“This has to cook for an hour and a half anyway,” he says as he washes his hands in the sink. “Let’s go outside. I’ll give you your first lesson. You’ll be a mountain woman by the time I’m done with you.”
“Don’t be so sure,” I say as I step off the stool, my heart beating hard. “I think you’ve met your match with me.”
“I know I have,” he says as he gives me another of those smoldering looks that get me all shaky inside.
I think I’ve met my match with him as well.
Chapter Five
Mia
* * *
“You have to grip it like this,” Cyrus says as he yanks the axe out of the chopping block and hands it to me.
“I’m not an idiot,” I say with a shake of my head as I walk over to grab it. “I know how to hold an axe!”
I take it and as soon as he lets go, it falls at my feet, landing blade down, half an inch beside my shoe.
“Hehehe,” I say, laughing nervously as I look up at him. “I guess I shouldn’t be so cocky after all.”
In my defense, who knew that an axe would be so heavy?
“I guess we’ll work up to chopping wood,” he says as he picks it up with one hand. “Let’s start with something easier.”
“Like making a tent out of branches?” I suggest.
He sighs as he looks at me. “Like reading a compass.”
“People still use those?” I say, scrunching my nose up. “But everyone has GPS on their phones.”
“Not out here they don’t. And GPS can be turned off. How are you going to get around if that happens?”
“Uber?”
He shakes his head and sighs again, but I can tell he’s having fun. The corner of his mouth keeps twitching up.
I watch as he pulls out an old copper compass from his pocket and opens it.
“How do you turn it on?” I ask, teasing him. “And where do you plug it in?”
His eyes dart up to mine. He can’t tell if I’m kidding or not, which isn’t sounding very good for what he thinks about my survival skills.
“I’m kidding!” I say. “But I don’t know how to use it.”
He starts explaining it, talking about magnetic poles and other boring stuff like that and my mind wanders to other more interesting topics. Like what Cyrus looks like with no shirt on.
He’s pointing out things on the compass, and I’m pretending to look, but my eyes are on his thick forearm and the vein running along it, the black hairs, the rough skin. Who knew that a forearm could be so fascinating, so alluring, so sexy?
I keep asking him basic questions just to keep him talking. I love his voice. It’s all rumbly and deep. It’s like my body is in tune with that exact frequency. I can feel the bass in it tingling through me like when you lean against a huge speaker.
“Do you think you can get around with one of these now?”
“Yes,” I lie. I wasn’t paying any attention. It’s too hard to focus on the lesson when the teacher is a hot stud.
“What would you like to learn next?”
“Can you show me how you chop wood?”
He looks unsure as he looks at me. “You want to learn how to chop wood?”
“No, I just… want to watch… you do it. For research purposes!”
That sexy grin is back as he walks over to the chopping block and picks up the axe. I swallow hard, feeling my heart rate increasing as he places a piece of wood on the chopping block. My eyes are everywhere—on his big strong hands gripping the oak handle, his muscular legs planted apart, those wide rolling shoulders as he postures back up, those sexy brown eyes as he focuses on the wood. He’s so hot.
I just stand back and enjoy the view as he starts to chop the wood. He slams the axe down with a grunt and the wood splits apart, flying to the sides.
“You want to aim your axe along the natural cracks,” he says as he places another piece onto the block and points to a crack. “That will make it easier to split.”
“Aim along the cracks,” I repeat, pretending that I’m actually going to do this one day. Spoiler alert: I’m not. I’d rather keep my toes, thank you very much.
“You want to keep your feet shoulder-width apart,” he says as he shows me how to stand with the axe in his hands. This is good. I get to look him over all I want and it’s not suspicious at all.
“Hold on,” I say, pretending like I’m a good student and not a creepy pervert as I admire every inch of him. “Legs apart. Got it.”
His legs are so sexy. I’ve never cared about a man’s legs before. Never have the words ‘he has nice legs’ gone through my mind once in my life, but they’re running on repeat now. His thighs are thick with muscle and his old jeans hug them nicely. I just want to run my hands over them to see if they’re as hard as they look.