Chapter 28
“What about your childhood?” Abraham asked. “What were you like as a kid?”
I smiled ruefully. “Wild.”
He laughed. “I can’t imagine that.”
“It’s true. Especially in my early teen years. I was a terror. Drinking, smoking, guys–”
Abraham growled deep in his throat. “What guys?”
I laughed and slapped his hard chest. “Down boy, that was a long time ago.” He huffed, still unhappy, but at least he didn’t look ready to hunt down all my ex-boyfriends and make them dog food. Or wolf food.
“So what happened? The Elizabeth sitting here is nothing like that. What changed?”
I gulped and looked away. This was not something I wanted to talk about. Not something I wanted him to know. If he did, there’s no way he’d keep looking at me with those soft eyes I was coming to love. “I got in trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?” he pressed.
I sighed. “Big trouble. With the law. Thankfully, I was a minor so the record’s sealed. After that, my parents sent me to boarding school out here, and that’s where I straightened my life out.”
“You went to boarding school?”
I nodded. “Most of high school. It was awful, but I’m thankful for it. Who knows where I’d be now if it weren’t for that?”
He shook his head. “You still would have figured it out, eventually. You’re too smart for that.”
I chuckled darkly. “Where were you, and your vote of confidence back then?”
His eyes turned serious. “Just waiting to find you.”
My gaze locked on his, trapped in their blue depths. His eyes left mine to glance at my lips, and then back again, my insides clenching almost painfully. Delicious anticipation zipped through my veins as we inched closer. Like magnets, we were being pulled together, the space between us dwindling fast.
And, I panicked.
“So!” I said, straightening, and leaning away from him. “How did you find this place?”
Abraham smiled. “I told you, I know this area, and these mountains like the back of my hand. I found this place years ago and somehow kept it a secret from my nosey sisters.” He smiled indulgently. “This is where I come to get away from it all. From being the alpha, and the head of our family, and all the responsibility that comes with it. When things get too hectic, I escape out here to sit on this rock, and just think. Or rather, I work on not thinking. This is a great place to clear your mind.”
I looked out over the edge and nodded in agreement. This was an amazing place to get your head straight. I could imagine escaping out here with a book, and spending hours on this boulder, losing myself in a great story, or taking a nap beneath the warm sun.
“Wanna’ know what else I do out here?” he asked, rising to his feet.
He pulled me up next to him. “What?”
He grinned mischievously. “Do you trust me?”
“Yes,” I answered immediately, and the shock was obvious in his clear eyes. His smile got wider as he led me to the edge of the rock. He kicked off his boots and pulled his t-shirt over his head.
My mouth went dry, and my heart raced, sounding like a tribal drumbeat to my sensitive ears. Heat infused my face as I realized he must have heard it as clearly as I did.
“You might want to take off your shoes so they don’t get wet.”
“Wet?”
He nodded toward the lake. “We’re goin’ in.”
I backed up. “Hell no. Abraham McCoy, have you lost your mind? I’m not going in that lake.”
“You’re right we’re not going in the lake, we’re jumping in the lake.”
I backed up further. “You’re nuts.”
“You said you trusted me,” he reminded.
I shook my head, hair flying around my face. This was crazy. He was crazy.
“Come on, El. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
I know.
I sighed deeply, tipping my face to the sky as I toed off my sneakers. “I can’t believe I’m letting you talk me into this,” I told the puffy white clouds.
“You’ll love it,” he promised.
I didn’t believe him.
He walked over, and grabbed my hand, leading me to the edge. I peeked over the side and took a quick step back. “It’s so far.”
His strong arm wrapped around my shoulders, tugging me against his warm, bare chest. It was a damn shame I was so terrified. A moment like this with a half-naked Abraham should be treasured.
“It’s not that far, I promise. It’ll be fun.”
I shook my head and closed my eyes.
Trust.
I needed to trust him. He’d given me no reason not to, and every reason to.
With a sigh, I opened my eyes, and met his gaze. I nodded once, and his face lit up with a brilliant smile. “Do you want to jump or run?” he asked.
I eyed the edge again, a shiver of fear running down my spine.
He snapped his fingers. “I’ve got an even better idea. Come here,” he opened his arms, and I stepped closer. He wrapped his hands around my waist, and hoisted me up against him, my hips meeting his, and I instinctively wrapped my legs around him.
“What are you doing?” I squeaked. The heat from his bare skin was scorching me through my thin top, and I was getting dizzy. He smelled so good. Like clean man. My senses were on overload. Add that to the adrenaline pumping through my veins from fear, and I was a mess.
His large hands cupped my bottom, hitching me a little higher. One hand stayed cupping me while the other wrapped around my waist. His body dwarfed mine, making me feel feminine and dainty, something I wasn’t used to at 5’9”.
“We’re goin’ in together. You ready?”
“No.”
“On three.” He smiled. “One.”
I closed my eyes, breaking his blue-eyed stare, and concentrated on taking deep breaths.
“Two.”
My arms slid around his neck, pulling my body closer to his until I could feel his heart beating into my chest. Or was that my heart? The two were synchronized.
“Three!”
He took off running toward the edge, and an involuntary scream left my lips as he ran out of rock. We were free-falling, the cool wind whipping my hair around my face as I clung to Abraham, his arms never loosening from around me.
The seconds stretched into days as everything got quiet, and we fell, fell, fell. And for that immeasurable amount of time, I felt all of my worries fall away as fast as my plummeting body.
I was just a girl, in this strong boy’s arms, jumping off a cliff.
I was a kid again, doing something carefree, and a little stupid, just because I could.
Right when I thought my stomach would leap out of my body, and beat me there, we hit the water.
Abraham’s arms loosened around me, but his hand found mine. The initial shock of hitting the water had eclipsed the freezing cold temperature of the lake. We broke through the surface simultaneously, him whooping and laughing, me gasping and sputtering.
“That was incredible!” he yelled.
“That was insane,” I called back, chuckling as I tread water in the deep lake. My wet clothes were heavy, especially my jeans.
Abraham swam closer, and wrapped his arms around me, pulling me close until our faces were inches apart. “Wasn’t that fun?”
My heart was still racing from the jump. Or was that from being so close to him?
“That was fun,” I confirmed.
I hadn’t done something that careless in a long time. Hadn’t made a snap decision, and just jumped for years. It seemed like more was changing in me besides my hearing.
“Wanna’ go again?” His arms wrapped tighter around me.
My body trembled in his arms, my limbs tingling, my toes going numb.
“Are you cold?” he asked, all humor leaving his face, quickly replaced by concern.
He reached out to trace one of his calloused fingers along my bottom lip. “Your lips are turning blue,” he noted. I nodded as my body continued to tremble in his arms. “Come on,” he spun around and pulled my arms over his shoulders. “Hold on and I’ll get us back to shore.”
I tightened my knees against his hips, and my arms around his neck. He dove under the surface, and took off toward the beach, swimming faster than I’d ever seen a person swim before. Our bodies sliced through the water as I clung to his back like a knapsack. Within a couple minutes, we’d gotten close enough to walk, and Abraham scooped me into his arms.
When we made it to the ATV, he opened a compartment on the back and pulled out a large white towel. He wrapped it around my shoulders, and used his large hands to rub my arms, the friction warming my cool skin.
He stood there thawing me out for a few minutes, and eventually, I could feel all my fingers and toes again. I must have looked a little better too, because he stopped rubbing, and took a step back.
“I’m gonna’ grab our shoes, you okay here for a minute?”
I nodded as I willed my insides to stop shaking. He disappeared and was back within a few minutes. Abraham placed our shoes and the picnic blanket on the seat of the ATV and pulled something else out of its storage compartment.
He held out a fresh set of clothes, and I looked around warily. Where the hell was I going to change?
His lips quirked in a smile as he turned around. “Go ahead and change. It’s just us out here, I’ve never come across anyone else.”
I really didn’t want to strip out in the open, but knew I needed to get the wet clothes off if I had any chance of warming up. With a sigh, I peeled my shirt off, letting it fall to the pebbled beach with a loud plop.
“I’m sorry, El. That was stupid of me.”
I frowned. “Wh–what are you s–sorry for?” I stuttered out between trembling lips.
He sighed, ran a hand through his hair, and scratched the back of his head. “I should have realized how cold the water would be for you. That waterfall comes directly from the mountains.”
I yanked his large t-shirt over my head and worked on getting my soaking jeans off my hips. “It’s fine Abraham, it’s n–not like I’ve never been c–cold before.”
“But, I’m supposed to take care of you, not hurt you,” he countered.
I slid his sweatpants up my legs and rolled the waistband down a few times until they stayed put. “It’s not your j–job to take care of m–me. And besides, it really was a l–lot of fun. I don’t regret it.”
I reached out, and placed a hand on his shoulder, turning him to face me. His eyes raked my body, a gleam shining in his blue gaze. He grabbed the blanket off the ATV, and wrapped it around my shoulders, dragging me into his warm arms. “It is my job,” he argued.
His denim gaze drilled straight to my core, hollowing me out, and filling me with everything Abraham. I breathed him in, swallowing him down and letting him run through my veins. My eyes closed as I listened to his steady heart beat faster, faster.
“Elizabeth.”
His voice was so deep.
So rough.
So unsteady.
I opened my eyes to see he’d moved closer, his face just inches from mine. He took a deep breath, his chest hitching. “I want to kiss you so bad right now,” he admitted softly, his eyes anything but.
“Why don’t you?” I whispered because anything louder would shatter this moment.
Shatter this fragile thing between us.
“I don’t want you to run,” he admitted, his voice broken, his words breaking me.
“I’m not going anywh–”
His warm mouth found mine and instantly changed everything.
Flashes of what felt like electricity shot through him into me, back and forth, around and around, like a never ending current. Our lips stayed locked, both of us frozen for a long moment before something snapped. Something inside us both fractured.
In the same instant, both our mouths moved against each other, testing, and tasting, teeth, and tongues, and heat all swirling together until we were almost frenzied. His strong hands cupped my bottom once more, my legs enveloping his hips, hands tangling in his thick hair, clutching his face to mine.
I didn’t know when he moved, but suddenly my back was digging into something hard, his body pressed against mine. His hard lines digging into my soft curves, our bodies aligned like the planets in the sky, creating a perfect constellation of stars. When his lips left mine, and traveled across my face and down my neck, I gasped for air, my body trembling once again, but this time I wasn’t cold at all.
It felt like I was on fire at every point Abraham’s body touched mine. I moaned, and struggled for breath, and might have even been embarrassed by the sounds I was making if I hadn’t been so enraptured by the man nibbling on my earlobe.
I used his hair to drag his mouth back to mine. He chuckled against my lips, and I swallowed his humor as I clung to him, silently begging for more. One of his hands left my backside, and moved to my neck where he held my face with a thumb on my jaw, and his fingers tangled in my wet hair. The other squeezed my backside almost painfully, but not quite.
He moved my face around as he devoured my desire, giving me nothing less in return. We stayed like that, panting and groaning in the quiet forest until our lust had subsided enough for us to catch our breath. He peppered soft, wet kisses around my face, and across my eyelids as my fingers twisted in his hair.
Finally he lifted his head, and looked at me, my brown eyes meeting his blue gaze. I’d never seen his eyes so clear.
So bright.
So light.
He smiled shyly, and my heart stuttered, another few bricks tumbling off my highest wall.
“That was even better than I’d imagined.”
My smile matched his. “You’ve imagined this?”
His grin spread. “More times than I care to admit.”
And those walls. Those high brick walls that’d been my shelter and protector from everything that could hurt me shuddered. Mortar crumbling, and stones falling. Abraham McCoy was toppling my fortress and I, I’d given up defending the castle, and instead, had opened the front door for him.