"I read you."
"Yeah."His voice drops to gravel."You do."
He kisses me.
No warning.No hesitation.No gentle approach.His mouth comes down on mine with the force of a man who's been fighting this for two days and just lost the war.His hands grip my waist and pull me flush against his body, and the heat of him through our soaked clothes is staggering, consuming, the only warm thing in a world gone cold and gray.
I open for him on instinct.His tongue sweeps against mine and a sound comes out of me that I will never live down.Raw.Desperate.My hands fist in the wet fabric of his shirt, pulling him closer, feeling the wall of his chest and the hard lines of his stomach against me and wanting more.Wanting everything.
He kisses me like he does everything else.With total commitment.Zero hesitation.One hundred percent of himself poured into a single point of contact, and the intensity of it buckles my knees.
His hand slides up my back, over the soaked flannel, fingers spreading across my spine, and his other hand cradles the base of my skull, tilting my head back, changing the angle, deepening the kiss until I can't remember what breathing was for.
The rain pounds us.The parking area is empty.Ryan's truck disappeared five minutes ago and the ambulance is gone and there's no one here but us and three dogs in a truck and the mountains watching from every direction.
Stephen breaks the kiss but doesn't let go.His forehead presses against mine.His breath comes in ragged pulls against my wet skin.His thumb traces the line of my jaw, the same path his fingers took yesterday on the tailgate, and the deliberateness of that gesture, the way he's retracing territory he touched before, makes my whole body tremble.
"This is a bad idea," he says.
"Probably."
"You're my consultant."
"Technically, I'm Ryan's recommendation and Sawyer's idea.Nobody signed a contract."
His laugh is rough and quiet and goes straight between my legs."You've got an answer for everything."
"Not everything."I pull back enough to see his eyes.Swollen lips.Rain-dark hair.The raw, cracked-open expression of a man who hasn't let anyone this close in a very long time."I don't have an answer for what this is."
"This is me making a bad decision and not caring."
He kisses me again.Softer this time.Slower.His mouth moves over mine with a precision that's devastating because it's so controlled.He kisses the way he works.Every detail intentional.Every movement calibrated.And underneath the control, a current of need so fierce I can feel it vibrating through his bones.
When we break apart, we're both trembling, and the rain is getting worse, and his truck is running ten feet away with three dogs inside.
"We need to get the dogs dried and fed."
"Okay."
"And then I want to cook you dinner."
"You cook?"
"I cook."He opens my car door for me.A gesture so old-fashioned and so instinctive that I know it's not performed.He does this because it's who he is.A man who opens doors and runs into water he's afraid of and kisses women in the rain like the world is ending."I've been told my elk stew is worth the drive."
"I'm already here."
His eyes hold mine.The rain streams between us, catching the last gray light of the storm."Yeah," he says, and his voice does something low and rough that settles in my belly."You are."
I sat beside him through the rain back to Mountain Rescue K9.My lips are swollen.My clothes are soaked.My hands are steady, but my heart is doing something it hasn't done in years.
It's hoping.
That's the dangerous thing.Not the attraction.Not the heat that crackled between us every time we got within arm's reach.Those things I can manage.Attraction fades.Heat cools.
Hope is the thing that ruins you.Because hope means you want something to last, and lasting means staying, and staying means letting someone see all the parts of you that you've been holding together with both hands.
My phone sits in the cupholder.Agent Daniels' confirmation email.My mother's text about Thanksgiving.The weight of a family I'm about to betray in a courtroom for the sake of dogs who can't speak for themselves.
