Page 36 of Undoing His Innocent Enemy (Hot Winter Escapes)

The rat.

‘I will go in first. You must descend quickly or your fingers will freeze to the ladder,’ Logan commanded, unable to take his eyes off Cara as they stood on the edge of the swimming hole. She wore nothing but a pair of his boxer shorts, sliders to protect her feet and the thick robe he’d given her, which reached her ankles. With her arms folded tightly across her chest he could see the delicious hint of cleavage flushed pink from the sauna.

It had been an act of sheer willpower not to take advantage of all that lush skin as they had heated themselves to prepare for their swim. She hadn’t commented on the erection stretching his shorts. But he could tell from the potent scent of her arousal she had noticed it.

But then, he was almost permanently ready for her, in a constant state of wanting to touch, to taste, to devour.

In the past week he had lost the last of his inhibitions, the fear that he might hurt her. And taken her whenever and wherever he could.

She had embraced the sex with the same enthusiasm, the same fierce, unquenchable desire—meeting all of his demands and making many of her own. And he had discovered a level of pleasure, of passion, he had never believed possible.

As he had watched her sleep this morning, her slender body laid out on his bed like a banquet, the heat had pooled in his crotch all over again, but he had forced himself not to wake her—and demand more. Because as he had studied her, he had finally noticed the ravages of the past week’s endless sex-capades, as Cara had dubbed them, on her soft skin.

The small thumb-sized bruises on her hips where he had held her too tightly, the slight rash around both nipples where he had sucked her into a frenzy too many times to count—because she was so deliciously sensitive there. He had listened to the deep murmur of her breathing, a sign of her exhaustion, and been more than a little ashamed.

How could he have gorged on her again and again, and still not have satisfied this endless hunger? Was this normal? This desperate clawing need to touch and caress and excite? And to be touched and caressed and excited in return? After so many years spent avoiding any touch at all?

And when was it going to stop? Would this thirst ever be fully quenched? Because they only had seven days left and already he was terrified she had changed him in some fundamental way.

As much as he had tried to make their connection only about the physical, there were so many other aspects of her presence in his home that had begun to enchant him.

The inane chatter about nothing in particular, which had become a comforting background noise when they cooked and ate together. The flush that highlighted the freckles on her cleavage when he frustrated or aroused her. The way she whistled off-key, songs by an Irish band called U2, when she stirred the big pots of stew they had been devouring each evening before devouring each other.

Instead of enjoying his solitude, he now sought her company.

Instead of wanting to know nothing more about her than how to make her beg for release, he wanted to know everything. Who she was? Where did she come from? Who were the brothers she had mentioned in passing with such affection? Why had she waited so long to have sex when she was so responsive to a man’s touch? What did that band’s songs really sound like when she wasn’t mangling them? What had driven her to come to Finnish Lapland and take the stunning shots he had seen on her camera?

He had even had to catch himself from offering to take her outside in a blizzard when he had found her studying a snowy owl as it swooped past the bedroom windows.

The woman was an artist, just as he was. He had seen her fierce desire to capture the bird in flight and understood it. So much so, that he was even beginning to feel uncomfortable about making her keep her promise not to use the camera around his home.

How had he come to be desperate to know everything about her? How could he want to please her, and not just her body? Because both were urges he did not understand.

He had never been curious about another human being. Never wanted to please anyone but himself. Not since he was a boy and he had first arrived in the care of his grandfather—and this frozen wilderness had become his sanctuary. A place of peace and solitude.

But his sanctuary didn’t feel as safe and sure as it once had—when he imagined it now without her in it.

‘I can’t believe I’m actually doing this. It’s madness!’ she huffed, stamping her feet, her breath pluming out in a cloud.

He grinned at her disgruntled expression and shoved the wayward thoughts to the back of his mind.

Time to stop thinking and start doing.

They both needed time out from the unquenchable desire, and he couldn’t think of a better way to control it than dousing himself in icy water. That he had wanted to share this with her too was problematic, but he had been unable to deny the urge.

He dropped his own robe, slung it over the ladder and climbed into the water.

The prickling pain fired over his skin as he immersed himself, his panting breaths helping to regulate his temperature.

‘Come quickly, before you cool too much.’ He beckoned her in.

A delightful frown puckered her brow, and she muttered something that sounded like, ‘Oh, feck it.’ Then, with the fierceness he had come to adore, she slipped the robe off, revealing those pert breasts, and flipped off her sliders.

Turning, she presented him with a perfect view of her beautiful butt, exquisitely displayed in his shorts. He kicked away from the ladder, giving her space as her toe touched the water.

She swore profusely, the profane words echoing off the quiet snow and making birds fly up from the nearby trees. He began to laugh, as he watched her scrambling down into the frigid lake. She ducked in all the way to her neckline, panting furiously and still cursing like a sailor.

‘Good?’ he asked, as he swam closer—the endorphin rush starting to shoot into his brain, making his whole body sing.

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