Chapter 9
nine
KIT
White Winter Hymnal - Fleet Foxes
“You must be joking.” I came to a full stop while Jonah toddled on ahead, the snow nearly up to the top of his wellies.
He looked cute – a knitted hat on his head, that signature goofy smile on his lips – but the sharp incline of a hill before us was more distracting. “Of course not.”
I took a pleading look at the sky. The storm hadn’t started again, and some stars had even managed to peek out from under the clouds.
It should have been a blessing. “I’ll watch from down here,” I said, analysing the structural integrity of the blue sled tucked under his arm.
There were two hills: a small baby hill that looked safe enough, and, behind it, a monster hill with a degree of slope too insane to trust something as flimsy as plastic.
With skiing, I had years of practice and knew how to stop. I’d tackled black runs in the Alps. At least then I had a helmet, not to mention the trained first-aiders on site. This was sliding down on a kid’s toy, no brakes, no dignity. If I broke a limb, it was on Jonah to drag me to safety.
“Come on,” he insisted, dropping it to the ground. “It will be fun.”
“Fun is not flinging myself down a mountain on a piece of plastic you stole from a child.” I hadn’t even changed into proper snow clothes. I only planned to poke my head out.
“Just the small one,” Jonah countered.
Without much more argument, I followed him up. If there was anything I’d learned in my short time knowing Jonah, it was that he usually got his way.
We reached the top, and Jonah triumphantly placed our ride on top of the snow. “Are you ready?”
“To break my leg? Not really,” I said, reluctantly plopping myself down on the sled, trying to ready myself for the descent.
With his hands pressing on my back, Jonah began to count down from three before, with a squeal of joy from him and a scream of horror from me, he launched me away.
My heartbeat thumped as the wind rushed through my hair, gravity giving me significant speed. The cold air was almost unbearable, like jagged little spikes against my soft skin. I would have hated it…if it weren’t for the absolute thrill of going down.
I felt like a child again, the magic of the snow finally having some appeal, the discomfort worth the experience, the rush.
When I came to a stop at the bottom, I barely waited a moment before I was turning back around, clambering back up, the snow deep and slowing against aching muscles, the absolute joy unabating as I summited the hill once again.
“Did you have fun?” Jonah asked, his smile a mile wide.
“It was alright,” I said with a slight shrug of my shoulders. As I grew closer, I held out the sled. “Your turn.”
“Admit it,” he teased. “You loved it.”
I couldn’t help my telling grin as I held the sled towards him. “Fine. Maybe it wasn’t completely terrible.”
“You don’t want to go again?”
I shook my head. “We can take turns.”
Jonah smiled gratefully before climbing on board, his large body almost taking up the entire thing.
“Want me to give you a shove?” I offered.
“Hell yeah!”
I wanted to roll my eyes at him, but it was too irresistible. The effort he was putting in, all for me, to turn my trip around. And that goofy lopsided smile? The way his nose and cheeks turned rosy with the cold and brown tuffs of hair stuck out of his knitted hat? None of it helped.
With all my strength, I pushed Jonah down, watching as he whooped and yelled with glee as he accelerated away. At the bottom, instead of slowing down, he crash-landed, laughing as he rolled over the snow.
For a moment, he was still, and fear began to bite alongside the cold.
“Jonah?” I shouted. “Are you okay?”
Then, he pushed up, sitting straight upright from the snow, his arms stuck up in the air. “That—was—awesome!” And then he was up, running back up the hill. We took a few more turns, alternating, the freezing air burning our lungs as we laughed.
Back home, I’d probably be bored shitless at some A-list event, trying to avoid all the men searching for their fourth wife. Here, with him? I didn’t need to pretend. Around him, everything felt special.
I hadn’t felt like this in so long. This alive.
“Right.” Jonah clapped his mitten-clad hands together. “Are you ready for the big one?”
I followed his gaze behind me, the much bigger hill standing proud behind him. “Absolutely not. It’s practically a Munro.”
“Barely. It’s a little taller,” he retorted. “Come on, do it once, and if you hate it we can go back inside.”
I thought of the bottles of white wine we’d stuck in the snow at the cabin to chill, his fridge too full with tomorrow’s feast. All that food had looked like far too much for one person.
“Really?”
He nodded. “I promise. Try once.”
Reluctantly, I followed him up the peak.
I was almost sweating when we reached the summit, the snow difficult to track as we climbed, but the view from the top made it worth it.
The entire glen was lit up in moonlight, the snow sparkling under its glow.
Tall, white-peaked mountains curved round the distance, a forest of trees between us and the sleeping giants, stars littering the sky between dark storm clouds.
Not even a runway at Paris Fashion Week could look this beautiful.
“You ready?” Jonah asked.
“To die? No, I’m far too young,” I joked. “Are you going first?”
“And leave you to chicken out? Never!”
“Well, I’m not going first!” I said, standing my ground. “You’ll make me drag the sled back up so you can force me down again.”
He smirked. “You caught onto my dastardly plan.”
“I’m not dumb.” I rolled my eyes, looking between the sled and the foreboding slope.
“Get it over with, London,” he teased.
I peered down the slope again, stomach plummeting at the idea. I really didn’t want to do this twice. The sooner we both got to the bottom, the sooner I could get back to my wine and cheese.
“Come down with me.” I said the words as quickly as the idea popped into my head.
Jonah stood there, staring at me. For a moment, I wondered if he’d frozen in the cold. Then, he blinked.
“You want us,” he said, pointing between us, “to go down together?”
I nodded once. “We can share. Then you’re not left up here and you can’t force me to climb back up.”
He continued to stare at me, a flash of regret across his face like a shooting star in the night. An unmistakable slip of the mask that had a smirk curling onto my lips.
“I mean,” I said, revelling in his uncertainty, “unless you’re scared.”
Had that been his plan all along? To drag me up a hill, force me on a sled, but never actually take his turn?
His brows pressed together, mask back in place. “I’m not afraid.”
“Oh really?” If this was my ticket off this damn mountain, I was taking it.
Much to my regret, however, Jonah did not take the bait. Instead, he huffed once, his warm breath turning to a cloud of condensation, before lowering himself to the back of the sled.
“Well, climb on,” he said, motioning in front of him, between his spread legs.
I had not thought it through. I had not thought it through at all. Worse yet, I knew it was too late to back out.
Slowly, I shuffled through the snow to the front of the sled, lowering myself backwards until my bum met the cold plastic. “I don’t think there’s enough room,” I said.
“You need to move back more.”
“There’s no space.”
“There is,” he said, although the words sounded pained. “Can I put my arm around you?”
“Yeah.” I just about squeaked the word, holding my breath as his arm moved, snaking around my waist. And then he pulled me back until my back met his hard chest and I was fully seated in between his thighs.
I had to close my eyes to hold myself together. Even through our clothes and jacket I could feel the heat of his body, and, like a moth to the flame, I wanted more.
“Is that alright?” There was a heavy weight to his voice, the words practically spoken into my ear, our bodies pressed so close.
I nodded, only managing a single, cracked, “Yes.”
His feet tucked into the sled, bracketing me further, squeezed tightly into the middle.
This was a bad idea. A terrible, awful idea. And, even worse, I didn’t hate it at all. Not with my gloved hands placed on the outer side of his thighs, feeling the thick, sculpted muscle. Not with his hot breath on my neck, or his heartbeat thrumming through his body to mine.
No, I found that being in close proximity to Jonah wasn’t something I disliked even a tiny bit.
“Ready?” he asked.
I only nodded, my attention fixed on the distance ahead of us. With the distraction of his body, my fight or flight instincts were almost completely lulled into a horniness-induced stupor.
“We need to shuffle forward.”
“Shuffle?” I questioned, trying to turn around to catch his gaze.
“We need to move the sled closer to the edge.”
“Oh,” I said. “Okay.”
Jonah counted down, so we moved at the same time, using our combined bodyweight to push the sled forward.
The friction between us as we moved, the grind of his front on my behind.
I was getting turned on sledding.
“Again.” His voice was a low gruff, and as we reached the tipping point, I found myself wondering if he felt the same, if his reluctance wasn’t because of fear but because he had predicted this proximity long before I had – if I was the only stupid one in this fucking sled.
I was out of time; we tipped forward, and at first the world around me moved in slow motion. As we slipped further forward, an instant was all we needed for everything to speed up exponentially.
I gasped out a scream as we accelerated, the frozen air flying over us. My body was pressed hard against Jonah, fingers gripping his thighs as his arms at my waist tightened, no space between our bodies.
At ground level, the sled kept up its speed, sliding on the frozen ground, coming to an immediate sideways halt that left us both leaning too far to one side.
Gravity pulled our weight and tumbled us out of the sled, a toss of limbs and bodies hitting the snow.
When we came to a stop, I blinked softly, waiting for the sharp sign of pain or injury.
In the crash, I ended up rotated, my body pressing closer to Jonah’s as I protected my face with my arms.
Lying on my back, our limbs tangled, I blinked up to see the storm clouds break open and reveal a sky of bright colours. Hues of lilac and pink, ribbons of blue and green, they danced against the inky, dark, infinite night.
“Do you see it?” I murmured, my voice low as if I were afraid any noise would chase it away. “Or do I have a concussion?”
“I see it,” he said, his voice rough.
“It’s beautiful.” I couldn’t tear my eyes away, mesmerized by the beauty, each light dancing as if for our eyes only. A pocket of heaven.
There was a pause. Long enough I thought maybe he hadn’t heard me. Then, like it slipped out before he could stop it, he said quietly, “Yeah. You are.”
I turned my head, coming face to face with him as a bare finger twisted with a lock of my hair.
The northern lights shone onto his face, flashes of green and pink, highlighting his thick lashes that framed dark chocolate eyes.
His lips parted, his warm, heaving breaths filling what little of the frozen air was left between us.
The length of his body alongside mine was hot, reminding me how easily another naked body could help fight off a cold, lonely night.
“Are you alright?” he asked, his voice still that heavy weight, his skin two shades paler than it had been at the top of the hill.
No. I clearly need to get my head checked because I want to kiss you. “I’m fine.” I strangled the two words out, my entire body wound tight, my leg over his body. And yet, I didn’t move an inch. “You?”
“I’m okay,” he answered. My eyes searched his face, searching for a sign of a lie, but apart from the hat now askew on his forehead, nothing was amiss.
Nothing apart from that look on his face.
“You’ve got a little…” He trailed off, those deep eyes on my lips. I held my breath as his hand rose to my face, the delicate pad of his forefinger pressing against the edge of my bottom lip that pulled as he ran across it. His attention was fixated as he moved; I didn’t dare to look away from him.
Jonah looked relieved as he pulled his finger away. “Your lipstick got smudged. I thought it was blood for a moment.”
He lifted, showing me his hand, the ruby-red mark transferred to his fingertip.
Marked, as if he were mine.
Maybe he could be.
“Kit…” he trailed off, my name on his lips a loaded gun. One that screamed Go. “I’m having a hard time not kissing you.”
My single remaining thread of self-control snapped, and my lips pressed against his. He reacted immediately, his hands skimming up the curve of my body, pulling me closer to him, his mouth moving against mine.
It was every bit electric as I thought it would be, sparking fireworks down every nerve, every inch of my body.
I pulled back the fraction of space that I could bear, looking down at his red-stained mouth.
Marked, just like I’d wanted.