His lips were soft, his mouth tentative, almost questioning. Tasha was surprised by all of it—the taste of him, the unexpected intimacy, his hesitation created by some completely insane doubt that she somehow wouldn’t happily welcome his kiss.
So she laughed.
He pulled back to look at her, a very solidoh shittaking root and growing, along with the sweetest, laid-heartbreakingly-bare vulnerability that she’d ever seen in his dark brown eyes.
And Tasha realized just how impossibly hard this was for him—and that now was not the time for overthinking or analysis for either of them, so she leaned in to kiss him back.
No hesitation. No doubt. Just pure conviction that her mouth against his was absolutely, unquestionably right.
She used her sore arm to hold her jacket up against her bare chest, looping her right arm around his neck to pull him even closer. She may have been scared and uncertain about a lot of things right now, but kissing him wasn’t one of them, and she wanted him to know it.
It was as if she’d opened a floodgate, because now he was kissing her with the hunger of a starving man as he pulled her even closer, too.
This was the fairytale first kiss she’d dreamed of for years, but real life was better than any fantasy she’d ever imagined. His mouth was warm and sweet, his hands hot against her bare, chilled back as he wrapped his arms around her, pulled her onto his lap, and engulfed her with his body heat.
She wasn’t astride him, but she wanted to be. The flannel pants he was wearing were ridiculously thin, and she could feel his arousal against her thigh, and oh, God, she wanted him inside of hersobadly.
She started to shift, her scraped knees be damned, except there was still a small part of her that hadn’t transformed into pure, liquid, sexual need, and that tiny, still-clear-thinking part whispered for her to slow down. This wasThomas, and yes he was kissing her like he was trying to sear together their very souls, but this was still fresh and new for him.
He hadn’t spent his entire life desperately wanting her the way she’d spent her life desperately wanting him, so maybe going from first kiss to full penetration in under two minutes wasn’t something she should push for.
Also? There were boxes of condoms downstairs.
And a shower would be nice.
She pulled back. Just a little. And of course, because he was Thomas, he instantly released her—just enough so that he could look searchingly into her eyes. He was breathing hard—she was, too—and the expression on his face was one she’d remember to her dying day. Because he wasn’t hiding anything. Everything he was feeling was all right there—his fear for her, and more—laid bare for her to see.
Tasha kissed him again—she couldn’t resist—and whispered, “I thought I’d lost you, too. I saw the rifle and I thought... I thought the worst.”
He rested his forehead against hers, his hands now in her hair. “You forgot that I’m ridiculously hard to kill.”
She laughed, just a little. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I know going outside was a mistake, but I wanted to help you, not...” Make it worse. And she had to ask. “Did you kill them?” He shook his head, so she clarified, to make sure they were talking about the same thing. “The two men who shot at me?”
“No, they were gone when I got here,” Thomas told her. “But there was blood on the trail. I think you hit one of them.”
What?
“Oh my God,” she said, aghast. “I didn’t mean to. I didn’t even aim.” She tried to remember that moment, as she was manhandling the rifle up and into place. “Oh my God,” she said again. “Did I...?”Kill one of them?She couldn’t form the words. And suddenly she needed space, so she reached up to hold onto her jacket as she pushed herself off of Thomas’s lap.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But... There were only two?”
Only...? “Yeah,” she said, “that I know of.”
“Then I’m pretty sure whoever you shot was only injured,” he told her. “His teammate helped him back to camp. If he’d already been dead, the other guy would’ve left the body, gone back to get help. There was no body, so...”
That was good.
Wasn’t it?
Or was it? Maybe she shouldn’t be feeling this much relief over the fact that she hadn’t killed one of the men who were trying to kill her and Thomas. As she drew in a shaky breath, she said, “But they’ll be back. They know where we are now.”
Thomas nodded, his face somber. “They do.”
“Should we leave, right now?” she asked. “Before they return?”
“No, we’re safer in here,” he said. “It’s too cold out there, and it’s getting colder.”
“But we’ll be trapped in here.”
