Chapter 5
CHAPTER 5
M oose!
The word formed in Janelle’s brain, and she opened her mouth to scream it, but no sound came out. The creature stood fifteen feet away, its massive head framed by antlers that looked like saucer sleds fringed with spikes. It snorted and pawed a patch of ground marking the tip of a triangle from it, to the door, to Janelle.
Sherman barked in the doorway, and Janelle jumped, stubbing her toe on a tree stump. The moose lowered its head, and a big flap of skin swayed on its throat. The beast pawed the ground again and Sherman gave another low growl.
Janelle glanced toward the door. How fast could she cover the twenty feet? What if the damn thing charged? She had no idea how fast moose could run, or even if they were aggressive. Hell, maybe it was just looking for food. Did moose eat berries and leaves?
Or did moose eat people?
She swallowed hard and looked at the moose again. The massive animal took a step forward. A big step forward, cutting off her path to the door.
Holy shit, now what?
She glanced to her right, spotting a branch that looked low enough for her to grab. If she could reach it and pull herself up?—
A flash of movement gave her no time to think. She shrieked and grabbed the branch, hoisting herself into the tree. She kicked out, her legs flailing in open air as she scrambled for purchase on the tree limb. She gripped the trunk with her bare thighs, not daring to look down as she dragged herself up. She reached for the next branch, then the next one and the next, thankful for her weekly visits to the climbing gym back home. The rough bark scraped her knees, her thighs, her arms, but she kept going. Her hair snagged on a branch, and she cried out in pain, but still didn’t look down.
A thunder of hooves sounded beneath her, followed by a fierce round of barking, a crack of gunfire, and a familiar voice.
“Janelle?”
She squeezed her eyes shut, not daring to look down. “Is it going to eat me?”
“What?”
“The moose.”
“Eat you.” He muttered something under his breath, but she couldn’t hear him over the blood pounding in her brain.
She had her eyes scrunched shut tight, still too terrified to open them. “Did you shoot the moose?”
“No.”
“Wasn’t that a gun I heard?”
“A warning shot. Sherman had him running the other way before I got here.”
“Oh.”
“Are you okay?”
His voice was directly beneath her now, so she opened her eyes and looked down. She’d been certain she was at least twenty feet off the ground, well out of the reach of the moose. She could see now that wasn’t the case, though she was well within Schwartz’s reach. He stood there in boxer shorts and boots with a flannel shirt that gaped open to expose his chest. Good Lord, the man had an amazing body.
He studied her with a mixture of concern and amusement. “Are you hurt?” he asked.
“I don’t think so.”
“Your legs look a little scraped up. Not that I’m looking at your legs.”
“What?”
He cleared his throat. “I think you can come down now.”
“You’re sure it’s gone?”
“Positive.”
“It won’t come back?”
“Between the gunfire and the barking, I think he got the message he’s not welcome for breakfast.”
“It was a him?”
“Yep. Bull moose. A big one, too. They can get a little crazy in the fall when it’s mating season.”
“It’s mating season?”
“Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “For moose, I mean.”
Janelle craned her head to study the woods in the direction the big creature had gone. Well, the direction she assumed he’d gone. She’d kinda missed the details when she’d started climbing. God, she must look like such an idiot.
“You gonna let go of that branch anytime soon, or you want me to bring your breakfast out here?”
Janelle bit her lip. “I might be stuck.”
To his credit, he didn’t laugh, though one glance at his face told her it was an effort not to. “Just let go and I’ll catch you.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
She scrunched her eyes shut again and took a breath. Then she released her death grip on the branch, untangling her thighs from around it. She was airborne for an instant, free-falling through the pine-scented air.
Then she tumbled into his outstretched arms. His hands caught her around the back, and he pulled her tight against his bare chest. She opened her eyes to find herself staring up into his face.
“Hi,” she breathed.
“Hello. This is becoming a habit.”
“What?”
“You fell into my arms at the bus stop before we’d even introduced ourselves.”
“Maybe we should start a circus act.”
He nodded and turned toward the cabin. “Come on. Your legs are freezing. Let’s get you inside and get you warmed up.”
She started to protest that she could walk just fine on her own, but his chest felt warm and solid, and he covered the distance to the front door in just a few short strides. Janelle sighed and relaxed against his chest, pretty sure this was wrong, but not caring all that much at the moment.
Fucking idiot.
“What?” Janelle asked.
Schwartz blinked, then set her on the edge of the bathroom counter as gently as he could. “ What what?”
“You just muttered something under your breath,” she said, biting her lip as Schwartz eased back to put some distance between them. “It sounded like you called me an idiot.”
Dammit, no. He’d been calling himself an idiot. How the hell had he let her get away from the house without him hearing it? He should have woken up. He should have known the instant she’d gotten out of bed. She could have been lost or hurt or kidnapped or?—
“I’m sorry,” she murmured.
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“You’ve got nothing to be sorry for. I’m the one who let you get hurt.”
“ Let me get hurt?” She cocked her head to the side. “I’m a big girl, Schwartz. I can injure myself without your permission.”
He shook his head, not wanting to argue. “Give me your leg.”
The fact that she didn’t question him at all nearly split his heart in half. She just stuck out her bare leg—the right one, the one with the biggest red scratches on it. What the hell did he do to deserve that sort of trust?
Nothing. You didn’t do jack shit.
He caught her ankle in his palm, turning it carefully to the left, then right. “You’ve got some pretty bad abrasions from your climb up the tree,” he muttered, trying not to let his eyes travel too far up her thigh.
But hell, the marks from the bark went all the way up. Was she wearing anything under that stupid oversize sweatshirt? She’d had those tiny little shorts on earlier for sleeping, but maybe she’d changed.
He should probably get dressed himself. He’d thrown the flannel shirt on when he jumped out of bed after Sherman barked. He hadn’t bothered to button it up, and the boxer shorts he wore didn’t do much to conceal the fact that touching Janelle’s leg was starting to have an effect on him.
He studied her other leg, which bore more angry red scratches on the knees and thighs. “Does it hurt?”
“A little.”
He let go of her leg and moved to the side to scrub his hands at the sink. He used plenty of soap, figuring the least he could do was avoid getting germs in her wounds. He dried off on the green towel hanging beside the sink, then turned back to face her.
“I have a first aid kit.”
“Okay.”
“It’s in the cupboard under you. I just need to get in there.”
He expected her to tuck up her legs to get them out of the way. Instead, she opened them wide on either side of the cupboard door, leaning back against the mirror. He closed his eyes, trying his damnedest not to look.
“Okay, sure—that works.”
He opened his eyes and looked down, taking a breath before he ducked into the space between her legs. He yanked the cupboard open, banging himself in the head and sending a tumble of towels and toilet paper onto the tile floor. He shoved it all back in, grabbing for the little red medical kit. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d used it, but he pulled it to his chest and stood up.
The dizziness hit him right away, but he wasn’t sure whether to blame his blood pressure or the fact that he was now standing squarely between Janelle’s bare thighs.
“Right,” he said, taking a steadying breath. “I think I’ve got some ointment here somewhere.”
He set the kit on the counter beside her and fumbled it open. He pawed through the spools of bandages and little pill bottles until he found a white tube of first aid cream.
“What’s in that?” she asked.
He glanced at the side of the tube and looked at the ingredients. “Bacitracin, polymyxin, salicylic acid, a bunch of other shit I can’t pronounce. Why, are you allergic to something?”
“No. Just wondering if it had any natural ingredients.”
“Natural ingredients?”
“I did some graphics for a spread in a women’s magazine last spring. Did you know willow bark has salicylic acid in it? The same stuff that’s in aspirin.”
“I’ll keep that in mind the next time I’m down at the creek and have a headache.”
She smiled, and he was so dumbstruck by the flash in those pale blue eyes that he dropped the cap from the ointment. He bent down to retrieve it as Janelle chattered on.
“I didn’t know there was a creek nearby,” she said. “How far is it?”
“Less than a quarter mile west.” He stood up, dizzy again at the sight of her thighs on either side of his torso. She had to be wearing those little satin shorts, or at least some panties, right?
“Will you take me there sometime?”
“Take you—oh, you mean the creek?”
“Yes. I love the water. It’s one of the things I enjoy most about San Francisco.”
“Sure. Sometime.” He set the cap aside and squeezed a little ointment onto his fingers. He started to reach for her leg, then stopped himself. What the hell was he doing?
“Here, you should put this on yourself,” he said, reaching for her hand.
She drew it back, biting her lip. “Can you do it?”
“Me?”
“Please?”
“What the hell for?”
“It always hurts more when I do it myself. Sort of like a Brazilian bikini wax?”
“What?” There was no blood left in his brain. None at all.
“It stings more when I do it myself. Besides, you just washed your hands. Come on, Schwartz—lend me a hand here.”
A hand was not the body part he wanted to lend her, but he grabbed her leg again, trying not to let his frustration translate into unnecessary roughness.
“For crying out loud,” he muttered as he began to stroke the ointment onto the worst-looking mark on the inside of her left knee. He tried to be gentle, but her skin was so soft and everything about her felt tiny.
He heard a sharp intake of breath and looked up to see her wincing. “You okay?”
“Yeah, sorry. Just cold. It’s okay, keep going.”
He massaged the ointment into her knee, using every damn shred of self-control he had to stay detached and clinical. It was just a knee, for crying out loud. Just a mess of ligaments and cartilage and bones and the softest, sweetest, most satiny skin he’d ever laid a hand on.
He grimaced and kept going, pausing to squeeze more ointment on his fingers as he continued up her thigh. God, were her legs naturally this smooth, or did she shave all the way up?
Don’t think about it, don’t think about it, don’t think about it…
“Looks pretty bad right here,” he said, and looked up to see she’d scrunched her eyes shut. “Does that hurt?”
“No.” The pale length of her throat moved as she swallowed. “Not at all. It feels really good.”
Something in her voice sent the blood surging from his brain to spots he really didn’t need any extra blood at the moment. Schwartz forced himself to keep going.
She’s hurt; she needs you to help her, not grope her.
“There,” he said, grabbing more ointment as he reached for her other leg. “I think you’re covered on that side. Can you scoot just a little this way?”
She obeyed, and Schwartz gave himself a mental pat on the back. He’d been standing here between her thighs for a good five minutes and hadn’t done anything unseemly. That counted for something, right?
He got to work on the other leg, dabbing ointment on the worst-looking spots and trying his best to minimize the amount of contact between his fingertips and her bare flesh.
“There,” he said, screwing the cap back on the tube. “All better.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
He stood there like an idiot, not walking away, not running, not getting the hell out of the damn bathroom like he ought to. Hell, he was barely breathing. Janelle’s gaze held his, and he felt like he was trapped in some sort of force field. He couldn’t look away.
But he could still move, so he took a step back. Or tried to, anyway. Janelle stuck her legs out, digging her heels into the backs of his thighs to make him stumble forward.
“What the?—?”
He didn’t finish the question, and she didn’t give an answer. Not with words, anyway. She locked her ankles together behind his ass and pulled him to her, her thighs snug and warm around his hips. Part of him wanted to resist, but it sure as hell wasn’t the part pressing into the heat between her legs.
“Stop,” he murmured, or at least that’s what he meant to say. It came out sounding more like “Yes,” which probably wasn’t the same thing at all.
He wasn’t sure how his mouth found hers, but suddenly he was kissing her. Kissing her hard and deep as he pressed her back against the bathroom mirror. She let go of the tiled counter and reached up to wrap her arms around his neck. Her fingernails dug into the back of his scalp, which felt way better than it ought to.
Her lips felt warm and soft beneath his, and the alarm bells in his brain were no match for all that heat. For such a soft woman, she was kissing him with surprising ferocity. Like a woman who hadn’t been kissed for years, at least not like this. His breath was coming hard, and he twisted his fingers in her hair to tilt her head to the side.
She moaned against his mouth and deepened the kiss, her heels digging hard into his tailbone. He was dimly aware of a damp heat pressing against the thin fabric that separated them, and the knowledge of how wet she was made him want her more. He slid one hand down the side of the bulky sweatshirt, then under the hem and up again. She was still wearing that damn flimsy tank top, but his fingers found the hem of that, too, tunneling up and under it before his brain could catch up and tell him it was a really dumb idea.
He was cupping her breast in his palm now, the weight of it making him insane with need. His thumb found her nipple and stroked it, making her cry out against his mouth.
“Don’t stop,” she gasped, and threw her head back, smacking it against the mirror.
He started to pull away, to check and make sure she was okay, but she gripped his hair tight between her fingers and forced him to meet her eyes.
“Don’t even fucking think about it,” she said. “I’m fine, I am not hurt, but I will be in serious agony if you take your hands off my body for any reason at all.”
“Right,” he growled. “Can’t argue with that.”
One of his hands was still cupping her breast while the other twined in her hair. He released his grip on her head and grabbed the hem of her sweatshirt. His sweatshirt.
“Never said you could borrow this,” he muttered.
“My mistake,” she said, smiling up at him with her eyes flashing in a beam from the skylight overhead. “Better take it back.”
“My pleasure,” he said, and yanked it over her head.
She laughed as he tossed the garment aside and started to reach for her again. But she was already grabbing the hem of her pink top, pulling it off before he could ask himself if this was a good idea.
“Great idea.” He claimed her mouth again.
His hands covered her bare breasts as his brain registered the fact that he had a beautiful woman on his bathroom counter wearing nothing but a tiny, silky pair of shorts. Panties, really, that’s pretty much all they were. He was still wearing boxers and the flannel shirt, but Janelle seemed determined to remedy that. She clawed at the shirt, yanking it off his shoulders so hard he thought he heard something rip.
Schwartz closed his eyes and began kissing his way down her throat, his lips and teeth and tongue devouring every inch of warm flesh he encountered. Her breasts felt weighty in his palms, and he was dying to taste them. He slid his tongue over her nipple, making slow circles as she gripped the back of his head and arched against him. She cried out as he moved to the other side, licking and sucking and feeling her writhe against him.
She had a death grip on the back of his head with one hand, but he felt the other hand sliding over the front of his boxers. Her fingers gripped him through the thin fabric of his shorts, and he bit back a curse as she began to stroke him.
“So it’s true what they say about a guy with big hands and big feet,” she murmured against his throat.
Schwartz licked the underside of her breast, making her groan. “Big gloves and big boots?”
She laughed and kissed the spot where his neck met his shoulder, then kept going, kissing his throat, his jaw, his ear; all the while her hand kept making him mindless as she touched and stroked and teased him through his boxers.
Then her hands slipped beneath the elastic of his waistband, sliding lower and lower until?—
“Christ,” he hissed as she began to stroke him. His brain flashed back to high school summers of heavy petting in the back of a beat-up truck, but his body assured him no teenage grope-fest compared to the magic Janelle was working with her hand.
He closed his eyes, wondering if he’d ever felt anything this good in his whole damn life. Her palm felt soft and her grip felt firm and somewhere in the middle of all that was the most perfect sensation he could imagine. He heard himself groaning as she pushed his boxers down his thighs, shoving them aside as she continued moving her hand over his shaft.
“God, you feel good,” she murmured, and Schwartz opened his eyes to see her gazing down at him in apparent wonder. He’d never had a woman look at him like that, and he suddenly wanted her so badly his thighs ached.
He kicked the boxers away and pushed against her, pressing himself into the thin strip of satin between her thighs. God, she was wet. The heat was dizzying, and he moved his mouth to the column of her throat so he could kiss his way down toward her breasts again. He ground himself against the damp fabric, losing his mind as she gasped and cried out.
“Yes!” she hissed, pushing against him with equal vigor. “Don’t stop.”
He didn’t. He kept going, grinding against her, dimly aware that the only thing preventing him from burying himself inside her was this flimsy scrap of satin. He needed her naked. Now. Badly.
He clawed at the waistband of her shorts, smacking his elbow against metal. Something cracked, so he’d either busted the toothbrush holder out of the wall or broken his arm. Did it matter? He just wanted her naked and wrapped around him.
Her lips brushed his ear. “Do you, uh—do you have any protection?”
Protection.
The word felt like a fifty-pound bag of lead slamming into his gut.
Protection. You’re supposed to be protecting her, asshole.
He jumped back, pulling his hands off her like her skin had scalded him. It damn near had.
Her mouth opened, and her hand still cupped the space where his ass had been seconds before. The toothbrush holder hung half off the wall, and Janelle sat there looking disheveled and beautiful and completely off-limits. Schwartz dragged his hands down his face and took another step back.
“No,” he said. “No.”
“Hey, it’s fine. I think I have a condom in my purse in the other room if you want to grab?—”
“No!” he said again, more harshly this time. “We can’t do this.”
What the hell was he thinking, riding her like some kind of horny teenager? Had he lost his fucking mind?
“What’s wrong?” She blinked at him, still looking so dazed and flushed and so fuckable he had to grip the doorknob to keep from reaching for her again.
He gritted his teeth. “I’m here to protect you, not to fuck you.”
“You can’t do both?”
“No. When people get distracted, people fuck up, and people die. It’s as simple as that.”
He raked his hands through his hair, then bent and grabbed his boxers. He struggled to put them on, missing the leg hole on his first try. When he finally got himself covered, he stooped again and grabbed her pink shirt. He tossed it toward her without looking to see if she caught it. He didn’t care. He just needed to get away as fast as he could.
He turned and fled toward the bedroom, hating himself more now than he had in almost ten years.