to a Super G course. And when her laughter rang out around the clearing, he’d felt justified, and more than a little bit relieved, if he were being honest.
The risk had paid off.
They spent the next hour sliding down the snow mound. Each time he watched her carefully, and he noticed it wasn’t getting easier for her, but she had made up her mind that she would do it.
And she did.
He felt like a jumble of nerves. A mess. This wasn’t like him. He was the guy who felt nothing. Why did Lindsey change all that?
And he was beginning to believe that his desire for more of her in his bed wasn’t the only thing he wanted.
“Thank you for this.”
“You’re welcome,” he said.
She put the sled on the ground next to him. “Your turn.”
He didn’t want another turn with anything but her. “Will you go with me?”
“Go with you?” she asked. “Are you asking me to date you?”
Not a bad idea, but they were too old to be dating like that. Weren’t they?
“Maybe. But for now I want to take a run down with you.”
She nodded.
Picking up the sled, he led her back to the mound and then stood behind her as she climbed up. The woman had a first-class ass, and when she got to the top she glanced over her shoulder and caught him staring at her butt.
“I think you just wanted another chance to ogle me.”
“No denying that, gorgeous. I do like your body.”
“I like yours, too,” she confessed. He climbed up after her and set the sled on the top of the mound. He sat on it and anchored himself in place by stomping his boot into the snow.
“Come on,” he said.
Lindsey carefully sat in front of him, scooting back until her buttocks were pressed firmly up against him. He wrapped one of his arms around her waist. She smelled of snow and the pine trees that surrounded the clearing.
“Ready?”
She put her hands together over his arm, holding him as she nodded. He lifted his boot from the place where it was anchoring them in the snow and pushed off with one hand. He leaned in close, holding her to him, and then pivoted his body so they slid sideways into the snow. He fell off the sled and pulled her with him, making sure she was on top of him.
She rested her arms on his chest and looked down at him, and for the first time this morning he saw something close to happiness shining in her big brown eyes. She smiled, and he arched his eyebrow at her. “You must be messing with my mojo.”
“I must be,” she said. “I’ve never seen you fall.”
“I usually don’t,” he admitted. But he’d wanted her to see what would happen if she did. Wanted her to experience a fall and maybe in some way show her that this time it wouldn’t be as bad as it had been before.
He was messed up. He knew it. He was trying to make her see him in a different light, but the truth was he was too flawed to really want her to see the man behind the bluster. He knew that, but at the same time he sort of wanted her to be the one person who knew the real guy under that cocky facade.
“I imagine this is just one of your seduction techniques. The way you get woman to kiss you.”
“Nah, it’s how I get women to let me kiss them,” he said, going along with her. He traced the bottom curve of her lip and held her to him with his arm around her waist. The ground was cold, but he didn’t feel it through his snow pants. He looked up at the cloudy sky and saw the first snowflakes falling toward them. One of them landed on the end of Lindsey’s nose, and he caught it on his finger and brought it to his lips to lick it off.
She leaned down as another flake landed on his lips, and kissed him. The chilled snowflake melted under the heat of her kiss, and he felt the warmth spread from her mouth to every cell of his body. Slowly working over him until he wrapped both arms around her and kissed her as if nothing mattered except the two of them.
As if there wasn’t anything else in the universe but him and her and this snowy clearing. Nothing but her lips moving over hers, her hands on his face and her body pressed intimately to his. Nothing except the taste of her happiness and the cold chill that couldn’t penetrate the heat they were generating.
Nothing but he and Lindsey and this outdoor world that they’d both called home for so long.
* * *
LYING ON TOP of Carter with the snow gently falling around her was the perfect end to this crazy first day of the year. She had been running on empty, she realized, until he’d pushed her to go down the mound. She wasn’t perfect. It was silly to think one man would make that big of a change in her, but this was Carter.
The bad boy who’d been teasing and cajoling her since the moment they’d met. But damn, could he kiss.
Lindsey forgot about everything but how soft his lips were under hers. How right his tongue felt as it tangled with hers. And his taste. It was minty but earthy...and she couldn’t get enough of it. Of him. His hands were moving up and down her back, cupping her butt and pulling her more fully against him.
Despite the cold, his erection was strong and solid between them, awakening an answering ache deep inside her. She wasn’t a sexual person, so this desire so quick on the heels of last night was new. She wasn’t sure she wanted to be this lusty. Not with Carter. He had already proved to her that he was different, or rather that she was different when he was around.
He made everything she felt seem bigger somehow, but he also called to the parts of her soul she preferred to keep hidden from the world. She pulled her head back and gazed down into those blue-gray eyes of his. There was something almost harsh about his features, and she recognized the look on his face as smoldering desire. Last night had given her a glimpse into how passion changed him from that sort of mischievous badass into a man who knew how to seduce.
“Let’s go back to my room,” he said, shifting her so he could sit up.
She shook her head.
“Why not? It’s not like—”
Lindsey put her finger over his lips, rubbed it back and forth for a second. Then she brought her finger to her own lips and kissed it. She wanted to be able to dismiss him as easily as she always had. But she couldn’t. She thought about how awkward she’d felt this morning and how electrified she felt right now. She wanted him. Wanted to feel his muscled body moving against hers and over hers again. Not again. If she had sex with him again she had to be in control.
“You have to stop thinking that you are the boss,” she said, lifting her finger from his lips.
“I’m not?”
“No, you’re not.”
He swept an errant lock of hair off her cheek. “Then you aren’t on fire for me? You
