Instant Temptation (11 page)

“I will.” Harley pulled out a can of soup. “I know you intended to be back home by now, so you probably don’t have food. I’ve got chicken noodle.”

“I’m okay.”

“TJ, I’m not going to eat if you don’t. And besides, I’m still in charge. You’re eating.” She’d been rifling through her backpack as she spoke. “Uh oh.”

“What?”

“Might have spoken too soon. Can’t find my can opener.” She began to unload her pack, pulling out the maps, her GPS tracking unit, a bottle of lotion, a hairbrush, a pair of pink bikini polka-dotted panties that just about gave him heart failure, and a paperback. The cover was a scantily clad woman in the arms of a soldier, whose shirt was wide open.

“A camping handbook?” he teased.

“It’s a historical romance, from Skye. She said I need to read it and broaden my horizons.”

“Read it out loud and broaden both our horizons.”

She eyed the cover. “You’d have to put me in chains to get me to read that out loud to you.”

He held out his hand for the book. She winced, clearly not wanting to hand it over, but she eventually did. He read the back cover copy. “‘He’s been released from his bonds to the government, but she’s only just begun her servitude—willingly.’” He looked up and grinned. “Turns out that chains might be the perfect accessory for this book.”

“Ha.” Face flaming, she yanked it out of his hands and stuffed the thing back into the bottom of her pack. “I’m sure I have a can opener in here somewhere.”

TJ pulled out his utility knife, opened the can, and set it in the middle of the flames to heat up.

“You’re good.”

“Just practiced.”

Harley eyed his backpack with envy. “What other magic necessities do you have in there?”

Condoms, he nearly said, but he was fairly certain she wouldn’t consider that a magic necessity. He pulled out an apple, which they shared with the soup.

TJ had spent a myriad of nights just like this one, out in the open, a fire crackling, the wind rustling the trees, the night insects humming. It always brought him peace. Tonight, however, he wouldn’t have labeled his mood peaceful. More like…revved up. “You warming up?” he asked, knowing she was because her cheeks began to go from pale to rosy.

“Actually, yeah, and it’s making me tired. I know it’s early, but I’m going to hit the sack.”

He stood and added wood to the fire while she opened her sleeping bag and spread it on the ground.

“Going to sleep now means you don’t have to talk to me,” he pointed out.

“And that.”

Saying nothing, he watched as she crawled into her sleeping bag. He opened his bag and spread it on the opposite side of the fire. He’d just slid into it when Harley asked, “How come you even have your sleeping bag when all you were planning was a day trip?”

“I like to be prepared.”

“That’s pretty prepared. That’s almost…overly prepared.”

“I told you about Sam. You know there’s a lot that could happen out here. Even a sprained ankle could lead to me being stuck overnight. Or a rockslide could hold me up, or having to go straight to a rescue, anything.”

“Or a childhood acquaintance coming out here alone, making you feel that you have to keep an eye on her.”

He said nothing to that.

“I imagine you’ve seen and heard it all, and rescued half of them,” she said.

“Probably.”

She was quiet a minute, then began rustling about like she was having a wrestling match with herself.

“Everything okay in there?” he asked.

“I’m fine.”

Of course she was. She had “fine” down to a science. She was quiet for all of two seconds. Then he heard her swear softly.

“Problem?” he asked.

“Yeah.” A bare arm appeared, her shirt dangling from two fingers. “This needs to dry.” She tossed it to the log they’d just vacated.

Then she did the same with her pants.

He found himself holding his breath, hoping her underwear was coming next, praying her underwear was coming next.

But his luck wasn’t that good.

Finally she seemed to settle down, and he spent the next few minutes picturing her in the sleeping bag in only her bra and panties.

He wondered if they were silky.

Or lace.

Maybe she wore a thong…

God. He had to stop the self-inflicted torture. “You okay now?” he asked, hearing the huskiness in his own voice.

“Yeah.”

Her voice was husky, too, as if she knew what she did to him and maybe, maybe he did something to her, too.

“Good,” he managed. “Glad you’re okay.”

Because he wasn’t.

Not even close.

The mountains were never silent, and that night was no exception. The wind whistled through the treetops. Animals rustled. Crickets chirped.

But he got a big, fat nothing from the woman across the fire from him. After a long minute, he let out a breath and told himself she wasn’t going to climb into his sleeping bag the way she’d climbed into his truck all those years ago.

Because apparently a guy only got lucky like that once in a lifetime.

CHAPTER 9

Harley tossed and turned, but no matter what she did, she couldn’t get warm enough. “Dammit.”

“What?”

“N—nothing.”

“You’re cold.”

She sighed at TJ’s low, knowing voice from across the flames. If she lifted her head, she’d be able to see him by the fire’s glow, which would be a bad idea because he looked gorgeous by the glow. She’d been noticing all night. She’d been noticing other things too, like how the muscles of his chest and arms flexed when he tossed wood onto the fire. Or when he did things like wrap her in his jacket and slice an apple with his knife and offer it to her.

Hell, who was she kidding? He looked gorgeous when he breathed.

And they were alone up there, on what felt like the top of the world.

At the sound of movement, she lifted her head in time to catch TJ rise from his sleeping bag. He’d removed his shirt and wore only those faded, battered Levi’s, disturbingly low on his hips. She watched as he cranked up the fire with minimal effort on his part, his body like poetry in motion, oozing testosterone and sex with every heartbeat.

“That should help,” he said, poking at the flames with a big stick, those muscles she loved bunching in a way that made her mouth water.

He was edible all half naked like that. He could give a dead woman an orgasm.

And she was far from dead.

He added another log and crouched low, stick in hand, watching the flames. His hair fell over his forehead, curling at the back of his neck. He hadn’t shaved that morning, and probably not the day before either, and he looked almost impossibly handsome as his eyes flicked to her. “Better?”

She blinked. “Um, what?”

Still hunkered down in front of the fire, he let out a breath. “You’re still a popsicle, aren’t you?”

“I’m still a popsicle,” she whispered.

“I’m not.”

Oh boy.

“You could come over here and we could share body heat.”

Uh huh. And that wouldn’t be all they shared either. Not with the amount of crazy chemistry they had.

There was a rock under her hip.

And she couldn’t feel her toes.

She curled into a ball and told herself to ignore both the rock and the shivering of her limbs. She managed it, too, for at least half an hour after she’d heard TJ slip back into his sleeping bag. But then came a howl, long and eerie, and she jerked. Just a coyote. Probably one of hers. They don’t attack humans.

Mostly.

Another cry, sounding more like a mountain cat. She gasped, leapt out of her sleeping bag, and in nothing but her bra and panties, dove into TJ’s before she could take another breath.

Just as she’d known it would be, his sleeping bag was higher quality than hers, far cushier, bigger, and toasty warm.

TJ hissed out a breath when she pressed her icy feet to his, but otherwise didn’t say a word, just wrapped his arms around her and pulled her in against him.

He’d stripped out of his jeans, but wore boxers, and was deliciously warm. “Cold?” he asked quietly.

“Or scared?”

She tilted her head up and met his gaze. His hair was still over his forehead, almost in his eyes, pretty much inviting a woman to push it back for him.

To resist, she tightened her fingers in a fist against his pecs, which didn’t really help since he was built like a kickboxer, all hard and lean and mind-bendingly perfect. She took a deep breath, which meant she inhaled his scent. Problem was, in spite of his being outside all day long, he smelled like rain and mountain and man, and so…yum it made her take a sniff, and then she couldn’t seem to stop herself. She was breathing him in like he was her private stash of crack.

He ran a hand up and down her back. “Harley? You hyper-ventilating?”

“No,” she said weakly, and dropped her forehead to his chest. Oh, God. Big mistake. Because her mouth was only a fraction of an inch away from his skin. If she so much as breathed, she’d have her lips on him—oh look at that, she breathed.

A lot.

TJ let out a long, shaky breath of his own. “You’re shivering.” He ran his large, warm hand down her arm until he reached her hand. “And your fingers are ice.” He held them in his, gently rubbing his thumbs over her skin.

Harley closed her eyes. Getting into TJ’s sleeping bag had been a bad idea. Such a bad, bad idea she moved to get out of the bag, but he tightened his grip. “Shh,” he said, and giving up the resistance, she pressed her face into his throat and let her eyes drift shut. Her teeth were chattering and she was shaking, though honestly, she was no longer certain it was just from cold.

In fact, she was pretty sure it wasn’t the cold at al , but him.

“Breathe,” he murmured into her hair, rubbing soothing light circles on her back. “Breathe deeper.”

She absorbed his calm, his strength, and best of all his heat, and after a few minutes, her jaw relaxed, and her teeth stopped chattering. Finally, the rest of her stopped shaking.

Harley woke up some time later, lying on top of TJ. If she pressed her knees into the ground on either side of his hips and pushed herself upright, she could ride him like a pony.

Yep, definitely out of her comfort zone. Her legs were entwined in his and her face was plastered to the crook of his neck. She didn’t have to wonder if he was awake because his hands were slowly caressing her back, holding her in all that wonderful body heat of his.

Or maybe that was her heat. She certainly felt…heated.

“I know you’re awake,” he said. “You stopped breathing.”

She still didn’t move, incredibly aware of her hands braced on his chest for leverage, the muscles hard beneath her palms, his heart beating steady and sure beneath her fingertips.

Unlike hers, which was racing.

When he spoke, she felt the rumble of his voice, even deeper and huskier than normal. “We’ve played this your way,” he said. “I didn’t like it. My turn now.”

Oh boy.

Cupping the nape of her neck, he urged her head up. His other hand slid down low, to the very small of her back, holding her in place for his kiss. At the first touch of his mouth on hers, her bones completely dissolved, and that was it, she was his for the taking.

Please take me…

She already knew that getting kissed by him was a full-body experience, but she hadn’t expected to be rendered a quivering mass of lust before his tongue even touched hers—a huge miscalculation on her part because she knew, dammit she knew he kissed like heaven on earth. She braced for the onslaught of erotic, sensual heat, but when he lightly ran his tongue over the seam of her lips, she opened to him, softening in his arms, letting out a low moan. A sound he apparently took for acquiescence because he tightened his hold on her and deepened the kiss. Giving herself up to it, she sank her fingers into his hair, holding his head to hers as they devoured each other.

When he finally drew back and looked at her, there was warmth in his eyes and a smile on his face that promised all sorts of wicked things if she only said the word. And suddenly she became incredibly aware of how little she wore, how her nipples were boring holes in his chest, how his arm was low around her back, his palm sliding across her ass, skimming the thin silk of her panties.

Yeah, there was a word right on the tip of her tongue, and that word was yes! Her hands ran over his shoulders and down his sides—

That’s when she remembered. She’d wanted passion in her life, but she’d planned on finding it with Nolan. Sweet, gentle, kind Nolan, who would remember their lovemaking, once they had it. “Crap.”

TJ pulled back a fraction, all sleepy and sexy-eyed. “That’s not the reaction I usually get.”

“I’m thinking of Nolan.”

TJ’s hands went still. “My kiss made you think of another man?”

She winced at the warning in his tone. “No, your kiss melted my bones.”

“Like the sound of that,” he murmured, rocking his hips against hers. Hers responded in kind before she stopped herself. Dammit. She rol ed off the glorious mountain of heat to her side, which was as far as she could get in the sleeping bag, roomy and cushy as it was. Outside, it was still very dark, which was a good thing. She wasn’t ready to see him.

“You’re not with him,” he said, tucking one arm beneath his head, resting his other hand on his bel y.

“Two dates—and one of them not counting—doesn’t make anything exclusive.”

“Why does everyone keep saying that? And how in the hell does everyone know we had two dates and that one of them didn’t count?”

“Wishful is Mayberry, remember? Everyone knows everything.” He rolled to face her, propping up his head with his hand, the other settling on her hip. “You had to save his ass when he should be saving yours.”

“And what does that mean?”

“Nothing.” He paused, then ran the tips of his fingers lightly up her spine. And damn if she didn’t melt all over again. “You really think of him as your boyfriend?”

She wanted to nod but she didn’t. Because the truth was, she liked the idea of Nolan being her boyfriend, but somehow it never seemed to materialize.

And she didn’t know why.

TJ brushed a soft kiss to her temple before trailing more of those soft kisses along her jaw, and without thinking, her body arched to give him better access, which she abruptly stopped when she felt his smile against her skin. Damn him! “TJ—”