“Careful with the equipment, baby,” I tease her. “We’ll need it later.”
“Which equipment?” She palms me roughly, and I grunt again in surprise. “This?”
My breath catches. “That’s the one.”
She runs her fingers along me as I grow hard beneath her touch. I reach for her, but she steps back again. Confusion and disappointment spike through me. She’s giving me so many mixed messages, I feel off-kilter.
“We’ll see,” she says, her poker face back in place. “Let’s climb.”
We move into position. “Belay on,” I say.
This is going to be torture. Watching her curvy, beautiful body from below, her safety depending on being focused and not distracted.
Then she starts to climb.
It’s amazing. I’m in awe of her. She scrambles over slabs, shimmies up chimney rock clefts, wedges herself into cracks. Her footwork is like watching a prima ballerina, every move deliberate, elegant like a choreographed dance. She extends fully, legs pressing against the barre of the rock wall, her balance perfect.
Her hair is pulled into a high ponytail, swinging and swaying in time with her body. The motion is hypnotic. Muscles bunch and flex across her shoulders and back as she grips, pulls, and swings herself higher. She moves with the confidence of someone who trusts the earth itself to hold her.
Even when she falls, she’s graceful. She lands lightly, then she’s climbing again, fast, fierce, as if gravity is merely atemporary inconvenience.
After about thirty feet, she pauses on a short ledge, shaking out and stretching her fingers. “You’re doing a great job,” she calls down. “You’re really catching me before I can drop too far.”
“We’re good together,” I correct. My heart thuds. “Or we could be.”
“Yeah,” she breathes. I know her well enough to recognize the longing in her face as she gazes down at me. Longing for me.
Hope floods my veins. “Come down, baby. I’d rather not have this conversation like this.”
She snorts. “What’s wrong with this? Apparently, hanging by my fingertips is the best time to discuss relationship statuses.”
“What?”
“I’ve had bad luck with partners lately who want to discuss this kind of thing while I’m climbing. The last guy I partnered with unclipped himself from the rope and walked away.”
My body goes cold. “He did what?”
“He wanted to punish me a little because he thought he was entitled to fuck me. Here I was, forty feet in the air, hanging on by my fingertips. It was scary as hell.”
“Who was he?” I wanted his name, his address.
“Just some guy. I’m ready to go again. You’ve got me, right?”
“Sierra, I’d never let you fall.”
She smiles. “I know you wouldn’t.”
“Come down. I want to talk, and it’d be safer with both of us on the ground.”
“Logan…” she begins. TheI’m about to let you down gentlytone is clear, even from here.
Oh, no. That’s not going to happen. I guess wearegoing to have this conversation while she’s hanging. “We’re good together,” I say firmly. “Tell me you don’t have feelings for me.”
Sierra groaned. “That’s not fair.Of courseI have feelings for you. You were my first love.”
“There’s still something here between us,” I insist.
“That’s not the point!”
