“Revenge.”
“You little weasel...”
“You can keep calling me any number of animals,” she said. “I’m not going to be insulted.”
“Polecat. Varmint. Badger.”
She bared her teeth. “If I were a badger you wouldn’t be so close.”
But suddenly, she became overly aware of how close he was.
And how the position wasn’t...innocent. Well, it was, because he was angry, and her legs were tightly closed, and he wasn’t making any kind of contact with her, but she felt...she felt the heat of his body radiating off him. Or maybe it was just his anger. But either way it was something.
He lowered his head closer, in defiance of what she had just said.
“Marmot. Digger squirrel.”
She arched up toward him and bit him. Right on the side of the neck. And he growled. Went stiff beneath her teeth, and she pulled back quickly, breathing hard. Feeling every inch like one of the scared little rodents that he had accused her of being. Her heart was thundering wildly, and she felt like something that had been cornered in its burrow.
His eyes were blazing into hers, but the heat had changed. It was different now. And suddenly, he moved, grabbing hold of one hand, then another, and pinning them up over her head. She was suddenly unbearably aware of her breasts. Of the fact that her shirt was see-through, and this position forced her to arch up toward him.
And she would’ve said that he was just mad. But Hunter would never hurt her. And none of his physical handling of her was about hurting her. So he was just...touching her. And this was...
There was no circumstance in which he would chase Sawyer down and pin him to the ground, even if he had grabbed hold of him and dumped him in a creek. That was the problem. There was no equivalent thing he would do to a man, which meant that he was thinking of her as a woman.
And if they were a different man and woman, maybe the interaction would’ve been playful, but they were them, so it was tinged with anger.
If she had to wonder where the anger actually came from.
If the anger was actually more about the fact that this...
This was wrong. In every way. Impossible, improbable.
And not...
She scrambled away from him, pulling her wrists out from his hold. She stood up, brushing the sand and grass from her bare legs.
“Consider us even,” she said.
“We are not even,” he said. “You can’t just say whatever the hell you want to me.”
“Did I hurt your feelings?” He should’ve called her a hedgehog, because right about now she had her spikes turned out, trying to repel him, trying to hide any vulnerability that she might inadvertently display.
“No, Elsie, because life has taken enough potshots at me that you’re not going to hurt me. But there are certain things that are off-limits. And anything to do with my old man is one of them, and you know that. That’s the problem. You know that. And you’re running around like a hissing, spitting—”
“Polecat?” she suggested.
“Yes. Like you can say anything to me, do anything to me. Like I’m not a man. I am. And I am not your personal punching bag, or your testing ground. Don’t play with me. Or eventually, something’s going to happen that you’re not going to like.”
There was a threat in those words that was different to a threat that promised violence. A sensual undercurrent that she would’ve said she couldn’t have recognized before this moment.
But now she felt like she couldn’t unsee it. Couldn’t eradicate it from the fabric of who she was. And he was right. She was pushing him, testing him. But it wasn’t because she didn’t know he was a man. She wasn’t playing. She was upset and she...she had been having difficulty figuring out why.
But it was because while nothing had happened in Vancouver, lines had been crossed that they couldn’t go back over. She had always known that he was a man, but now she had seen what other women saw in him.
And what she wanted more than anything was to be looked at and desired, and for one moment, for more than one moment, Hunter McCloud had looked at her like a woman he could want. And it had done something to her. To everything that she was made of. The very material she’d been stitched from. She didn’t want it. She wanted to want Travis. And she was cut up, tangled up, in this thing with Hunter.
“I know you’re a man,” she said. “But I’m a woman.”
“I know,” he said, the words scratchy.
She looked at him, at the stretch of ground between them. And she realized it couldn’t go on like this. She felt almost panicked with that realization. That she needed to do something to fix this. To change it.
But she didn’t have any amazing insights or solutions. She only had a mass of feelings that she didn’t know how to deal with. At all. And she didn’t want to run away from him. Not again. Because he was Hunter and she was Elsie. And they had the relationship they’d had for all these years. Antagonistic though it sometimes was. But he wasn’t a predator, and she wasn’t his prey. And she wasn’t afraid of him, or anyone else. So she stood her ground. And she looked at him.
And there was really no further indignity to be had. She had vomited her feelings all over him that night at the bonfire, and she was standing there reduced, having absolutely shown that she wasn’t fine or over any of it. Or handling it in any way at all. There was no pride left for her.
“Forget it,” she said. “I’m sorry. I made a mistake. Telling you that I wanted...something after Vancouver. I didn’t know what I was saying. I didn’t... I didn’t understand.”
“You do now?”
He rocked back on his heels, and he touched his neck. Right where she had bitten him. And it sent an arrow of desire down straight between her legs.
And she couldn’t deny it. Couldn’t pretend. Not anymore. Because these feelings were more real, more raw than anything Travis had ever made her feel. Than anything any casual fantasy she’d ever had about anyone or anything had ever made her feel.
She had never really known what it was to be attracted to somebody. She’d had vague longings about how she wanted someone to make her feel. How their attention might appeal to her. Or change something inside of her. Yes. She had experienced that. But this was different. This was outside of herself. This was...big. And she couldn’t control it. She didn’t like it. But she also had to acknowledge that it was teaching her something. A lesson she wasn’t entirely certain she wanted to learn.
“Yes,” she said. “But it doesn’t change anything, does it?”
“Even if it did, would you want it to?”