She couldn’t tear her eyes from him, but her mouth opened on its own, offering up a word. “Dreamy?”
“Like all your life, the sky’s been hiding in plain sight.” He put down his food and leaned back, giving her a rare shot of his neck, bisected by angry red scar tissue. “Wearing funeral clothes or something. Dark, thick fabric, with just a glimmer of diamonds. And suddenly, one night, you look up and she’s letting you in on her big secret, doing the dance of the seven veils. Wrapping them around you until you’re caught in her ephemeral net.” He swallowed, lowered his head, and met Angel’s eyes with his, and they were rife with the complexity and hidden secrets of this constantly shifting place. “That’s the ice, Angel. Infinite, ever-changing, magical.” She could get addicted to this man. Maybe she already was. “With depths none of us will ever get to plumb.”
A sound escaped her—half gasp, half sob. She covered her mouth, but not quickly enough.
“You okay? Angel?”
“Why’d you have to go and do that?”
“Do what?” he said with a puzzled smile.
“Be so…” Beautiful, solid.Good. She could only shake her head, finally tearing her eyes away. “Never mind.”
He rose. “Come here.”
Like a moth to a flame, mesmerized or hypnotized or something, Angel went to him, giving herself up to Ford Cooper’s ephemeral net.
Chapter 35
“Come here,” Coop said, shocked at his own words and the way he met her halfway.
Honestly, though, this wasn’t him. Ford Cooper didn’t hug. He shook hands or shared body heat. The one because society dictated it, the other to survive. And sex, of course, was peppered in there because his libido wanted it. But that was just the occasional itch he scratched.
None of it could have prepared him for what he felt now. This hunger was different, as strong as the one gnawing at his belly, but more widespread, impossible to pin down. It filled his head and lungs, only calming when she stepped into his arms.
He didn’t just want her body. He wantedher.
He’d denied it out there, turned it into something else, about survival and body heat and closeness that saved lives. But here, in the growing warmth from the heaters, with enough space to breathe, he couldn’t lie. Couldn’t look away.
He bent his head, let his eyes roam her soft features—a novelty after touching only in the dark—and, like a man still starving, kissed her.
For three long seconds, he felt nothing, as if the jolt was too much, the connection too hot, too electric, to register. And Jesus, it was.Shewas. Like defibrillator paddles to his chest. He sucked at her, took a life-giving breath from her lungs, gave his own.
Don’t blink. Don’t forget a second of this.
Watching her kiss him, watching her watch him, was one of those never-ending mirror portraits, with no beginning and no end. He was lost in it. Like he’d fallen into a maze. Ensnared. No way in, no way out.
No way out.
With a gasp like a drowning man, he stumbled back a step and put his hand to his mouth—not to wipe her away, but to hold her there.
“You okay?” She was upset. He’d upset her.
He nodded. “Let me…” A blind look around supplied an answer. “Get water. For a bath.” He almost groaned at that image. Clean, fresh, warm skin. Shit, there was something wrong with him. He’d short-circuited himself with that kiss, blown some neural connections that he’d never get back.
“Be right back,” he mumbled, barely remembering to snag his mittens and pull on his hood before heading out.
With relief, he let the cold soak into him. Wake him up. Only it didn’t clear his mind the way it always did. It didn’t push the feelings back to where he could handle them, in the shadowed confines of a sleeping bag. It froze away the bullshit, let it crackle and fall, leaving nothing but the ice-cold core of reality.
Which was what? That he was an idiot? Scared of a woman because she let her emotions show? Because she lured out his own?
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—hisice—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 certainlyshouldn’tbe. A sun was warm, giving, constant.
