Page 29 of Since Day One

Walking toward the fireplace, I pulled the iron bar to me and hung the pot on the end before swinging it back into the fire.

I can’t believe I did that.

Glancing casually over my shoulder, I noticed that Gunnar still had not moved. His body remained like a statue in place, but his eyes.

Oh, his eyes.

Darkened beneath his hunter brows, his steely gaze was locked onto me, unwavering.

I was desperately holding on to every ounce of self-control within myself, desperately avoiding looking at anything that wasn’t his face. My imagination begged me to look elsewhere, to find out how delicious he looked in something that casual. It urged me to turn my gaze toward the area of his body that had danced beneath my hand. Begging me to find out if it looked just as good as the electrifying jolt the gentle brush against his chest had felt.

But Gunnar, on the other hand, was not hiding the fact that his eyes were tracing every line of my figure. There was no restraint in his hunger as I slowly rose from my crouched position. His chest heaved, and his gaze slid slowly down my bare legs. Flames flickered across his pupils, and then he very leisurely trailed back up to my face. My cheeks flushed with heat as he raised his brows, devouring every part of me he could.

“You suddenly seem a little less concerned if I’m going to poison you or not,” I said with a wink, and Gunnar whipped his eyes away from me, furrowing his brows. A hint of pink raised on his cheeks, embarrassment coating his typically poised frame since he’d been caught so blatantly staring. However, what may have made me a little uncomfortable a week ago felt different now, exciting.

“Distracting me with the fact you put the chili on the fire is a very low blow,” he finally managed to banter back, cautiously returning his gaze to me as I sashayed toward him, still resisting the urge to really look at him.

I stopped directly in front of him, lifting my chin so our eyes met. “Because that’s totally what you were distracted by,“ I whispered unexpectedly, boldly, and he clenched his jaw, his Adam’s apple bobbing with a hard swallow as I finished walking around him and began cleaning up the counter.

Hot breath brushed against my right ear, setting my heart off so rapidly that the sound of my pumping blood nearly drowned out any other sound. Gunnar leaned down close to me, stepping directly into my back without actually touching me. He hovered a centimeter away and spoke, “They do say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.”

I placed my palms against the counter, not moving. His entire steel frame swamped my figure, and I didn’t want him to move. But he could never know that. He also could never know just how flustered I was. Just how wrapped up in whatever terrifying game we were playing I was. “Is that what you think I’m doing?”

A low chuckle reverberated from his chest, making me catch my breath. “It might just work if you are,” he whispered, and everything stopped. Every sound drummed to silence. Every tick of the clock on the wall faded to nothing. Every crackle of a flame in the fireplace disappeared. The only thing that filled my mind was Gunnar this close to me.

Gunnar.

With his arms enveloping around me without actually touching me. His hands braced against the counter, so enticingly close to my own.

All I had to do was lean slightly backward and I would press against him. I could feel his body against mine; that was all it would take. Not doing so was forcing an all-new level of self-control upon me, to not let him think he was winning. There would be none of that while here, because I already knew everyone would assume something did happen.

But the pull, the yearning to know what it would feel like, to have that comforting warmth wrapped so tightly around me, grew stronger with each breath. This fight between my head and heart was one I was about to raise the white flag on. And just as I was about to lose the battle, just as that last sliver of control was gone, Gunnar backed away.

Instinctively, as everything whirred back to life, I inhaled sharply, and the intense friction fizzled, quickly dissipating as cold replaced his body heat.

Gunnar spoke from across the room, suddenly too far away from me. “We’ve got board games and cards stashed in the closet of the bedroom. I know it’ll take a bit for the food to cook, and we’ve got nothing else to do until the snow stops and we can get out of here.”

Hesitantly turning around, I found a slight twinkle in his eyes as if he knew exactly what he’d done to me and exactly what it had ignited in my soul.

“I like board games,” I muttered, surprised that anything actually came out of my mouth that was coherent.

His eyebrows twitched as he ran a hand through his hair, which was becoming curlier as it dried. With the back a little longer than the short fade on the sides, it was no wonder I could see the ends of his hair from under his hat sometimes. I really liked the way it looked on him; I just really liked the way he looked and hated that I liked it so much.

A crooked grin spread across his face, snapping me out of the ogling I’d slipped into. He winked. “I’ll go grab one. Any requests?”

I shook my head no, unable to speak from the amount of embarrassment that flowed through me. Gunnar chuckled once more and then disappeared into the bedroom.

I leaned my head back and sighed. What an idiot I was. Where was this coming from? After how many hours we spent alone together, why was it now that I was acting like this? He was a cowboy, which meant he was absolutely off limits. There would be no way that anyone would ever be able to accuse me of sleeping with one to make it in this world, and yet…

Shaking my head, I attempted to clear my mind of the cloudy thoughts as Gunnar returned to the main room. He walked toward the fireplace and set a box on the coffee table before planting himself on the floor beside it.

He opened the lid and looked over at me. “Are you coming?”

“Oh, uh, yeah,” I quickly said, and somehow found the ability to walk across the floor without making myself out to be more of a fool. As I sat down across from him, he slid something across the table before continuing to unbox the game.

“Your feet have to be really cold,” he said as I stared at the socks he just handed me.

“You have no idea,” I replied, and quickly pulled the thick wool fabric over my toes. Gunnar chuckled as I scooted forward and realized what game he had chosen. “Monopoly?”

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