She just hoped that that didn’t involve pain either.

“You okay?” Stone asked when he walked by her desk, stopping to look at her oddly, making her realize he’d had to ask her twice. She managed to nod her head. “Fine.” Just daydreaming about your brother having his tongue down my throat.

“You okay?” Annie asked her an hour later.

“Fine.” Still daydreaming…

But Annie didn’t buy it as easily as Stone had, and stopped to give her the once-over. “You look flushed.”

Yep, that’s what happened when one got caught thinking about having her boss’s hands up her shirt. “I’m good,” she said weakly.

“Well, at least you’re finally looking warm.”

“Yeah.” When Annie had moved on, Katie let out a breath. “Try hot. I’m hot. Hot for him. Dammit.”

“Hot for whom?”

Katie jumped, then turned to face Nick, who’d come up the stairs. “No one. And if you could not ask me how I’m doing, that would be great.”

“Right.” His mouth quirked. “Because you’re hot.”

“I-” Ah, hell. “Well, I-”

He lifted a hand and shook his head. He didn’t need to know.

Which was good. Great. Excellent. She really didn’t want to explain how it was that she was overheating over a kiss.

At the end of the day, she closed up and made her way downstairs. Generally, Annie had food in the kitchen. People came and went as they pleased, though several times a week they all managed to eat together. Tonight not being one of those nights, she grabbed a bowl of stew on her own. Afterward, she stood in the foyer pulling on all her layers to make the trek to her cabin-hat, gloves, jacket, boots. Just as she finished the whole production, Cam stepped inside, filling up the small area with his size and nearness that kept her warm in spite of the slap of frigid air he brought with him. “Hey.”

“Hey yourself.” He started to move past her, appeared to war with himself, then turned back.

She liked that he clearly had no idea what the hell to do about her, and rewarded that fact in a smile she couldn’t have hidden anyway.

He shook his head but smiled back. He wore loose jeans, a hoodie sweatshirt with Wilder Adventures’s logo on a pec, and a thick black scarf. He looked his usual scruffy, solidly muscled mountain-man self, and gorgeous with it, of course. Not to mention his scent. Good Lord, that scent should be bottled and sold under the name IMPENDING ORGASM. Just thinking it, she shivered.

He came close again, pulling off his scarf. Lifting it over her head, he settled it around her neck, still holding on to the ends. “Better?”

“I don’t mind the cold,” she murmured, turning her head so the scarf stroked her cheek. It held his body heat and smelled like him. Which was to say delicious.

Still holding her gaze, he slowly pulled on the ends of the scarf, tugging her closer.

Her pulse kicked into gear, her head fell back a little. Another mind-blowing kiss, please…

Looking down at her, he went very still. Only a heartbeat ago, he’d looked so big and bad and wickedly sexy, so sure of himself. And he was still big and bad and sexy, only suddenly he no longer seemed quite so sure. “You shouldn’t look at me like that,” he said softly.

“Like what?”

“Like you’re good with being this close to me, like maybe you want to be even closer.”

“You think you can read my mind?”

“You weren’t thinking that?”

“Well, yes. But I wasn’t going to say it out loud.”

“Good. Don’t. Not to me.”

“So you don’t want me to think about you.”

“No.” Slowly, with great care, he tucked the ends of the scarf inside her jacket, his fingers lingering on her throat, skimming over skin, causing all sorts of reactions within her. “Yes,” he corrected, then shook his head. “Katie…”

Her eyes drifted shut. He had that effect on her, creating an odd state of bliss. And God, the way he said her name. She really hoped his sentence was going to end with “can I strip you naked and taste every square inch of you?”

“I’m not someone you want to get close to,” he said instead.

Damn. That wasn’t anywhere close. She opened her eyes. “How do you know what I want?”

“I’m going off the way you kissed me.”

“Hey, there were two tongues in that kiss.”

“I know. And I started it.”

Well, that wasn’t technically true… But she didn’t plan on mentioning that. “Good night, Cam.”

Leaning past her, he opened the lodge door and gestured her out ahead of him. “You just got here,” she said.

“I’m walking you to your cabin.”

“You don’t have to-”

“I’m walking you.” When she didn’t move, he took her hand in his.

The moon wasn’t out yet, so it was a dark night, but she didn’t notice any of that, just the man holding her gloved hand along the path. They didn’t speak, which was fine with her. It wasn’t talking she ached for.

Halfway there, the bushes rustled. Cam didn’t even flinch, so she sucked it up and pretended not to notice.

At the front door of her cabin, she turned to face him. In his eyes was the same fierce hunger she was fighting inside of her own body, which was both cheering and sobering because he could fight this much better than she could. “Cam-”