true.” He lowered their joined hands to her lap. She was wrong. He wasn’t the wild risk-taker his parents saw him as—she really was that way, not him.
“Come on,” she scoffed in that tone that’d always called him on his bullshit. “Remember the time we jumped from Jagged Rock Falls? You took my dare.”
He nodded mutely, recalling that twenty-foot leap into churning waters, her body pressed to his afterward, behind the roaring falls. The material of his jeans tightened around his swelling groin. “I could never say no to you.”
He brushed a thumb along her knuckles and a visible shiver passed over her skin.
“You should have,” she whispered against his cheek, straight into his ear. His whole body hummed with unleashed hunger for her, not heeding the warning reminder in her words when he damn well should have. He forced himself to let go of her hand.
The music shuffled to another one-hit wonder hair band tune and she tensed beside him. “Is this the...”
He gritted his teeth to keep the telling admission from escaping. Then she snapped her fingers beneath his nose and shot him a knowing look. “It’s the playlist I made for you for your nineteenth birthday. Why are you still listening to this?”
“Some things have a way of sticking with you.”
The teasing look in her eyes faded and she blinked a little too swiftly before she dropped her gaze.
They sat in silence for a moment and he stared out the windshield at the point where the black sea met the sky.
“You didn’t object when I dared you to jump in our ice fishing hole, either,” she said after a moment.
“We nearly froze to death.”
“We warmed each other up,” she countered.
The buzz of blood in his veins at that wicked memory seemed to throb along to the thumping beat. “We made good use of that fishing shack.”
He caught the quirk of her lips in the gloom. “Though we didn’t catch a single fish. Not that we cared.”
No. He’d only cared about Nolee back then. Had insisted, over her objections, that he would give up everything, his dreams of joining the Coast Guard, of leaving Kodiak, because she’d been what mattered most.
And she hadn’t felt the same way.
The windshield began to fog and he flipped the heater to defrost. A couple of snowmobiles whined in the distance and a memory resurfaced. “We stole that ski-doo.” He felt himself smile at that crazy day that’d nearly landed them in the ER and jail.
“Borrowed,” she clarified, shifting, her knee bumping his. He was aware of the press of her against his side, hip to hip, leg to leg, arm to arm.
“We didn’t have permission.”
She sighed. “The real crime was Mr. Strout never riding the damn thing. Plus, I didn’t hear you complaining when you did donuts with it. You had us going fifty miles an hour.”
“That was kid stuff. This is real life.”
“Exactly, Dylan. It’s my life. I call the shots in it. Only me.”
“You came way too close to losing it yesterday,” he growled.
She reached a hand to his cheek. Laid her palm flat against it. His breath lodged in his chest and his mind went blank. “But I didn’t.”
No. He was acutely aware of just how alive she was here beside him, short-circuiting his brain. His defenses against her were running low. God knew, he was trying his damnedest to do the right thing and save her from her worst instincts before he left Kodiak.
“What if you hadn’t been rescued in time?”
“Then I would have died doing what I love. Isn’t your motto So Others May Live?”
“That’s different.”
“Is it?” She angled her head and her dark eyes met his in the dimness.
“I risk my life to save other people’s lives. You’re risking yours for profit.”
“You’re wrong.”
“Then what?” He stroked a hand through her mane of straight, glossy black hair, the strands running through his fingers like a silken waterfall, her eyes closing in pleasure.
“I want to be independent. Free,” she murmured.
He watched her breath quicken and he felt the barrier he’d erected between them start to crumble.
“We’ve both always wanted that,” she added.
Something inside him shifted. Loosened. “Nolee. I don’t want anything happening to you.”
She raised her face, lips parted, as if in a question, and put her hand to the scar above his brow, tracing it with her fingertips. “The worst thing that could happen to me is nothing.”
He groaned at the brush of her mouth against his jaw. In an instant he had her in his arms, his heart pounding against hers. It was only a few seconds, but it was as much as a man on the edge could take. He stripped the hat from her head and tossed it on the dashboard, while his lips descended to hers.
And he kissed her with all the longing that had been plaguing him since he’d laid eyes on her again.
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