“What?”
“Talk again.”
“Excuse me?” He cleared his throat, tried to shift away, probably to look down at her, but she wouldn’t let him. He felt too good. “You want me to—”
“Like that.” It was the rumble of his voice that calmed her, echoing through muscle and bone. It was comfort, home. His deep, slow words flashed her back to a time when she was just Papa’s little girl. No responsibilities, no pressure. No evil murderers chasing her through frozen tunnels. “More. Say more.”
“You…” He cleared his throat again, more awkward this time. But she didn’t care. That awkwardness made him real when, before today, he’d been the stiffest, chilliest, hardest-ass prick she’d ever met. She knew secrets about him now: he was warm. And he smelled good. “Want me to talk?”
She nodded, getting in another clandestine rub.
“I’ll, uh, tell you about ice, I guess?” He paused and she made a sound of assent. “Ahem. Um. So, the thing is, ice is like amber, or fossils. Except better. So cold, pristine, and untouched that it’s the perfect receptacle for trapped data.”
“What kind of data?”
“History. The history of the world. Everything from soot to bacteria, with layers that perfectly delineate eras, changes, shifts in temperature, climate…major events, disasters. The ice and every air bubble inside it is a time capsule.”
“I didn’t realize that.” He’d never used this many words in her presence before. And his voice, though almost painfully rough, felt good against her ear. She needed him to keep talking. “So. You study ice.”
“Mostly. Glaciers. Movement, cycles, patterns…”
She closed her eyes and pictured layer upon layer of ice. “Are they different colors?”
“What?”
“The ice layers.”
“Sometimes. It’s actually quite beautiful. Volcanic ash, for example, is black or gray, which makes dating and identification easy when we know of an event.”
“Sounds like an opera.”
“What?”
“Pastry. Layered buttercream, coffee cream, almond cake, chocolate… All paper thin.” She swallowed back a mouthful of saliva. “It’s complex and, when done right, amazing.”
He didn’t respond, which wasn’t a surprise, since before today, the man had never strung more than a couple words together. Not for her.
It was disappointing, though, that he’d shut up.
She arched back enough to look up and had to curl right down again when the sight of him hit her.
This suddenly felt an awful lot like a morning after—or even worse, themomentsafter. She lay, limbs heavy and used up, in the arms of a man who was uncomfortably sexy.
And the worst part was that even that hesitant, building excitement in his voice when he talked about ice was appealing. He made it interesting. To a woman who’d never gotten better than a C- in science, that was saying something.
She swallowed back discomfort at this unexpected closeness and asked the first question that came to mind. “What do you go out there for every day?”
“You really wanna hear this?”
She nodded.
“Well. I have”—his jaw tightened—“hadmultiple sites, each equipped with a drill that bores down into the ice. Heat helps them slice right into it. The technology’s great because it avoids contamination and—” Another throat-clearing rumble, followed by a gruff scoffing sound. “You don’t need to know the details.”
“Go on.”
“Um. I get ice core samples. From the drills. I collect these long cylindrical tubes of ice, which I examine initially and then send back to the States to be—”
Something prickled through her. “Whoa. Hang on. Hang on.” She rolled away from him, groaning as her feet hit the frigid floor.
