One Night with her Bachelor(4)
He blinked, all the words hitting him at once in a wall of sound he wasn’t used to experiencing at his cabin. “Wouldn’t you be alone at home?”
Her mouth softened a little, as if she hadn’t thought of that. “Oh. Um. Yeah. I guess I would be.” She shifted again, rolling her shoulders uncomfortably. “Gosh, I hadn’t expected to walk so far. It’s so beautiful up here I just kept going and going.” She laid her palm on her throat and her voice suddenly went as scratchy as his grandma’s old records. “Could I maybe get a glass of water?”
That galvanized him. Finally—a task. He swung hard and buried the ax’s blade in the stump before heading toward the cabin. “You should carry water with you,” he called over his shoulder.
She didn’t respond, and he glanced back to find her following him, which he hadn’t expected. But of course, most people would invite a guest in for a drink, not bring it out to them. It had been a long time since he’d had any guests. Actually, Mila was the only one who’d ever been here, and twin sisters didn’t count as guests. His manners were as rusty as the hinges on the door of his woodshed.
He stepped onto the porch and held open his back door as she approached. She squeezed past him, her backpack nearly smacking him in the face as she tried to get it through the doorway. Odd. He would’ve expected her to drop it on the porch. Why bring it inside? It wasn’t like she was staying, though the bag did look like it was carrying more than he owned. “How long did you say you were camping for?”
“Two nights.”
Jesus. “What do you need other than a tent and hardtack?”
“Water.” She winked at him over her shoulder, and he was surprised by his own burst of laughter.
“What else is in your bag?”
“Camping stove and fuel, food, metal container to hide that food from bears, extra layers of clothes in case it gets too cold, first aid kit, sleeping bag, travel pillow—”
He coughed. “Did you just say travel pillow? You brought a pillow camping? Why don’t you just bunch up a sweater or something?”
“I fell on some ice last winter and jarred my neck. It’s usually fine, but I have to sleep with a firm pillow or I can hardly move in the morning.”
He grunted. Acceptable answer. The stove and fuel were ridiculous, though. “You know it’s easy to find kindling and wood around here, right? I mean, that’s why they call it the woods.”
She dropped her backpack next to his kitchen table and grinned. Just like that, heat rushed through him from head to toe, centering on certain sensitive areas and making them tight, tingly.
“I said I wanted alone time, not manual labor time. Believe me, I get plenty of that at home. And at work, come to think of it.” She glanced around his humble kitchen, and he followed her gaze, trying to see it the way she did. A fridge and freezer—both powered by his wind turbine and generator—so he didn’t have to go into town much during the winter, a tiny counter just big enough to gut fish on or dress whatever bird he’d managed to bag, a sink fed by his rainwater harvester, curtains he’d sewn using fabric from a few tattered dresses he’d bought at the Good Will, a table and a wobbly chair he’d made himself.
One chair.
Damn. When had his life become this pathetic?
“Would you like to sit down?” He gestured toward the chair, as if she had a lot of other options.
“Thanks,” she said and slid onto it before he could tell her there was a trick to mastering the chair. With two legs slightly shorter than the others, it tumbled over easily. One second, Molly was lowering herself and the next her legs were flying up as her torso fell back. Gabriel lunged forward and caught her head before it hit the floor, but his bad leg gave way. He lost his balance and braced his arm on the other side of her. The move made his body hunch over her head with his crotch in her face like the world’s clumsiest lap-dancer.
They both went completely still, except for their increasingly erratic breathing, which seemed to echo even in the tiny room.
He pushed himself back, hiding his grimace and surreptitiously adjusting his body so she wouldn’t see how the movement had wrecked him. “You okay?”
Her face was flushed, her breathing heavy, and his brain started to slip into professional rescuer mode despite the fact his body recognized the signs as something other than distress. “Molly, where does it hurt?”
Still looking dazed, she let her hand hover over her ribs. His gaze followed as her hand traveled downward until it fluttered over her crotch. “Here.”
He blinked. “Um…What…”
“Throbbing.”
Now his face flushed, along with the rest of him as heat rushed all through his confused body, until it reached one hardening destination. He hadn’t used any nails in the chair, since he’d been trying to teach himself old-fashioned carpentry techniques. But occasionally he could feel the uneven edge poking uncomfortably into his ass. Maybe she’d rubbed against it the wrong way. “Did you hit something sharp?”
She shook her head, still cradled protectively in his palm. The tip of her tongue wet her lips nervously, and he enjoyed the sight far, far more than he should’ve. “No. But I’d like to.”
All of a sudden, her meaning became so blindingly clear that even his brain could no longer deny it. “Molly Dekker, are you trying to seduce me?”