Page 61 of Shared By the Mountain Men

Then she kissed me on the cheek.

I turned toward her in surprise, and she gripped my face with both hands and pressed her lips against mine. They were soft and warm, and comforting in a way that words had never been.

A geyser of emotions erupted within me as I kissed her back, tongue searching and seeking. I was hungry for her. I wanted more. And as my hands moved over her back and I deepened the kiss, I felt myself giving in. Lowering my walls all the way, knocking down the bricks until I was completely vulnerable. I felt a flicker of light within my soul, the realization that maybe I could let someone in. That I could kiss a woman like Melissa and show her all of myself without fear…

Fear. Pain. Trust. As quickly as the moment had arrived, it disappeared, and I scrambled to put all the bricks back in place.

I pushed Melissa away from me. “What the fuck was that?”

“I… it just felt right,” she said. “I thought you…”

“You thought wrong,” I growled. She was looking at me with those pitying eyes, eyes that I barely knew, eyes that I wasn’t certain I could trust. I lurched to my feet and stared at the sky. “We need to leave. Looks like a storm might be blowing in.”

I walked to the edge of the route, my half-eaten burrito forgotten on the ground.

28

Melissa

A cold feeling came over me as I followed Ash back down the via ferrata route.

I kissed him.

Why did I kiss him?!?!

I wasn’t sure what had come over me. Ash had opened up to me about his life, taking the fall for his friend and going to prison. It was a horrible story, one that left my entire body tense with horror and grief.

But by telling it, Ash was allowing himself to bevulnerablearound me. And that was one of the sexiest things a man could do.

Especially a man as quiet and closed-off as Ash.

So I stopped overthinking things and just did what felt right. I let my gut lead me, just like Ash had said when we were mountain biking.

Andoh my God, did it feel good. When you peeled away how terrifying Ash seemed, he was hot.Verygoddamn hot. Tall, broad-shouldered, muscular in an imposing way. Like if you took a normal good-looking dude and made him 33% larger in every proportion. And although I normally wasn’t into guys with tattoos, they enhanced Ash’s dark, brooding attractiveness.

The kiss wasn’t one-sided, either. There was a barely-restrained lust beneath his surface, a boiling hunger that was unleashed as soon as our lips touched. He deepened the kiss, holding me close to him as if, for those few seconds, I was trulyhis.

Then he pulled away, growled a curse, and practically ran away.

I didn’t understand. The kiss, the passion, was every bit as satisfying as it was with Noah, but in a different way.

Noah.

He was probably worried about his best friend. That was it. And now that I was thinking about things again, I began to feel guilty myself. Noah and I weren’t serious… but we still hadsomethingtogether, however short it was destined to last.

We reached the first ledge landing, but Ash didn’t stop to rest. We continued around the edge of the cliff more quickly than before. I was grateful for the distraction—it was tough to worry about our kiss when I was clinging to the side of a cliff, every step crucial.

When we reached the bottom, I broke the silence by joking, “Am I that bad of a kisser?”

He acted like he didn’t hear me, removing his harness and gear.

We were silent on the drive home. He didn’t even turn the radio on. There was a tension in the air that I was afraid of breaking, so I pretended to scroll on my phone while wondering if he was going to say something.

“Thanks for making me go back and finish it,” I said when we reached camp.

He stared straight ahead in the driver’s seat. “Yup.”

“Listen…” I ran a hand nervously through my hair. “I’m sorry if I—”

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