Uncharted by Adriana Anders
Chapter 29
Leo had never been this rash in her life. She’d taken risks—hell, she lived for them—but a cliff’s-edge, soaking-wet make-out session on the brink of hypothermia was just plain idiocy. Yet when Elias barked, “Clothes off,” his voice sounding like he’d scraped it up the side of the mountain, her immediate reaction wasn’t refusal.
She wanted to get naked, to press her body to his and soak him up.
When he began pulling off his own wet clothes, she realized he wasn’t telling her to strip for him. He was doing it for survival.
Embarrassment and disappointment wound through her and she tugged off her hoodie, started to wring it out—pointless, given the downpour—and went on to the next layer, and the next, laying them out as flat as she could, until there was nothing left to protect her cold, clammy skin.
The elements raged. Wind, frigid and angry, whipped around them, into the recess and back out, slowed only by the waterfall hemming them in.
Without speaking, he grabbed her hand and led her to the very back of the indentation, lugging his pack behind him.
He threw her a tiny camp towel and wiped himself off with brisk, rough movements. Getting dry seemed impossible with this level of wet and cold. The bastard wind wasn’t helping at all, the way it threw water their way, like a cruel practical jokester.
Muttering insults to the elements, she grabbed the tarp Elias shoved her way. Together, they stretched it out, fought to keep it low, and somehow got a sleeping bag spread on top of it. Still too damp to climb in, they anchored the bag with their bodies and pulled out more layers. Another bag, the fur.
“Go ahead!” he yelled. “Be right there.”
She opened her mouth to protest and let it drop when he rubbed his towel over Bo. Right. The dog, who looked more like a drowned rat than a canine, didn’t protest the treatment for a second.
Teeth chattering, Leo turned to the backpack.
“What you doing?”
“Getting…clothes.”
“You sure you need them?” The question whipped through the air between them.
She stilled, stark freaking naked, and stared at him for a good five seconds before dropping the bag, shoving it to the side, and sliding deep into their nest.
Well, I guess that’s that.Nerve endings on fire, she drew the covers up and over herself, and watched him work. The blanket did nothing to tamp down her desire when it raked over her tender nipples, drawing them into painfully tight points. Even the hard ground beneath her made her ache in ways she didn’t understand. Or maybe that was all him.
It wasn’t possible to make out details in the dark, but she got the impression the man wore his nudity the way he’d worn his parka—completely at ease. There was nothing awkward or ridiculous about the sight of him leaning down, scrubbing at the dog, everything out in the open.
Deep inside their shelter, that image flashed back over and over in her mind. Solid and sturdy Elias, wiping down his dog in the nude. That shouldn’t be sexy. It shouldn’t, but by God, it was. Like made-to-order porn, featuring the world’s most efficient, capable, and competent man taking care of another creature.
How on earth would she handle these close quarters with the man after witnessing that? After…everything? Her skin felt stretched and sensitive, like it could barely contain all the want running through her muscles and bones.
And she’d just agreed to sleep naked with him. She shook at the realization. The night before last, getting into the bag that very second had saved their lives. He’d been dead to the world when she’d undressed him, after all, and still a stranger. Skin to skin had been a last-ditch bid for survival.
Up here, tonight, with her nipples beaded hard and the heavy weight of want in her belly, things were not the same. At all. She was damp from the rain and soaking wet from wanting him.
She shut her eyes, but still he was there, branded on the backs of her lids, thick muscles bunching and rolling, rain sluicing off him, hair plastered to his head. She couldn’t possibly have seen single beads of water, shining like diamonds in his chest hair, but damn if she didn’t remember it that way. And his shoulders… She swallowed, thinking of how hefty they were, like his thighs, how strong they’d looked. How strong they were. Because the man was a freaking Goliath.
A moan escaped her lips as she shuddered deeper into the still-cold sleeping bag, waiting for him to come and complicate things.
Afraid of what would happen. Wishing he’d hurry.
***
After feeding Bo, Elias urged her to take up a spot in the blankets at their feet, and slid in before pulling the thick wad over their heads and shutting out the world. The last time they’d done this, Elias had been unconscious.
This time, he was fully aware of every detail, from the clammy press of her skin against his, to the perfect fit of their bodies, to the pain of too-cold blood sluggishly ebbing through half-frozen veins.
Leo’s breath heated his chest—the only spot of warmth aside from the dog at their feet. Until the foot warmers he’d thrown inside, wrapped in a few insulating layers of clothes, slowly worked their magic.
Bo shifted, grumbling in the way that meant she was happily settling in.
A shudder at a time, their shivering diminished, Leo’s teeth stopped clacking, and even then, she didn’t move, didn’t give him an inch of space.
Her whispered “Elias” made his hand tighten on her back, his no longer numb fingers sensitive to the point of pain.
“Yeah,” he breathed against the top of her head.
“You do that a lot?”
His muscles tightened in preparation for whatever she’d ask. “What?”
“Sucking face right after almost dying? This is, what? Our second or third time?”
His lungs released, his belly jumped with a surprised laugh. If hypothermia had really set in, she could have stopped his heart with that question.
“Just with you, Leo.” He listened to her breathe for a few cycles and then, though he was afraid, he asked, “You?”
“Every single ti—” She must’ve caught the hitch in his chest. Or maybe she felt all his muscles go tight because she got real serious real fast. “Never. I told you that before.” Another long, hot exhale, the air between them like a sauna. “You’re my first.”
And last, he wanted to say, but that seemed way out of bounds given their short acquaintance. Acquaintance. Yeah right. What they had was knowledge of each other—deep and raw and almost painful.
It hurt him right now, in the chest, the throat. Just her presence made his insides dance.
He should let go of her. Should make his limbs obey, slow his pulse to a reasonable rate. He should force his lower half to retreat, given the hardness growing between them.
He’d just opened his mouth to suggest they get dressed after all and eat something, maybe separate their bed in two, when her voice cut through, each word reverberating past his rib cage to thrum at his heart. “I want to do it some more.”
He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t budge, couldn’t believe he’d actually heard the right words. One second she was mad that they couldn’t keep their hands off each other and the next, this. “Say that again.”
“I’m done fighting it. Kiss me, Elias. Heat me up.”
Those words burned his skin the way her eyes would if he could see them, searing their way from his scalp to the soles of his feet. His cock was a brand pulsing against their bellies.
There’d never be a better invitation, at least not one he was dying to accept. Before the next heartbeat, he was on her.