Taking the Leap (River Rain 3)

I let that trail off, not because I didn’t have more to say, but because I’d lost the ability to speak.

This was because his eyes were watching my mouth while I was doing it.

“Text you,” he murmured to my mouth, like that wasn’t where his mind was going.

I also had a sense of where his mind was going.

As in, he didn’t want to text me the info.

He wanted to personally show me the site.

With the glass shower.

That he would be using.

With me there.

Or, perhaps, in it with him.

Lord.

“Yeah,” I forced out, and it did, indeed, sound forced.

No, that wasn’t right.

It sounded breathy and strangled.

As you could probably deduce, I was generally no good at flirting (or chitchat, or mingling, or social situations on the whole, but definitely top of that heap was flirting).

However, with Rix, I was a mess and not only now. All the time.

I didn’t think in the time I’d known him we’d ever had a single one-on-one conversation.

This was the first of those too.

His attention returned to my eyes. “Yours?”

“Uh…sorry?”

“Coolest place you ever spent the night,” he reminded me of the subject we’d been discussing.

It had been my question, and it might have been the ballsiest question I’d ever asked any man, not just Rix.

“I go off route,” I told him.

“You mean off trail?” he asked.

I nodded, but then shook my head, which meant I ended up making a circle, which made Rix’s lips hitch again, this time just with amusement. And making him smile like that, I felt like throwing my arms out and arching my back, like I was breaking through the tape at the finish line, coming in first, winning the prize.

“That too,” I made myself say. “But I meant off route. I’m a byway person, not a highway person. And I was on a byway, outside Ouray—”

“Colorado.”

I nodded.

“One of the prettiest places on the planet,” he stated my personal opinion.

“Yeah,” I said softly.

He let that soft sound float between us for a second.

I felt weird about it, weird in a wonderful way, like the sound I’d made was pretty and the word was meaningful, and he was getting off on riding it and the feeling behind it, before he prompted, “You were on a byway…”

Good God.

He was.

He was paying complete attention to me.

Listening to every word I said.

So this was how it felt to be the center of Rix’s attention.

I’d wondered for a very long time.

I’d been a lot of beautiful places (a lot, a lot), but none was as heavenly as that right there.

“I was on a byway,” I repeated, “and I pulled into this diner. Cool place. Had a counter with a pie under glass at the end of it and everything. Sat next to an old-timer, we got to talking, and he told me about some hot springs not many people know about. I remembered the conversation, what he said. So, on a long weekend, I drove back up in the winter, snowshoed in where he said to go, and he was right on the money. It was exactly as he described. Trees and snow and this tuft of steam coming up from the spring. Pristine, not a footprint, no one around. Pitched my tent close to the rocks around the spring, barely had to use my sleeping bag they were so warm. Sat in the spring until my fingers wrinkled. Slept with my head out of the tent, gaiter pulled up over my nose, listening to the burbling of the water, staring through the evergreens up at the stars.”

I stopped talking, and Rix didn’t start. He didn’t move. And somewhere in sharing this memory with him, I’d missed his eyes had slid back down to my lips.

When he continued not to move or say anything for a long time, I finished, “So that’s the coolest place I’ve ever spent the night.”

“Heaven,” he murmured, not shifting his gaze.

A shiver trailed down my spine.

“Yeah,” I whispered. “Heaven.”

He still didn’t move.

I started freaking out, my lips with his attention on them beginning to feel tingly, and not thinking, I caught the bottom one with my teeth.

When I did that, his gaze came up to my eyes, and he had such a cocky look in his own, knowing just how hot he was, knowing just what reaction he was causing in me, it was not only mesmerizing, it was akin to about twenty minutes of foreplay.

Great foreplay.

So great, I almost moaned.

I did whimper (slightly and horrifyingly, because he heard it, and I got another hitch of his lips, and not the amused hitch this time, the other one).

Holy crap.

I might orgasm…

From flirting!

I instantly stood.

He sat back as I did, his brows snapping together as he looked up at me.

“I’ll be back!” I cried.

I was unnecessarily loud. Thus, I felt Judge and Chloe’s startled attention come to me too.