Page 71 of Head Over Heels

“I like beautiful things, too.” His gaze eats me up.

He grabs his T-shirt at the back of his neck and yanks it over his head in one smooth motion.

I’m not sure if it’s that distinctly alpha male gesture or the ripple of his abs that makes me woozy.

He unsnaps and unzips his hiking pants and drops them to the ground. Wearing only his gray knit boxer briefs, he scoops me up—every last tired, sweaty, disgusting bit of me—and, ignoring my protests and kicking, carries me into the lake and drops me in the water.

Every cubic inch of air gets sucked out of my lungs by the cold.

“Youbastard!” I sputter, surfacing. “Oh myGod,that’s cold! I’m going to die of hypothermia.”

He dives under, surfaces, and wraps his arms around me. “Let me warm you up. So you don’t die of hypothermia.”

He’s 100 million degrees of smooth skin over bunching muscle. I almost forget to hate him, because I’m so busy pressing myself as close to the heat source as I can.

Almost. “You are an evil, evil man.”

“Here’s what’s good about the icy lake.” He ducks his head, slips the cup of my bra down, and takes one rock-hard nipple in his mouth. The contrast between the heat of his mouth and the cold of the lake is electrifying. So electrifying that I shut up, clutch his head, and let him suck my nipples in turn, while his hand slides down the front of my panties. He finds my core with two fingers, his thumb circling my clit.

“God, Liv, you’re so hot.”

Circling, spiraling, the perfect pressure, the perfect rhythm.

I forget my extreme physical misery and come, thrashing, against him.

He wears the self-satisfied expression he always gets when he makes me come. Cat that swallowed the canary, all the way.

He tromps ashore, digs something from his pack, and returns with some camping soap and a washcloth. “I want you to know that this soap is a concession to you. It feels wrong to get clean on the trail. My ideal is three to four days of uninterrupted sloth and filth.”

“Thank you,” I say, not particularly graciously. But I get more gracious as he washes me, gracious enough that I find myself squeezing camping soap into the palm of my hand, cupping his balls in one hand to warm them while I get him off, slippery and slipperier, with the other.

My name echoes very nicely across the surface of the lake.

“Open-air hand job, achievement unlocked,” I murmur, making him laugh.

We get out and dry ourselves off with our dirty clothes—sigh—and then get into our warmest things.

“Grateful for arealsweater yet?”

I am, unbelievably cozily grateful, but of course I’m not going to admit it.

“You fell in the lake and you don’t have any extra underwear!” he crows.

I have to shake my headandroll my eyes.

We pitch the tent on a flat part of the beach. Okay,Chasepitches the tent while I more or less flap my hands and pretend to be useful. When he’s done laying the foam pads and sleeping bags inside, I pull a gauzy scarf from where I shoved it in the bottom of my backpack and hang it across the inside of the door. “Home sweet home.” I look at him triumphantly.

“You carried that all the way up here? Why would you—?”

“Just to annoy you—is it working?”

He can’t hide his smile.

We gather fallen wood and he builds a campfire on the beach. I watch. I wouldn’t have billed myself as a woman who could be snowed by Boy Scout tricks, but watching him kneel, broad-shouldered, and patiently coax flame from a little twirl of smoke—

Is it getting warmer, or is that the newly blazing fire?

We dry our clothes on a branch that conveniently overhangs the fire at a safe distance. He sharpens sticks with his Swiss Army knife (more points for both self-sufficiency and sexiness) and hands me one. As parts of the fire die to coals, we roast hot dogs.

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