Page 20

Eve

Hot Lady Lumberjacks

It was a false floor.

Common at old mining sites and something Monty had specifically noted in her journal to watch out for. But, as always, I’d spent our time walking around feeling the usual pull of intense attraction, compelling curiosity, and mild irritation with Harper.

Which meant I hadn’t been paying attention one bit.

One second, we were mid-argument, standing in the rain, the only people around for what felt like miles. The next we were tumbling down together, so quickly my head spun. I landed first, hard, on the dirt-packed ground.

And Harper landed on top of me. Again.

Dust flew up around our bodies. It felt like every bone had been jarred and shaken.

Harper’s head was down, curled against me, and she was coughing.

Wincing, I peered up at the spot where we’d fallen, realizing we were only about four feet down, in what had probably been storage.

Rain continued to fall through the body-size hole above us, and the sound of the wind sent shivers down my aching spine.

“Oh god, did we fall into hell?” Harper asked weakly, still coughing.

“Hope not,” I managed. “Unless spending an eternity arguing with each other is hell.”

She shifted on top of me, shattering whatever shock I’d been in, so I now grasped the full extent of our situation. Which was Harper, sprawled on top of me—her untamed hair against my throat, her soft hips pressed to mine, her knees squeezing my waist.

She dropped her hands to either side of my face and pushed up with a bleary groan. Her glasses were crooked. There were streaks of dust along her jaw. She was close enough that the freckles splashed across her nose were visible, even in the dim light.

The deepest craving I’d ever known clawed through me.

My hand rose without thinking, only instinct. I threaded my fingers into her thick, tangled hair and brushed it back from her forehead.

The smile that flickered across her face was much too adorable given our current situation.

“I fell on top of you,” she said, voice raspy. “Again.”

I let my own smile curve up. “If you wanted a date, you could have just asked. You didn’t have to stage an elaborate fall into an old mine just to get close.”

A haughty eyebrow rose. “It’s cute that you think I have to manufacture these grand plans just to get a hot girl under me.”

“Don’t I know it, heartbreaker ,” I teased. “You can try and pretend you didn’t leave a trail of devastated hot people back in Brooklyn, but I’m still calling your bluff.”

She sighed, biting her lip. “It wasn’t like that, Eve. I swear I’m not like that.”

“Not like what? Worthy of being with someone who falls for you so completely that they’re devastated when you leave?”

She blinked, looking stunned, then pleased, then much too pretty. Her eyes traveled down to my mouth, lingered there. “I thought my relationships had the excitement level of watching paint dry?”

“Am I wrong?” I asked.

Her face darkened at that. She shifted back, like she was about to move off me, but I stopped her. Took her by the wrist.

Tugged until she was back where she started—straddling me with her nose only inches from my own.

“I don’t think you were the boring part,” I said, my voice low. “You have been unbearably captivating from the moment we met. I should have made that clear, and I’m sorry.”

Her lips parted on a shaky breath.

“What I was trying, and failing, to say…was that if you ended these relationships every time, and they were always polite and amicable, they probably weren’t the right person for you. If passion is something you want…then you deserve it.”

Her mouth tugged up on one side. “So you’re saying you think they were the boring ones?”

“Am I wrong?” I repeated with a grin.

She tried to hide a smile behind her hair. “Maybe…”

I laughed. “What was that?”

“You think I’m captivating?”

“In the most infuriating way possible.”

Her eyes were softening, her body relaxed where it lay atop mine. But I still sensed her walls up and knew exactly why.

“Hendrix,” I said roughly. “I’m really sorry. About earlier. I wasn’t explaining myself well, and I wanted…wanted you to know that I understand the choices that you had to make. Are still having to make. I’ve had to make them, too.”

I brushed another strand behind her ear, watched her lashes flutter. Wondered how Harper Hendrix had gotten me here: flat on my back in the middle of a storm, baring slivers of myself I hadn’t thought about in a long time. And doing it eagerly at that.

“When?” she asked softly.

“Before I moved out here to be with Monty, the reason why I dropped out. I was constantly sick, had this painful, unrelenting anxiety. I ended up in the hospital a few times with panic attacks. My last one was the worst. It was like…it was like I was drowning. That’s when Monty showed up, asked me to move out here and be with her. ”

Except you hardly even see her anymore , my brain reminded me, and fuck if that didn’t still hurt. The thought of Monty seeing the real me that day, crumpled in that hospital bed, as vulnerable as I’d ever been.

And she still wouldn’t share all of her secrets with me. Was currently camping in the middle of nowhere, clearly going through something, and I’d barely merited a single phone call.

“Before that,” I continued, pushing through, “I would have chosen the panic attacks over being honest with my family. Because the other option meant choosing my own happiness over theirs, and every single part of me wanted to run from that feeling.”

Her eyes were soft and warm, searching. “That sounds terrifying.”

“My brain was screaming at me that getting this PhD was all that mattered, that it would magically fix all that was wrong with my life.” Emotion welled in my throat. “It was really terrifying. I was…sometimes still am…so fucking scared.”

Harper nodded, her face carved open with empathy. It shone through her every pore, the way I felt seen in that moment. “I know that feeling, have lived with that feeling. Drowning is an accurate way to describe it. At the time, it seems permanent.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “It really does.”

“I’m so sorry that happened to you.”

“It’s a part of my life, and I’m not ashamed of it,” I said. “I just didn’t want you to think I come to this stuff easily, because I don’t and I didn’t mean to sound so dismissive. I remember what it was like being in survival mode. And there’s nothing for you to apologize for.”

Her dark brows met in the middle. “That’s not entirely true. I’m sorry about what I said, too. I…well, your whole deal isn’t entirely obvious.”

My lips twitched. “Oh, good. Glad to know my enigmatic air of mystery is still intact.”

She gave a slight tip of her head. “Not by much.”

A sinuous pleasure spread through my limbs. My fingers curled into her hair, a big, greedy fistful. I let my other hand tighten at the base of her spine, where I clutched the fabric of her shirt. Her breath faltered. I felt it against my lips.

“I’m sure you’re more honest in your relationships than I give you credit for,” she murmured.

“Maybe,” I said, more to myself than to her. Those words had sent a defensive ripple through my thoughts—spiky and arrogant. I wasn’t sure if it was because I believed Harper was wrong about me.

Or because, deep down, I believed she was right.

“You got any tips on how to be more honest?” I asked.

“Not really,” she said, practically a whisper now. The rain was a soft mist around us, soaking our clothes, but I was only aware of Harper’s delicious weight on top of me. “Do you have any tips for just…doing what you want? Enjoying the chaos?”

As she said that, she shifted her hips, pressing them down onto mine, a pressure so satisfying that I responded without thinking. I let the hand that held her shirt begin to slowly drift up, along her spine. A deliberate drag, the very edges of my nails skimming her skin.

“It’s pretty simple,” I whispered back. “Figure out what feels good to you. And seek that feeling any way that you can. No shame, just sensation.”

There was a heavy pause—nothing but the sound of the rain, the rush of wind, my own pulse roaring in my ears. Then Harper said, “Can I smell your neck?”

A delighted smile startled across my face. “Why my neck?”

Her teeth snagged her lower lip. “Because you smell really fucking good. No shame, just sensation, right?”

“R-right,” I said, a little dazed. Then I settled back, tipped my chin up, belatedly realizing how easily Harper had flipped our positions.

I wondered if she could guess how I usually operated when it came to sex and dating, how much I craved being the one in control.

To tempt, to seduce, to be responsible for another person’s complete and utter unraveling.

In every fantasy I’d had about Harper, she’d been the one to come undone, as many times as I demanded it.

But now Harper Hendrix was lowering her gorgeous face to that spot right where my shoulder met my neck, spilling more of her hair across us both. My right hand splayed across the small of her back, now bare. The other tugged, very gently, on the hair trapped in my fist.

Harper moaned, less an actual sound and more a shiver against my throat. It felt wrenched from the very core of her, not controlled or contrived.

It struck an immediate chord deep in my body, in the filthiest recesses of my brain. Had me aching to do something drastic—flip her over, bury my head between her thighs. Hear that breathy moan tumble from her lips again and again and again.

The tip of her nose traced a line up the front of my neck. Tentative, then growing in confidence. My eyes fluttered shut, my body adrift on a dream that this could be real, that this quiet intimacy between us in the middle of nowhere wasn’t a fluke.

“You smell like a hot lady lumberjack,” she said, and I could hear the smile in her voice. Felt her lips move. “Like oh, here I am chopping wood in the forest, but I’m sexy about it .”

Laughter bubbled up from my chest. From hers, too, the sweetest sound. Harper inhaled again, nudging her nose against the shell of my ear. Her other hand cupped my face, thumb under my chin, tilting it back so she could explore.

I liked being handled like this, liked being smelled like this.

“And what does a hot lady lumberjack smell like?” I finally managed to ask.

She hummed. “Dry leaves on a hiking trail. Moss on river rocks.” Another heady inhale.

“Sweat and sun and lying around in the grass.” Her lips hovered at my ear.

This time I arched back of my own accord, enthralled with the space between her mouth and my skin.

Barely there. So close. “You smell like you’d build me a fire if I was cold.

Like you’d build me a whole house if I wanted it. ”

My hand tightened in her hair. I was breathless and blushing, spinning out on the image she sketched for us both.

“Of course I would,” I murmured. “All you’d have to do is ask, Hendrix.”

She pushed up until her nose grazed mine. Her glasses were foggy, so I set them in her hair, let the heat and curiosity in her eyes strip me bare.

“What do I smell like?” she asked.

Fighting a smile, I tipped my face up to press it into the crook of her soft neck.

Inhaled at the spot where her pulse fluttered, let my lips ghost across the skin there.

“You smell like you’ve been eating oranges at the beach.

” Another inhale, along the shell of her ear.

“Citrus, sand, saltwater.” Another, this one across her jaw, smudging the dust there. “You smell like vacation.”

Harper laughed again, shuddering slightly when I dragged my lips—very, very lightly—across her cheekbone. “How interesting.” She sighed. “I can’t remember the last time I went on vacation.”

“I’ll take you,” I said, picturing Harper in the waves, the taste of salt on her skin. “We can go anywhere you want.”

She hummed beneath her breath. “Is that a promise?”

Our eyes were locked together now, lips hovering close. I wanted this kiss, wanted this woman, even as I knew there wasn’t a world where we worked as a couple. I didn’t even want to be a couple.

We didn’t even fucking trust each other.

“Eve?” she whispered, doubt flickering through her gaze.

I opened my mouth to respond—to say what, I didn’t really know. But then a flashlight was shone down on us both, and a big, booming voice said, “Y’all all right down there?”