Josie sucked in her breath. For as long as she wished to see him? That would be forever!
She looked back over the edge of the dune. It didn’t look so frightening anymore. Not with this new challenge. Not with her very virginity on the line.
But...
What about saving herself for love, for commitment, for a lifetime?
She looked back at him. Was Kasimir the man? Was this the time? Was this how she wanted to remember her first night, for the rest of her life?
Her heart pounded in her throat.
Should she let her husband take her virginity?
“Just so you know,” she said hesitantly, “my babysitter taught me to snowboard.”
“Even better.” He gave her a cheeky grin. “So with your head start, you have pretty good odds.”
She couldn’t help but smile at his smug masculine confidence. “Bree’s the gambler, not me.”
He gave her a long look beneath the blazing white sun.
“Are you sure about that?” he said softly.
On the other end of the dune, with a loud shout, the boys pushed off again, going straight down, good-naturedly roughhousing and cutting in front of each other as they skidded down the sand.
Josie closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and made her choice.
“I’ll do it.”
“Excellent.”
His blue eyes were beaming. He clearly expected that this would be no contest and that he would easily overtake her. He didn’t know that the entirety of the choice was still hers. Would she let him beat her? Or not?
Before her courage could fail her, she breathed, “Just tell me when to go.”
“One...two...three...go!”
Hastily, Josie tilted her snowboard and went off the edge, plummeting down the dune. Her body remembered the sport, even though her brain had forgotten, and her board picked up speed. For a glorious instant, she flew, and wild joy filled her heart—joy she hadn’t felt for ten years.
Then she remembered: if she won, she would sleep alone.
And if she lost, he would seduce her.
Slow down, she ordered her feet, and though they protested, she made them turn, her body leaning to drag the board against sand as hard and glassy as ice. It was hard to slow down, when her body yearned to barrel down the dune, like the reckless child she’d once been.
“You’ll never win that way,” Kasimir called from the top, sounding amused. “Turn your feet to aim straight down.”
Josie choked back a wry laugh. He had no idea how hard she was trying not to do that. A bead of sweat formed on her forehead from the effort of fighting her body’s desire to aim the snowboard straight down and plummet at the speed of flight. Couldn’t he tell? Couldn’t he see she was actually forcing herself not to win?
“Ready or not...”
Behind her, he pushed off the top of the dune. Smiling, she looked up at him as he glided past her on his snowboard. She saw the joy in his face—the same as when they’d galloped together across the desert that morning.
“You are mine now, kroshka!” he shouted, and flew past her.
Let me fly fast, half her heart begged.
Let him seduce you, the other half cried.
Then Josie turned her head when she heard a scream at the bottom of the hill. One of the roughhousing boys had lost control and crashed into the other, sending the smaller one skidding down the hard sand in panicked yells. The smaller boy, perhaps twelve years old, had a streak of blood across his tanned face and a trail of red followed him across the pale sand.
Josie didn’t think, she just acted. Her knees turned, she leaned forward and she flew down the hill. She had a single glimpse of Kasimir’s shocked face as she flew right past him. But she didn’t think about that, or anything but the boy’s face—the boy who moments before had seemed like a reckless, rambunctious teenager, but who now she saw was barely more than a child.#p#分页标题#e#
She reached the bottom of the dune in seconds. Ten feet away from the boy, she twisted hard on her snowboard, digging in for a sharp stop, causing sand to scatter in a wide fan around the boy’s friends, who were struggling up towards him. Josie kicked off her snowboard in a single fluid movement and leapt barefoot across the hot sand.
“Are you all right?” she said to the boy in English. His black eyes were anguished, and he answered in sobbing words she didn’t understand.
Then she saw his leg.
Beneath the boy’s white pants, now covered with blood, she saw the freakish-looking angle of his shin.
She blinked, feeling as though she was going to faint. Careful not to look back at his leg, she reached her arm around the boy’s shoulders. “It’ll be all right,” she whispered, forcing her voice to offer comfort and reassurance. “It’ll be all right.”