In The Roar(18)

Karel stopped the bike near a bushy trail. In stunned amazement, she watched the bike descend over a flat patch of land, to rest on the ground.





FIFTEEN



She closed her eyes and inhaled, taking in the moment. She was on another planet. The vacation she’d been denying herself had finally come and it was literally out of this galaxy. Not to mention she was with a man so hot, her skin sweat from just looking at him.

He slid from of his seat and helped her out. Wind ruffled the trees, whispering through the branches and gliding its cool fingers over her skin.

He pulled her into the seductive cage of his arms and brushed his lips over hers. Little fires broke out in her core, heating her from the inside. He glided his tongue over her lips. Tasting. Probing. She opened hers in a soft sigh and he plunged in, his tongue immediately caressing and curling over hers. She clung to him, her soft, curvaceous body pressed tightly to his muscular, harder one.

The kiss didn’t grow desperate, though she felt like she was. He kept it light, playful with a hint of ownership. A reminder of who was in control: him.

She opened her eyes the moment he drew away, taking in his stubbly beard, and licking her lips. She had a thing for men with stubble. On Karel, it looked like he’d just gotten out of bed and with his short hair tousled from the wind, she had no issues imagining him in bed with her--doing all the wonderful things he’d done before.

It felt a lifetime ago since then, but it had only been hours.

“I’ll set up our tent for the night,” he said and moved to the rear of the bike. He grabbed their duffel bags and headed toward two giant trees with long crooked branches that intertwined creating an X.

“That’s kind of up there,” she mentioned, making conversation. “Are your trees always so tall and gnarly?”

He laughed and took a bunch of thin sheets out of his bag. “Yes. Aurora is very old. It is common to find trees millions of years old.”

She stared at him in shock. She’d never heard of a tree being that old. She stopped asking questions and instead focused on watching him.

He laid a sheet on the flat grass and frowned. If they were sleeping on that, she was in for a rough night. But before her eyes, the sheet started to reshape, thickening and changing to look like a mattress.

Holy shit! They wouldn’t have to sleep on the ground and she wouldn’t have to make the acquaintance of otherworldly bugs. She definitely didn’t want any creepy crawlies getting friendly with her mouth, nose, or ears while she slept.

Karel grabbed another sheet and hooked it to a corner of the mattress. The sheet stood straight and twisted into a rope growing longer. While that one twined, he hooked another to the other corner and let it twist. After all four corners had an attachment, together they reached toward the branches.

The cords lengthened and wrapped around limbs, lifting the mattress two feet off the ground. She squatted to look under the mattress and noticed the bottom appeared to be sheet metal and the top plush like a normal mattress.

“This is insane!”

“What’s insane?” he asked, standing back to glance at the hammock bed. He placed another thin sheet on top and it extended over the mattress and thicken into a throw blanket. With a firm set of his lips, he turned to her. “It’s not the castle, but we’ll be able to sleep. I don’t want you on the ground.”

She curled her hands at her sides to keep from throwing herself at him. “You have been catering to me since I met you,” she said. “I could have slept on the ground, if necessary.”

He nodded, cupping her face and pinning her with his stare. “I know, but it is my honored duty to make sure you never have to.”

Her heart thumped twice as fast in her chest. “Life isn’t always comfortable. There are a lot of difficult situations we all face at one point or another. This would have been no different.”

“That’s true, but you’re important to me,” he reaffirmed. “It would be different if it felt like a job, but making you comfortable and happy makes me happy.”

“I wish more people like you existed.” She sighed, remembering the difficult times she’d had as a big girl with people, and even her family. “I’ve never been anyone’s priority.”

“You have gone through a lot,” he said, his eyes bright with that animal she knew lay beneath the surface. “I can’t make your past disappear, but I can tell you that it doesn’t define you. The woman you are is the woman you want to be.” He caressed her jaw. “Everything you went through made you stronger. Taught you to be the woman you are. It helped to decide how you would approach the world.” He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it. “I wish more women like you existed, because then other men would appreciate getting to know someone who has endured a hateful society filled with negativity, but thrived as a person.”