She pressed her palm against his chest. “Like hell you will.”
Mace chuckled. “That’s my girl. Welcome back, baby. I was beginning to think I’d lost you there for a minute.” He kissed her forehead.
Thank God you came back to me
. Mace tucked her head into his shoulder, nestling her against him. “Are you warming up now?”
“Yes, Mace, yes, thanks.” Her voice sounded husky, raw. “I’m really sleepy. Do you think it’ll be okay, if I fall asleep, I mean?”
“Yeah, baby, it’ll be okay now. Go to sleep. I’ve got you. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
Maggie snuggled as close as she could, resting her hand on his abdomen, just above his erection. Mace resisted the temptation to shift his hips just a little, so that her hand would brush the tip of his penis, but he knew he couldn’t be so crude, not at a time like this.
“Thank you,” she murmured against his shoulder. “I would have died out there if you hadn’t come for me.” Mace heard her sigh.
With his free hand, Mace brushed the hair from her eyes. He ran gentle fingers through her damp curls. “I’ll always come for you, Maggie. Always.” He waited to hear a reply, but the only sounds he heard were the moan of the wind in the trees above, the patter of rain on the tarp, and Maggie’s quiet, even breathing.
* * * *
Although the rain had stopped, Maggie was reluctant to move. She might be naked, but she was warm and dry and snug in Mace’s arms.
He came for me. Mace Williams came to find me without a second thought. He risked himself to bring me back. And he refused to let me stop moving.
She buried her nose against the side of Mace’s neck, inhaling. He smelled of crushed pine needles and clean, fresh rain.
I’ve never smelled such a fuckable man in my entire life
. She wiggled her hips against him just a little, testing the waters, but he didn’t move.
What are you doing? You’ve sworn off men, remember? Yeah, but…
Every detail of the night they’d spent together in Lynn’s apartment flooded back, in vivid, living color.
God, I want him. I want this one man
.
Hey, you’re stuck in the wilderness. No food, no cell phone, nobody knows where you are, and you’re thinking of sex? Are you insane? Probably.
Mace might be asleep, but it was obvious that a certain portion of his anatomy wasn’t. It pressed against her belly, insistent, hard, impossible to ignore
.
“Mace.” Maggie nuzzled his neck. “Mace.”
He opened an eye. “Hmmm? You all right?”
In answer, Maggie stroked the silky underside of his erection.
Mace opened both eyes and grinned at her. “Feeling better, I take it?” He rubbed himself against her open palm.
“Much better.” She slid down his body in their cramped quarters, her lips trailing from his neck to his collarbone, coming to rest at last on his small, hard bud of a nipple. Mace groaned.
“Do you know what you’re doing?”
“Um-hmm.” Maggie hummed the word; she didn’t stop sucking on his nipple.
“Are you in complete control of your faculties?”
“Yes,” she murmured against his chest, and she moved her mouth lower, to his taut abdomen. She licked his navel as her free hand traveled to his inner thigh.
Mace made a low, growling noise and shifted his hips so that the head of his cock brushed her lips. “Where are we?”
“In the Boundary Waters Canoe Area.” She licked him. Maggie heard him say, “Fuck, yes.”
“What happened to us?” His voice sounded hoarse, raspy.
“We’re stranded,” Maggie said, just before she wrapped her lips around him and took him deep in her mouth, sucking on his hard, steely erection. Mace wiggled around in the cramped space to make it easier for her, thrusting his hips and withdrawing, thrusting and withdrawing. Maggie felt herself grow hot and wet with wanting him. She knew in minute detail how incredible those thrusts would feel when he filled up her pussy.
“C’mere.” Mace’s hands reached down for her. Maggie let go of him with a reluctant sucking sound as he pulled her up his body. “I want those sweet tits of yours.”
Mace dangled her above his mouth. “Christ, you have the most beautiful breasts. Gimme…” He took a nipple into his mouth and bit down. Maggie gave a little squeal, she couldn’t help it. Everything the man did set her on fire. He switched his attention to her other breast, his hands on her rib cage, holding her suspended over his mouth and that club between his legs. Moaning, she tried to slide onto him, but he stopped her.
Mace pulled his mouth from her nipple. He looked up at her. “Maggie…” His voice sounded ragged and harsh, painfully raw to her ears. “Maggie, make sure this is what you really want, because I would sell my soul to fuck you right now.”
Maggie smiled and she lowered her face to his, brushing her lips over his. “Yes, I want you.”
“You want me, or you want my dick?”
“Can I have both, just this once?” Maggie slid the tip of her tongue between Mace’s lips.
Instead of answering her, he ran his cock through her slick folds, rubbing against her clit. The contact felt electric and Maggie jerked in response. Mace lowered her onto his chest and threaded his hands in her short curls. He brought her mouth back to his, kissing her with great tenderness, his movements lazy, slow, as if they had all the time in the world. When Mace finally let her go, Maggie lifted her head, dazed.
We
do
have all the time in the world. We have nothing but time.
Deftly, Mace shifted their positions. He loomed above her, spreading her legs apart with his knees. “Be careful what you wish for, woman, you might just get it.” With those words, he thrust inside.
Maggie arched to meet him, biting her lower lip, overwhelmed by the power of the man, the heat of him, the perfect way he filled her emptiness. Mace rose up on his elbows, keeping most of his weight off her as he pumped his hips, while she placed a hand on each side of his face and drew his mouth down to hers. She managed to kick one leg free of the sleeping bag and wrapped it around Mace’s ass.
He has a glorious, tight little ass
.
“Oh god…” She tore her mouth from his.
Mace panted. “Come for me, Maggie. Come for me, baby.”
He thrust harder, deeper, and Maggie responded, thrashing beneath him, careening toward orgasm. “Yes, Mace…yes…yes…yes…oh, that feels so good…”
“That’s it, baby, that’s it. Fuck, you’re gonna make me come. Right. Now.” Mace grew so fierce that Maggie felt as if she was once again buffeted by a storm. He pumped into her, hard as that proverbial club. Burying himself deep inside, he came with a growl, kicking her right into a second orgasm.
Both held still for the longest time, seemingly capable of nothing more than breathing. Looming over her in the twilight, Mace hung his head, limp. At last he pulled out of her. He rearranged the sleeping bag, keeping his body between her and the outside air. He wrapped her in his strong arms and they both lay back on the bed of pine needles, spent. Maggie’s body still quivered with longing for the man.
I’ve never, ever felt like this before. Oh my god, what am I going to do?
* * * *
“Have you had anything to drink today?”
Mace opened his eyes at the sound of her voice. “What?”
“I asked if you’ve had anything to drink today. It’s one thing to go without food; it’s something entirely different to risk dehydration. We need to drink. Where are the water bottles?”
Mace looked around their makeshift shelter. He reached beneath the downed tree, grabbing one of the quart bottles. “Here’s one. We can’t drink it all; we only have two quarts of clean water.”
“Fuck that, Mace, we drink it all and we refill the bottles from the lake.” Maggie struggled to sit up in the cramped space. Mace rearranged the sleeping bag so they could both sit. She shared the water with him, insisting that they each drink half. “We’ll drink the other in the morning and then it’s going to be lake water, and don’t give me any shit about giardiasis, no pun intended.”
He gave her a half-smile. “I’ve read about the Boundary Waters, Maggie. There are beavers up here. Beavers are the main carriers of giardiasis.”
“Big deal. Giardia tends to sift out of lake water, so we’re less likely to catch it. The dangers of dehydration are much more immediate, you know that as well as I do, Dr. Williams. Besides, we can treat ourselves to a course of Flagyl when we get out of here.” She grinned at him. “Fun, huh?”
He grinned back. “Nothing like being wind bound in the Boundary Waters with a woman like…” Mace stopped. He had no idea how Maggie felt about what they’d done, again.
Maggie looked into his eyes. “A woman like what, Mace? What were you about to say?”
Mace licked his lips. “I was about to say, a woman like you, but I don’t know if those are words you want to hear. You’re an enigma, Maggie. Seems like you want me, but you pull me close and then push me away. As I said before, I feel like a piece of meat.”
He watched her sigh and she dropped her gaze. “We need to prioritize. Our first priority is to get out of here alive. Everything else will have to wait.”
“If you say so.”
She gave him a look that he interpreted as
Don’t you dare
. “I say so. Okay, let’s take stock. What do we have with us, anything we can use?”
Mace decided if Maggie could be all business, so could he. “I’ve gone through everything. We have warm clothes, if we use the lake as you suggest, plenty of water, and we have this tarp and one sleeping bag. I have a pack of matches and we have the single-burner stove, but not a crumb of food and nothing to cook in even if we had food.”
Maggie reached into a pocket of her pack. She pulled out a flashlight and two airplane-issued packs of peanuts. She set the flashlight down between them and handed him the bags of peanuts. “Here, these are yours, I can’t eat them.”
“What are you talking about?” Mace rolled his eyes. “You eat one, I’ll take the other.”
“No, Mace, I can’t eat them. A bag of salted peanuts will give me an instant migraine and I can’t risk it. If I get a bad migraine, I’ll be useless and you’ll be stuck with a partner who can’t help get us out of here.”
“But you have some pain pills…”
“Yeah,” she interrupted him, “but they’re pain pills, they won’t prevent it.” She thought for a minute. “Crap, I better take my birth control pill or we’re double fucked. The last thing I need on this trip from hell is my period.” Maggie pulled out the baggie of pills and popped a birth control pill into her mouth. She swallowed without water. “Okay, one thing out of the way, on to the next. What do we do tomorrow?”
He was tempted to take her in his arms and kiss her senseless.
More fucking
was what he wanted to say, but he didn’t. “We’ll have to see what the weather is like before we decide upon our next move. For now, I’d say we put on some dry clothes and try to sleep. It’s cold, it’s rainy, there’s nothing to eat. Sleeping until dawn makes the most sense. If we’re lucky, these winds will die down overnight.”
The two dug through their packs. Mace pulled out a long-sleeved Henley and a pair of polypropylene leggings. He saw Maggie watching as he put them on. He waggled his eyebrows at her and she punched him in the arm, making him laugh out loud. She set her own polypropylene long underwear between them, but instead of dressing, she grabbed the flashlight.
“I need to get up,” she said. “I have to find a place to pee.”
“Put on your clothes before you leave the shelter.”
“No, I don’t want to get them wet. I’ll be quick, I promise. And then you can use the flashlight if you need to.”
Mace laughed at the note of embarrassment in her voice. “Don’t sweat it. I can just stand under the tree and take a piss.”
“Men…”
He tweaked her under the chin. “One of the few advantages.”