Page 127 of Jaded

Lo and behold, a few fat flakes drift down through the branches, prick cold against my cheeks. Still no sound or sign of Olli. I cast my gaze up the trail, but I can’t even discern his footprints, because he’s traversed this way so many times, his boots are just a shuffle of disrupted snow.

The faint pad of crunching boots reaches my ears, and I close my eyes to track the sound. It’s coming from up the mountain, and the footfalls are fast enough to belong to a jogger, which means Olli’s coming back for me. Probably laughing the whole way.

The idea isn’t even a thought; one moment, I’m standing on the trail, the next, I’m backing into the trees. Tucking myself behind a particularly large pine to hide from view even as I peer around to watch the pathway.

Olli jogs into view, his breath a pale ghost before his lips, his skin dark against the white of his surroundings. And the sleek, steady way he moves, his breath undulating, arms swinging, legs stretched to eat up the trail, he does look like he belongs here, under the trees and the sky, enveloped in snow.

He slows.

Slows, head turning, because somehow he knows I’m here, hiding . . . Shit.

His gaze angles down towards my footprints. I left a fucking trail of prints into the trees—

I dive out from behind the pine, clinging to that faintest thread of the element of surprise. His head snaps up in the instant before my body collides with his, my arms enveloping him in a hold that’s half embrace, half tackle. He stumbles backwards, keeping his feet, until his back hits the trunk of the tree behind him.

He’s laughing. “You’re not very sneaky.”

“Fucking snow,” I mutter, and I almost let go, almost step back, except he tilts his head upwards, and his soft brown eyes meet mine. And the rest of the world vanishes.

The trees, the snow, the cold, all of it, gone. It’s just those brown eyes, like immense pools expanding to fill my vision.

The soft scent of coffee and strawberries lurks atop the cold of the snow and the crisp tang of pines, and the warmth of his breath offsets the frigid tongues of wind against my cheek. I breathe him in, deeper, the faded suggestion of mint, warmth and softness and heat.

“Nat,” he murmurs, and suddenly his hand is on my cheek, adding more warmth—fire, actually, because those fingers are a brand against my skin. His thumb caresses the arch of my cheekbone, and I lean into that touch, that faintest brush. “I should . . . thank you. For staying.”

“Little ghost,” I respond, not breaking eye contact with him. His eyes flash in surprise, brows knit tighter in confusion.

“Why do you call me that?”

“Because.” I step in closer, so my legs line his, so my hips pin his, so we’re chest to chest, so I feel him in all the places I should, all the places I felt him last night, and the last time we kissed, and the time before that. All the places that haunt me. “Because I can’t stop thinking about you. Because it fits better than Aspen. You’re not like a tree—sturdy and unchanging. You’re a ghost, flitting around me, hovering over me, and I can’t seem to make you go away.”

“That’s . . . kind of poetic and also kind of unflattering,” he says, laughing a little.

“Shut up,” I say, and I crush my mouth to his. I might have intended it to be a sweet kiss, a soft kiss, a kiss of tenderness. But with him . . . with him it’s always instant heat, want, need for more.

I drive my tongue between his lips, and he opens readily for me, instantly, so those two tongues play a hot, wet game of push and pull. My hips rock forward into him, and my hands clutch at his hair, tilting his head back against the tree.

By the second thrust of my hips, I’m hard, hard enough he must feel it. Hard enough the press of his thigh sends a wave of fizzing pleasure through me. Hard enough to groan when he pushes back and I feel him, hard too.

I don’t care that we’re kissing like teenagers, rutting like animals against the trunk of a tree. All I know is him. The mint of his tongue, his sweet-bitter scent in my nose, his mouth devouring mine as his hips match mine for rhythm. The friction is such beautiful, brutal temptation.

Alluring, heady, not enough.

Like he hears my thoughts, Olli breaks off the kiss, his chest heaving under mine. “We don’t have to come in our pants, you know.”

My own breath shudders in a white cloud between us. My thoughts spin, and all I can really focus on is the pulsing need of my cock pinched between his erection and his hard thigh. I want more, much more, but . . .

“I don’t think either of us should kneel in the snow?” I say, like a question, because I’m realizing I’m out of my element. Again. “I’ve um, never . . . I mean, what else could we . . .”

Without warning, Olli flips us. So it’s me with my back to the bark and him pinning me. Like that night at the bar, the first time we kissed, the first time I realized how badly I wanted him.

Now is no exception. I ache for him.

So when he presses into me, grinding his cock against mine, I groan, nearly beg and tell him whatever he wants to do, I’ll do it—gladly, willingly.

Anything, for more of him.

“I could show you some things.” Olli’s lips whisper down my jaw. Down my throat. “Things I bet you’ve never done.”

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