They rolled away from the unsheltered edge, through the actual waterfall, and into the recess behind it. It was suddenly staggeringly quiet and close, the water like a wall separating them from reality, the air in here still except for the cyclone of their mingled breaths. When she wound up on top again, he cupped both ass cheeks in his hands, reveled in the tight squeeze of her thighs around his waist.
This was ridiculous. They couldn’t screw here, in what was barely a pocket at the top of the mountain. They’d die if they didn’t get dry and warm.Now.
Although there was something poetically right about being wet with her again—a strange bookend to the longest few days in history. Completing a cycle.
As if on cue, the wind howled, picking up the snowmelt and blowing it over them with the force of a million little fists, while she straddled him like something from his dreams.
She’d get up now, out of self-preservation. They both would.
He tightened his hold on her butt and then with a strange, belly-deep fear, reached for her wrists, wrapped them with his hands, held them as if her life depended on it. Her curves plastered to his front, her mouth hungry against his, her hands caught in the circle of his.
Alive!He felt the thrill through every pore, every nerve, every cell in his body.
Alive!She responded, her legs and arms and lips an embrace.
Alive!Not so high above them, lightning flashed, and seconds later the ground shook, as if even the sky had to show a sign of agreement.
“This is stupid,” he muttered against her.
She nodded, gasped, the sound uncharacteristically shaky, and rubbed her cheek into his.
“Need to get warm.”
Her “yeah” was a whisper, barely audible with the wind chiming in. “Dry first. Dry. Warm.” She ground against him, scalding in that place where their bodies met.
He could only grunt in response, pulling her tight to where he was hard and needy and hot enough to warm them both. “Yeah.”
Water dripped from her face onto his, into his mouth and eyes. He closed them and held her for a few terrible moments, where he actually considered being idiots to death.
“This…” He swallowed. “You feel so good.” He didn’t want her to move, but if she didn’t get up, they’d be caught here in this sexy, stupid brush with mortality. “Just want to keep kissing you. Touching you. Can’t stop.”
“Same. I’ve known you, what? Four days? Or five?” She rubbed her nose to his. Hers was an ice cube.
“Four.”
“Four days.” Shuddering hard, she spoke into his ear. “We’ve got to stop meeting this way, Elias Thorne.”
All he could do was laugh.
Chapter 29
Leo had never been this rash in her life. She’d taken risks—hell, she lived for them—but a cliff’s-edge, soaking-wet make-out session on the brink of hypothermia was just plain idiocy. Yet when Elias barked, “Clothes off,” his voice sounding like he’d scraped it up the side of the mountain, her immediate reaction wasn’t refusal.
She wanted to get naked, to press her body to his and soak him up.
When he began pulling off his own wet clothes, she realized he wasn’t telling her to strip forhim. He was doing it for survival.
Embarrassment and disappointment wound through her and she tugged off her hoodie, started to wring it out—pointless, given the downpour—and went on to the next layer, and the next, laying them out as flat as she could, until there was nothing left to protect her cold, clammy skin.
The elements raged. Wind, frigid and angry, whipped around them, into the recess and back out, slowed only by the waterfall hemming them in.
Without speaking, he grabbed her hand and led her to the very back of the indentation, lugging his pack behind him.
He threw her a tiny camp towel and wiped himself off with brisk, rough movements. Getting dry seemed impossible with this level of wet and cold. The bastard wind wasn’t helping at all, the way it threw water their way, like a cruel practical jokester.
Muttering insults to the elements, she grabbed the tarp Elias shoved her way. Together, they stretched it out, fought to keep it low, and somehow got a sleeping bag spread on top of it. Still too damp to climb in, they anchored the bag with their bodies and pulled out more layers. Another bag, the fur.
“Go ahead!” he yelled. “Be right there.”
