Page 7 of Forsaken Mountain Man
I stood, watching him. Water sluiced over heavy arms and a thick torso rippled with more muscle than I knew what to do with. Out here, all that was hard earned and I had no doubt that every part of him was much needed for pure survival. Except maybe that smattering of dark hair across his chest that wound in a fine trail much lower. The water obscured everything below in a haze of white.
Without opening his eyes, Bode stepped forward, out of the spray, as though knowing I needed to continue my perusal of him.
And …There was a reason this man stayed within the mountains. Because mere mortal men could not stand up next to him.
Shame on them.
Thick thighs were the perfectly proportioned home for the length that hung between them. Bode could walk for days without stopping for the look of him and what he could do withother parts…
I rolled my lips inward, willing the insta-fantasies back, then decided not to bother.
Because my feet took those next steps forward on their own.
What a liar I am.I took those steps consciously.
As long as that trek down his mountainside had seemed from his home to the ledge and to here, the next took no time at all. I stood before him in my filthy, three day old clothes drenched with the residual spray where Bode had emerged from the water to meet me. He still appeared as some sort of archaic mountain god drawn from an unknown realm, drifting toward his chosen mortal.
How fanciful could I possibly be?
But this was the man who drew wildlife and flora from literal gemstones, extracting their faces from perfect stones themselves. And now he stood before me, rivulets of pristine mountain water running over musculature that appeared as though he, too, had been carved from the earth’s stone.
The way he called to me, curling his fingers… I shivered. My body’s response had nothing to do with the plummeting temperature in the caves, away from the few shafts of sunlight that filtered in from above, though that same pale warmth didn't make it to where he stood beneath the water’s fall.
“I shouldn’t have come down here.” My apology tumbled from my lips, the first thought that fell out of my mouth the moment I opened it.
“Yet here you are.” Bode watched me through heavy eyes. His shoulders were more relaxed than they had been in the cabin above us.
“I followed you.” All the unnecessary words I uttered, my pithy volume stripped away by the cacophony that surrounded us.
He didn't seem bothered by the constant white noise that I couldn't block out. Those same damned fingers raised, curling inwards.
“What? No.” I wrapped my hands around my midsection in a one person hug, getting the joke. His sense of humor was as wacky as my own. He’d finally turned the tables on me. Up at the surface level, in his living area, he’d been the one sayingno. How neatly Bode Hunter had reversed our positions. Still, I had my own objections to this situation. “I’m not suicidal, thank you. It’s freezing.”
Bode’s expression never changed, but I swore his lips flickered in the faintest semblance of a smile before he sank back beneath the wall of water, the constant spray obscuring him from sight.
“Bode?” I stared at him, or where he had been, nonplussed. Was he coming back out? Was I supposed to leave? His invitation only seemed to extend so far, and my feet were already wet.
This is insane. I just met this man.
But he was everything that seemed perfect about this place. I had walked for three days through mountains and rain storms to meet Bode Hunter. What the hell was the point of being here if I didn’t understand the real man who made such stunning art if I turned down an opportunity like this?
Yeah, because that's the real reason you want to go waterfall swimming with a man you just met who tried to kick you out of his house but couldn’t because you were too stubborn about a job you obsess over.
Not that any of that mattered right now.
My decision made for me, I stepped through the veil of water, and into his world.
CHAPTER SIX
CORA
Silence cocooned around me in a cold sluice. The interruption of static and chatter, even within my own head, lasted a full second, nothing more. Bode’s hand, unseen, wrapped around mine, pulling me deeper. I crashed against his chest, my body pressed flush to his.
If I thought I’d been drenched before, I had nothing on right now. Every inch of my clothing was wet through to the inner parts. A violent tremor wracked me as Bode Hunter gazed down with those same unchanging eyes that brooked no argument. Even so, I had the sense that he was pleased I stood before him.
Heat from his oversized body eked into mine, whittling away like the water that washed over us, cleansing in its endless downpour. Neither of us spoke. I didn’t think we’d be able to hear one another beneath the endless roar, or end up drinking everything above us. Still, he leaned down and rested his forehead gently against mine.
Warmth seared me at every point of contact: where his brow touched mine, where our noses grazed. Thighs grazing, belliespressed together. Our fingers brushed as I swayed on the spot, though he stood still, unmovable as the mountain itself.
