Page 15 of Raul
For a moment, he was annoyed, but he remembered that his safety was her responsibility, so he dropped his hands to his sides.“Gracias,”he managed to say.
She stepped up close to him. “May I adjust the position of the waistbelt slightly?” she asked, glancing up at him and then back down to the belt.
“Por supuesto,”he said, inhaling a light citrus scent that drifted up from her brown hair.
A frisson of pleasure shivered through him as she shifted the harness higher on his torso, her fingertips brushing over the thin fabric of his shirt. When she smoothed her palms over the fabric that had been wrinkled by the adjustment, heat shot down to his groin.
Then she went to work threading the strap through the buckle on the waistbelt, leaning in so that her forehead almost brushed against his chest. He fought the urge to touch her hair to see if it was as silky as it looked. She stepped back after snugging the belt around his waist. “Is that comfortable?”
Her cheeks were bright pink, and her breathing was shallow. So she was affected too.
He tilted his body from side to side. “It seems fine.” Aside from his desire to taste her curving lips.
“I would like to do one more safety check.” She hesitated, her cheeks flushing even brighter. “I need to slide my hand between the belt and your waist. Is that okay?”
This was more fun than he had anticipated.
He suppressed a grin and held his hands away from his sides. “Whatever you need to do is fine with me.”
She inhaled audibly and moved in close to him again. Flattening her hand, she slipped it inside the belt, the heat of her skin setting off little sparks on his abdomen.Mierda!Hiscock started to harden. Once her wrist was inside the belt, she clenched her fist and pulled her arm upward, her knuckles pressing lightly into his muscle. The belt didn’t allow her fist to pull out of it.
“Good. It’s tight enough.” She withdrew her hand at lightning speed and took a step back. Her gaze lifted to his and immediately fell again, probably to avoid the heat he was sure flared in his eyes. “I need to buckle your leg straps now.”
He almost offered to buckle them himself, but he wanted to indulge in the feel of her fingers against him again. “I am all yours.” He injected a tiny hint of innuendo into the words.
The flush spread down her neck, but she bent down and threaded the strap through the buckle on his left leg before shifting the loop up to the top of his thigh. Her touch so near his cock made him grit his teeth to control his reaction. When she tightened the loop on his right thigh, he had to dig his fingernails into his palms to fight against an erection.
“Comfortable?” she asked as she backed away from him.
“Quite.” His voice sounded strained, but he was enjoying this. Who would guess that an equipment check could be so erotic?
“Great.” She picked up a small sack on a strap. “Here’s your chalk bag. Wrap the belt over your harness and shift the bag to your back. There’s a ball in it. Reach in and squeeze it when you need to chalk your hands.”
She stood so far away from him when she handed him the chalk bag that he had to lean forward to take it. She was deliberately putting distance between them.
He strapped it on and picked up his helmet. As much as he wanted to lure her in close again, he decided it would test his control. “I know how to adjust a helmet,” he said, fitting it on his head and sliding the clips to tighten the straps.
“I would still like to check it,” she said, her voice a little strangled.
He lowered his head, allowing her to test how closely it was snugged to his skull.
“Good job,” she said, turning on her heel to grab a rugged tablet from the gear bag. “Now let me give you the beta on this climb. ‘Beta’ means ‘information.’”
She swiped at the tablet and then turned toward the cliff. Pascal had dropped the two ends of the climbing rope down as soon as they started gearing up.
“Obviously, you’ll be climbing roughly where the rope is, but here’s the route.” She moved closer to his side to show him a photo of the cliff with a red line meandering to the top. There was that temptingly silky hair in easy reach again. “You start here. Then you move to the right to grab this jug—remember, that’s a big, easy handhold. Your foot goes here on this…”
He focused on her words, but he was also aware of the female scent of her sun-warmed skin. Her shoulder brushed his upper arm as she pointed to various features on the cliff, her fingers long and slender but showing a tensile strength. She spoke with an unabashed confidence that he liked because she wasn’t treating him like a prince.
“I don’t expect you to remember all that,” she said. “I’ll be talking you through the route as you go. Remember you can always yell ‘tension,’ and I’ll brace against the rope you so can rest.”
He wasnotgoing to rest. Nor was he going to fall. He would not allow himself that failure.
“Okay, let’s get you tied in.” She picked up one end of the rope and measured a length against her arm and chest. Then she whipped through a series of loops before stopping and giving him another one of those quick up-and-down looks. “I’m going to thread this through your hardpoints and then finish the knot.”
He couldn’t suppress a grin at the wordhardpoints. Juvenile, yes, but he was feeling loose and carefree for a change.
She moved in close and threaded the knot through the two loops of his harness before she did another series of ins and outs with the rope to tie what he recognized as a figure-eight knot. Even though she never quite touched him, his cock wanted to react to having her fingers so close to it, and he took a couple of deep breaths.
