Despite the cold, his erection was strong and solid between them, awakening an answering ache deep inside her. She wasn’t a sexual person, so this desire so quick on the heels of last night was new. She wasn’t sure she wanted to be this lusty. Not with Carter. He had already proved to her that he was different, or rather that she was different when he was around.
He made everything she felt seem bigger somehow, but he also called to the parts of her soul she preferred to keep hidden from the world. She pulled her head back and gazed down into those blue-gray eyes of his. There was something almost harsh about his features, and she recognized the look on his face as smoldering desire. Last night had given her a glimpse into how passion changed him from that sort of mischievous badass into a man who knew how to seduce.
“Let’s go back to my room,” he said, shifting her so he could sit up.
She shook her head.
“Why not? It’s not like—”
Lindsey put her finger over his lips, rubbed it back and forth for a second. Then she brought her finger to her own lips and kissed it. She wanted to be able to dismiss him as easily as she always had. But she couldn’t. She thought about how awkward she’d felt this morning and how electrified she felt right now. She wanted him. Wanted to feel his muscled body moving against hers and over hers again. Not again. If she had sex with him again she had to be in control.
“You have to stop thinking that you are the boss,” she said, lifting her finger from his lips.
“I’m not?”
“No, you’re not.”
He swept an errant lock of hair off her cheek. “Then you aren’t on fire for me? You don’t burn when you think of both of us naked in each other’s arms?” His words fanned the flames that were already coursing through her. Of course she wanted that. Just wanted it on her terms. “We’ll go to my place. When I say.”
“When you say?” he asked, quirking one eyebrow at her.
“Yes,” she said.
He tightened his arms around her, and she felt him shift before he stood with her in his arms. “I don’t think so.”
He brought his mouth down on hers, and unlike the last time there was no doubt that he was in charge of this kiss. Her body, which felt as though it wasn’t hers anymore, stirred to life. She moaned as he angled his head and deepened the kiss. He held her as if she weighed nothing, but she kept her arms locked around his shoulders. Held on to him.
The only solid thing she could find in a world that she was losing her grip on. A world where all she could see was Carter. She couldn’t let him mean that much to her. She knew better than that. He was her sexy midnight man. That was all.
She thought being confused about what to do next was a problem, but dealing with this attraction to Carter was turning into something much harder to handle. She wasn’t used to lust or the feelings that coursed through her body. Her skin was so sensitive; her breasts felt full, her nipples tight. She throbbed for him. Needed him between her legs, and she didn’t care that they were in this clearing exposed to anyone who happened along. She had to have him now.
That wasn’t her.
She didn’t need Carter Shaw.
She loosened her hold on him. Startled, she felt his release as she sort of slid down his body and stepped back from him. She didn’t like the fever that had engulfed her.
He watched her with narrowed eyes, a flush on his cheekbones, his breath rasping in and out of his body rapidly. She put her hand out and took another step backward, stumbling in the snow and falling, and he stood there watching her. He stretched a hand down to help her up.
“Sorry if that got out of hand. My control disappears around you. I’ve never wanted a woman the way I want you, gorgeous.”
He was getting himself back under control. Giving her that rueful smile of his that made her heart soften and her fears sort of melt away. “Me, either. You make me forget everything I thought I knew about you.”
“That’s because you didn’t know me at all.”
She was beginning to believe that. But who was the real man? Did she really want to know? Could she handle him now when she was just barely able to limp forward toward finding herself again?
And could she live with herself if she didn’t? He had shown her a world and an experience she’d never found with another man. She really wanted to believe that it was better because she’d experienced it with him.
After all, this morning he’d given her back a piece of the winter world she’d used to love so much. While sledding down the slope wasn’t nearly as fast as hitting the Super G course on two skis, it felt like a huge step back to her old self.
LINDSEY’S CONDO WAS a little embarrassing now that she saw it through Carter’s eyes. She’d always lived sparsely mainly because she and one of her parents—usually her mom—had stayed in this sort of temporary housing during her years of training. Once she’d turned eighteen and started to live on her own, she’d sort of just kept it sparse.
But now as she led him into the two-story condo, she realized how plain and boring it might seem. Carter was surely used to more luxurious accommodations. And this entire bring-him-back-to-her-place-for-sex thing seemed to be backfiring.
“Nice place,” he said. “I’m a fan of the Nordic open-air interior design, too.”
She couldn’t tell if he was serious or having fun at her expense. But she let it go. “Want a drink? Maybe something hot?”
“The only hot thing I’m interested in is you.”
“Really? I don’t feel hot,” she said. Unless being a big, fat, hot mess counted, and she was pretty sure it didn’t. But for right now she shoved that aside. She wasn’t going to be able to get what she wanted from him if she let her doubts and fears plague her. And unlike standing on all that freshly packed snow earlier, this fear was a lot easier to conquer.
She heard the sound of the television next door coming on. The walls in this place weren’t exactly thick. “Sorry about that.”
“I have lived in apartments before, so I know what it’s like. Why’d you choose this place?” he asked, coming into the room and taking off his coat. He sat on the ottoman to remove his boots.
He was getting comfortable and acting normal. It made her realize how out of sync she felt. She took off her coat and picked his up, hanging them both on hooks by her front door. Her father had put them up when her parents had visited over the holidays.
She kicked her boots off and set them under her coat. Carter came over and did the same with his.
“So why do you live here?” he asked again.
“It’s close to the lodge. When I was cleared to ski again, I came back here thinking I’d go straight into training. My coach—do you know Peter Martin?”
“I do. Not sure he likes me very much,” Carter said with a huge grin.
“Why does that not surprise me?” she replied. “You do tend to annoy a lot of people.”
“I know. I like it.”
She knew he did. That had been obvious from the first. “Anyway, I got to the top and couldn’t ski down, and he suggested that maybe I stay here and teach classes so I’d be on skis every day as a way of getting used to it again. But so far it hasn’t worked.”
“Yet it did today. You went down a slope—”
“A tiny one. That hardly counts.”
He gave her