"What if I wasn't here for the article?" I ask. "What if the article stopped mattering about six hours ago when you cooked me dinner and told me I was good at my job and looked at me like you couldn't decide whether to kick me off your mountain or kiss me?"
His hand tightens on mine. His eyes darken from deep water to something with a current, dangerous and pulling.
"Then I'd tell you that I haven't been able to think straight since you stepped out of that SUV. That watching you climb beside me today was the closest thing to peace I've felt in three years. And that if I kiss you right now, I won't stop. Because I don't do halfway, Shelby. And you're not a halfway kind of woman."
The storm slams against the lodge windows. The fire roars. My pulse is a drumline.
I lean in. Close the distance until my face is inches from his. I can smell woodsmoke on his skin and coffee on his breath and something underneath that's just him, clean and warm and male.
"Then don't stop," I whisper.
He releases my hand. Both of his palms come up to frame my face, and the contact is electric, his rough skin against my cheeks, his thumbs at the corners of my mouth. He holds me there for a suspended moment, eyes searching mine, and whatever he's looking for, he finds it.
He kisses me.
Not gently. Not tentatively. Cory Matthews kisses me the way he does everything else: with total, consuming focus. His mouth covers mine and his hands tilt my face to the angle he wants and his tongue slides past my lips and I make a sound against his mouth that I will never live down.
He stands without breaking the kiss, pulling me up with him, and I'm on my feet with my hands fisting the front of his flannel shirt and his arm locked around my waist, crushing me against him. The size of him, the heat of him, the sheer wall of muscle pressed against me from chest to thigh, sends my brain offline.
He kisses down my jaw. My neck. Finds the spot below my ear that makes my knees dissolve, and when I gasp, he makes a low sound in his chest that vibrates through my entire body.
"You taste like trouble," he mutters against my throat. "I knew it the second you smiled at me in that parking lot."
"You liked my smile."
"I wanted to put you back in your car and send you down the mountain." His teeth graze my earlobe. "And then I wanted to pull you into the nearest building and find out what other sounds you make."
His hand slides down my spine to the small of my back, presses me tighter against him, and I feel exactly how much he wants me. Hard and unmistakable against my stomach.
I pull back just enough to see his face. His eyes are blazing. The ice is completely gone, replaced by something molten that makes me feel like the most desired woman on the planet.
"Cory."
"Yeah."
"Take me somewhere that isn't a dining table."
He doesn't smile. He does something better. He looks at me with an expression of such raw, unfiltered want that my breath actually stops.
Then he takes my hand, kills the lamp, and leads me through the darkened lodge toward the back hallway.
He doesn't take me to a cabin. He takes me to the room at the back of the lodge that I hadn't noticed before, a private quarters with a heavy door and a bed and a window showing nothing butwhite fury. His overnight room, I realize. For storm nights when the walk to his cabin is too dangerous.
The door closes behind us. A battery lantern on the nightstand throws warm light across rough timber walls and a bed made with military precision. He turns to me and the look on his face stops me in my tracks.
He's not uncertain. He's reverent. Like he's standing at the edge of something sacred and terrifying and he's choosing to step forward anyway.
"Last chance to be professional about this," he says.
I grab the hem of my thermal and pull it over my head. I'm wearing a sports bra underneath and nothing else, and the cold air tightens my nipples instantly. His eyes drop. His jaw clenches. A muscle in his neck jumps.
"Does that answer your question?" I say.
He crosses the distance between us in one stride. His mouth is on mine and his hands are everywhere, sliding up my bare ribs, cupping my breasts through the thin fabric, then pulling the bra over my head with an efficiency that makes me dizzy. He palms my breasts and rolls my nipples between his thumbs and forefingers, and the pleasure is sharp enough to make me cry out.
"These," he growls against my collarbone. "Every time you stretched your arms over your head on that trail today, I could see the outline of these through your shirt. I almost walked into a tree."
I laugh and the laugh turns into a moan as his mouth closes over my right nipple, hot and wet and devastating. He sucks hard, then soft, then scrapes his teeth across the peak, and my hands grip his hair and pull.
