“Is that a challenge?” he asked, hoping it was.
“Maybe.”
He crawled over her, careful not to jostle her injured leg. Her eyes widened and when he was a breath away from her, her lips parted. Instead of closing the distance between them the way he wanted, he paused, breathing her in, searching her gaze to make sure she was right there with him. That there wasn’t anything—anyone—in between them. Unable to resist any longer, he claimed her lips, losing himself for a moment in the sweetness of her kiss.
Her fingers tangled in his hair, pulling him to her. He loved the way she met his hunger with her own, loved that she seemed to want him as much as he wanted her. She shifted her weight, angling so she was closer to him. She gasped into his mouth but he was pretty sure it was from pain and not passion. He pulled back so he could look at her face and saw the lines of pain etched around her eyes.
“Hold on a second,” he said, hurrying to the place he’d set the packs and berating himself for not thinking of it sooner. “Here, make yourself useful.” He handed her the bundle they’d pulled out of the last cache and went to grab the first-aid kit from his pack.
By the time he knelt at her foot holding an ACE bandage, a bottle of water, and a pack of ibuprofen, she’d managed to unwrap the bundle. She pulled out two more candy bars, significantly improving their meager dinner, and what looked like a map. He handed her the water and pills and waited for her to take them before he started wrapping her ankle.
“It’s blank,” she said, holding the paper out for him to see. It was a map but only in the most basic way. There were no contour lines, no key, nothing that would make it possible to use it to navigate.
“That’s just weird,” he said, winding the bandage around her ankle.
She didn’t fight him or try to do it herself. She leaned back and, for the moment at least, let him take care of her. He saw her dig the tile out of her pocket and turn it over in her hands.
“Could you get the rest of the clues for me?”
“Sure,” he said, fastening the tail of the bandage before reaching for her pack again.
She traded him one of the candy bars for the collection of plastic bits they’d gathered from the caches. The bundle he’d snagged at the bottom of the rappel was supposed to be the last one. If the clues meant anything, they should have everything they needed to figure it out. He rocked back on his heels and tore the wrapper off the chocolate while she set the apparently unrelated items up in the order they’d collected them.
The rain had started to slack up but what was left of the light was rapidly fading. Tucked under the tarp in their makeshift shelter, it was getting hard to see. He took his head light and propped it on one of the smaller rocks, positioning it so the light shone over the row of items Amanda had set up in front of her, starting with the whistle and ending with the useless map.
He polished off the last of his candy, looking at the objects with no clearer idea what they meant than he’d had when he started. Amanda still had half of her chocolate left and was muttering under her breath. He caught the occasional obvious words,don’tandit,but not much more. He watched as she turned the coaster over and over in her hand, the crease in her forehead becoming deeper with every rotation. He seriously considered pressing his lips to the spot and from there, working his way over the rest of her skin. But she seemed so caught up in her thoughts, he hated to interrupt her. For now.
He rolled out the insulite pad, spreading it out on a level patch of ground in the shelter of the rock overhang. It wasn’t a cave exactly. Nothing could live in it but the shelter provided the most protection from what was left of the rain, and without a fire, they’d be glad to be shielded from the wind. He heard it picking up outside the tarp and the temperature had started to drop again. He positioned his sleeping bag on the pad and glanced around the space, looking for something to use to prop Amanda’s ankle. He wanted to zip their bags together and get her snuggled in before she caught a chill.
He reached for her pack, digging around for some warm, dry clothes and chastising himself for making her stay in the wet ones longer than she needed to. With her ankle messed up, she couldn’t change on her own and despite their tenuous truce after the rappelling incident, she was unlikely to come out and ask for help.
“I’ve got it!” she shouted, making him drop the pile of clothes he’d been holding.
“Got what?”
“I know what the puzzle means.”
––––––––
IT HAPPENED SO quickly. She’d been playing with the words in her head, mulling them over like some kind of three-dimensional Rebus puzzle. In the end, it was the Chinese character that unlocked it all for her. She knew she’d seen it before but for the longest time, she couldn’t make sense of it. It wasn’t until she turned her attention to the eight stress balls painted to look like the solar system that she remembered where she’d seen the symbol. It had been on the door of the Chinese restaurant with the dumplings she and Becca loved. It was one half ofgood luck. Thegoodhalf. After that, everything fell into place.
“What is it?” asked Michael, closing the distance between them, his hands full of dry clothes for her.
She knew better than to sit around in wet clothes. The fact that he had to be the one to remind her to change showed how shaken up the storm left her. She could still picture the lightning striking the spot they’d been standing on only moments earlier.
“The objects represent words,” she said, grinning at the simplicity of it. It was like one of those optical illusions; once she saw it, it was impossible to look at it any other way. “Here, just start with this.” She exchanged the whistle and theittile for the dry clothes. While he turned the two objects over in his hand, she quickly stripped off her T-shirt, replacing it with a long-sleeved thermal. She glanced up to find him looking at her instead of the whistle, a hunger in his expression that suddenly made it hard for her to swallow.
He shook his head and muttered something about lack of blood flow before turning his attention back to the puzzle. The almost pained expression on his face gave her an idea. She’d been wrong to snap at him before they rappelled. Instead of trying to second-guess her, he’d been looking out for her. She could see that now and was enough of a grown-up to admit it. And she apologized. If she fell into old patterns, she’d do it again. She’d do what she had to do to keep her relationship with Michael as honest and on as equal footing as she could. That didn’t mean she couldn’t torture him a bit for proving her wrong.
Using her good foot, she raised her butt off the insulite pad and shimmied the wet yoga pants over her hips. When her bare butt hit the cold foam pad, she hissed in a breath and glanced up to see Michael watching her, the whistle clamped between his lips. He let out his breath and it made a low fluttery sound.
“You’re doing it wrong,” she said, taking her time as she peeled the wet nylon off her legs. His gaze followed her every move, fixed on the skin she bared.
“What am I doing wrong?” he asked, the whistle falling from his mouth to his lap.
It would have been funny if she could manage to concentrate on anything other than his lips. She knew exactly how much pleasure he could give her with his mouth. Gingerly, she pulled the yoga pants off her injured leg, giving herself a moment to grab control of her rampant libido. She rolled the dry pants up and positioned them at her feet so she could try to wriggle into them without hurting her ankle.
She didn’t have a chance to do more than poke her foot through the opening in the leg before Michael crossed the cramped space and scooped her up into his arms. Careful of her ankle, he cradled her on his lap, his lips a breath away from hers. She leaned into him, trying to steal a kiss but he pulled away.
