close to boiling, and I know I need to create some distance.
I drop back into the grass with a graceless thud, pulling him down with me.
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah,” I reply gruffly, sitting on the cold grass.
Jericho looks around with narrowed eyes as if he wants to duel the rooster. “Where did it go?”
“Who knows.” I rub my sore knee I banged up when I fell. “I’ve been trying to catch him for a long time, but he’s uncatchable.”
“Huh.” His assessing eyes dart around my yard. “We need to make a trap for him.”
“We?” I ask with a quirked brow.
“If we make a trap in only one yard, he’ll just move over to the other.”
“True. Let me know if you come up with something. I’ll think of something too.”
He sits on the nearly frozen ground next to me as we both stare in the darkness, knowing well enough the rooster is gone. And yet, we are both still here.
“Why are you always naked?” The sudden question takes me by surprise, and I swivel toward him with a grin, trying to maintain coolness despite the jab.
“I’m not,” I shoot back with a laugh. “I’m wearing a T-shirt.”
“With nothing underneath,” he observes quietly. I note how he keeps his eyes averted, as if the very act of looking might somehow disrupt a fragile balance between us.
“What about you?” I counter, unwilling to let him have the upper hand. “You don’t seem to have anything under the jeans either.”
The words tumble out before I have a chance to reconsider, and too late, I realize his curious eyes are already on me. My face grows warm as if the breeze just shifted to a heat wave.
“How do you know?” Jericho’s voice is smooth, almost challenging. “Did you look that closely?”
“Close enough.” The weak shrug I give feels like a flimsy shield against the intensity of his focus. I try to play it off, but I seem to have walked right into a smartly laid trap, and I’m not sure I want to struggle free.
“Here?” he prompts, and my eyes betray me, instinctively following his motion. He tugs the side of his jeans down, revealing the navy band of his underwear. The color registers for a fleeting moment, but not before my gaze locks onto the expanse of his skin.
Thank goodness I replaced the bulbs in the outdoor lights a week ago for more powerful ones because I was planning on hunting. And now I can see everything. The trail is even happier up close. The skin north of the boxers band is a little darker from the sun. Tiny skin wrinkles show the lack of fat on his stomach.
“Did you find it?” comes his guttural voice.
“It?” I ask, swallowing from the embarrassment of being caught gawking.
“What you were looking for.”
Clearing my throat, I shift my attention up to his face.
“No. I mean yes.”
His chuckle is husky. He releases the hem of the jeans material, and it clings back to his skin. “What’s your excuse?”
“I hate sleeping in clothes,” I say, feeling the heat of my own words as they meet the chill of the air.
“All the time?”
“All the time.”
