“What?”he asks, giving me a funny look.
“Listen to you, mister calm-instruction-giver,” I say.It’s not clever, but my ankle fucking hurts.
Hunter laughs.
“You know it’s myjobto remain calm in emergencies, right?”he asks.“This is kid stuff.Where’s the key to the cabin?”
He has a point.
“That funny little outside pocket on the waistband,” I say.He bends over.Despite my injuries, I check out his ass, just a little.“The other one, and it’s the thing with the Yellowstone keychain...yeah.”
He holds up the key to the lookout cabin.Then he gives me a long, appraising look as I wobble a little on my left foot.
“If I can kinda lean on you, I’m fine to?—”
I’m still talking as Hunter crouches down, puts one shoulder at my hip, and slings me over his back before standing.I yelp yet again.
“I’m fine,” I protest.He grabs my arm to keep my steady.
“Is that what you call not being able to put weight on that ankle?”he says coolly, walking toward the stairs to the lookout cabin.
“I could have gotten myself up there,” I grumble.
I don’t really mind.I feel kind of silly, because I’m upside down and my ass is in the air, but if I’m being really, really honest?It’s kind of hot to just be picked up like it’s nothing.
Awkward position aside, I can feel the muscles in Hunter’s shoulders move and flex under my stomach, even though I’m trying to ignore it.I don’t hate it.
“No, you were gonna insist that you could get up a flight of stairs on one leg, and then get pissed when I carried you anyway,” he says.
He reaches the bottom of the stairs and adjusts me a little before heading up.
“I feel like one of those sickly noblewomen who got carried around by servants or something,” I say as we climb.
Hunter looks over at me, from the corner of his eye, as he unlocks the door.
“You hiked nine miles with a forty-pound pack on, now you’re being lugged around like a sack of potatoes, and you feel like a noblewoman?”he teases.
He opens the door and turns sideways so I don’t hit my head.
“I feel helpless like that, I mean,” I say.
Hunter puts me down on one of the bare cots.
“I think you meantthanks for the ride,I like your muscles,” he says, darting a look at me.
I laugh and feel myself blush.
“Thanks for the ride,” I say.
“And?”
“And...you’re very good at carrying things?”I say, still laughing.
“C’mon, Clem,” he says, his blue eyes dancing as he stands in front of me.“Icarriedyou up all those stairs.On myback.It’s one simple phrase.”
I sigh dramatically, for show.
“If I say it will you stop harassing me like this?”I tease.
