Northern Encounter (8 page)

Humming beneath her breath, she crossed to the bunks on the right and plopped down on the lower platform. She pulled out her cameras and did whatever it was that she did to them. She took meticulous care of them, which he respected. He’d seen far too many people in his years as a guide who were careless with their things. And inevitably those were the people he was glad to say goodbye to by the time they left.

He stood for a moment, watching her, almost trans-fixed by her hands. Her nails were short, neat and unpainted. He wanted to touch her and be touched
by her. He longed to trace the delicate blue vein from the back of her hand to the tender spot of her wrist, to know the texture of her skin.

He turned abruptly to the supplies stored on the kitchen counter. He was hungry for her and she wanted cheese crackers and some dried fruit. This was a helluva time and place for him to develop this crazy attraction. And it was crazy, insane…but very real, very intense nonetheless.

Her footsteps sounded on the cabin’s wood floor as she crossed to stand in front of the wood stove, backing her nicely curved rear up to the heat, holding her hands behind to absorb some warmth, as well.

Clint wasn’t sure how it happened, unless he was simply careless in his distraction, but as he turned he dropped the dried fruit. Apple rings and banana chips scattered over the floor. “Damn,” he said.

They both dropped to the wood that had been worn smooth over the years and began to pick up the pieces. Wasting food out here simply wasn’t an option. “I’ll eat this,” he said, “since it’s been on the floor.”

She picked up the last piece, returning it to the bowl.

“Heck no, you won’t,” she said with a smile that turned him inside out. “I’ve been eyeing these apple rings. A little floor time never hurt anyone.” She leaned forward and the curve of her shoulder brushed against his arm. On their hands and knees in front
of the wood stove, the only sound the sizzle and pop of the green birch he’d loaded earlier, their eyes met and held and it was as if time hung suspended.

And in that moment everything that had been dancing between them, the furtive looks, the brief touches, the longing that was an almost-palpable force roared to the forefront.

Like the winds that could tear across the open expanses at times, desire and need hurtled through him. And an answering hunger gleamed in her eyes. With mutual groans, they reached for each other. Their kiss was frantic. Her lips seemed to feed on his even as he devoured her mouth with his own. Still on their knees, they pressed against each other, her hands tangled in his hair, and he molded his fingers against the fine bones of her skull, her hair a silken mantle against the backs of his hands.

Her breasts pressed against his chest and blood pooled hot and thick between his legs. Their tongues tangled and she arched against him, sending even more heat spiraling through him. She swallowed his groan as he smoothed his hands over her back, quickly learning the curves he’d admired.

She slid her hands beneath the edge of his shirt, under his thermal top, and the sensation of her fingers against his bare skin was even better than he’d imagined.

“Clint,” she said, her breathing as ragged as his own.

His brain fogged with want, he didn’t know whether she was asking him to stop or not stop. And he ought to have the internal fortitude to call his own halt, but God help him, if she wanted him, he could no longer deny how much he wanted her, as well.

“Yes…should I…”

“Take off your shirt…please. I spent all last night lying in my bunk…wondering.”

He knew, had known from the moment he’d seen her that he didn’t need to do this. And there was a part of him that had known from the moment he’d laid eyes on her that this was inevitable. There came points when freewill and destiny and desire crossed paths to only one possible outcome.

What the next outcome would be was yet to be seen, but for now, here, there was only one thing he could do and it wasn’t to walk away.

“I will if you will,” he said. “Because I too have wondered.”

With a slow, sweet smile, she grasped the hem of her shirt and the undershirt beneath it and slowly slid them up and over her head. His mouth went dry and his blood ran hot at the perfection before him—the delicate expanse of her neck, the slope of her shoulder, the curve of her breasts spilling out of the top of a white and pink bra, and the indent of her waist that gave way to the flare of her jeans-clad hips. “Your turn.”

T
ESSA TREMBLED IN ANTICIPATION.
His dark eyes holding her gaze, Clint pulled off his shirt and tossed it aside. In one smooth movement he took off the thermal undershirt.

Her breath caught in her throat. “I just want to look at you for a moment. You are beautiful.”

And he was. It was the upper body of a man who worked and worked out. Broad muscled shoulders, well-defined biceps, a chest that rippled with definition down to a flat belly. All of this covered by possibly the most beautiful expanse of skin she’d ever seen. Due to his native heritage, he was naturally several shades darker than she was, somewhere between the richness of mocha and café au lait. The very sight of his bare chest made her ache and the wetness between her thighs dampened her panties.

She reached out and drew a finger over the ridge of his shoulder to his pectorals. The texture of his
smooth warm skin sent a shiver through her. Leaning forward she inhaled his scent and then followed the same path of her finger with her lips and her tongue, kissing his skin, tasting him.

He pulled her to him, his breath stirring against her hair in a sigh. His fingers and his broad palms were warm and arousing as they slid up and down her back in a slow, sensual caress.

Still kneeling, he claimed her lips with his. Although he hadn’t spoken a word, there was a reverence in his kiss, in his touch. She felt a sense of wonder at the depth of the kiss, at the feel of his velvet skin over muscles of steel beneath her questing hands. He slid her bra straps down her shoulders and trailed nipping, sucking kisses over her neck, across her chest, her body tightening with each touch.

He licked at the valley between her breasts and she shuddered against his mouth, arching her back, des per ate for the touch of his lips and tongue against her intimately. But he continued to nuzzle and suck at the tops of her breasts until she was nearly writhing with the need to have his mouth on her nipple.

“Clint.” Ragged with want. Desperate with need.

He made a low, sexy sound in the back of his throat and pushed aside the bra. His tongue toyed with her pearled tip. The sensation arrowed through her, straight to the increasing want between her thighs. She gasped. And then his mouth, wet and warm, suck led her. It was unlike any sensation she’d ever
known—it was raw and elemental. Like an animal in the wild, she dug her fingers into the rigid muscles of his shoulder and instinctively threw her head and shoulders back, thrusting her nipple further, harder into his mouth, a mewling sound blossoming low in her throat.

Clint uttered a rich sound of satisfaction that reverberated against her. He took her other nipple into his mouth and worked the same magic while he fondled the other one. Over and over and over until she was nearly mindless with want, he stoked the fire inside of her higher and higher until she felt as if she might explode simply from the hard tug of his mouth on her nipple, the slight nip against her aching tip.

She’d always thought she simply didn’t have very sensitive breasts. Obviously, she’d simply never had the right lover. She was teetering on the brink of an orgasm and all he’d done was suckle her. As if he sensed the edge she skirted he stopped, filling his warm, big hands with both of her breasts, his lips trailing back up her neck.

“You are beautiful…and so sensitive.” He made that sound of satisfaction low in the back of his throat.

“Do you want to move to the bunk or should I bring the sleeping bags down here?”

Thank goodness he didn’t have the stupid idea they should stop, because if they didn’t finish what they’d
started, she really thought she might just expire on the spot from frustration and want.

“On the floor. In front of the stove.”

He pulled his sleeping bag down and unzipped it, spreading it in front of the stove. Tessa did the same with hers, throwing it on top of his like a blanket. When she wasn’t all wrapped up in kissing and touching, she definitely felt the chill of the cabin. Gooseflesh prickled her exposed skin. Without wasting any time she finished undressing and dove beneath the top sleeping bag, sliding to the spot nearest the wood stove. Hey, he was the Alaskan, used to the cold, not her.

She turned her attention to Clint, just as he pulled off the long johns, which were in no shape, form or fashion remotely sexy. However, the underwear quickly followed and
sexy
just picked up a new definition because she was looking at it. Sweet mercy. He was, bar none, the most beautiful man she’d ever seen naked—not that there’d been a lot before him, but enough for her to know who topped the list when she saw it.

Lean hips framed his penis, which jutted proudly from a thatch of dark hair. Muscular thighs and legs, all in splendid proportion to the rest of his body, gave way to well-shaped feet.

She pulled back the edge of the sleeping bag. “Why don’t you climb in? I’d hate for you to catch a cold.”

“Honey, with you naked in front of me, I could stand outside and not be cold,” he said, sliding beneath the cover and facing her.

“Good answer.” She slid her arms around his neck and her body to his, intimately.

She deliberately licked the fullness of his lower lip before kissing him. He groaned and rocked his hips against her, his erection nudging at the wet curls between her thighs.

He trailed his hand down and over her hip, stroking, fondling, his touch sure and firm—a man who knew what he wanted and wanted what he had in front of him.

Tess reached between them, stroking the length of his erection. The hiss of the water sizzling out of the birch wood in the stove next to them seemed to extend and echo his “Oh…”

His cock was heavy and hot in her hand and she touched her thumb against his plumbed tip, finding a pearl of moisture there.

Clint was on his own quest. He delved between her folds, brushing against the part of her that wept with the need for release. Instinctively she guided his cock to her wetness and ground against him.

Tessa had never, ever ached for a man the way she ached for Clint Sisnuket. It wasn’t just the manifestation of a physical release—it was
him.

For one glorious moment, for one spectacular time out of mind, he slid inside her, filled her. Bliss.

And then he withdrew.

What the…

“Protection,” he said. “I don’t have any protection.”

He looked positively stricken and in that particular moment Tessa thought that she might just be the other side of smitten with Clint.

She pressed a quick kiss to his forehead and said, “Hold that thought. I don’t usually carry condoms but my best friend thought it was funny to slip some into my suitcase.”

“Well, go, woman. What are you waiting for?”

There was something spine-tinglingly sexy in the way he called her “woman” that upped the ante for her. Feeling remarkably unselfconscious, she climbed over him and made a quick dash for her suitcase.

Chillbumps covered her. “Oh, my God, it’s cold without the sleeping bag and the fire.”

“Maybe it’s not the sleeping bag or the fire that’s keeping you warm.”

Wow, when Clint got into playful sexy mode he was truly lethal.

Finally, she found the packet and made a dive back underneath the cover. “Really? What else could it have possibly been?”

He rolled her beneath him, smoothing her hair back from her face, and pulled the sleeping bag up around them, cocooning them in body heat and sexual energy. “Maybe this.” He scattered kisses down
the length of her neck, chasing away every last vestige of gooseflesh.

“Oh,” she breathed on a sigh of rekindled arousal.

He chuckled low in his throat. “Or this.” He dipped his head beneath the sleeping bag and once again, his mouth and his hands found her breasts, his lips teasing, taunting, suckling her until she was thrusting her wetness against his erection.

He emerged from beneath the cover, his eyes glittering in the dim light of the wood stove. “Where are the condoms?”

Her hand unsteady, Tessa fished out one of the foil packets and tore it open. She handed it to him. The way she was shaking, combined with the fact that she had very little experience in the condom department, meant they’d be here all day if she had to put it on.

Luckily, he knew what to do. In a few seconds he was poised between her thighs. He paused and for a moment it was like an impression caught on camera—him etched against the shadows filtering through the cabin, all man and muscle. Evocative.

Erotic. She focused on the sensation of him entering her inch by inch and then the thrust as he gained momentum.

“Yes,” she said.

She closed her eyes, the better to absorb the feel of him. It was sublime—him deep inside her. It was
as if everything stilled inside her and exploded, all at the same time.

They set a rhythm together and with each thrust, each squeeze of her muscles around him, it got better and better when she didn’t think it was possible to feel any more intensely.

Her orgasm began to build inside her. She didn’t want the lovemaking to end but she also wasn’t sure how much tighter she could be wound without totally shattering and coming undone. And then there was no choice to be made, nothing to be done but be swept along in the release that gripped her, shook her and touched her to her core.

C
LINT STOOD, THE SHEEN
of sweat on him rapidly chilling in the cabin’s draft. “Can I get you anything?” he said.

Tessa looked as shell-shocked as he felt which was fairly gratifying. She blinked as if to focus and shifted beneath the sleeping bag.

“A cigarette?” she quipped with a quirky smile. “Just kidding. No, I don’t need anything except to lie here for a minute.”

“I’ll be right back,” Clint said.

He covered the short distance from the sleeping bags to the kitchen and made quick work of cleaning himself up. Kobuk raised his head from his corner of the room, looked at Clint, and then lowered his head again, closing his eyes.

Clint returned to Tessa, sliding beneath the cover.

“I want you to know that this is a first. I’ve never slept with anyone I was working with before.”

“I didn’t think you had, Clint. I’ve only known you a few days but you don’t seem the type. Plus, if this was standard operating procedure for you, you would’ve been prepared with a condom.”

“There is that,” he said with a smile. He was glad she believed him. And he’d felt it was important she know that about him.

“I wanted to make sure you know that this is…I’ve never…I do a lot of filming and I’ve never done this before. Condoms aren’t part of my travel package. It was my friend’s idea of funny before I left.”

He would have never asked her but he was pretty damned relieved to hear it. “I appreciate you letting me know.”

“Clint?”

“Yes?”

“Would you pass those apple rings that started all of this in the first place? I’m starving.” She tugged on her thermal undershirt, not bothering with her bra.

He laughed, snagging the plastic bag of dried fruit.

“I’m not sure the apple rings had a whole lot to do with what just happened but here you go.”

She grabbed a piece of the dried fruit and bit into it. “Hmm. That’s good. I don’t know why I never think of buying these at home.”

Clint helped himself as well. Now that she mentioned it, he was pretty damn hungry. And they’d both just expended a good bit of energy. He wasn’t sure the last time he’d felt this good. Possibly never.

“What do you like to do when you’re not filming and editing your videos?”

Her smile held a note of self-consciousness. “I like to cook but since it’s just me, I share a lot with my neighbors so they appreciate it. I also dabble in jewelry making—mostly beading. I sell some of it online.”

“My grandmother and my aunt are both jewelry makers. I’m not sure what materials they use but they’re pretty good at it.”

Tessa’s face lit up. “Do you think I could meet them? I’d love to take a look at their work and talk about technique.”

He wasn’t altogether sure it was a good idea but at this point he would’ve promised her the moon if he thought he could deliver it. “I don’t see why not. I’ll check when we get back. As long as it’s not bingo night it should be fine.”

“Do you have a big family?”

Clint laughed, thinking about the crowd that had gathered at his cousin’s wedding in September. “Yeah. There’s more than just a few of us.”

“Any brothers or sisters?”

He felt his face tighten. “No.” His father had never remarried. Clint’s mother had pretty much broken
his father’s heart and that was that. His father had disrespected the wishes of his family when he married her.

“How have you reached the ripe old age of, what, thirty or thirty-one without getting hitched?”

He shrugged. “There was no one here I want to marry. There was someone in college. I met her at the University of Alaska. That didn’t work out. I think she thought dating a native was an interesting social experiment but long-term just wouldn’t work out.”

“I see.”

He suspected she did, in fact, see. Carrie Turner had broken his heart—ripped it out and stomped on it—and he’d vowed then and there that he was never going to open himself to that kind of pain, ever again.

And he had a few questions of his own for her. “How is it that you’re still single? Or are you divorced?”

“No. Never married. I move around a lot. Makes it difficult to form attachments.”

“Yeah, long distance doesn’t work, does it?” Clint said. This was a good conversation to have. It left absolutely no room for misunderstanding when she left at the end of the week. They definitely shared some chemistry but that was going to be it.

“No, not at all.”

Good deal. They were on the same page. Neither
one of them was looking for anything beyond the next couple of days. Glad they had that straightened out.

T
ESSA HAD NEVER SEEN
anything as spectacular as the northern lights. She stood at the cabin’s window and watched as ribbons of purple and yellow danced and swirled in the night sky.

“Photos don’t do it justice. They certainly don’t prepare you for this.”