The Thrill of It All Read Online Free PDF Page B

pressed the stuff on her, half of it had spilled down her skin. Soft, satiny ski—
    “You want?”
    He started, then realized she was talking about the flask she was holding out to him. “No.” Alcohol made him reckless, and he couldn’t afford to lose even half a scruple.
    Especially tonight with its surprise KOs. Discovering it was Simon’s flask in his glove box instead of his own had almost wigged him out. Though it shouldn’t seem so strange, Magee thought, sliding lower. When he’d cleaned out Simon’s truck before putting it up for sale, he’d found not only his own second-best pair of belaying gloves but his treasured 1999 Topless Chicks Top Mountains calendar, too.
    “You’re smiling.”
    “Am I?” He looked over to find Lissie had shifted lower as well and was half-turned toward him.
    “Yep. Nice smile.” The hand holding the flask made a sloppy gesture toward it, sprinkling tequila over his chest. Then she smiled, and that was sloppy, too. “Uh-oh. Baptized you.”
    “Don’t worry about it.” But he edged away from her anyway, because she was definitely heading toward tipsy and she was definitely staring at his bare skin.
    Then her gaze lifted from his chest to his mouth. So, hell, he indulged himself and looked at her mouth. That puffy, pretty mouth that he knew but that he’d never kissed. Her dark hair had dried and was sticking out in wispy tufts from behind her ears and her lashes were a thick, black fringe around matching dark eyesin the paleness of her small face. With the silver-gray blanket around her, that distracting mouth of hers was her only colorful feature.
    The only thing colorful in his sight.
    It was a dark pink. A bruised pink.
    All night long he’d been half-hard, thinking about administrating first aid on it again—the consensual kind.
    As if she could read his thoughts, the hand holding the flask jerked, spilling more tequila on his chest.
    “Uh-oh,” she said again, and her free hand reached out to wipe it away. But at the last second, she halted, leaving her palm a crucial inch from his skin.
    The atmosphere inside the car crackled with static and the temperature jacked up another twenty degrees. He sucked in a breath. Though he’d half-expected this phenomenon to reappear, it didn’t make the combustion any less powerful.
    “Uh-oh,” she said, wiggling the fingers of that damn hand. “Mi-chael.”
    “Don’t,” he rasped out. “You don’t want to do it. You don’t want to touch me.”
    She frowned at him. “Yes, I do.”
    He ground his back teeth together, cursing himself for not dealing out the facts the first time they’d almost incinerated. “Dollface, here’s the beta on what’s happening. We don’t really want to bump bones. It’s survival rush.”
    Her frown deepened. “Beta? Bump bones? Survival rush?”
    Taking advantage of her confusion, he inched farther from her hand. “Beta—that means information. Bump bones—that’s a boink, a bang, a score, a screw. Survival rush is just what it sounds like.”
    He’d witnessed it during climbs, even between a man and woman who held an active dislike for each other. Have them survive the same epic snowstorm or hairy roped fall and the next thing you knew, they’d be shedding their packs and their gear and going at it like rabbits. “That urge you’re feeling’s a reaction to stress. It’ll go away.”
    “Oh.” She looked disappointed. “I kinda like it.”
    Damn, he knew he should have taken the tequila from her. Without its influence, this uptight little cookie would never have made such an admission. But now the shooters had loosened her up, forcing him to play old maid aunt. “Too bad,” he said firmly. “We’re not going to act on it.”
    Her mouth pouted, just crying for a kiss. “Why not?” She put both hands around the flask and brought it up for another sip.
    “Be—” Her movement lifted the top slope of her pale breasts out of the blanket and he had to wrench his gaze