It had grown increasingly harder with each passing night to hold himself back, especially because the desire between them was only getting stronger. However, he had honored his word to her that they would wait.
Regardless, he was not above taunting her just a little. As he unwound her braid, he bent in and brushed a kiss on her jaw, then one below her ear.
Her lashes fluttered down, and she tilted her head to afford him more of her graceful neck to kiss.
He pulled back, caressing her hair but nothing more.
She tried to tug him closer. “Max.” Her voice was breathless with need.
Another bolt of heat shot through him, but he didn’t budge, even though he wanted to keep kissing her. Instead, he gave her a wicked smile in return.
She pushed at him and laughed lightly. Then before he could tease her again, she wrapped her arms around his neck and shifted so that she was sitting on his lap.
“You should know something,” she whispered as she brushed her lips across his.
He almost groaned out his desire but managed to somehow speak coherently. “And what is that, darling?”
“You will never win. I will always find a way to drive you crazier than you do me.” She finished her statement by jerking his shirt out of his jeans and sliding her hand underneath and over the bare skin of his abdomen. At the same time, she teased him again with another ghost of a kiss.
He was suddenly on fire. And he knew she was right. She would drive him to the brink of insanity. But he loved it and would not have it any other way, although he would not tell her so.
Instead, he wound his fingers deeper into her hair and guided her mouth to his, fusing them together powerfully and magnetically. When they came together like that, he felt as though their destinies had been intertwined. He’d been a lost comet circling endlessly until she’d come along like a shootingstar. They’d collided and now were both burning brightly together.
Her passion, her enthusiasm, and her momentum with each kiss always seeped through him and brought him an energy and life that he’d never known. A part of him was beginning to wonder how he’d ever lived without her. He knew without a doubt that he needed her and that he would be hopelessly lost if something ever pulled them apart.
As their mouths danced to the passionate rhythm of their kiss, he fisted her hair tighter. She made a soft, pleasurable noise in her throat and then dug her fingers into his hair. Her grip tightened, and she pressed her body to his.
This universe with just the two of them enveloped in their passion was the only place he wanted to live. Yet this passion was only a foretaste of what was still possible between them.
Soon.
Very soon.
He deepened the fusing of their mouths and earned another throaty groan from her. He was so lost in their kiss that he barely heard the helicopter door opening, barely heard the growl behind him, and hardly felt the hand gripping his shirt until he was being yanked backward.
“I knew this would happen!” Tyler’s shout reverberated through the helicopter. “That you would help yourself and take advantage of Emberly.”
“Tyler!” Emberly shouted as she slipped off Max’s lap and onto the floor.
Tyler had pulled Max’s shirt up to his throat so that it was strangling him. At the same time, he was dragging him through the helicopter door as though he intended to toss him out and leave him in the cold wilderness alone.
“You are a lying piece of scum!” Tyler roared.
From the corner of his eye, Max could see Kade hurrying toward the helicopter with Braun and Winzig traipsing along more slowly, still on the path that led to the cabin.
“Let go of Max!” Emberly scrambled up from the floor and lunged after her brother. “Right now!”
Max clawed for purchase of something and managed to grab the helicopter door.
Tyler jerked at him, attempting to dislodge his hold. “He thinks he can have anything he wants, but he can’t have you.”
Emberly seized Max’s arm and tried hauling him back, her forehead furrowed with a scowl. “Max has every right to kiss me!”
“It’s obvious he wants a whole lot more than kissing!” Tyler shouted in return. “That’s probably why he brought you up here, so that he could pressure you into more.”
“Absolutely not,” Max interjected, even though Tyler was still cutting off his breathing with his shirt pulled too tight.
Tyler heaved again, but Max held fast.
