Melt

He shook his head. “Domestic replacement for the woman who had to be med-evaced out a couple of weeks ago. She’s actually a hairdresser, but like many of us, she’ll do anything for some time down here.”

Anything? Emma narrowed her eyes when she saw the twinkle in his. If another woman wanted to come here and experience everything Antarctic life had to offer, then she was perfectly entitled to do so. “Good for her for wanting to broaden her life experience.”

He leaned close and whispered, “But you don’t think a quick screw in a tiny locked bathroom would broaden your life experience?”

“Absolutely not. Too quick, too tacky, too uncomfortable.” She crossed her arms and stopped on the ice. “But enough. This joke’s old already. I am not your challenge for this trip. Go find someone else—I’m sure there’ll be someone desperate to roll in the ice and leap into that sauna with you.”

“But I prefer a challenge.”

“Only until the challenge is achieved,” Emma said tartly. “You’d just tick it off your list and move on to the next one, right?”

“Is that so bad?” His shoulders lifted. “I think sometimes people like to be a challenge. They like to set the game so the pursuit has to be relentless and hard.”

Relentless and hard? Oh my.

He moved closer. “Sometimes people want to be conquered. They like to have control taken away from them.”

She raised her brows. “You’re on thin ice with that idea.”

He chuckled. “I mean, they like to be freed to be as bad as they don’t dare to be ordinarily.”

“Really.” She almost rolled her eyes. “You’re into liberation?”

“Yeah, that’s it.” He nodded, laughter in his voice. “Sometimes people need to be set free.”

“By being conquered?”

“By having their walls of repression smashed.” He dared her to have a fit at him.

“Through sex?” she asked as sarcastically as she could, but inside she was totally heating up.

“How else?” he murmured. “By being dominated and made to lose control and succumb to the ecstasy.”

She managed a laugh and shook her head. “I don’t need to be liberated, thanks.”

“You’d prefer to be captured, then?” He nodded like he finally got it now. “How about bound?”

“You’re never tying me up.” A breathless denial.

“I’m not being tied up, either, so we’ll flag that idea,” he agreed. “Still, I’m sure we could set boundaries that we’re both comfortable with.”

“The boundaries are here.” She made a wall with her hands, slicing through the space out from her body—as if showing a force field around her. “No getting past these walls.”

“See?” He laughed. “You can’t help but set me a challenge.”

“No, you can’t help but see it as a challenge. There’s a difference.”

“I’m not convinced.”

“It’s only because you’re being so outrageous.”

“I’m only doing that because you’re so uptight.”

“I’m not uptight.” She stamped her boot.

“Please, you’re the most uptight person ever to hit this place. Too scared to look at any male in case he’s about to pounce. Making it oh so clear you’re here on earnest endeavors, and you won’t be participating in any of those hijinks.”

She tried to go back to prim. “I am here to work hard.”

“As is everyone else, but you can’t play, either?”

“Nope, not interested in being anyone’s plaything. Certainly not for less than a fortnight.”

“Why?” He sidled closer. “Got a boyfriend?”

She glared at him. “Is it really any of your business?”

“Thought not.”

“Don’t even try to suggest that I’m so uptight, what I’m in need of is a good, hard screw.”

His brows shot up. “Your words, darling.”

She wasn’t uptight, but she knew that physical intimacy led to complications. Keeping it light and fun wasn’t in her makeup. She’d missed out on the physical comfort most people got from their parents and family for a long part of her childhood. By the time she’d gotten to Bea she was a mass of prickles. She’d worked on it, but the first time a guy had bothered to hold her and whisper words of care, she’d read too much into it. Ditto the second time. For all her street smarts, she’d been naïve. Now she knew it was safer for her to keep her distance.

“So why are you here?” he asked, watching her closely and suddenly looking more serious.

“Who wouldn’t want to come to Antarctica?”

“But the people who actually get here tend to be quite driven. There’s something pulling them, so they will do whatever to get here.”

“I wanted to experience the isolation. I wanted to see what it was like to be surviving.” She looked at him. “Why are you down here? What drove you?”

“I’m on vacation, and I’m avoiding the holidays,” he said bluntly.

“You came all the way to Antarctica to avoid Christmas?” She laughed.

He nodded.

“But there’s tinsel all over the lounge,” she argued.

“I can handle tinsel.”

“Is it the family you can’t handle?”

“Bingo.” He grinned.

“You don’t think it’s worth making the effort to get along just for a day?”

“I think forcing people to spend time together when they’d rather not, with too much food and drinks and ancient issues on hand, is a recipe for disaster.”

Okay, she could grant him that, but she wasn’t going to verbalize her agreement—he was confident enough already. “I love Christmas,” she said.

“Of course you do. I bet you have one of those big happy family gatherings, don’t you?”

Actually, no, she didn’t. There’d be just Grandma Bea and her. “It’s not the size that matters.”

He opened his mouth, but she knew what he was about to say and clapped her gloved hand over his lips to stop him.

“Enough,” she admonished.

He smiled. She knew because she saw it in his eyes, but she also felt it through her gloved fingers—the soft sliding curve of his lips. She paused as the temptation to press closer whispered. She touched him for ten seconds too long, staring into his blue eyes. Then she felt movement beneath her hand…

He nipped her glove with his teeth, and she snatched her hand back, heat bursting in her belly. “You’re incorrigible.” And mesmerizing. She was the proverbial moth and he the incandescent flame.

He laughed. “And I’m betting you’ve had a fling go wrong before.”

“A holiday fling, yes.” She shrugged it off like it was nothing but was glad of the reminder—the thought of it almost doused the inferno inside her.

“What happened?”

“The usual.” She breezed through the basics. “I was on holiday with a bunch of people in close quarters in a foreign place. Half the people hook up. It’s all very intense and passionate and not at all real.”

Something flickered in his eyes. “Where were you?”

“Bali.”

“Your first trip away?”

“Yeah.”

“So you had a fling. And then?”

“And then there’s the end. The good-bye. The regrets. The what-ifs.”

“But you know the good-bye is coming. There’s no missing something you never really had.”

“Yeah? Definitely not something for him. But he’d said there was, so there actually was for me. So why would I knowingly go down that road again when I already know the hurt that’s at the end of it?”

His gaze narrowed. “There shouldn’t be hurt. There should just be a, ‘Thank you for making this time so magical. Without you it wouldn’t have been nearly so amazing.’”

“Is that how you play it?” She raised one brow. “You mean, ‘Without you I wouldn’t hav

e had all that hot sex.’”

“Nothing wrong with hot sex.”

“No, but that’s never all there is. There’s always more. There are always complications.”

“What were the complications with the Bali guy?”

“The affair lasted the whole trip. Every minute of every day together, you know? So there were tears at the airport—both of us.” He really had cried. “He’d said more…stuff,” she fudged, not wanting to reveal what a complete idiot she’d been. But he’d told her he loved her, that he’d wanted her to go and live with him, and that had played on her weakest part. No one had ever wanted her to live with him—not without being paid to do so. Not even Grandma Bea.

“So, he said stuff that wasn’t true?”

She nodded but didn’t explain further.

“He already had a girlfriend?” Hunter paused at her silence, and his brows shot up. “A wife?”

In some ways it would have been better if there had been another woman. Then she’d have come second to something. But no, the guy was single. “No,” Emma said quietly. “He just didn’t want to know me after the trip.”

Hunter frowned. “You met up with him again?”

“Yep,” she mumbled. It was the most embarrassing bit. She’d chased him, and he’d been clearly embarrassed. He hadn’t wanted to introduce her to his housemates; he was a total playboy who wasn’t up for any kind of commitment. He’d just been spouting rubbish to get his rocks off on holiday. Nothing had been so crushing. Her already tragic self-esteem had been trashed by that cutting lack of welcome and the curt good-bye.

She’d tried to recover her poise instantly. She had some pride after all. She wasn’t about to beg the guy. And she’d gotten the hell out of there as quickly as she could.

“Sounds to me like he wasn’t honest from the start.”

“He wasn’t honest at any time,” she said.

“Then he’s not worth spending another second of your life on. Forget him.” He made it sound so easy.

“I have.” She hardly ever thought of him. But she wouldn’t forget the lesson she’d learned. It was the final nail in her trust coffin. People could never, ever be relied on. No matter what they said.