Instant Temptation (Wilder #3)(46)

They’d seen it yesterday in its most vicious form when they’d come across the shot coyote. The irony didn’t escape her, that the mountains she loved with all her heart, the place that she needed in order to be happy, could also bring death so swiftly.

But the fact remained. Those mountains were deadly, and the rescue last night had almost proven that. Every single season at least one tragedy occurred because someone got stupid, lazy, or lost their concentration while doing something dangerous. Hell, even TJ and his brothers weren’t immune. A year and a half ago, Cam had nearly killed himself in a snowboarding accident. Stone had had a couple of close calls on SR. And TJ had lost Sam.

What would she lose, she wondered.

First you have to actually have something to lose, she reminded herself. Her life hadn’t lent itself to that, but she was working on changing it. She was getting herself where she wanted to be, and for the first time she could honestly say she was trying to move toward a life she could enjoy.

“Deep thoughts?” TJ asked.

“Did you know how much your work would come to define you?”

He looked at her for a long moment. “Are you looking for definition, Harley?”

“Maybe.”

He was quiet a moment. “When we first started Wilder Adventures, it was about getting food in our bellies and keeping a roof over our heads, doing the only thing we knew how to do well. Getting paid to play was a bonus.”

“And now?”

“And now…now I can’t imagine doing anything else.” He paused. “Is that how you feel about wildlife biology?”

It was her turn to pause, as she looked at the blazing glory of dawn. She handed him back the nightvision goggles. “Yes. But I don’t think I have the job right yet.”

He smiled and slung an arm over her shoulders. “You will.”

“You sound so sure.”

“I am.”

The sun continued to slide up the horizon, quietly spectacular. “You must be exhausted,” she murmured. “Why aren’t you home in bed again?”

He turned his head. The bright rays of the sun slanted over him, lighting his hair, his eyes. She braced for the assault on her senses, especially the sensual ones. If he kept it up, he’d wear her down in no time, and she knew it.

“I wanted to walk you out,” he said simply.

The words, softly and genuinely uttered, gave her a flutter a hundred times more devastating than she’d anticipated, and she sighed, softening as she slid a hand around to the back of his neck, her fingers playing with the ends of his unruly, silky hair.

His eyes dipped down to her mouth, then back up again in question.

She lifted her other hand to his chest, and felt the very welcome heat of him, his muscles hard beneath her hand. His heart was steady and strong, like the rest of him. “What’s it going to be like for us?” she asked. “In the real world, I mean. Because there’s all kinds of…friends.”

One corner of his mouth slowly curved up. “Like the naked kind?”

A laugh bubbled out of her at his hopeful tone. “Maybe we should go with the kind that doesn’t necessarily ignore or bicker.”

He let out a breath. “Not as good as Naked Friends.”

No, it wasn’t. And that thought shimmered between them for the rest of the hike back.





CHAPTER 16


Back at the lodge the next day, TJ was sitting at his desk, not at all happy. A few kittens were working on his shoelaces as he went through a mountain of paperwork that Stone had deemed his to handle. Normally he got through such a boring task by fantasizing. The fantasies varied in length and levels of sexual explicitness, depending on his mood. Could be a stacked brunette on her knees beneath his desk one day, or a curvy redhead riding his motorcycle in nothing but thigh-high boots the next.

But today his fantasy wasn’t make-believe. He had a specific face in his head, a very specific woman.

Harley.

In a sleeping bag—

He hissed out a breath when a gray kitten climbed up his leg. He no sooner extracted her claws out of his skin when her sister did the same thing to his other leg.

“Mew.” The soft cry was accompanied by the sweet batting of clear baby blue eyes.

“Try ouch.” He plopped both kittens to the floor. Where was he? Oh yeah, fantasizing about Harley…Doing so was even better since their trip, because thanks to Desolation he knew exactly how her soft skin felt under his fingertips, beneath his tongue. He knew how she squirmed when he kissed the spot beneath her ear, how her breathing changed when he stroked his fingers between her thighs, and he knew how she sounded when she came, those sexy-as-hell breathy little whimpers driving him right out of his mind.

Christ. He shifted in his chair and nearly stepped on a kitten. Bending, he pulled them both out from beneath his desk, set them on his chest, and looked at them.

They stared back up at him solemnly. “I’m not fooled,” he said. “You’re both menaces to society.”

They yawned in innocent tandem. Innocent his ass. They’d destroyed three important files and dumped his trash in the last five minutes alone. With a sigh, he set them back down and they curled up in a pile and went to sleep; cute and dangerous.

Like Harley. He’d told her he could fall hard and deep, and he’d been completely serious.