Mess with Me by Nicole Helm (13)

Chapter Thirteen

Sam couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt nervous. It pissed him right the hell off. So, along with nerves, he was edgy and angry and one growly asshole.

At least when he was facing forward.

Anytime he glanced back at Hayley as they hiked toward their camping spot, his bubbling irritation would simply cease to exist, if briefly. She was always smiling. Constantly. All that cheerful happiness would normally crawl up his ass sideways, but something about it on Hayley, her excitement and enjoyment of what they were doing, it soothed all those hard edges inside of him.

She asked a million questions as they hiked, and he could tell she was filing the answers away. He could tell she sincerely wanted to succeed at this, and though there was a certain emotional family thing mixed up in her involvement with Mile High, it was clear she liked this job.

Hayley had one of those faces he didn’t think could be inscrutable if she tried. She was expressive and excitable. She was plain old genuine in her responses to everything, but especially about these excursions. Like her half brothers, like Sam himself, Hayley saw the beauty and soulfulness of being out here in this wild, vast land.

Not that he’d ever admit all that understanding and camaraderie to her or anyone else.

The most important thing here was that she really was going to be an asset to Mile High. It made the training feel less like a land mine and more like an imperative part of his job.

Or so he’d keep telling himself. It would probably be a little easier to believe if he could stop looking at her. At the easy bounce of her dark, vibrant curls. The way the clothes she was wearing hugged every last all-too-enticing curve.

Sam had to believe at least part of his attraction was because he hadn’t been with anyone in years. Because this constant exposure to someone of the opposite sex was driving him slowly insane. It didn’t mean he had any special feelings for Hayley. That would be beyond suicide.

Except he wasn’t the man he’d been a month ago. Something had opened up inside him and he didn’t like it. Questions and feelings were surfacing—things he thought would be better left alone.

Before he could torture himself with attraction and opening up thoughts, they reached the designated campsite. Sam immediately set about directing her. Explaining what they needed to do, walking her through setting up her tent. He explained how he helped customers first, and how to give them something to do while he was setting up his own tent.

He talked her through starting a fire and discussed the different ways they dealt with feeding people on a backpacking trip. He focused on rules and regulations and processes and every nonpersonal, business thing he could think of, and Hayley ate it all up, clearly trying to memorize it all.

Eventually, though, the sun set, and the fire was going. They were sitting around the campfire eating their dinner, and Sam worked very hard to stare at the fire in front of him instead of her.

“Do you provide any kind of entertainment?” Hayley asked, cheerfully burning a marshmallow to a crisp. She had brought an entire bag. Apparently to torture him with, as he had to watch her lick sticky, white melted sugar off her fingers.

“Entertainment?” he grumbled, staring harder at the fire so he didn’t have to think about . . . licking.

“You know, like telling stories or playing an instrument?”

Which earned her a glare. “Do I seem like someone who plays a fucking harmonica before telling some kind of damn ghost story?”

Hayley laughed. “No, but I wanted to see that look of horror and recoil on your face when you answered me.”

“Ha.”

“You’re just too easy, Sam.”

“And I suppose nothing ever bothers you?”

“I mean, I’ve managed to spend a lot of time with you the past few weeks without being bothered. Maybe nothing does bother me.” She grinned at him.

It took every last ounce of control he had not to grin back, but he didn’t want to encourage this . . . this. Smiling and teasing and joking and all the very uncomfortable implications of attraction. Your attraction. Not hers.

“Why don’t you tell me a story?” she said, popping the blackened marshmallow into her mouth.

He struggled to return his gaze to the lick of flame instead of the pink of her tongue reaching out to banish a tiny bit of white marshmallow. “I don’t have any stories, Hayley.”

“Of course you do. Everyone has stories.”

“I do not.”

“Okay, so what would you do if a customer wanted to hear a story?”

“I’d tell them to go fuck themselves.”

Hayley laughed, that sound of ease and brightness sliding down his spine a mix of tension and . . . No, just tension.

“You would not. Even you.”

He glared at her because she was right. He’d never tell off a customer that way, no matter how much he might want to. And boy, there had been a few times he’d wanted to. Like that prick Raj asking Hayley out.

“Do you want me to teach you a story?” She smiled brightly at him, then stuck her thumb in her mouth, slowly licking the marshmallow off.

Sam had to close his eyes, trying to will his dick to calm the fuck down. She had no idea, that was the worst part. It had been easy to ignore any random woman customer who’d flirted with him. Not that his body had never reacted, but his brain had always been fully in control.

Hayley was all . . . well, the analogy he’d come up with the other day. A breeze. A pebble. Something non-threatening and small you didn’t notice had the potential to create an avalanche. Until the avalanche was upon you.

This could only end in disaster.

There was too much amusement in her expression, too much looseness to this moment. He should tell her no. No stories. Time to go to their tents where at least something solid would separate them.

There was no way in hell he should smile at her. There was no way he should encourage this ridiculousness.

But his mouth curved of its own accord and though he didn’t say anything, the very fact he didn’t leave and didn’t tell her to leave, was an invitation.

“Once upon a time,” she began, shoving another marshmallow onto her stick. “Are you sure you don’t want one?”

With a grunt he took the proffered stick. Hell, if he took it at least he wouldn’t have to watch her eat another damn one. “Campfire stories do not start with once upon a time.”

“I believe I’m the one telling the story. No one asked you.”

“I’m just saying you need to know the rules.” He thrust the marshmallow into the fire. He did not burn his to a crisp. Carefully he rotated the marshmallow at just the edge of the flame.

“There are no rules when it comes to a good story.”

“And you’re so certain you have a good story to tell?” There were all sorts of warning bells going off in his head. This was too close to flirting. Sort of jovial teasing. Giving each other a hard time while they all but grinned at each other. He was on very dangerous ground, and he had the awful feeling that if he pursued that very dangerous ground, Hayley would follow him wherever he went.

Which meant he had to be the smarter person here. He had to be the one to say no. The one to end this.

He made a gesture at her to go on with her story.

“Once upon a time there was a bear. He was a sad little bear, living alone in a sad little cave on the very top of a very beautiful mountain.”

“How can a cave be sad?”

She shushed him and continued. “The sad bear didn’t have any friends. Or at least, he thought he didn’t. But there were a lot of people—I mean bears—who very much cared about the well-being of sad bear. If only sad bear would let them in.”

Somehow, it didn’t piss him off. She was too obvious, too damn pleased with herself. He couldn’t muster up his usual irritation or anger or stomping away. “I know that story too,” he said conversationally.

“Oh really?”

“Only in my story sad little bear eats everyone instead of letting them in.”

Hayley burst out laughing, and he couldn’t help but join her. He was sitting around a campfire laughing happily, and no matter how dangerous all this was, he couldn’t extricate himself.

“The sad bear isn’t nearly as tough as he thinks he is.”

“Stop calling him sad bear.”

“Why? Do you feel a certain affinity for sad bear?”

Sam gave her a doleful look as he plucked the hot, perfectly browned marshmallow off the stick and popped it into his mouth. Despite his expertise, a few stray sticky spots of marshmallow remained on his finger. He made quick work of sucking them off, but for some reason made eye contact with Hayley on that last finger.

She was watching. Intently. Her top teeth biting into that lush lower lip of hers.

Shit. Shit. Shiiiiit.

He dropped his hand immediately and handed the stick back to her. He could almost handle his own attraction. It was a crappy thing, but he could force it to the background.

He didn’t know what to do with her attraction layering on top of his. It was too much. Too big and possible and something he wanted.

“Are you ever going to tell me what it’s about?” she asked softly.

He tensed. What was she even talking about? Being attracted to her or . . . ? “What what’s about?” he asked, praying she would chicken out and not answer.

“I’m sure it was very hard to lose her, but I don’t understand why you still wouldn’t want to be friends with people. Why you insist on being so alone. Don’t your parents miss you?”

“No, they do not.”

“Are you sure, because—”

“I’m sure. Listen, don’t poke at that. Period.” Because he’d been feeling fairly good and she’d ruined it, but he didn’t want to ruin it permanently. “Got it?”

“Okay.”

Silence settled over them and Sam knew it was his turn or duty or something to break the silence, but he couldn’t bring himself to. He’d given her an inch and she’d tried to take a mile. He had no business letting her think she knew him, or deserved answers. Or, worst of all, that this attraction was anything more than a mistake.

No matter what existed between them, he sure as hell wasn’t going to bleed all over the place in front of her. He didn’t talk about this, he didn’t want to. That was the whole point of the life he’d built—not wanting to talk about pain, or about the guilt and the frustration. That stupid, aching hole in his heart because she wasn’t here, and that was partly his fault.

He had taken Abby to that party and left her alone. He had taken no responsibility at all for a nineteen-year-old at a party full of alcohol and drugs and bad behavior. He’d known what they were walking into, and he’d known his sister was unstable. He’d taken her anyway. He’d wanted to have fun, so he figured she could and should have some fun too.

He’d left Abby with those vultures and when he’d returned, it had been too late. Drug overdose. Everyone who knew the story blamed him. Every single person. Right down to his parents. Abby’s death was his fault, and there were no two ways about it.

He thought about telling Hayley, simply because she would maybe leave him alone if he did. But then what? Would she hide away? Would she tell him he belonged on a boat in Alaska? Would everything change simply because he couldn’t ever get over what he had done?

Sam stood, disgusted by the way his head had taken over. Worse, his heart. “We should get to sleep. Long day of hiking back tomorrow.”

He stood and waited for her to as well, so he could put out the fire and clean things up and—

But when she stood, she didn’t head to her tent or even begin to pick up any of the things they’d been using around the fire. She approached him—not in anger, not in frustration, not to put him in his place, but with something like pity in her eyes. Only it wasn’t so bad as pity, it didn’t make him recoil. There was a warmth to it, one he wanted to lean into.

Which meant he had to get the hell away—but she reached out and touched him before he could. Just those long, delicate fingers across the curve of his shoulder. Nothing more than the slightest featherlight touch, as though she was brushing lint off his shirt.

It blasted through him like some kind of fire. Not just the sexual kind. Something bigger and brighter. He wanted to step into that, wrap himself around that. Her. He wanted to . . .

She must’ve been able to read something in his gaze, because she backed away. Good. She should damn well back away from him.

But then she had the nerve to do that Hayley thing. Where retreat was never final. Her steps back were only ever a moment to take stock, or gather strength. Before she blasted him to hell.

Because Hayley very purposefully, very determinedly stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him. It was an attack. It was cruel. It was pain and it was suffering, her arms sliding around his midsection, her body so close he could feel her warmth, could smell the coconut scent of her hair.

It was an irresistible comfort he didn’t know what to do with. Except sink into it. Which was horrifying, but not the kind of horrifying he could begin to resist.

* * *

Hayley was hugging Sam. She couldn’t wrap her mind around the reality of what she was doing. Her arms were around Sam’s gigantic body. All of the heat that must blaze from the very center of his angry being was now seeping into her.

She could feel the tension of each muscle, instead of just see it. She could feel how very strong and hard he was from the sturdy plane of his chest to the sheer broadness of his shoulders that all but dwarfed her.

And he was just standing there, all hard muscle and tension, and she knew she had to stop this. It was only meant to be a little gesture. A squeeze. A physical I’m sorry I’m poking at your gaping wound, but . . .

It felt good here and she didn’t want to let go. Maybe if—

Sam moved, and Hayley tensed. Inexplicably holding him tighter. What is wrong with you? her brain screamed, but the other half of her brain was having none of it.

When his arms lifted and came around her, she couldn’t have let go if her life depended on it. She was frozen, and even though he was now holding her, hugging her, he didn’t even begin to soften.

It was like holding a sun-warmed boulder. Except she was far more interested in what might be under Sam’s layer of clothes than she would be interested in the naked contents of a rock.

Hayley squeezed her eyes shut. The hug had been meant to be an offer of comfort, an apology of sorts, and that’s certainly the way he was taking it. If he knew she was thinking about nakedness he’d probably run in the opposite direction.

When he took a deep, shuddering breath, she could feel it shake through her too, and for the first time, he relaxed. Incrementally.

“Why did you hug me?” he asked, his voice a pained rasp way too close to her ear. She could feel his breath on her temple and another shudder went through her, this one completely her own. Everything about his proximity, feeling things as intimate as his breath on her skin, it turned her insides into a jittering, uncertain mass of nerves.

“I . . . I’m still hugging you,” she said, because she had no clue how to answer the question. The initial reason had been decimated by the strength in his grip and the clear knowledge he needed this.

He pulled away, but his arms remained around her, and though hers no longer touched the center of his back, she kept hers around him too. She swallowed against the urge to smooth her hands up, then down.

Really down.

Sam pushed her back enough he could look down at her, the firelight reflecting in those prismatic blue eyes. It seemed fitting, because in all that pain and confusion, there was a humming air of anger about him.

That was anger, right? Except someone else’s anger usually caused more fear than a restless nervousness that reminded her a whole heck a lot of . . . wanting something she didn’t quite understand.

She wanted . . . Well, she wanted him, and she wanted him to want her, and she wouldn’t have thought that possible a few days ago. Heck, a few minutes ago, but there was something in his expression . . .

She knew how to kiss a guy. She even knew how to engage in a little awkward groping. But nothing about Sam’s look reminded her of what she could only consider child’s play now.

“You should go to your tent, Hayley. You don’t want me to get the wrong idea.”

It took her a minute to unravel that sentence, the glint in his eye, the flat-lipped danger in the expression of his mouth.

Hayley wasn’t completely clueless. There was a certain predatory gleam in a guy’s eyes when he wanted to get in your pants. It had taken seeing a lot of that look on Sean’s face to get it—understand what it was. Eventually, she’d picked up on it, she’d even been interested, but in the end her mother’s numerous dire predictions about where sex led, and an overprotective stepfather and stepbrother, had kept Hayley’s panties securely in place.

But she wasn’t a teenager anymore, or an innocent, fluttery college student. And, well . . . no offense to Sean, he was no Sam Goodall.

So, very much against all the voices in her head warning her off—because what was the past two years of her life if not ignoring those voices—she didn’t drop her gaze. She didn’t pretend she was confused.

“Maybe you getting the wrong idea is exactly what I want.”

She figured those words, which amounted to a challenge, were probably a bad idea. She expected him to completely shut down. To let her go and back away. To be the Sam of the past few weeks who was gone at the hint of any emotion or connection before she even blinked.

Instead, she was still being held by a man she didn’t know how to read. Sure, she recognized the man in front of her as the man who had been teaching her how to hike and guide. The man who grunted more than he spoke actual words. She recognized some pieces of the hard-edged man with the sad past. But tonight, in the flickering light of the campfire, she also saw a world of emotion behind those usually blank eyes.

He wasn’t running away. He wasn’t even letting her go. His grip remained exactly the same. Holding her tight and close.

“It’s okay. It’ll be all right,” she murmured, because he seemed pained, because he seemed confused. Like he was going to walk away, which she wasn’t sure she could stand. She wanted everything to be all right for him.

He looked at her then, bleak and empty. “It’s not okay.”

She blinked, shocked by the raw pain in his voice, except he was still holding her. Surely, that was something. Surely, she was something.

She understood, perhaps too deeply, that he wasn’t talking about this moment per se, but about everything that had led him here. Things weren’t okay in his life. Some things never would be—his sister would always be gone.

Her father would always be the man who’d paid her mother to disappear.

There would always be fissures and cracks, and she was so damn afraid of them that she ignored them.

But what if fissures and cracks were all there were? And acceptance was the only way to actually . . . be.

“Kiss me. Please.” Because she wanted him to, even if it wouldn’t be okay. She wanted to know what that not okay felt like.

She expected denial. She kept expecting the words she uttered would be the final thing to break him of this spell. But nothing changed. Except that his eyes, once so firmly linked to hers, dropped to her mouth. As though he was actually going to kiss her.

Hayley tried to hide her sharp intake of breath, but it was nearly impossible. This handsome, confusing man was looking at her mouth like he was actually going to kiss her.

She wanted that more than was precisely right or fair.

It was all supposed to start with Sam. Trying things, standing up for herself. Maybe . . . maybe even this. This last vestige of adolescence. This journey into being an adult and a woman and who she wanted to be. Not who Mom or Mack or James wanted her to be, but the person she’d hidden deep while trying to belong.

So, instead of standing still or fading away, Hayley did what she’d only ever been able to find the courage to do with Sam. She stood taller, even up on her toes. She got her mouth as close to his as she could. The only thing stopping her from kissing him was the fact that she didn’t have the height.

He would have to give an inch—just an inch. She held her breath, wondering if that would ever, ever happen.

She felt his exhale, surprisingly shaky. As though he wasn’t sure what to do, and though she knew Sam had his demons and hang-ups in spades, it surprised her that he might not know exactly what he wanted. It shocked the hell out of her that he might be uncertain or even . . . tempted. By her.

The hands that held her in a tight grip moved. A slight loosening, and just as she was starting to feel the threads of disappointment at his pulling away, those hands didn’t leave her body as she anticipated. Big, rough, sure and steady hands slid up her back. One stayed there at the space between her shoulder blades—a large, sturdy anchor.

The other one slid up her neck. It was somewhat disorienting how easy it would be for Sam’s hand to clamp around her neck and keep her immobile. Right there. Exactly where he wanted her.

Instead, the hand kept moving, up into her hair, cupping her scalp. Those long, blunt fingers getting tangled in all the thick curls.

The move poked holes in all the restless nerves wriggling along her skin. Because she knew what came next. Sean had always made comments about her hair—how thick it was, how different it felt. Constantly pointing out her differences when all she wanted to do was belong. Blend in.

But Sam didn’t speak.

He was standing here, holding her head and her back, and looking at her like he could devour her in one bite.

Yes, Hayley definitely felt a little light-headed. Like her throat had closed and her heart was beating too wildly to be doing its job. Like her skin was so hot and sensitive, even the air was too much to bear.

But if she thought she was warm now, once Sam lowered his mouth just a fraction of a hair from her own, there were no adjectives left to explain the blaze inside of her. She wasn’t sure she could even breathe.

She wanted to beg him to kiss her, but she didn’t have words anymore because he was this close to doing it. This close, and his mouth looked perfect somehow. Exactly like a man’s mouth should look. Full, but strong and determined.

She realized, suddenly and with something of a start, that his mouth was close enough now she could kiss him. Her arms were mobile. She didn’t have to stand here frozen and waiting. She could actually, for once in her life, be the one who did the thing.

So she moved one hand from his back and carefully touched his cheek just where his beard started edging to skin. She cupped his jaw, enjoying the rough scrape of his whiskers, full and thick and the perfect texture.

His eyes flicked from her mouth to her steady gaze. Even though her heart was still beating a mile a minute, even though she was nervous and scared and desperate, she softened at that lost look in his eyes.

She wanted to give him something. She wanted him to have this and know that it was okay. It really was. So she wrapped her hand around his shoulder and then moved to close that distance between them.

But before she could manage it, his mouth was on hers, his arms tightened and brought her closer. Her pulse, its own scattered rhythm everywhere, an uncontrollable heat centering in her gut and spreading out.

His mouth, hard and uncompromising, taking hers, not waiting for any kind of invitation to trace her lips with his tongue, until he was inside.

She felt like she was liquid, and he was holding her up, and the erotic slide of his tongue against hers was like nothing she had ever experienced. She wanted to live here in the heat and the certainty that even though she had no idea where this was going, Sam would hold her up.