Page 6 of Hiding with the Mountain Man

I’d never even had sex. It was something my friends teased me about. I was writing all these scenes and everything I knew about sex came from reading other novels.

I couldn’t tell him any of that, though. If this went anywhere, of course I’d tell him, but a twenty-three-year-old who’d never been with a man was both honorable and embarrassing. I wanted this guy to see me as a woman.

“Never have,” I said. “But plenty of times I want to try something out. Being single kind of sucks in that area. It’s not like I can just ask a guy to try out a position to make sure I have everything right.”

Behind that visor, I saw his smile widen. “I’m pretty sure you could ask any guy in a five-mile radius and get plenty of volunteers.”

“Anysingleguy,” I said.

I’d never be the type of person who had sex just for the sake of having it. Not that love and marriage were necessary for me to get naked with a guy. That wasn’t the case at all. I just always had a hard time finding a man who was up to my standards.

But this guy had me believing I could have a real-life hero. This was the type of man I’d been writing about.

“First off, this face shield would have to go.” Wyatt whipped off the mask and tossed it to the floor. “There’s no kissing with a face shield on.”

I nodded. The air between us had suddenly gotten thick.

“What about the helmet?” he asked, reaching for it.

I shook my head. “That’s part of what makes it so sexy. It’s getting steamy with a fireman. That’s the trope.”

Trope. Did he know what that term meant? If not, he didn’t ask.

“Well, he couldn’t keep all this gear on and have sex,” he said, looking down at his body. “This coat is a pain in the ass.”

“So take it off.”

I was being way forward. I didn’t even know what had lowered my inhibitions so much. Maybe it was that I felt comfortable with him. Or maybe it was just that this whole setup was so familiar. Like something straight out of one of my novels. And even though I wasn’t exactly pretending to be one of my heroines, I could suddenly access a part of me that I’d kept shut away for all those years. A part of me that had come out on the page.

“If you say so,” he said.

He unzipped the jacket and shrugged it off, letting it fall to the floor. Beneath the jacket, he wore the T-shirt he’d had on earlier, but he also wore suspenders.

I narrowed my eyes at him. On the cover of one of my books, the guy wouldn’t be wearing a shirt.

“Can you remove your T-shirt but leave on the suspenders?” I asked.

Was that going too far? I was legit sexually harassing my trainer. At any moment, he could get offended, and I wouldn’t blame him.

His gaze met mine and my heart began racing. “Are you requesting as an author or as a woman who wants to see me naked?”

This was it. No more playing around. I could back out of this now, or I could rise to the challenge.

There was no way I was walking away from this.

“A woman,” I forced out. “A woman who wants to see you naked.”

That changed the tension between us noticeably. Suddenly, his expression had an edge to it.

He kept his eyes on me as he lowered the suspenders, then tugged the T-shirt over his head. At the first glimpse of his naked upper body, my breath caught. He was toned beyond belief. Washboard abs, muscular pecs… I doubted he was a gym rat. Something told me this guy stayed fit through manual labor.

“How’s this?” he asked.

I had to catch my breath to answer. That should have been a response in itself. But I chose to take things back to lighthearted and flirtatious, if only to give my head a second to catch up with my body.

“You forgot to keep on the suspenders,” I said, gesturing toward them. They hung at his sides.

He gave a nod. “Yes, ma’am.”

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