She smiled, but it was forced—tears were back in her eyes. “At least maybe this way we won’t freeze to death.”
“This is going to be hard,” he told her quietly, “but we’re gonna fight to make it.”
Tasha nodded. “I know. I just...” She took a deep breath and started over. “Fighting and... and trying not to die is all well and good, but... Thomas, I’m sorry, I’m just feeling really stupid and desperate. Like, I’m trying to manage my burning need to live a lifetime with you in a single night, while still respecting your burning need to take this—us—slowly. And I know I said I wouldn’t push, and God, I don’t want to push, but what if this moment—right now—is all we get? I keep trying to convince myself that we’re gonna be okay—please God—and yes, you’ll read my book and tell me that you like it even if you don’t, and we’ll... we’ll... eat burgers and watch lots of movies at Werewulf’s, and we’ll have all the time in the world to—”
Thomas kissed her—not specifically to shut her up, although ending her panicky rant was a bonus. He kissed her because she was right. What if this moment—right now—was all they were given?
And right now, they had hours before dawn. Hours that he’d planned for them to spend sleeping, resting before attempting an arduous, dangerous journey. He had maybe fifteen minutes, tops, of prep left to do before they were ready to leave.
Tash’s torrent of words turned into a soft noise of pleasure as she melted against him, and his rush of pleasure and joy felt so damn right that he knew, without a doubt, that this wasn’t just for her.
Life was too damn short, and he’d already wasted too much time.
Thomas stopped thinking and planning and lost himself in kissing Tasha.
“If you were the twenty-three-year-old crown prince of Ustanzia,” Dave mused, as Rio pulled the SUV back onto the state road, “and you were heading to your family’s mountaintop ski lodge to rescue your...”
At his hesitation, Rio filled the word in for him, “Girlfriend. They’re not engaged yet.”
“Right,” Dave said. “No. But...” He cleared his throat. “Okay. Yeah. You’re Tedric and you borrow your... friend’s phone, and you convince him—Jeff—to pretend to be you and fly Daddy’s private jet at a time when doing that can get you into some real trouble even if you really are a crown prince—all of which Jeff had to have known.”
“Kayla said the prince tried to get him to come with,” Rio pointed out. “To storm a mountainside filled with hostiles with a single handgun. So Jeff definitely took the easier job by flying the plane.” There was trouble, and there was dead. Jeff Willems had chosen trouble.
“But what do you do now,” Dave continued, “if you’re Ted? Obviously he knows the jet’s landed and his prince-and-the-pauper act with Jeff’s been discovered. He’s busted—and he was smart enough to ditch the phone when he did. So he knows someone’s hot on his trail. Does he take the direct paved route to the ski lodge and drive right up to it, or does he go indirect, get as far as he can via back roads, ditch the car, and hike in?”
“He definitely hikes in,” Rio said. “Someone who engineered that whole fake-prince-flying-the-jet setup won’t simply drive up to the ski lodge, even though that’s the way I’d do it. Of course, I’m armed with more than a handgun.”
Dave opened the detailed map of the Ustanzian compound and the surrounding area. They still had hours left to drive—they just couldn’t get much speed on these winding mountain roads.
“I originally thought we’d do it that way, too,” he said. “Just drive on up to whatever’s left of the lodge, weapons at the ready. But that was before the royal jet landed at the airfield. I mean, the prince could’ve added Here we come in skywriting or maybe even a leaflet drop announcing his arrival, but nope, he didn’t have to.”
Rio nodded grimly. Whoever the hostiles were, they definitely knew that the cavalry was coming.
And thanks to Prince Tedric’s foolish game-playing, those hostiles had just been given a boatload of time to prepare.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Tasha knew that she should stop him.
They couldn’t talk if they were kissing, and they needed to talk.
But Thomas just kept on kissing her as he carefully unpeeled her blood-stained winter jacket from her injured arm. And she couldn’t seem to make herself stop kissing him back.
When he scooped her up, one arm under her knees—again, so careful of her arm—her mouth was free. But she couldn’t seem to form any words or do more than laugh her surprise as he carried her over to the sofa.
She could tell from the answering smile that danced in his eyes that he damn well knew the powerful impact of his Officer-and-a-Gentleman-ing her this way. She’d watched that movie on repeat, and therefore Thomas had, too, despite his squirreliness at watching R-rated scenes with her when she was barely fourteen.
“I know it’s not the same without my cover,” he told her now as he set her gently down on the cushions.
Tash laughed. “That wasn’t the big part of the fantasy for me.” In fact, the way that Debra Winger had casually worn Richard Gere’s gleaming white hat had made her cringe when she was younger. Uncle Alan’s stern-officer voice always popped into her head: My uniform is to be respected, Natasha, not treated like a toy. As a result, she hadn’t made the mistake of wearing his fancy white cover to play Ship Captain more than that one extremely regrettable time. “I’m not exactly the skinniest woman on the planet.”
“Why do so many women think being skin and bones is appealing?” he said, but then quickly added, “Rhetorical, don’t answer that right now.” He leaned in to kiss her again.
And damnit, she’d used up that non-kissing-window discussing one of her own foolish insecurities, as if he really was going to see her naked again after five long years, instead of stopping this insanity before it got that far, because she knew—he’d said—he wanted to wait.
But Thomas was kissing her like the word wait was no longer in his vocabulary. If there was any wait happening here, it was the homonym—the delicious weight of his body on top of hers. Ah, God! Of course that was at least partially the result of her pulling him closer as she melted beneath him, but he wasn’t resisting.
She’d gone so far as to open herself to him, wrapping her legs around him. If they hadn’t been wearing clothes, he’d already be inside her.
That knowledge shocked her into pulling back from the magic of his mouth. “Thomas, you really don’t have to—”
“Nah, Tash, there’s no have to here. This is pure want to.” The heat in his brown eyes was everything she’d ever dreamed of, but then he added the perfect dash of reality to the fantasy, upping it to an eleven by searching her eyes and confirming, “For you, too, right?”
She nodded as she made an affirmative noise, and then surrendered as he kissed her again.
Somehow their clothes fell away—her shoes and her shirt, his boots and sweatshirt, her socks and her jeans. Thomas must’ve done most of that, and surely she’d helped, but maybe she hadn’t, just thrilling at the intimacy of his touch.