“Can we sit?” she asked, her words muffled against his throat.
“We can try.” Amusement touched his voice as he shifted to lean against the rough wall and started to lower his body. She came along with him, since they were bound together by his coat.
Tipping her head back a little so she could see his face, she couldn’t help but laugh. “Suddenly, I have empathy for conjoined twins.”
“I know. Here.” His hands caught the backs of her thighs, lifting her feet off the floor before she even processed what he was doing. “Put your legs around me.”
As she followed his direction, she flashed back to other times with Derek where her legs had been wrapped around him. Flushing, she pressed her face against his shoulder to hide her expression. With surprising ease, he lowered himself to a sitting position with Artie on his lap, her legs still tangled around his waist.
For a long minute, they sat quietly as the wind howled outside their dilapidated shelter.
“Shit, Artie,” Derek finally sighed. “I’ve missed this.”
So had she…so much that it was scary to admit out loud. She tried to force a chuckle. “What? Sitting in frozen squirrel poop in the middle of a blizzard?”
“No.” For once, he sounded completely serious. “I’ve missed holding you. I’ve missedyou.”
His words stripped her bare. She leaned back as far as his zipped coat would allow so she could meet his gaze. “Derek…”
Tucking a strand of her hair back under her cap, he gave her a crooked smile. “You’re so beautiful, Artemis Rey.”
Whatever she’d been about to say was forgotten, wiped away by his expression. It was hunger and wistfulness and longing, all directed at her. How had she managed to let him go four years ago? After just a few minutes in his arms, she didn’t ever want to leave him again. All she wanted was to stay wrapped in his coat and his arms forever.
Her face must’ve revealed her thoughts, because his breath caught. He leaned closer, and Artie fought to keep her eyes from closing, not wanting to look away from him. It’d been so long. She didn’t want to miss a second of his kiss.
Their lips met lightly, and she sighed, contentment underlying the excitement and need churning inside her. He pulled back, and Artie’s stomach clenched, worried that it was over already, but he just checked her expression before leaning in for a second kiss, as sweet and delicate as the one before.
The featherlight contact lasted only two seconds before Artie was pressing closer, her arms and legs tightening around him, trying to increase the contact. His lips turned up in a smile under hers, and he palmed the back of her head. He felt so familiar and, at the same time, so thrilling. After nipping at her lower lip, Derek soothed it with his tongue. She groaned into his mouth, loving that he remembered what she liked.
As he deepened the kiss, he dropped his other hand to the small of her back, and then lower to cup her ass. He tucked her closer, digging his fingers into her flesh. Even through all of their layers, he felt amazing, comfortable yet new. Artie rocked her hips into his, wanting more, needing him, not caring about the freezing temperature and screaming wind.
His hands and mouth were urgent, as if desperate to make up for the years of separation in just one kiss. Artie didn’t mind, since she was just as eager and needy. When he touched his lips beneath her jaw, she tilted her head back with a low groan. He kissed the hollow of her throat and then worked his way back toward her mouth.
“God, Artie,” he muttered barely an inch from her skin, his breath so hot it burned. “I’m still crazy about you. Even when I knew I was dragging you down, the hardest thing I’d ever done was to break things off with you.”
Inhaling sharply, she parted her lips, meaning to tell him how she’d fallen apart when he’d left, how she hadn’t been able to stop mentally comparing Randy to Derek, and how every time she had done so, her husband—herhusband—had come up short. When she’d signed the divorce papers, her first thought, quickly quashed, had been of Derek, and how maybe they could get a second chance.
All she managed to get out, though, was a choked, “I—” before his mouth crashed down on hers. The kiss was even more frantic this time, consuming her with its urgency. Feelings that had stayed dormant, hiding deep inside of her, woke in a fury, roaring to the surface and making her dig her nails into his shirt as a moan escaped her throat.
At the sound, he answered her with a hungry groan and pulled her even more tightly against him. From the time they were kids, Derek had always seemed so easygoing and carefree, but the man kissing her was neither of those things. He was desperate and intense and possessive, instead. In fact, he was acting like a man in love.
At that thought, she startled, yanking her head back and breaking the kiss.
“What?” His voice was rough and husky, his gaze locked on her mouth.
“Uh…” How could she explain her thoughts without dying of embarrassment? The decreased noise from outside registered as her head cleared slightly, and she seized on the distraction. “The wind’s quieter. If we don’t get back to base sometime soon, they’re going to send people out after us.” All the events of the day rushed back to her, and she marveled at how simply kissing Derek could erase all her thoughts and worries so easily.
“Right.” He blew out a short breath, as if preparing to return to reality, but his grip didn’t ease. “You’re right. But I don’t want to move.”
Tipping forward so her forehead could rest on his shoulder, she found it was easier to be brutally honest with him when she wasn’t meeting his gaze. “I don’t want to move, either.”
He chuckled, although there was still a gritty sound to it. “So it’s settled. We’re staying here for infinity. Itwouldbe nice to be somewhere with heat, though.” Glancing around the cabin, he grimaced. “And walls.”
“And fewer rodents.”
“A hole-free roof.”
“Maybe a bed?”
