“The front?” Her question was accompanied by shrieking from the next trail over as another group went down the twin chute.
“That’s the safest place.” He helped her get settled on her knees and then realized he’d need to wrap his legs around her if he wanted to keep her steady.
The position shouldn’t be a big deal since she wore a long winter coat that tucked around her where she sat.
“Well?” She turned around to peer at him, her cheeks flushed pink from the cold. “Ready?”
He remembered other times he’d seen her fair skin suffused with color like that, right before she hit her peak…
“Yeah,” he lied, straddling the sled and lowering himself to sit behind her.
“Oh.” She let out a note of surprise at his sudden proximity, his boots tucking under the front of the sled so his thighs bracketed her hips. “Ooh.”
She settled against him, leaning her back into his chest and shifting her legs to fold beneath her. The movement wriggled her butt right into his lap and he acknowledged all the snow in the world wouldn’t be able to cool him off if they kept this up.
Ah—poor choice of words.
He ground his teeth against a surge of primal possessiveness.
“Hold on,” he warned her, using his arms to tip the sled forward down the chute.
Gravity shifted, pushing them into their seats as they tore across the icy run. Heather screamed and wrapped her arms around his knees, squeezing him tight to her. It was probably the ideal date for a hormonal teenager, but damn it was killing him. Her hair blew back on one side of his face, the silky strands whipping in the wind and couching him in her scent. He slipped his arms around her waist to anchor her to the sled, his hands aware of the exact distance between his thumbs and the underside of her breasts.
Are we there yet? Jared squeezed her hips with his legs as they flew over a small rise in the run that had them airborne for a few heart-stopping seconds. Heather murmured something that sounded like “Ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod” under her breath then squealed with delight when they touched down on the frozen ice and skidded to a stop midway across the lake.
For a tantalizing moment, they sat there, breathless from the run and seared together by the soaring temperatures wherever their bodies touched. If he shifted his arms or his weight a little bit, he could roll her right underneath him, his body perfectly aligned with hers…
“Don’t let go.” She whispered the words a fraction of a second before he would have bolted from the sled, her hands tightening on his knees.
He froze there, oblivious to the other tobogganers who must be coming down the chutes. Luckily their combined weight had propelled their sled much farther than the younger kids who took the ride, so they were fairly out of view beyond the lights of the run.
“I don’t think—”
She turned sharply in his arms, the movement applying exquisite—excruciating—pressure between his legs.
“Then maybe you need to stop thinking so damn much,” she chided him in a wispy voice that sounded as strangled with want as he felt inside. “There is such a thing as overthinking, Murphy, and the reason we got along so famously five years ago is that neither of us worked so hard at it that we got confused. Some things you need to just let happen.”
His brain told him she was dead wrong. He’d seen the effects of let it happen mentality play out when his brother had gone into the service a year before him, leaving behind a new bride he didn’t know was pregnant. Jessie had missed the birth of his son and alienated his wife because he’d married a woman he didn’t know very well without taking the time to build a relationship first.
But Jared stopped listening to his brain when Heather brushed her lips across his, her body splayed against him with total abandon. She was every bit as wild and willing as he remembered, and he was as captivated as ever by that.
Heat blasted through him as her hips settled against his, her hands fumbling with the zipper on his jacket before she eased it down a few inches, just enough to expose his chest. A growling sigh wrenched up his throat at the feel of her fingers spread across his shirt.
He unbuttoned her coat, his leather gloves sliding on the fabric as he opened it wider. Just for a minute, he told himself. The lights shut off on the run behind him, signaling the close of the chutes and deepening the privacy of their corner of the frozen lake.
He cupped a breast in one palm, hating the barriers between them even after he slipped beneath her sweater. Still, her muffled moan into his mouth told him she found the caress of leather pleasurable so he kept the glove in place, fondling the tight peak of her breast.