We chuckle together, and it takes most of my concentration to focus on the task and not the way even the most basic contact with her ignites my desire for her. "You're snapping at it. It's a scrape, not a fight. Use the whole edge and send the sparks where you want them."
She makes a small, frustrated sound. "I was sending them."
"You were attempting to murder them. Different technique."
Her laugh vibrates through both of us. I fold her fingers back around the striker and draw it down the flint with her, slow, so she can feel the pressure it wants. Sparks jump, bright and useless, and die in the grass an inch short of the nest.
"Closer," she mutters. Not to me. To the sparks. She's coaching them now.
We strike again. Nothing. Again, and this time a spark lands where we aimed it, and the tinder catches it and holds.
"Don't breathe yet," I say, low, like the flame might overhear.
She's got both hands cupped around the nest. I've got mine cupped around hers. We feed it dry grass a pinch at a time, heads bent together, and coax it, breath by breath, until a flame the size of a thumbnail decides to live.
She leans back into me and huffs like she just delivered a baby. I keep my arms where they are. She lets me hold her, despite that our flame is taking shape now.
"We are excellent at this."
"Agreed." I press a kiss to her temple, and for a while we stay right there on the ground, watching our fire eat its first kindling, her spine warm against my chest. I've been building fires my whole life. This is the first one I didn't want to hurry.
"You had our fire going in seconds last night," she says, twisting around to look at me, suspicion arriving as she speaks. Her eyes go from the flint in her hand to my face.
I grin, reaching into my jacket pocket, and holding a lighter up between two fingers.
"Oh, my God!" She smacks my arm. "You had that the whole time? Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because you were so fucking cute trying to do it the hard way. Besides, this was more fun."
"You're a terrible wilderness guide."
"I got you a fire, dinner, and this view. I'd say I'm the best guide you've ever had."
"You're the only one I've ever had."
I drop a kiss on the tip of her nose. "Then the title's mine by default. I'll take it. Come on, let's eat."
Dinner is sandwiches and good cheese out of the cooler, and the second bottle from the family vault poured into tin cups. We eat on the log with the fire cracking and the valley going dark below the ledge, and I look at her longer than I look at the view.
She's got pine sap in her hair and scratches across her knuckles and the start of a sunburn on the bridge of her nose. Her hair gave up its knot somewhere around midafternoon, the way I figured it would. I've seen this woman in candlelight. I've seen her in a wrap dress that took me three tries to untie and in nothing at all. This version beats every one of them, because she earned it. Every scratch, every mile, out here in my world, on her own two feet.
I want her all the time now. Tonight I get to do something about it.
But first, the treat I brought that I think she's really going to enjoy. I go back to the cooler and come out with a box of graham crackers, several chocolate bars, and a bag of marshmallows. Her whole face lights up brighter than when I served her Michelin-star tiramisu the other night at the guesthouse.
"You did not."
"Of course I did. What's a campfire without s'mores?"
I hand her one of the skewers I brought just for this purpose, then we both stab a fat marshmallow onto the ends and stick them into the fire. In moments, her marshmallow is a masterpiece. She rotates it low over the coals, golden brown on every side, and assembles her s'more as though it's being judged at the county fair. Mine catches fire because I'm mostly watching her mouth instead of my marshmallow, and I have to blow it out and eat it charred.
She stares at my blackened mess and shakes her head. "I think yours is technically charcoal."
"Still delicious," I reply, pinching it between the graham crackers and chocolate.
She laughs as she starts eating hers. There's a smear of chocolate at the corner of her mouth, and I reach over and wipe it away with my thumb. Before I decide what to do next, she catches my wrist and pulls my thumb into her mouth. Her tongue moves over it once, sucking the pad against the wet pillow of her tongue, her eyes holding mine.
"Mmm," she moans around my thumb.
