When her lips meet mine, it’s like every light in the building suddenly comes back on. She tastes like mint and something uniquely her, and when I kiss her back, she makes this soft sound that nearly undoes me completely.
I thread my fingers through her hair, and she presses closer, her hand fisting in my shirt like she’s afraid I might disappear. The buffalo hide falls away from our shoulders, but neither of us cares about the cold anymore.
“We shouldn’t be doing this,” she whispers against my mouth, but she doesn’t pull away.
“Probably not,” I agree, trailing kisses along her jaw. “But I’ve been thinking about doing this for weeks.”
“Weeks?”
I nod. “Yeah, even before you started tutoring me.”
She pulls back slightly, surprise flickering across her face. “Before? But you used to come in and—”
“Annoy you on purpose? Yeah.” I brush a strand of hair from her face. “Because it was the only way I could get you to look at me. When you’d get all indignant about my lame jokes and terrible questions, your whole face would light up. It was worth enduring your lectures to see that fire in your eyes.”
“You’re telling me you’ve been flirting with me this entire time by pretending to be an idiot?”
“Hey, I wasn’t pretending to be an idiot. I genuinely didn’t know half the stuff I asked you about.” I grin. “I was… strategically curious.”
She stares at me for a moment, then starts laughing. “Strategically curious? That’s the worst pickup strategy I’ve ever heard.”
“But it worked, didn’t it?”
“Yeah,” she admits. “It worked.”
When she kisses me again, it’s different. This time, her kiss is slower and deeper, like she’s pouring everything she can’t say into it. I lose myself in the taste of her, the way she sighs against my lips, how perfectly she fits in my arms.
I furiously hope that the cleaning lady calls in sick tomorrow because I never want this night to end. All I want is to kiss Reese until I forget my own name.
I love feeling her soft laugh against my neck, the way her fingers trace patterns on my chest, and how she shivers when I whisper her name…
“What are you thinking about?” she asks.
“How I’m going to explain to my hiking groups why I keep smiling like an idiot.”
She props herself up on her elbow, grinning down at me. “You could tell them you finally passed your history lessons.”
“With flying colors, apparently.”
She snorts. “Don’t get cocky. You still have a lot to learn.”
“Lucky me,” I say, pulling her closer again. “I have an excellent teacher.”
“The best,” she agrees, and when she kisses me again, soft and sweet, I’m certain I could stay trapped in this storage room forever. I don’t need food. Don’t need air. Only her.
Outside, I can hear the wind picking up, but wrapped in this soft buffalo hide with Reese in my arms, I’ve never felt warmer.
Epilogue
Sawyer
One year later
Historic Gems Quarterlysits on our kitchen counter, open to page twelve. Even now, three months after it arrived, I can’t help but grin every time I see it. There’s Reese, standing by those old cabin ruins, her face lit up with genuine joy as she explains something to an invisible audience. The photographer they sent did an incredible job, but honestly, the magic was already there in the pictures I took that day by the lake.
I still can’t believe my plan worked.
After our lakeside hike last year, the one we did the day of our first kiss, I stared at those photos on my phone for hours. Reese looked so natural, so passionate, talking about the history of that old fishing camp. It hit me that this was exactly whatHistoric Gems Quarterlyneeded to see. Not some stuffy posed shot, but her in her element, bringing the past to life and connecting to their readers.