“There.” He pointed, and hey, those muscles were back.
“That’s the spot you reserved for the night?” She dragged her eyes away from his ridiculously attractive shoulders. The camping spot didn’t look particularly special, although the ground was mostly flat, and there were stumps in a semicircle, presumably designed for sitting around a fire.
“Yep. It’s close to the water, but it’s on high enough ground to keep us safe.”
“Safe?” That sounded alarming, but he slanted her one of those cocky grins he had in abundance when he wasn’t trapped inside four walls.
“From flash floods, Bigfoot, that kind of thing,” he said.
“Ha.” Being in nature even made him funnier somehow. Looser. God, what would he have been like in charge of his own team in Brazil? Calling the shots, making plans…
“Faith? Did you hear me?”
His amused question snapped her out of her trance, and his tongue darted out to stroke along the corner of his mouth as he watched her watching him.
“What? No, I…” Could she blame her flushed face on exertion? Probably not. Outdoors Leo was giving her pants feelings, and the gleam in his eyes told her he knew it.
“I asked if you were interested in a quick detour before we set up camp,” he said. “If we head a little south, I can show you something you’ll love.”
“Oh. Yeah, sure. Definitely!”
But instead of setting them in motion, Leo tilted his head to study her face.
“When’s the last time you put on sunblock?”
She touched her cheeks. Could he possibly think she was sunburned and not singed by lust? “The parking lot,” she managed.
“We’re both overdue. Turn around.” He made a circular motion with his finger, and she did as he asked, holding still while he opened the top compartment of her bag to grab the sunblock. He made quick work of his face, neck, and hands. “One of my worst-ever sunburns happened on an overcast day like this. You’ve got to be careful.”
When he was done, he handed the bottle over to her, and she smeared a fair amount onto her own face and neck before capping the bottle.
“Rookie.” He gave a laughing shake of his head. “You’re not even half-done.”
She looked at him in surprise. “What?”
He plucked the bottle from her fingers and flipped open the cap to squeeze a healthy amount into his palm, then grabbed her left hand. She jumped a little at his touch but forced herself to hold still as he rubbed the sunblock up her arms under the rolled cuffs of her flannel shirt. She shivered when he moved back down to work the lotion in between her fingers. Even though there was nothing sexual about it, his fingers sliding between each of hers had her struggling to breathe.
“Am I good?” she managed to ask.
He shook his head and stepped closer after adding a little more sunblock to his palm. He rubbed his hands together and then set them on either side of her neck. Her whole body tensed as he rubbed the cool lotion down to the vee of her chest exposed by her shirt. His palms were rough, and as they scraped lightly against her skin, the sensation traveled straight to her nipples.
His eyes darted down, then back up, and when he spoke, his voice was hoarse.
“It’s easy to miss spots when you do it yourself.” His eyes locked on hers, he slid his hands around to the back of her neck, spreading the lotion from her hairline to inside the shirt collar. Her head felt like a balloon connected to her body with a string, and when he gently squeezed the base of her neck after he was done, she almost drifted away.
“You didn’t get the back of your neck either,” she murmured, reaching for the bottle almost in a trance.
He held perfectly still as she slid her palms around the sides of his neck, his muscles and tendons tense. But she took her time smoothing in the lotion, working her fingers up into his hairline, tickling the back of his neck and pulling goose bumps to the surface of his skin as he gradually relaxed under her touch. She lingered when she shouldn’t have, enjoying the texture of his hair, thick and a little damp with sweat. Somehow her fingers ended up locked behind his neck, and she stepped closer as he dropped his hands to her hips.
A breeze kicked up, and she involuntarily shivered. Her movements snapped the spell they were under, and she stepped away with a nervous little laugh.
“So much for sunscreen time.” Leo reached behind her to return the bottle to her pack. “Shall we?”
She pushed away her longing to ignore reality and wrap her arms around him again, instead falling into step as Leo led them toward what she was assuming was south. Her thoughts raced as they walked. Obviously they were attracted to each other. That had been the case a decade ago, so it wasn’t a surprise that this was unchanged. Over the past few months, they’d managed to wallpaper over all the cracks in their relationship, but this weird circling pattern they were in wasn’t going to last forever.
When she rang his doorbell that morning, she’d had to fight back an almost nauseating attack of nerves. What she’s said to him at the store… she was embarrassed that she’d let her body-image issues run riot like that. And yes, she’d overreacted—she’d happily acknowledge that now, especially in light of William’s amusement over those damn hiking poles—but her response to Leo’s words was a problem. They had so much shit between them that they’d never sorted out. If they didn’t stay away from each other, that dam was going to crumble and their past would come rushing in.
But that was tomorrow’s problem. Today Leo wanted to show her something, and she wanted to see it.
