Page 26 of Noah's Reckoning
“No!” I barked. Then I checked myself. “You need to stay and watch the fire. Only when that log is nearly gone do you add another heavy log to it. Got it?”
“Now I do,” she said tightly. I knew I had upset her again by the way she wrapped her arms around herself.
“It’s got to be this way, Olivia.”
I wasn’t talking about her watching the fire. In my own way I was trying to explain why I had to keep hurting her. The more I snapped and pushed the more she would back away. I really needed her to back away.
Because I no longer just wanted Olivia. Turns out, I really liked her, too.
* * *
Olivia
“It’s one-seventy-one,” I said again as he slammed the cabin door behind him.
I spun around and looked at the precious fire and wanted to throw something at it. I was relatively certain I wasn’t going to leave this cabin with my sanity intact.
Mostly because I hated him and liked him and wanted him and hated that I wanted him.
Ugh! Why had I held his hand like that?
Because it felt right.
Shit. My walls of self-denial were starting to crumble.
God, that sound he’d made this morning. He’d been so hard under my hand and that groan had immediately gotten me wet. It made me wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t backed off.
He probably would have fucked me. Something which would have been more fun than being so irritated with him that I had stupidly added too many logs to the fire and almost smoked myself to death.
Bored, I wandered over to the supply trunk and opened it.
We had been sharing the one toothbrush, which was pretty intimate, but I suppose it was better than cotton mouth. On day three however, without a shower, I was probably starting to get a little rank, too. I tried to smell myself but all I could smell was smoke from this morning.
At the very least I could heat up some water and use the soap to take a cloth bath and rinse out my panties. With a solid plan for the day, I sprang into action.
I packed the kettle with snow and put that over the fire. I moved the storage trunk in front of the cabin door just in case Noah came back earlier than I thought he would.
He was looking for a reason to be away from me, I knew that. Now that the weather was better, he wouldn’t need to rush back. I had no plan of going down the path I did yesterday. That had almost been disastrous. But if he came back early, I could certainly justify doing some laundry.
I stripped and used the T-shirt I was wearing under my sweater as a washcloth. Used the hot water and soap to clean me first. Then I poured what was left of the hot soapy water over my panties. I wrung them out and draped them over the handle connected to the fireplace, but far enough from the flames they didn’t catch fire.
I immediately put my jeans on and my flannel over the sports bra I was wearing. Only then did I feel comfortable enough to move the storage trunk back to where it was.
Refreshed. My panties clean and drying. I had a deck of cards and a long day of solitaire waiting for me.
That and trying not to think about Noah.
I didn’t succeed.
7
Ark
At least I had scored a snow rabbit. When I saw the animal trapped in my snare, I wanted to pound my chest and grunt to my woman I had provided food. It had been overcast all day, but I could tell it was starting to get dark and, with that, the temperature was dropping.
I’d been gone for at least six hours and figured I couldn’t put off my return any longer. Not to mention, she had to be really hungry. I dug through the deep snow. My jeans were soaked. I wondered how she would deal with me taking them off and drying them by the fire.
Probably would get all huffy like she had when I dropped them on the boat.
