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The night grew still, and a gentle wind rustled dry leaves. An owl hooted at occasional intervals. Behind her, Mark’s chest rose and fell in a slow, rhythmic cycle. Bone-tired, she listened to him breathe. Too wired and frightened to fall asleep, she stared at the swaying shadows of tree limbs and prayed she’d live another day.
****
Swishing tree branches awakened her. She opened one bleary eye to confirm darkness still hid their location. Mark had wrapped his muscular arm tight around her waist, and warmth spread through her back. Like a broken mosaic, disordered images from the past two days appeared in her memory without warning but didn’t make any sense. Eager to wish their ordeal away and return home, she burrowed closer to Mark’s chest. She visualized packing away all the painful memories into tidy boxes in her mind’s attic, then locking the door in hopes they’d disappear forever. Later, she could reconcile all she’d seen and, worse, what she’d done.
Mark stirred, and his left arm tightened around her waist.
They’d stayed spooned together since falling asleep, and their proximity revived a sublime, intimate comfort she sorely missed. Although they were fugitives struggling to survive, she let her mind run wild for a few moments. Smelling the remnant wisps of his cologne, a heady mix of sandalwood and amber, she felt her restraint slip away.
She scolded herself for daydreaming and decided he’d kept her warm to protect her from becoming hypothermic, an obstacle that would jeopardize their escape. And their earlier embrace? She wrote off his expression of gratitude as an anomaly and nothing more.
He repositioned his body a few inches, and his top leg curled over hers.
“Mark, are you awake?” she whispered.
He jerked and moved his leg away. “Now I am. Everything all right?”
Groggy, his raspy voice held a note of concern, but she hadn’t meant to startle him. “Yes, but we’ll need to start running again soon.”
“Not for a couple of minutes at least,” he mumbled into her back.
Soaking up their shared warmth, she rolled over to face him and tucked her head against his chest. “Thanks for keeping me warm. How are you doing?”
“Other than hiding out from terrorists and sleeping in the woods? Achy.”
“Pretty well, then.”
“I’m alive and didn’t wake up alone, so I’d say yes.” Stretching his arms, he yawned.
She smiled in the dark. “Thanks to you, I’m alive, too.”
The clouds above shifted, and moonlight beams shone through the fir tree branches into their fort. Mark nestled closer with a sleepy smile, and the lengths of their bodies pressed together. The sounds of the forest grew quiet, and something unspoken, yet palpable, passed between them.
His blue-eyed gaze entranced her, magical like perfect, round-cut sapphires. She couldn’t help but notice an unmistakable firmness against her lower hip and wondered if perhaps he wasn’t so exhausted, after all. Unable to resist, she touched the golden stubble on his cheek. “What should we do?”
He didn’t answer for several seconds. “I want to kiss you.”
A hint of confession mixed with desire infused his voice. Without waiting for an answer, he cupped her face with his hands and kissed her lips tentatively. The sudden, intimate gesture ignited a long-dormant flame inside her, one she’d assumed was forever extinguished. His second-day stubble tickled her cheeks, and she tasted salt. Melting, she sought his lips again and caressed his cheek in a tender motion.
He returned the kiss and stroked her body gently, forging a pathway of heat running across her neck, where his lips touched her skin in soft kisses.
The restless desire which had drifted through her like a passing cloud became an urgent need.
He kneaded her hips in firm circles with his hands, then lifted a fingertip to trace each of her breasts. After opening her blood-stained ivory blouse, he lingered to massage her torso before grazing his lips over her skin.
Pleasure roused her, and she unbuttoned the top few buttons of his shirt to rest her fingertips on his chest. Avoiding his injured ribs, she traced invisible lines down his pecs.
Mark tugged the remaining buttons of his shirt open, and the white pearl disks tumbled into the pine needles. He unclasped her lace bra, and when their bare skin met for the first time, he exhaled hard.
A critical question interrupted her intoxicated, dream-like state, and she stopped. “Wait. I don’t even know your full name.”
Transferring his attention from her bare breast to meet her gaze, he laughed softly before replying. “Dr. Markus Henriksen Nygaard.”
“Tess Madeleine Bennett,” she replied in kind.
“Pleased to meet you, Ms. Bennett. May I continue?”
“Yes, please.” Wanting more, she groaned with pleasure.
