Chapter 17 #2
Instead, I’m staring at his back as he’s turned and going through his backpack.
The definition between his shoulder blades, the taper of his waist, not to mention the firmness of his ass beneath wet fabric that has absolutely given up on modesty.
The muscles in his thighs are carved and dense, flexing as he shifts his weight, and every slick inch of him is designed to torture me.
“I know you’re staring,” he says without turning around.
“Pretty much impossible not to.”
He glances over his shoulder, his smile slow and wicked. “Like what you see?”
“Your body’s ridiculous. Genuinely unfair to the rest of humanity.
” I grab my bag and duck behind a wide shrub before I do something mortifying, like keep staring until I owe him a formal apology.
Wet leggings off. Wet underwear off. I pull on dry ones, then fresh leggings, and thank God my sports bra stayed dry, but I take off my half-drenched shirt and grab a dry one from my bag.
“You decent over there?” His voice carries from his location.
“Absolutely not.”
“I meant dressed.”
“I know what you meant.”
His laugh comes low and pleased.
When I step out, Corey has his back to me, giving me privacy while he changes with no real effort to be less distracting about it.
His wet boxers hit the ground first, bare ass, and my eyes are locked on those firm cheeks.
Then there’s the hard shift of muscle along his legs, water glistening on tanned skin before he pulls on dry boxers and hiking pants.
Well, I got my eyeful, and unfortunately for my dignity, I have zero regrets.
When he turns, he’s still shirtless, and the sun glints across the planes of his stomach. Water clings to him in places, sliding down the ridges of his abdomen, and I hate my gaze for following it.
“Gonna put a shirt on?” I ask, adjusting my pack.
“Letting it dry.” He meets my eye and holds it, his grin softening into something more deliberate. “So. You and Jakob yesterday.”
My stomach drops. “He told you, didn’t he?”
“Pack members share everything, and he was extremely detailed.” Corey steps close enough that the heat coming off him ruins whatever composure I had left. “Made Brody and me jealous as hell, and I officially have a favorite number. Sixty-nine.”
“Oh God.”
“So you don’t need to be shy around me, Claire.” His voice dips, teasing but rougher now. “I practically feel like I was there.”
“Corey, please stop talking, or I’m going to live behind that shrub permanently.”
His gaze falls to my mouth, and his smile turns dangerous. “I’d move in with you.” He laughs, pulling on a dry T-shirt from his pack, and the spell of his bare torso breaks just enough for me to function.
In no time, we’re walking again. The trail climbs through thinner forest, the air warming, birdsong threading through the canopy.
The creek disaster purged the last of the morning’s tension, and we’re talking easily, swapping stories.
From his first terrible cooking attempt for Brody, and to me sharing my first book signing where nobody came for forty minutes.
“I told Katie you took me into the woods today,” I say, stepping over a mossy log. “So if anything happens, the police know where to find my body.”
“When you say anything happens to your body, how detailed are we going with Katie?”
I scoop up a handful of dried leaves from the forest floor and throw them at him. He swats most of them away, grinning, and a few stick in his hair before floating down.
A sudden high, frantic peeping sound reaches us.
I stop, then follow the sound to the base of a thick beech tree.
On the ground, on a bed of dead leaves, a tiny bird is hopping and squeaking.
Downy gray feathers, beak wide open, too young to fly.
High above us, a nest sits in the crook of a low branch, another chick visible at the rim, peering down.
“Oh no.” I crouch beside it. “It’s fallen out.”
Corey looks up at the nest. “I can’t reach it. Even jumping.”
“Boost me. I can get it from your shoulders.”
I scoop the chick into my cupped hands. It’s warm and impossibly small, its heartbeat fluttering against my palm. Corey crouches, and I awkwardly climb onto his shoulders, gripping the tree trunk with one hand, the bird in the other.
“Okay,” he says. “Hold on.” He rises, his hands gripping my thighs, high, steadying me, his fingers pressing into the muscle through my leggings, and the contact sends a jolt through me.
I reach up to the nest, which is just there.
My fingers find the rim, and I lower the chick in.
It tumbles against its sibling, and both start peeping furiously.
“Done,” I breathe.
He lowers me down. I slide along his back, my body pressed flush against his, and when my feet find the ground, he turns. We’re face-to-face. Inches apart. His hands are on my waist, on bare skin where my top has ridden up, and his palms are on fire against my sides.
“You good?” His voice is low.
“Saved a bird. Can’t ask for anything more heroic than that.”
“You’re my hero,” he murmurs with a striking smirk.
The forest is quiet except for the peeping above and my pulse roaring in my ears.
“We don’t seem to be moving,” I whisper.
“Probably best we wait. Make sure the birdie doesn’t fall out again.”
“Good plan.”
His fingers flex against my sides, and the pressure sends heat rolling through me so fast I forget to breathe.
My body is raging, needy, every inch of me too aware of his closeness, the solid weight of him beneath my hands.
The space between us keeps shrinking as though neither of us has any interest in saving ourselves.
“If you kiss me,” I say, my voice barely holding together, “I may not be able to stop.”
His gaze darkens. “Counting on it.”
My pulse trips hard. “Then what? We sleep here? There are bears. Raccoons.”
“Wolves,” he adds, mouth hovering close enough to steal the word from my lips.
I freeze. “Wait, there are wolves—”
Instantly, his mouth lands on mine, and the sentence dies there, swallowed under the force of him.
One hand drives to the small of my back, the other cradles the back of my head, and he pulls me in hard enough that every soft part of me meets the solid heat of him.
There’s no hesitation. No careful easing into it.
He kisses me like the last thread of restraint just snapped, tongue sliding against mine, teeth catching once at my lower lip, his breath rough.
I fist the front of his shirt and cling to him because the whole damn forest seems to tilt beneath my feet.
He holds nothing back.
This isn’t the playful Corey who grins at everything and turns every awkward moment into a joke. This is something darker, hungrier, the Alpha under the charm, kissing me as if he’s been trying not to all day and has finally stopped pretending he can behave.
My toes curl in my boots while my body arches into his, chasing pressure, heat, and the low sound that tears from his chest when I press closer.
His heartbeat pounds against mine, and I’m drowning in the sweet taste of his mouth and the terrifying realization that if he wanted to ruin me right here against the tree, part of me would beg him to hurry.