Page 43 of The Ice Queen in the Corner Office

“It was my favorite,” I said, thoroughly bummed. Living in Atlanta, I didn’t get many opportunities to wear it, but it was the one I picked every time the temperature dropped below fifty.

He rubbed a thumb over my cheekbone, right beneath my eye. “You’ve got a nasty scrape.”

I scanned his face. He had several scrapes and his un-blacked eye looked to be bruising up already. I ran my fingers over the scrapes. “You’ve got several.”

“And more you can’t see,” he said. “At the very least, I’ll be covered in bruises.”

His words, and maybe the sheer adrenaline rush of surviving that fall, had me thinking of his body without clothes, of tracing scrapes and bruises in more intimate locations. I looked at his lips and my thumb followed, my inhibitions left somewhere behind us up the mountain.

His gaze heated, and he shivered. “This is a bad idea.”

“It really is.”

And then his lips were on mine and he was kissing me, gentle at first, teasing, light nips like he was testing to see if I’d slap him. But I didn’t slap him, I leaned into him, climbed onto his lap and slid my tongue between his lips. I wrapped my arms around his neck and he tangled his fingers in my hair and deepened the kiss.

I couldn’t help the wiggle of my hips as I pressed closer to him. I was rewarded with the feel of him hardening beneath me. He groaned, and I sighed with relief. Finally. I was finally right where I should be.

The thought stunned me. I broke the kiss and tried to slide off his lap, but he held me in place. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“I…” Shit. I’d started this and now…Damn, he looked good. His hair a mess, his lips wet from my kiss and begging for…I lost myself and fell into another deep kiss. This time, his hands slid under my coat and sweater, his skin cold against mine. I should have shrieked and pushed him away, but it felt so good to have his hands on me, I wasn’t bothered by their chill. He felt so good, everything he did felt so good, I didn’t ever want to stop.

But then he reached for the clasp of my bra and rational thought, my trusty companion and killjoy, reasserted itself. I pushed his hands out from under my shirt. “Alex, I—”

The sound of voices drifted over to us.

“I hear people.” I pushed out of Alex’s arms and stood very still. I heard it again. “I think they’re below us.” I pointed downhill like he might not understand what ‘below us’ meant. I pulled in a deep breath and tried to regain control.

He nodded, expression glum. “Yeah, I hear them, too.”

“Come on. Let’s try to catch them before they get too far away.”

“I can’t.”

I looked down at him, his hair mussed, his lips swollen, his…

“It’s my ankle,” he said with a smirk, his eyes tight. Now that he mentioned it, I did notice his ankle was resting at a weird angle.

I dropped to my knees next to him. “Why didn’t you say something?”

“I was a little distracted.”

I gently pulled up his pant leg to try to inspect the injury.

“Just go,” he said. “Catch them before they move on.”

I hopped to my feet. I’d forgotten about the people I’d heard as soon he’d told me he was hurt. I’d forgot everything but figuring out how to help him. “Hey,” I shouted. “Help.”

I grabbed Alex’s hand and tried to help him up.

“Jill, I’m way too heavy. Just go. Come back with help.”

“And if I can’t find you?”

He had no answer for that. I shouted for help again and then I resumed my efforts to lift him.

There was a lot of swearing and he nearly knocked me over more than once, but I finally got him on his feet and, together, we hobbled toward the voices while I continued to shout. Eventually, three people, in bright coats and hats, made their way through the woods to us.

With very little explanation, they grabbed Alex’s other arm and helped me get him to the trail, which was less than ten feet farther on. They helped us from there down to the trail head, which was just over half a mile down the mountain.

---