Advanced Camp, Nepal
Cold like I’d never known invaded every cell of my body until I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been warm.
The storm had raged for hours, and though I no longer heard the crackling of snow hitting the tent, the roar of the wind was impossible to ignore. I slid deeper into my sleeping bag, covering my nose with the nylon fabric and using my breath for warmth.
The tent rustled, and I sat up, staring at the door as it unzipped, snow falling into the tent as a huge figure tumbled in. The flash of fear I felt died in the second it took me to recognize Landon’s jacket as he closed the tent.
“Sorry,” he muttered after he ripped the gaiter down that covered his nose and mouth. “Why didn’t you tell me you were alone in here? I had to hear it from Pax when he came to our tent for extra supplies.” He took off his hat and gaiter, tossing them on the floor where Leah’s bag had been.
“It d-d-d-didn’t matter,” I stuttered through the shivers.
“It sure as hell does,” he barked, stripping off his coat. “You’re shaking like a leaf and probably freezing. How the hell would anyone know?”
“I’m f-f-f-fi-fine,” I managed.
“Yeah, seems like it.” A moment later his snow pants joined the jacket on the floor, leaving him in the breathable light track pants he wore underneath and a long-sleeved henley. “Move,” he ordered as he knelt next to my bag.
I was too cold to argue.
He unzipped my bag, and I gasped as the colder air hit me. But then he slid in with me and zipped the bag behind him.
Warmth—sweet, wonderful warmth—hit my face first as he wrapped his arms around me, holding me against his chest. My cheek rested along his neck, and I breathed in his cedar scent. He maneuvered one of his legs over mine until I was completely surrounded by him.
“Fuck, Rachel. You’re a block of ice.”
“It’s cold up here.” My stammering stopped.
“I noticed while I was digging through the snow to get to you.” His arms tightened, and it felt so damn good to be held by him.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I said, voicing the last defense of my brain while my heart told it to shut up. Every nerve ending agreed, savoring his warmth.
“Well, Gabe and Alex both volunteered,” he admitted.
I tensed. “But you risked the storm and fell on the knife, eh?”
His chin rubbed against the top of my head. “I wanted to be the bigger man and give you some space, but the idea of one of them holding you…” He swallowed. “I just couldn’t do it. I’m sorry, I know this isn’t really what you want.”
I relaxed completely, my muscles abandoning the war they’d never wanted to wage. He was wrong—so very wrong. There was no one in the world I’d rather have holding me than Landon.
But that wasn’t something I was capable of admitting, not when it was the equivalent of letting down the drawbridge for him to walk straight into my heart and trample around.
He stretched the bag so he could look into my eyes. “What are you thinking?”
“Nothing I can say,” I whispered.
His hand came up, stroking my hair back from my face, his thumb caressing my cheek. “Okay. Then let’s just get you warm. Tomorrow we can go back to whatever stalemate we seem to be at.”
“Deal,” I agreed. “Besides, you have bigger things to worry about.”
“Not sure I’d agree with you,” he said, tucking me under his chin again to give me as much skin-to-skin contact as we could get without removing clothes.
Remove the clothes! All the clothes! my sex-starved inner demon demanded.
I told her to keep her horny pants on and settle for this, which was better—and more dangerous—than anything I thought I’d ever have again. Landon was breathtaking to look at, but being held in his arms was a whole new torture. He was intoxicating, and if I didn’t keep a tight rein on my self-control, reckless, wonderful, regrettable things would happen.
“There’s a twenty-one-thousand-foot-high ridgeline behind me just waiting for your board. I consider that bigger.”
His hand tunneled through my hair, holding me to him. “I don’t. Damn, I’d almost forgotten how perfectly you fit against me. Shit. Distract me. Talk about anything.”
“Like the giant snowstorm going on out there?” I teased, careful not to move against him.
“It’s a rather small one, I promise. The last guys who did this had a ten-day one to compete with. I think we can handle an overnight.”
“Speak for yourself.”
“Tell me about your paper. Are you really looking for your orphanage? Or is it more than that?”
I rubbed my nose along his throat, unable to help myself. “I’m not sure? I want to see it, to know where I came from. I’m not on some delusional quest for my birth parents, I promise.”
“I never thought that.”
“I just want to understand the need…what makes those mothers give their babies up. Hopelessness? Poverty? Culture? A hope for a better life?”
“Yes to all?” Landon suggested, his voice deep and comforting on a level that soothed the cracks in my soul. “And what happens if you don’t find an answer that satisfies you? If you don’t like what you find? Have you left room for those possibilities, too?”
I nodded. “I think so. I don’t have any expectations other than to see it, to feel connected somehow. There’s always been this part of me that’s felt untethered, and maybe I’m hoping finding it will ground me in a way.”
We were silent for a moment, the only sound the gusts of wind or static tapping of snow hitting our tent.
“Okay. I’ll take you.”
“What?” I asked, pulling back again. “You don’t have to do that.”
A half smile lifted his beautiful lips. “If you’ll let me, I’d like to be there for you. I kind of fucked that up a long time ago.”
He did. I knew it, and so did he. But wrapped in his arms like I was something precious, it suddenly seemed like a lifetime ago…and yet like we’d never been apart.
Everything was familiar and yet new. His scent was the same, the undertones of his skin unchanged by whatever cologne still managed to cling to his clothing. His voice still slid over my nerves like silk, his eyes the same ever-changing hazel that held me captive. His hands cupped my face with the same tenderness while the strength in his arms had only grown.
He was my Landon underneath all that Nova, only ten times more…everything.
“Rachel,” he whispered. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?” I asked, knowing damn well what he meant.
“Like you used to.”
Like there weren’t two years of betrayal, heartache, and struggle between us.
I couldn’t make my voice work, couldn’t find words to express the jumble of emotions crashing through me. Our eyes met, unspoken emotions sailing between us.
In that moment, I knew that it didn’t matter who had wronged whom. Who had walked out, or who had paid the price. It didn’t matter how many years had passed or how many would pass. This intense connection that strung us together would always be there. Buried, burned, or frayed, but never destroyed.
Landon was always going to call to me.
His gaze dropped to my lips. “Tell me no,” he said.
“Landon,” I said softly, my hands coming between us to push against his chest.
“Tell. Me. No.”
My mouth opened, but nothing came out, and even though I’d commanded my hands to push him away, they were gently stroking the lines of his chest.
“Rachel,” he begged, but I wouldn’t answer him because I couldn’t.
His thumbs stroked my cheeks, and I saw the moment his eyes changed from conflicted to determined.
His mouth found mine, and I was home.
His kiss was soft, and he groaned as he shifted, sinking his hands into my hair as his lips caressed mine. Slow, sipping kisses assaulted my senses, made me forget where we were…or what year it was.
His tongue flirted with the lower line of my mouth, and I opened for him. He slipped inside like he’d never left, his taste and touch overwhelming as he filled the cracks in my soul he’d put there in the first place. He made me feel whole for the first time in more than two years.
“Rachel.” He sighed, saying my name again before tilting my head so I could take him deeper. Our tongues slid and rubbed, and everything that had been forgotten came back with startling clarity.
This…there were no words for what he did to me, the way every nerve ending sparked to life as our bodies came into contact in the compact space. As my hands slid over his chest to grasp the back of his neck, one of his skimmed my spine until he cupped my hip.
God, this was what I’d missed. The few guys I’d let kiss me had been good, but they’d never had this effect on me, never turned me molten with a single kiss, never blocked out the world around us with the simple glide of his tongue.
Only Landon.
Heat flushed my skin, raced through my veins, waking up even the most dormant parts of me—those that screamed for him, begged for me to loop my leg over his hips—the parts I’d tried my best to kill off.
He was an amazing kisser.
Because he’s had a hell of a lot of practice.
Because he’d left.
Because I wasn’t enough for him.
His name was Nova now, due to the revolving door that had become his bed. His mouth. His hands were practiced at giving pleasure, and his heart had already schooled me in the art of heartbreak.
I ripped my mouth from his. “No.”
“Rach?” he asked, immediately pulling back.
“We can’t. I can’t. I…” I looked up into those hazel eyes, already greenish with want, and I did the one thing I swore I never would and let fear rule me. “I won’t.”
He flinched, and a spike of anger flashed over the need that had control of my body. Who the hell was he to look hurt?
“Okay,” he said softly with a tiny nod. “Do you want me to go?”
Did I? I didn’t have the immature need to stomp away, to run like the child I had been when he’d walked out, but I wasn’t capable of more. “No,” I answered. “I just…I can’t.”
“I understand.”
“Do you?” My hands withdrew, but with the confines of the bag, they only made it to rest between us.
“I don’t want to. I want to kiss you until you forget what I did and what I’ve done since then, but I gave up that right a long time ago. So if this is where I have to start with you, I’ll take it. It’s a hell of a lot better than I ever thought I’d get.”
I cracked a huge yawn, exhaustion reminding me that it was still an issue. Warmth finally infused every part of me after hours of bone-chilling cold, and my body was ready to shut down.
“Get some sleep. I promise I’ll be a perfect gentleman.”
I snorted.
“I mean it. Just sleep and let me hold you.”
My choices were to shiver myself to sleep or choose the nuclear reactor that had climbed into bed with me. “Okay. But just tonight.”
“Just tonight,” he agreed, but I swore I heard him mutter, “for now.” Then he sucked in a breath as I tried to get comfortable. “Don’t wiggle, okay? Things are hard enough as it is.”
My eyes popped open as I realized he was rock hard against me. “I’m sorry,” I mumbled as I executed the most awkward roll in history in the tight space to give him my back.
“Not helping,” he groaned as my ass pressed against him.
“Want me to move?” I offered, knowing there had to be an extra bag somewhere.
“No, I want you to stop moving.”
A small smile spread across my face. At least I still had the power to move him. Then again, probably half the girls on the ship had moved him. “Okay,” I said through another yawn, sleep reaching for me.
“Get some sleep,” he ordered again.
My eyelids agreed. “It didn’t mean anything,” I said, my words heavy and slow as my breathing evened out. “The kiss,” I added, in case he didn’t understand what I was saying.
“Maybe to you,” he said quietly, pressing a kiss into my hair as his arm wrapped around my waist.
“To you?” I asked as the world darkened and I slipped into sleep.
“Everything,” he said in my dreams.
