“Come on, you’ll love it! Don’t you have chocolate here? Oh no! Pleeeeease tell me you have chocolate here, I might self combust if I have to live the rest of my life without any.”
“Calm down, Red,” he says, taking the chocolate from my hand like it’s infected. “Of course we have chocolate, it just looks… nothing like this.” He turns the open bar from side to side as if he will find a better point of view.
“What do you mean? That’s my favorite kind, what’s wrong with the way it looks?”
“Baby,” Brax gets my attention from where he’s packing his bag for our trip down the mountain. “It looks like a turd.”
“What?! No, it does not! Ryker, tell him he’s wrong!” I demand.
Ryker’s wide eyes bounce back and forth between us like a deer caught in headlights.
“Well, if you don’t want it.” I reach up for it with a scowl, but he holds it out of my reach.
“I didn’t say that, if it’s your favorite, I want to try.” I pretend I’m mad at him, but secretly I love it. The contrast between these two men is already so apparent. It’s clear that Brax is theone who will give me a straightforward answer, even if I don’t want to hear it, while Ryker is more gentle with his words, not wanting to cause me any distress.
He gives it a little sniff before biting off the tiniest piece, making me roll my eyes as I cross my arms over my chest. “You have to try a bigger piece than that, you didn’t even get the good stuff.”
He takes a deep breath, as if he’s about to jump off a cliff, then takes a big bite. I watch eagerly as he chews, looking deep in thought. When he finally swallows, he says, “Huh, not bad!”
“I told you!” I turn proudly to Brax, who’s shaking his head at me, so I stick my tongue out at him.
“Is that an invitation, Baby?”
“What? I…” He smirks at my lack of words and goes back to packing.
“Alright, everyone’s eaten, packed and ready to go?” Brax asks, standing up with his bag. Ryker and I both nod and Brax motions us over to the cave entrance. All my clothing and shoes dried by the fire last night, so I am fully dressed in my own clothes again, but I know I’ll get cold quickly out there.
Brax passes some thick furs to Ryker, who bundles himself up. When I try to take one, he gently pushes my hand away. “Not for you, Baby.”
“What? You want me to freeze out there?” I tease. I know after the way he carried me to this cave, he isn’t letting me go out there unprotected, but I’m not sure what he has planned yet.
Once Ryker is bundled, Brax hands him my bag, then kneels down and motion to his back. “Get on, baby.”
“You’re going to carry me down the mountain?”
“What, you don’t think I can?” Brax counters.
“It’s not that, it’s just… you don’t have to. I can walk, at least some of the way.” Okay, let’s be real here, walking in deep snow, in short boots, down a mountain, was not my usual idea of a thrilling adventure. I wasn’t opposed to him carrying me, but I needed him to know that he didn’thaveto.
“I know, Baby, I want to.”Gah!Why did him calling me baby work for me? I always thought it was a cheesy nickname in romance books, but something about this giant man using it on me makes my insides melt and my panties dampen.
Silently, I climb onto his back, wrapping my arms around his neck. He isn’t wearing any furs, and I only have a moment to wonder why when Ryker starts pulling them over us. So, essentially, I was wrapped up inside Brax’s coat with him. This way, our body heat would stay between us, keeping us warm.
“Hmm… brains and brawn, huh, yeti?”
“Not a yeti.”
“That’s exactly what a yeti would say,” I tell him as he grabs his bag and we head out into the freezing weather.
Clinging to Brax’s back is a little tiring on my limbs, but I enjoy resting my chin on his shoulder, watching the path in front of us. And when I saypath, I mean endless abyss of white snow.
“How do you know we’re going in the right direction?” I ask him after we’ve been walking for a while.
“I know these hills. I can tell where we are by the slope of the hill, the placement of the sun, and the direction we came from.”
“How long have you been living up here?”
“Nine years.”
