Chapter Fourteen
Claire felt hot and melty, and it had nothing to do with white chicken chili or the wine or the roaring fire. Nope, it was all Hot HVAC Guy, who was officially the last person on earth she should be sleeping with. The isolated lodge should have been safe—and probably was, from the outside world—but the way she felt in his arms was anything but safe. It was…dangerous. Yep, the two of them hanging a good two-hundred ornaments on the tree that crushed his truck should have been awkward on some level, but instead they were talking and laughing, and she was trusting.
Trust.
She, of all people, shouldn’t throw that word around—especially after he’d outed her to the sleigh driver—but Liam was just so genuine. He had nothing to gain from their relationship, as it were. In fact, she was pretty sure he was on board with keeping it between them, which made him the no-strings man of any woman’s dreams. But the idea of him out of her life left her feeling kind of empty. Probably because he understood her like almost no one else could.
He also wore a pair of sweat pants like absolutely no one else could. They hung low on his hips, showing off V-lines and abs that defied authenticity. Had snowboarding cut muscle like that? He didn’t look like someone who lived at a gym, but he sure didn’t get built like that without doing something.
Something like moving her hips while she rode him. Pretty much the least missionary thing she’d ever done, and she had no idea how she’d ever go back to boring sex. Although even missionary with Liam hadn’t been boring. Nowhere near it.
Speak of the devil himself, he came up behind her and hooked a finger in the waistband of her pants. “What do you think of the tree? Close enough?”
“It’s different,” she said. “And that’s okay.”
She meant that, she realized, because it was theirs.
“You know we forgot nails,” he said, holding her like that was some kind of romantic declaration.
She sorely needed a grip on something other than any part of him. “Next time I go into town, I’ll get some.”
“Unless you’re going back tomorrow,” he said easily, “I probably won’t be here.”
She turned. “You won’t?”
“Work awaits back home.”
“I guess it does,” she said softly.
“I’ll have my brother bring the nails. I should probably have him bring a tree stand, but there’s not much fun in that. Anyway, I’ll check out your furnace tomorrow and should have your estimate ready by tomorrow evening, if anything needs to be done that I can’t take care of immediately. I can almost guarantee it’ll be lower than the other one. You can probably use it as a bargaining chip to get the local guy to bring down his price.”
“So when your truck is ready, do you think you’ll stop by?”
He hesitated before replying, “If the invitation stands.”
She didn’t say anything. She couldn’t.
“I was thinking,” he said. “We should bring a mattress down here. Park it far enough from the fire that we don’t need to worry, and then we keep ourselves plenty warm.”
“What are we going to do with a mattress?” she asked. “Did we run out of alternatives?”
“Besides the fact that I’ve been raiding the stuffing out of your furniture, that’s a loaded question. Do you want me to answer it?”
Before she could, he’d slid his hands along her hips, snagging her pants and dragging them down, using his foot to push them all the way to her ankles. She automatically lifted a foot, giving him the chance to kick the pant leg free. She wasn’t sure what to expect, standing in the middle of the room, halfway clothed, but he quickly answered at least one of her unspoken questions by pulling her shirt over her head and tossing it.
He stood behind her, and she could already tell he was hard. No surprise there. He was always ready. Rough hands slid against her skin, and she realized how hot she was. Burning, like her skin had been exposed to the heat of the fire, but it was all inside. All for him.
He reached her breasts, then her nipples, pinching unapologetically. Twisting. Bordering on pain, deviously hot. She couldn’t believe what he uncovered in her. A woman she barely recognized, arching her back, breasts full and aching, ass pressed tight, grinding lightly against the very hard evidence of his desire. She, who usually needed an hour of foreplay to get anywhere near interested, was already wet, already hoping the next place his mouth touched would bring with it the familiar sting of his teeth.
The pressure built, and for a moment, it disappeared. Disappointment frittered through her until she realized he’d put on a condom. Had he carried that in his sweat pants? Of course he had.
He pressed inside her. A new angle. A new sensation. She nearly cried out from the pleasure of it, but then that big, rough hand gripped her shoulder and held on as he drove into her, thick and hard, the arch of her back putting everything at what was apparently a fantastic angle because she was pretty sure her eyes rolled back in her head, and his name was on her lips. She blindly grabbed at the back of a chair and leaned toward it while he pumped and ground against her, pulsing so deep and thick with that new angle that she positively throbbed with the need to come, and come hard. The sensation fired from deep inside her and seemed to ramp up a notch with every grunt, every smack of skin. What had not begun in a particularly gentle manner tuned primal, with her arching and driving against him while he thrust, harder and harder, until he reached around and pinched her clit.
Pinpoints of light exploded.
It took a full minute for her to realize the explosions were real.
Somehow she’d pushed the chair into the tree, and the tree had fallen over. It lay in a pile of busted ornaments while she stood there, barely able to catch her breath, Liam still lodged inside her, pants shoved south, water from the bucket creeping across the hardwood to touch her toes.
“Am I allowed to laugh at this?”
At the sound of his voice, every bit as breathless as hers, she did laugh. She laughed harder than she had in a long time.
“This might not be flattering,” he said. Hands on her hips, he eased out of her.
Legs shaking, she kicked her water-soaked pants off her other foot. “This is the best tree memory ever.”
“I’d like it known it was not my tree stand that failed.”
“Noted,” she said, still laughing “Your tree stand skills are every bit as epic as your sexual prowess.”
“Actually,” he said giving her a quick kiss on the mouth. “I think evidence suggests my sexual prowess trumped the tree stand.” He adjusted his pants back in place. “I think I’m going to go get that mattress.”
An hour later, the tree had been rescued, more or less, and they had the mattress on the floor, several feet from the fire. She removed a couple more blankets from the linen closet from which the rest had come. They smelled a bit stale, but otherwise not bad. Still, she caught herself imagining sinking into a fresh bed with him. One piled high with freshly laundered sheets they’d twist into a knot and soak with sweat.
Something that wasn’t going to happen, because men like him didn’t exist in the real world, and neither did her anonymity.
She took a deep breath of air that was thick with the scent of evergreen. Outside, snow fell gently in large, soft flakes. Inside, the fire flickered and crackled, and she ached for every wrong reason.
She half expected Liam would drag her right into that makeshift bed. She half hoped he would. She didn’t need to think, and she didn’t need to feel. Not the kind of stuff she had going on in her head, where she wished for different circumstances. That maybe one of them didn’t have to be instantly recognizable. That if she went back to the city, they could grab coffee or something.
Yeah, right. Because that man was absolutely built for coffee dates.
“What are you smiling at?” he asked. He didn’t wait for her to answer before he pulled her into his arms, back onto the cushioned half of that leather sofa. She ignored how perfectly they fit there, legs tangled, leaving her completely enveloped. She leaned her head back against his shoulder.
“The snow and the fire and the tree. It’s just so pretty.”
“This place is amazing,” he said.
“Think you’ll really ever come back and visit?” She couldn’t resist asking him again. She wasn’t ready to give up this moment, or the idea of one day sharing another with him.
He hesitated. She felt the tension threading his limbs, and her heart sank when it should have been doing cartwheels. He wasn’t jumping all over what was supposed to have been an innocent question but had turned into a loaded one, because despite how it sounded, she wasn’t asking that.
“I didn’t mean…”
“I’m not going to ever see you again,” he said, “and not want to…”
“Have sex?” she managed, because she still felt like she’d been punched after he’d chosen the worst possible moment to take a break in the middle of a sentence. Not going to ever see you again.
“Yeah.”
“And I guess we’re a little too far out of high school to be sneaking around, secretly fucking.”
“Those were the precise, eloquent words I had in mind,” she muttered.
“You’re not going to have to hide forever,” he said. “Someone is going to do something else that’s ridiculously un-newsworthy and capture the attention of the nation, and you’ll be able to leave your apartment again.”
“I can already do that here. Or I could until you outed me.”
“You’ll be fine,” he said gently. “Just don’t run out on any more weddings, though for the record, I think that makes you pretty badass.”
He would. She sighed. “You’re the only person in the world who thinks it.”
“Nah,” he said, lightly running his fingertips down her arm, making her shiver. “I bet more people respect you than you might think.”
“Without hearing all the sordid details? From me, I mean. Not ex number three.”
He tightened his arms around her, giving more comfort than any sensible woman would allow under the circumstances. If ever there’d been a reason to run, it was him. She wasn’t fully able to appreciate the irony. “Hey,” he said, “you did what was right for you. To be honest, even though I never heard what happened, I knew walking away couldn’t have been a decision you made lightly.
She closed her eyes and tried to push away the memories, but they never seemed to listen. Talking about it wouldn’t make them go away, but for some reason—even though she’d previously refused to give Liam details—she wanted him to understand. “I caught the first guy in the supply closet with a catering assistant a few hours before the ceremony. I was wearing my wedding dress, and my fiancé had his pants around his ankles.” She cringed. “He wasn’t even wearing protection.”
“Damn.”
“Yeah. The second guy was less dramatic, I’m afraid. He just planned on using my connections to further his own career, and I caught him saying as much just before the ceremony started. He didn’t even have enough of a career to realize a newbie reporter doesn’t have clout.”
“Good riddance, then.”
“Exactly. And just because the third time’s a charm, my next boyfriend was only dating me to blog about being the guy who dated the Runaway Bride. And now he’s got a book deal. A local publisher, granted, but it’s in my locality. And who knows how far it’ll go from there.”
At the center of his embrace, she felt his arms tense around her. “Shit, Claire. No wonder you headed for the hills.”
“Needless to say, being endlessly judged has gotten old, but the entire world can think what it wants to think. I’m done with the spotlight.”
“Does that mean you are quitting your job?”
“I don’t know. I’m using vacation days now. Apparently I’m a distraction from more serious news.” She shrugged. “I’ve always dreamed of being a reporter, and before this happened I did love my job. Just not so much anymore. Not like this.”
“But you love the lodge.”
She shifted so she could see him, knowing all too soon those green eyes would be gone for good. “What’s not to love? It comes with its own raccoon.”
Too bad it didn’t come with its own Liam Chase. But that couldn’t happen. Not at the lodge.
Not anywhere.
And the sooner she got that out of her head, the better.