Chapter 6 Kai
KAI
The chairlift reached the top, and I didn’t bother trying to coax Zoe off. I just picked her up and set her on the ground, out of range of the lift.
I wish I could do that with all my newbie clients.
She started sliding down the gentle slope leading away from the lift, her arms windmilling. I caught up in two seconds flat, gliding alongside her. “Easy. You’re fine.”
Her eyes were wider than the mountain behind us, and I had to bite back a grin. The ground leveled off and she glided to a stop, somehow managing not to fall on her ass. It was a minor miracle.
Up here, the view stretched out forever—the valley below dusted with snow, pine trees dotting the edges of the slopes. A handful of trails branched off from the summit, each one marked with color-coded signs. Green for beginners. Blue for intermediate. Black for the good stuff.
A little color had returned to Zoe’s cheeks now that we weren’t moving.
Maybe too much color. Her skin was flushed pink.
It was interesting to see the color change in that creamy, pale skin I’d first noticed in the lobby.
But her eyes and hair were still the same.
I’d always had a thing for dark-eyed girls.
The way they glared at you made you want to do things that would make those flashing eyes become dazed with pleasure.
But I didn’t share any of thoughts with a young woman I barely knew. See? I could be good. Ish. “Are you warm enough in that suit?” I asked.
She nodded, but I wasn’t buying it. Women always got cold. They also frequently checked me out, which I was pretty sure she was doing right now behind those goggles.
Good. About damn time.
“Why aren’t you wearing a ski suit?” she asked.
Fuck, I guess she’d been checking out my clothes, not me. “Trust me, they don’t look as good on men as they do on women.” Particularly this woman. She was right, the suit was snug on her, and it showed off her thin waist and that juicy ass.
“But won’t your jeans get wet if you fall?”
Shit, she was adorable. “I don’t fall.”
Her mouth opened again, not in surprise but to ask another question. I’d seen this before. Nervous clients always stalled.
“Ready to start the lesson?” I asked.
“It hasn’t even started yet?”
I shrugged. “Not the fun part. Everything before this was preliminary. Like foreplay.”
“Foreplay can be fun,” she said, a little stiffly.
I grinned, pleased that she’d just made a borderline sexual joke. Progress. Zoe was a beautiful woman—there was no doubt about that. The question was whether she had any idea what she did to a guy.
But time to be a professional. “All right, let’s tackle the basics. Turning is all about shifting your weight from one ski to the other. Lean into it. Don’t fight the momentum.” I turned one way and then the other, demonstrating.
She watched me intently, like I was lecturing on quantum physics instead of explaining how not to make a fool of yourself on a mountain top.
“To stop, you snowplow—make a wedge like a pizza slice with your skis. Tips together, tails apart. Got it?”
She nodded.
“And keep your body loose. Relaxed. The more you tense up, the harder it gets.”
“Okay.” She wasn’t saying very much, but I could practically hear her likely panicky thoughts filling her mind.
“Ready to try?”
“Yes.” Her voice was so faint I barely heard it.
I led her to the bunny slope—the easiest route down, the one for beginners and little kids. I didn’t mention that part.
I stayed alongside her, close enough to catch her if she went down but giving her room to figure it out. She was doing okay for about thirty seconds. Then her skis crossed and she pitched forward, landing in the snow with a muffled yelp.
I pulled her upright, steadying her. “You’re okay.
Shake it off.” In my peripheral vision, I’d kept an eye on her hips and ass, because let’s face it, what guy wouldn’t?
But that made me see how rigidly she was holding herself.
Skiing, at least amateur skiing, was about going with the flow, letting your hips move from side to side.
Zoe looked like she was wearing a full-body cast instead of a ski suit.
I encouraged her to loosen up—again—and we kept going. She fell again about a quarter of the way down. I hauled her up, made sure she was steady, and we pushed off again.
Halfway down, after I’d picked her up for the third time, she looked through a break in the trees at the advanced slope running parallel to ours. A guy in a red jacket flew past, carving hard and fast, kicking up a spray of powder.
“Who’s that?” Her voice had a note of awe in it.
“A show-off,” I muttered.
But honestly? I wished I could show off for her. Show her what I could really do instead of holding her hand while she took baby steps down a slope designed for six-year-olds.
Irritation crawled up my spine. I shouldn’t have to do this. I was a champion skier, not a babysitter.
Except I couldn’t bring myself to be too pissed off about spending time with her.
“All right, stop,” I said, skiing in front of her. “Your problem is you’re way too stiff. You’re fighting the mountain instead of moving with it.”
She tried to make a wedge with her skis and managed to stop without tumbling head over heels. She stared up at me, breathing hard. “I don’t know what that means.”
“It means you need to loosen up. Here.” I moved behind her and put my hands on her hips. Through all the padding of the ski suit, I could still feel the curve of her waist, the way her body tensed under my touch.
Fuck, I liked this. Except making her muscles more tense wasn’t the goal.
“Feel that?” I shifted her hips gently from side to side. “You need to move. Flow with it. Skiing’s all about rhythm—left, right, left, right. Your body and skis need to be loose and ready to adjust your course at any moment. skis follow.”
I demonstrated again, guiding her through the motion. After a few tries, she started to relax into the movement, at least a little.
“Better,” I said, my hands still on her hips. I should probably let go, but I didn’t want to.
“Like this?” she asked, trying one more time.
“Yeah. Exactly like that.” I finally dropped my hands and moved back alongside her. “Let’s try again. And remember—loose hips, let them move.”
We continued down, and yeah, she still fell once more before we hit the bottom, but she was getting it. Slowly.
Asher had been out of sorts when he arrived yesterday—grumpy as hell after the drive up.
He’d described Zoe as frigid and stuck-up, which I’d filed away as useful information and possibly a fun challenge.
But the woman I’d seen this morning, staring out at the view with her mouth slightly open, hadn’t been frigid. She’d been awed.
And unless I was completely off my game, the awe didn’t completely stop when she looked at me.
So, frigid and stuck-up? Not what I was seeing. Terrified and really bad at skiing? Definitely.
So, I did my best to be patient. Picked her up when she fell. Didn’t let my hands linger too long on that shapely little body, even though I wanted to.
When we reached the base, she looked ready to kiss the snow-covered ground in relief.
“Want to try again?” I asked, expecting her to bail.
To my surprise, she said yes. She was a determined little thing, I’d give her that.
I lifted her back on the chairlift and sat down beside her. She was quiet on the way up, staring straight ahead.
“You scared?” I remembered to ask this time.
“No. Just angry.”
Shit. What did I do? I tried to see her eyes through the goggles. Had I made her cry? That had happened before in Colorado. Management had never let me forget it. No wait there had been two times. Jesus, no wonder I had a reputation for being bad with beginners. “Angry at me?”
“No. I just don’t like not knowing how to do things.”
I blinked. “Everyone starts at the beginning.”
“But I don’t have to like it.”
“If you were never a beginner, you’d never learn anything new.” I shifted to look at her. “You’re a student, right? Don’t you like learning?”
“Yes, but I prefer to do it myself with nobody watching.”
The phrasing put my mind straight in the gutter. My cock twitched despite the cold. I could tell she had no idea she’d said something suggestive—or maybe she hadn’t, and I just had a dirty mind.
Probably the second one.
“You’ll get better the more you do it, and soon you won’t mind if people watch.” There, that worked for both the G-rated and the R-rated meanings. I couldn’t help smirking as the ski lesson continued.