Page 70 of A Rebel's Shot

“No,” he rasped out, wrapping his arm around herand pulling her tight against him. “You don’t get to take that on.”

“But—”

“Shh.” He pulled her sleeping bag around them. “No more talking. I need my beauty sleep.”

For a moment, he thought she’d protest, but then she melted into his hold. Within minutes, soft snores he’d make sure to tease her about in the morning vibrated against his skin.

Yet as exhausted as he was, he couldn’t give in to sleep. All the ways Alaska could prevent him from fulfilling his promise to keep her safe ran through his head right alongside all his previous failures.

TWENTY-SIX

Merritt couldn’t decide if being roasted alive was a good thing or bad. Like a marshmallow kept over the flames too long, she oozed and lost shape.

But unlike the sweet treat, she was sticky with sweat. It pooled in all the normal places and even some she never imagined, like the inside of her elbows. If she didn’t move, her body would likely combust.

Tiikâan groaned and pulled her tighter against his side. Despite sweating more than an armadillo in the desert in summer, she snuggled in.

Encased in her sleeping bag, which had been pulled into his, and wrapped in his arms, she felt like a burrito set on the griddle to toast up, especially with her back to the fire.

She always assumed she was claustrophobic. Wasn’t everyone? So why was she willing to be roasted alive just to be held by a man?

Tiikâan’s hand rubbed up her back, then softlybrushed the sweaty hair from her face. She had to look a mess.

But when she leaned back enough to peek at him, his expression, as his fingers pushed paths against her scalp and around her ear, made her feel like he’d found something precious.

He wasn’t just a man.

He was her safe place.

Had been from practically their first meeting. With him, after a lifetime of pretending, she could just be herself.

“Morning, Skeeter.” He kissed her forehead as it furrowed.

“Skeeter?” She pushed back and lifted an eyebrow.

“All night long you had this little wheezing snore come out with every breath.” His mouth twitched on one side as her mouth gaped with a gasp. “It was like a little mosquito buzzing near my ear.”

“Excuse me, but I do not snore.” She had a hard time holding in her smile.

“You totally do.” He pressed a quick kiss on her lips. “But it’s cute, so I won’t give you too hard a time.”

“Mosquitoes aren’t cute.” She pouted as he unwrapped himself from around her. “They’re annoying.”

“Yeah, but being snuggled up to the most beautiful woman in the world kind of overrides the annoying part.”

He shrugged as he grabbed his boots from where he’d propped them by the fire and checked the inside of them. “Though I kept smacking at my face every time your hair would tickle my nose.”

She laughed. “You did not.”

He just smiled at her, this sexy grin that made dimples visible through his beard, and a warm, electric current surged through her veins, making her pulse skip and jump like she just hit turbulence.

The urge to pull him back into their makeshift cocoon was overwhelming. Her fingers twitched with the desire to trace the lines of his face, to feel the rough texture of his beard against her palm.

She longed to press her lips against his, to lose herself in a kiss that would make the world disappear—her uncle’s betrayal, the wilderness surrounding them, all of it fading away until there was nothing left but the two of them.

But reality crashed over her like an icy wave. One didn’t survive the Alaskan wilderness on kisses and wishes.

Merritt bit her lower lip, her eyes drinking in every detail of Tiikâan’s face as if to memorize it. The way his eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled, the strong line of his jaw, the messy hair that made her want to run her fingers through it.

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