Chapter 10 Sam
SAM
For the first few minutes of the trip, Sam occasionally glimpsed animals through the trees, almost certainly shifters and definitely incongruous in their wintry mountain surroundings: a zebra, an anteater, something that might have been a Tasmanian devil.
But after that, it was just them. The trail was fresh and clear in front of them. Blue sun-cast shadows whipped past. He had to stay on top of the twists and turns in the trail, which seemed to rush toward him. It was exhilarating.
So was the presence of Maggie pressed to his back.
And other parts not his back.
She was trying to keep from flattening herself against him too obviously, at least he got the feeling she was.
But after they had bounced over several bumps in the trail, which caused her fall against his ass, she seemed to give up and press herself more closely against his back, holding on to his waist. This was better, in a way, because now she was no longer bouncing on and off his back end.
But it also meant that he had Maggie plastered against him all the time, wrapped around him, jiggling a little with the movement of the machine.
And maybe that was why he was distracted enough that he did almost miss a turn. He saw it coming up on them at the last minute, wrenched the handlebars hard to the right, and then he remembered what Mauro had said about leaning, like on a motorcycle, and he leaned hard, pulling Maggie with him.
The machine tipped right over on the inside of the turn.
Maggie gave a loud, undignified squawk as they both plowed sideways into the snow.
As Mauro had said, the machine stopped moving the instant his hand came off the throttle, and they were very suddenly lying in the snow with the snowmobile flipped on its side, pressing Sam’s leg into the snowdrift.
They hadn’t been going very fast in the turn, so the general effect was like crashing into a pile of pillows.
“Maggie! Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she said, muffled. He could feel her squirming a little. “Uh, I think I’m stuck.”
“Me too. Under the machine?”
“No, under you.”
With a lot of squirming and struggling in the yielding snow, they thrashed their way apart from the machine and each other. Maggie pulled off her helmet, and Sam was vastly relieved to see her face emerge pink and grinning. She twisted her shoulders and shook snow out of her collar.
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine.” She pulled off a glove and shook snow out of that, too. “How about you?”
“Nothing bruised but my pride.”
They both regarded the machine laying on its side like a beached sea creature.
“What happened?” Maggie asked. “I couldn’t really see around you. We were starting to turn and then suddenly my head was in the snow.”
“I missed a turn. Totally my fault. I think I leaned too much and dragged us both over.” The machine was still sputtering, and Sam belatedly thought to turn it off. A sudden ringing hush fell on the woods, the perfect stillness of a winter’s day.
“We can flip rightside up, can’t we?” Maggie said. “I mean, we’re shifters. We’re strong.”
“Sure we can.”
He grasped the handlebars, and Maggie took the back end. With their feet slipping in the snow, wallowing and with a little occasional mild swearing, they dragged it upright and got it back on the trail, pointed in the right direction.
“I’m just going to hope this starts,” Sam said, and pushed the button.
It didn’t start. He had a moment of mild panic before he remembered the button had to be held for a moment until the engine caught.
When the machine was idling steadily, Sam said, “See? No problem.”
Maggie laughed. “I think maybe I’d like to try driving.”
“Sure. You couldn’t do any worse.”
“You were fine. I bet I’ll have us in the ditch in minutes.”
She put on her helmet and straddled the machine, and Sam had the somehow unexpected realization that it was his turn for his crotch to be pressed to her ass.
This was fine at the moment, because accidentally dumping them in the snow and having to turn upright a machine he’d crashed wasn’t the sexiest thing in the world.
The basic effect was like dumping a whole bunch of snow down his pants, more or less literally.
But now he was thinking about snugging up to Maggie’s back the way she had been to his, and oh no.
“You’re not getting on?” she asked, flipping the helmet’s visor up. “What’s the matter, don’t trust me as a driver?” There was a slight smile, but he sensed some uncertainty underneath.
“I do trust you,” he told her, and as a hint of that vulnerable wonder crossed her face, he realized that it was true. Not just on this. On everything. “I’m more worried I’m going to embarrass myself.”
Her smile returned in force. “By falling off? I’ll take it slow.”
“No. Falling off isn’t the problem. Look, just—don’t take anything you might feel too seriously, okay?”
Maggie’s eyes went wide. “Oh.” And then her winter-pink cheeks turned pinker. “Ohhhh.”
“It’s involuntary.”
“I know,” Maggie said, her voice rising a little until it almost squeaked. “That’s fine.” She flipped her visor down and turned around. He heard her say, muffled, “Go ahead, get on.”
Sam got on. He was doing okay until his groin slid against the roundness of her ass, which even her borrowed coat and snowpants couldn’t disguise. The threatened reaction began to occur immediately.
Think unsexy thoughts. Cleaning up sticky floors. Fawkes in spandex.
Unfortunately, his stallion was entirely on board with this activity, which it understood in its limited equine way. We are mounting our mare! This is wonderful!
Sam clenched his teeth. We absolutely are not.
This would work better with our pants off. And hers. Why do humans wear so many clothes?
“Shut up,” Sam muttered out loud.
“What?” Maggie asked. She was looking over the controls, familiarizing herself with them.
“Nothing. Just talking to myself.”
“Mmm.”
Our mate is very prudent and wise!
On that, at least we agree, Sam thought.
But we are not going to achieve a successful mating with all these clothes on.
Shut up.
Fortunately, just then the machine lurched into motion, and he had other things to think about than Maggie’s bottom. Like holding on to Maggie’s waist without groping anything he wasn’t trying to grope.
Maggie struggled a little with controlling the machine at first. Unlike Sam, she hadn’t had the opportunity to practice in the parking lot; she had landed right in the deep end on a twisting wilderness trail.
But she got the hang of it quickly, and Sam began to relax a little, now that he was no longer the one needing to watch the turns ahead.
Which once again put him in the position of trying to ignore the issue of Too Much Maggie and too little space. Except it was a very nice amount of Maggie, and just the right amount of space ...
Maggie stopped the machine on a straight stretch of trail, jerking him out of pleasant thoughts.
As it idled, she swung her leg over the seat so she was sitting sideways and took off her helmet.
“Sorry, I just needed to stop for a minute. And I was thinking, if we’re trying to find someone camping illegally in the woods, we can’t see much from this machine, and they can hear us coming a mile away.
” She hesitated. “Also, I’m ... not really sure where we are. ”
“Huh.” Sam looked back along the trail. “We’ve generally come east of the lodge, for the most part, I think.”
“How can you tell?”
“Sun,” he said, pointing. “It’ll be in the southeast at this time of year, and for the most part it’s been off to our right, or ahead. But you’re right, we’ve twisted around a lot. Do you have reception on your phone?”
It was immediately clear that neither of them did. Maggie’s phone had gotten too cold to turn on, and Sam’s wasn’t getting bars.
Sam unfolded the complimentary trail map, but it was very obvious that the map didn’t help if they weren’t sure which turns they had taken. They could be almost anywhere in its winding maze of trails.
“Well, this keeps getting better,” Maggie said with a sigh, tucking her phone inside her coat in the hopes it would warm up. “I guess if we don’t show up back at the hotel, they’ll send someone to look for us, right?”
“We can’t get truly lost,” Sam pointed out. “Your shift form has wings. You can scout by air.”
Maggie was already shaking her head. “No.”
“No?”
“I promised Hester I wouldn’t shift while I was here. I won’t break that promise.”
“And if she never finds out?”
“I would know,” Maggie said flatly. “You can think I’m a coward or whatever you like. I won’t do it.”
Sam gave her a gentle smile. “I don’t think you’re a coward. I admire you. That’s integrity, Maggie. You have it.”
They were sitting side by side on the machine. With her helmet off, Maggie’s hair was a curly, disheveled cascade. He yearned to touch it, to brush a strand off her forehead. The intense sexual longing when he was straddling the machine behind her had faded to something softer and more wistful.
“Can I ask you a personal question?” Maggie said, jolting him out of his thoughts.
“Sure. Go ahead.”
“Do you mind if I ask what happened to Charlie’s mom?”
Sam took a slow breath. He figured they would get to that eventually. “I don’t mind at all. She died when Charlie was a baby. Car crash.”
“And you were ...” She hesitated. “Very much in love?”
Sam smiled, feeling nostalgia and a faded grief twinge at him.
“I still miss her. But it was complicated. We weren’t married.
It was a rebound relationship for her, and my first serious relationship since I got out of the military.
So we had this fling. It was fun, we both had a good time, and neither of us really expected it to go much farther than that. And then there was Charlie.”
“Oh,” Maggie breathed.
“Kim was a great mom. That part was never in doubt. And what we would eventually made out of it, I don’t know.
Maybe we would have fallen in love and married eventually.
Maybe we would’ve found other people, and Charlie would have had two families.
But instead ...” He raised a hand and let it fall. “That happened.”
Maggie took his hand in hers. They were both wearing gloves, so it shouldn’t have felt as intimate as it did.
“You’re a good dad to Charlie,” she said quietly. “I wish my ...” She cut herself off abruptly. “Not everyone has good parents like that. But I know it when I see it, and I’m glad.”
Sam wasn’t sure what to say. I’m just doing what anyone would do ... wasn’t true, and he knew it firsthand; in his line of work, he saw terribly broken families up close. His work partner, Fawkes, had a background like that. So no, it wasn’t what anyone would have done.
But at the same time, parenting Charlie had never been a burden or a chore.
It could be difficult sometimes, of course.
Parenting was a never-ending parade of difficult things.
But it had always felt so inevitable, so necessary, that he never had a chance to think about what-ifs.
He couldn’t have done anything other than what he did.
“She’s a good kid,” he finally said.
“Yes.” Maggie smiled faintly. “She is.”
“She’s a mountain goat shifter, and she acts like one.
She’s almost given me a heart attack about a million times.
I used to find her in the most terrifying places when she was a kid, on rooftops and up ladders.
She just wasn’t afraid of anything. And that was .
.. the worst and the best thing she could possibly be. ”
“What do you mean?” Maggie’s attention was riveted on him.
“I mean that if there’s one thing I needed to learn to do in my life, it’s relax a little and not over-plan things. I guess all parents say they’ve learned from their children, but Charlie really has taught me a lot.”
“And do you never do ...” Her voice was husky. “Wild and crazy things?”
Her face was very close to his, her lips slightly parted as if she was going to say something more, but had stopped herself. It would be very easy to lean in a little closer and—
“Do you hear an engine?” Sam said suddenly.
He pulled back, and Maggie did too. Their hands were still entwined, resting on Maggie’s leg. He reluctantly let go so he could stand up. There was definitely some sort of engine sound, another snowmobile in the winter woods, coming closer.
“Do you think we should get off the trail?” Maggie asked nervously.
The other machine appeared up ahead and immediately slowed. It coasted to a stop just in front of theirs, head to head.
The driver, a tall person wearing a warm-looking coverall, removed her helmet to reveal a smiling face. “Hi! I’m Doreen. You all were gone long enough that Mauro started to worry, so I said I’d run out and have a look around.”
Sam grinned at Maggie. “You were right, they did send someone.” She gave him a brief smile back. “Thanks for looking. We would have started back soon, but since you came from the opposite way we did, I’m not sure if we’d have just ended up more turned around.”
“You made a big loop,” Doreen said cheerfully. “You would’ve gotten there eventually, I’m sure, but I’m just gonna turn around and then you can follow me back.”
“You’d better drive,” Maggie said to Sam.
“I’d happily ride behind you anytime.”
Maggie’s cheeks pinked further. “I know, but I think I’d rather just sit and look around for a while. I’ll leave the driving to other people.”
“My lady’s wish, et cetera.”
Blushing even harder, Maggie put her helmet back on.
Once they were settled on their machines, Doreen revved hers, backed up, and then—somewhat to Sam’s alarm—left the trail and took the machine at breakneck speed through the unbroken snow under the trees in a wide loop.
A rooster tail of snow flung up behind her.
In a few moments she roared back onto the trail and then slowed down to let them catch up.
Maggie leaned forward, bumping into Sam’s back, to talk without having to put her helmet visor up. “I think we’d both end up headfirst in a snowbank if we tried that.”
Sam couldn’t help thinking that Fawkes and Leah, especially Leah, would absolutely love this form of recreation. He wasn’t sure whether to suggest it, or leave them in blissful ignorance, considering the havoc Leah might get up to on a snowmobile.
Maggie nestled against his back. He gave the engine a little burst of gas and lurched forward to catch up with Doreen.
It was cold and he was getting hungry. He hoped there was hot chocolate and good food waiting for them at the end of the trail. But at the same time, with Maggie resting her head on his shoulder, he wished the ride would never end.