his head bent toward hers, his forehead wrinkled in concentration, his beautiful lips mouthing a word he’d never said before. There was the warmth of the fire and the bright, shiny, icy world outside the window. Frozen. Just like time seemed to be that day. There was the achingly sweet way he smiled so shyly at her when she caught him staring. The way canned pears made him lick his lips with delight, and the way his kisses became more bold, more practiced, more toe-curlingly delicious as the day wore on.
They trekked the few miles to the old logging road, unobscured by the thickness of forest, and Harper was able to get a signal. She called the group home and explained why she hadn’t made her shift, and then she called Rylee and left her a message when she didn’t answer. She thought about calling Agent Gallagher, but he hadn’t left a message for her, and she knew he would have if he had any new information about her parents.
A bird called out, a beautiful warbling sound that echoed through the trees and Harper smiled. Jak caught her eye and raised his face, putting his hands around his mouth and mimicking the song. It was so exact that Harper’s mouth fell open. “How’d you do that?”
He smiled, shrugged. “Practice.” He paused for a moment. “I wish I knew the names for things,” he murmured, almost to himself. “I know what they sound like, and what they do, but not what they’re called.”
“I can help with some,” Harper said, “but I don’t know the name for that particular bird.”
They walked slowly back through the forest to his cabin, a red fox spotting them, staring with wide eyes and darting away. Harper smiled, wondering if it was the mother fox out hunting for her babies.
“Foxes mate for life,” Harper said. She’d always liked that about them.
“Not all of them,” Jak answered.
Harper turned her head. “What? Yes, they do.”
He shook his head. “Where’d you learn that?”
“In a book.”
“The book lied. Some foxes mate for life. But not all of them. I saw this gray one with four females last summer. They were in three different directions. That guy was always running somewhere.”
“What was he doing?”
“Mating.”
“That devil.”
Jak laughed, the most open and honest laugh she’d ever heard, and Harper’s stomach flipped. “So what’s a female fox to do? How does she separate the monogamous male foxes from the chronic bachelors?”
Jak shot her a smile, obviously having garnered what monogamous meant and what a chronic bachelor was. “All males have to make a . . . case for themselves. Why should a female choose him? They do it in different ways. Birds sing or fluff their feathers. Some animals walk fancy, or dance around.” He shot her another playful smile. “Males have a hundred ways to beg. But it’s always up to the female to give her signal that she chooses him. Until that moment, he. . . circles.”
Harper stepped over a rock jutting from the snow. “Not in the human world. There, men take what they want,” she murmured. She hadn’t planned to say that, but she’d been lost in the moment, and it had rolled off her tongue.
Jak gave her a curious look and then stopped, turning toward her. She came up short too. “Do you mean me?”
She shook her head. “Oh, no. Please don’t think that. No. I . . .” She pulled in a deep breath and then let it out. The forest was silent around her, the trees overhead shutting out the blue of the sky. It felt like a different world, somewhere she could be different too. It felt like a place that would keep her secrets safe. And she found she didn’t want to keep secrets from him. She wanted him to understand her, to know her. “After my parents died, the first house I was placed into was owned by a woman with a teenage son. He would come into my room at night and . . . touch me.”
Jak stared at her for a moment, his expression growing dark. “Touch you? Like . . . I touched you?”
Harper nodded, biting at her lips, struggling to keep eye contact. It was not her fault, she knew that, and yet, God, why was there still so much shame?
“But . . . you were a child.”
Harper bobbed her head again. “Yes. Some people have sicknesses that they carry inside. Sicknesses of their soul. That boy did.”
He studied her intently for another moment, and she could see the wheels of understanding turning in his mind. “Your parents weren’t there. You were alone.”
“Yes,” she breathed. “I mean, it would have been hard under any circumstances, but yes, with no one to turn to”—she lowered her head, shook it—“it was . . . awful.” The last word died on her lips and Jak stepped forward, though haltingly. He raised his arms, his expression uncertain before he enfolded her in his arms, pulling her to his large, solid chest, the chest that held the proof that he himself had bled and hurt so many times. Alone in a way she really had no concept of, despite her own feelings of loss and abandonment.
He held her tightly, and she felt the tension seeping from her body, from her soul maybe if that were possible. Being held . . . when was the last time she’d been simply held close like this? Not in a romantic way, but for the sole purpose of providing solace? By her mother or father, she supposed. And, oh, how long ago that had been. Part of her wanted to weep with the sweetness of it, of the way it felt so necessary, when she hadn’t known how desperately she’d needed it. And the other part of her marveled that this man knew to provide her with it. When had he last been comforted, if he even remembered it? And if he didn’t, was this an instinctive act? The same way he’d figured out—quite adeptly—how to pleasure her body?
She squeezed him back, giving him—she hoped—the same thing he was giving her.
After another minute she pulled back, tilting her head and looking up at him. “Thank you.”
He nodded, releasing her, and she felt the loss of his body heat—the way he’d felt so strong and solid against her—immediately.