her ear. “This is the hard part.”
She nodded at whatever he said, distracted by the graze of his fingertips.
“The map traces a winding path through the woods. But the only directions I have to get us to the other side are clues from Pops’ fractured stories.”
Um…should she be taking notes?
“First, we have to look for some kind of blaze carved into the trees. If we don’t find anything, we’ll have to grope our way through.”
Grope. She wanted to be groped. She was already groping mentally, trying to focus on relevant facts and not the movement of his talented mouth.
“I won’t lie to you.” His lashes lowered in that I’m-about-to-kiss-you way. “This part of the journey will be tough. It might take days, even a week. Are you good with that?”
Her dancing libido answered. She raised her lips, welcoming the coming kiss, soft at first and then firm as she slid her hands up his chest.
He stopped her exploring with a rueful grin. “I forgot to put out the fire.” He winked. “Both of them.”
“We’ll light it up again later, yes?”
His smile lit with promise.
They headed out in a direction vaguely northeast. Casey spent the first part of the hike in a kiss daze, following the bob of his enormous backpack. Dylan stopped now and again to check his compass, or probe for potential blazes on tree trunks, or mark the path of their passing with blue chalk so that they could retrace their steps.
As the hours lengthened, she focused her attention on the changes in the woods. Some areas were thick with old trees, spongy with moss, and crisscrossed with fallen logs. Some areas were so dense that they had to walk around large patches of underbrush in order to continue traveling in a generally northeastern direction. He stopped to point out a pileated woodpecker in the trees. Another time, he touched her shoulder to gesture to a doe startled out of the underbrush, fleeing with a flash of white tail.
When she finally glimpsed a pleasant, sunlit clearing, she suggested a stop for lunch. Dylan bobbed his head and sank down on an old log to shuck off his pack. The resinous scent of pine permeated the area, so thick it seemed to flavor the water she drank from a metal thermos. Dylan braced his elbows on his knees and frowned at the map. They’d been walking all morning and hadn’t found a single marker.
She tugged his water bottle out of his pack and tapped it against his knee to catch his attention. “We’ll try another direction tomorrow.”
The frown melted at her encouragement. He curled the laminated map into a tube and shoved it in a side pocket of his pack before grabbing the bottle of water. “I’d hoped for better luck.”
“You found Owl’s Head Rock.” She shrugged. “You’ll find other markers, too.”
“Not on this path.” He paused to slug down a few deep gulps, and she watched the working of that throat with fascination.
He caught her looking. His grin grew sly and knowing.
“You,” he said, “are so much more than I expected, Casey Michaels.”
A little panic bomb went off inside her at the rumble of his words. No one was supposed to have any expectations of her, ever.
“Right now,” he continued, “if Garrick was here and not you, he’d be thrashing around in circles, hitting everything he could with the biggest stick he could find. Hell, I want to hit something with a stick right now.”
She felt a little like she’d been hit by one. “Maybe you just need some chocolate.”
“I hate the stuff.”
“Really? No one hates chocolate. I’m not sure we can be friends.” That’s what they were, right? Friends with benefits?
“I packed the chocolate for you,” he said after a heartbeat of a pause. “You’re the runner. There aren’t a lot of energy reserves on that hot body of yours.”
Ah, there we go. Sexy talk she could handle. She did feel pretty hot right now, in a prickly I-need-to-be-touched sort of way, in spite of the sneaky way he was talking around things she didn’t want to talk about.
“What I didn’t expect from you,” he added, still in that low, ruffle-the-little-hairs-on-her-skin voice, “was that you’d be so committed.”
A second panic bomb exploded in her mind. “Committed?”
“Nothing knocks you down.”
Nothing but you, Dylan MacCabe.
He leaned toward her with a raise of a brow, and that was all the invitation she needed. She surged toward him so fast that their teeth tapped when she caught his mouth. Talking was