New Year's Wish

* * *

CARTER HAD ALWAYS been a gambling man. Reaching for things and willing to play the risks, but this was the first time he’d gambled on someone else.

He’d felt as if he’d failed miserably as he’d stood at the bottom and saw Lindsey standing up there literally shaking with fear. It was more than fear or pride or even vulnerability. If he’d had to define it, he would have admitted she was lost. He never wanted to be responsible for that look he’d seen on her face again. So, heart hammering in his chest, he’d climbed up there with her, told her he believed in her. And then, just like that, she’d kissed him and thrown herself down that snow mound as though it was the gate to a Super G course. And when her laughter rang out around the clearing, he’d felt justified, and more than a little bit relieved, if he were being honest.

The risk had paid off.

They spent the next hour sliding down the snow mound. Each time he watched her carefully, and he noticed it wasn’t getting easier for her, but she had made up her mind that she would do it.

And she did.

He felt like a jumble of nerves. A mess. This wasn’t like him. He was the guy who felt nothing. Why did Lindsey change all that?

And he was beginning to believe that his desire for more of her in his bed wasn’t the only thing he wanted.

“Thank you for this.”

“You’re welcome,” he said.

She put the sled on the ground next to him. “Your turn.”

He didn’t want another turn with anything but her. “Will you go with me?”

“Go with you?” she asked. “Are you asking me to date you?”

Not a bad idea, but they were too old to be dating like that. Weren’t they?

“Maybe. But for now I want to take a run down with you.”

She nodded.

Picking up the sled, he led her back to the mound and then stood behind her as she climbed up. The woman had a first-class ass, and when she got to the top she glanced over her shoulder and caught him staring at her butt.

“I think you just wanted another chance to ogle me.”

“No denying that, gorgeous. I do like your body.”

“I like yours, too,” she confessed. He climbed up after her and set the sled on the top of the mound. He sat on it and anchored himself in place by stomping his boot into the snow.

“Come on,” he said.

Lindsey carefully sat in front of him, scooting back until her buttocks were pressed firmly up against him. He wrapped one of his arms around her waist. She smelled of snow and the pine trees that surrounded the clearing.

“Ready?”

She put her hands together over his arm, holding him as she nodded. He lifted his boot from the place where it was anchoring them in the snow and pushed off with one hand. He leaned in close, holding her to him, and then pivoted his body so they slid sideways into the snow. He fell off the sled and pulled her with him, making sure she was on top of him.

She rested her arms on his chest and looked down at him, and for the first time this morning he saw something close to happiness shining in her big brown eyes. She smiled, and he arched his eyebrow at her. “You must be messing with my mojo.”

“I must be,” she said. “I’ve never seen you fall.”

“I usually don’t,” he admitted. But he’d wanted her to see what would happen if she did. Wanted her to experience a fall and maybe in some way show her that this time it wouldn’t be as bad as it had been before.

He was messed up. He knew it. He was trying to make her see him in a different light, but the truth was he was too flawed to really want her to see the man behind the bluster. He knew that, but at the same time he sort of wanted her to be the one person who knew the real guy under that cocky facade.

“I imagine this is just one of your seduction techniques. The way you get woman to kiss you.”

“Nah, it’s how I get women to let me kiss them,” he said, going along with her. He traced the bottom curve of her lip and held her to him with his arm around her waist. The ground was cold, but he didn’t feel it through his snow pants. He looked up at the cloudy sky and saw the first snowflakes falling toward them. One of them landed on the end of Lindsey’s nose, and he caught it on his finger and brought it to his lips to lick it off.

She leaned down as another flake landed on his lips, and kissed him. The chilled snowflake melted under the heat of her kiss, and he felt the warmth spread from her mouth to every cell of his body. Slowly working over him until he wrapped both arms around her and kissed her as if nothing mattered except the two of them.

As if there wasn’t anything else in the universe but him and her and this snowy clearing. Nothing but her lips moving over hers, her hands on his face and her body pressed intimately to his. Nothing except the taste of her happiness and the cold chill that couldn’t penetrate the heat they were generating.

Nothing but he and Lindsey and this outdoor world that they’d both called home for so long.

* * *

LYING ON TOP of Carter with the snow gently falling around her was the perfect end to this crazy first day of the year. She had been running on empty, she realized, until he’d pushed her to go down the mound. She wasn’t perfect. It was silly to think one man would make that big of a change in her, but this was Carter.

The bad boy who’d been teasing and cajoling her since the moment they’d met. But damn, could he kiss.

Lindsey forgot about everything but how soft his lips were under hers. How right his tongue felt as it tangled with hers. And his taste. It was minty but earthy...and she couldn’t get enough of it. Of him. His hands were moving up and down her back, cupping her butt and pulling her more fully against him.

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.

7

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 a chiding look. “But you did it. And we crashed—”

“You did that on purpose,” she said.

“You’re right,” he admitted, taking her hand in his and lifting it to his mouth. He kissed her palm and then placed her hand on his chest. “Guilty as charged. But I had enough of waiting to hold you in my arms. I don’t think you can appreciate how much I want you.”

She thought that maybe she could. She wanted him, as well. With each aching breath she took she wanted to feel his naked body pressed to hers again. She wanted to see if in the cold light of day he’d been as sexy as he’d been the night before.

Had it been the night and the champagne that had made it seem magical? Surely it had. No man could make her feel so alive. A mountain, maybe. Taking a run down a dangerous slope, definitely. But Carter Shaw—surely she was remembering it wrong.

She felt her pulse beating a little more quickly, and her lips felt dry thinking about his mouth pressed to hers. A slow burning heat brushed over her from head to toe, and her clothes felt too restrictive and she wanted...just wanted things that she’d never thought she would.

He watched her with that uncanny gaze of his and she felt as though he could see all the way through her fears and her doubts. Straight to the heart of her, where she questioned everything she’d experienced with him the night before.

“Gorgeous, what am I going to do with you?” he asked.

A tingle of anticipation swept through her, and she guessed that this was her chance to try out all the risqué things she’d always sort of wanted to try but had never had the right guy to do it with. But this was Carter. The live-for-the-moment poster boy and her chance to do all the things she’d always deemed too dangerous.

“Kiss me?”

He smiled and then lifted one of his hands, pulling the ponytail holder from her hair very carefully so he didn’t snag even one strand. He ran his fingers through her hair, fanning it out and pulling it forward over her shoulders. Then he tunneled his fingers through it, tipping her head back, and very slowly lowered his head toward hers.

She kept her eyes open this time. This kiss, she wanted to see his emotions, ascertain what he felt and try to figure out if she was doing this right. Because if she’d learned anything from watching Carter over the years, it was that he knew how to roll with the punches. He moved effortlessly through life and didn’t get slowed down by emotional entanglements. Something she knew she had to master before she started to like him any more than she did at this moment.

It could be just sex. Sex was healthy and something she’d never denied herself, but any other kind of attachment wasn’t. She’d been focused on skiing and being the best in the world. There hadn’t been time for a relationship when she’d eaten, drank and even dreamed about her downhill runs. She had to remember that.

But as his lips moved over hers, just rubbing lightly, and he dropped nibbling kisses along the line of her jaw to her ear, all the while whispering hot promises about all the places he wanted to ravish her, she knew she was in very real danger of forgetting.

* * *

LINDSEY KEPT HIM on his toes, always dancing just out of his reach, which normally was exactly what he wanted and needed. But today he didn’t. Today he wanted to hold the woman who was so brave and strong but didn’t see those qualities in herself. Today he wanted a few moments where he didn’t feel as if he had to chase her. And now that they were at her condo—her sparse, nondescript home—he had hoped he’d be able to relax.

But this was Lindsey and she surprised him. Never more so then when he held her in his arms. She wanted him. That was obvious from the flush of her skin and how she kept coming back into his arms when normally she would have been running for the hills.

Last night he’d taken it nice and slow; savored each and every delectable inch of her. But he wasn’t sure he could take his time right now. He kept feeling that the harder he tried to keep her by his side the more easily she slipped away from him. And it hit him that the reason was that she saw him the way everyone else did.

As the careless playboy who’d taken too many women to his bed. And for once, he was with a woman that he wanted to be different with, and it wasn’t going to happen.

He kissed her, and he meant for it to be a sort of sweet extension of everything that had gone on before, but his control slipped and he plunged his tongue deep into her mouth. His hands tangled in her hair as he urged her head back so that he could get even deeper.

He rested one arm on the wall and leaned in over her, surrounding her yet at the same time keeping some small distance between them. He needed to do that or he was going to rip her clothes off and be on her like a man who hadn’t had a woman in years. Instead of just a few hours.

Dammit.

He’d never been this close to the edge of his control. But Lindsey, with her wide-open, chocolate-brown eyes that gazed up him, searching his face for something—almost daring him to try to make this about something other than sex—goaded him on.

It made him struggle to find a balance between what she expected and what he wanted. That was the key. He knew what he wanted and he had to figure out how to walk that fine edge without revealing to her how desperately he desired her. Not just for this afternoon but for...

How long?

He tore his mouth from hers, reaching for the top of her snow bib and sliding the shoulder straps down. Then he pulled the sweater she wore underneath up and over her head. He tossed it to the floor and stepped back to look at her.

She stood there with the bib folded down from her waist with just a simple cream-colored bra covering her. Her skin was soft; he knew that from the night before. And he remembered how much he’d enjoyed caressing her. She stood there staring at him with that intense gaze that made him harden.

Lindsey took a step forward, grabbed the hem of his shirt and pulled him back to her. She went up on her tiptoes to kiss him as she tugged the fabric up over his chest. He felt her fingers on him. Her nails scraping over his nipples and digging into his pectorals.

“Why do I want you?” she asked under her breath as she pulled her head back. “Why you?”

“There was always something between us, Linds. We both knew that.”

He unhooked her bra with one hand and pulled the fabric from her torso. Tossed it on the floor and then leaned down to kiss one nipple. He’d barely had time last night to taste them. They were pinkish red and hardened under his lips. He skimmed his hands over her ribs and down to her narrow waist.

Carter spanned it with both of his hands, pulling her from the wall and more firmly toward him. Then he turned so he could lean against the wall. Her hands roamed up and down, bringing every nerve in his body to red alert.

He wanted her now.

But he was trying to...

Why? Why was he taking this slow when he knew that Lindsey was a sixty-miles-per-hour girl? She liked the exhilaration of speeding through life. But he wanted it to take longer. Needed to tease it out for his as much as her pleasure.

This morning had showed him just how fragile his hold on her was, and he knew that every time he took her in his arms it might be his last.

He lifted his head from her tempting body and looked up at her. Her eyes were half-closed and her skin had a pretty rose-colored blush to it. She was lightly skimming her hands over his skin as she chewed her lower lip.

A moment later she pushed her hands into the waistband of his pants and shoved them toward his feet. He stepped out of them. Then she pushed his boxer briefs down, as well. Standing naked in her hallway, Carter realized he was where he wanted to be. She took his erection in her hand and stroked him up and down while he frantically shoved her clothes out of the way. Then, groaning low in his throat, he lifted her into his arms and turned so that her back was braced against the wall as he thrust into her.

He pushed himself all the way inside her and then rested his head on her shoulder. He took several deep breaths, but her fingers moving up and down his spine and then lower to cup his buttocks urged him on.

“Take me,” she said, whispering the words directly into his ear.

He was already there, moving his hips as she lifted her legs and wrapped them around him, forcing him farther inside her. She tipped her head back, her silky blond hair sliding over his shoulders as he plunged in and out of her.

His world narrowed to just her, and he couldn’t think beyond the urge to go deeper, to take her so completely that there wouldn’t be a Lindsey and Carter when he stopped, but just one being.

He felt his orgasm at the base of his spine and cursed as he tried to slow it or stop it. But it was too late. He was too close to the edge, and she dug her heels into his thighs, arching up against him as he came inside her. Realizing she wasn’t there yet, he reached between their bodies, finding her clit and stroking it while he kept moving in and out of her body.

She felt so good. He felt her tighten around him, and she called his name as she came. He sank to the cold, tiled floor, cradling her in his arms as they fought to catch their breaths. He rubbed his hands up and down her back, and she scooted closer to him, resting her head on his shoulder as his blood pounded in his ears.

“Wow,” she said.

Wow. Was that good? He had a feeling as quick as he was, he might not have given his best showing, but he was tired and he’d had that feeling all day that he might never have all he wanted from her.

“That good?” he asked gruffly.

“Yeah. I had no idea... My sexual experience isn’t as diverse as yours. I mean, mission-style, lights off is my usual thing.” He would’ve laughed if he’d thought that was what she wanted from him. “We’ve had the lights on every time.”

“Yes we have. You make me feel so comfortable in my skin,” she murmured. “Other guys seemed to just...”

Jealousy shot through him. The last thing he wanted to talk about were other guys she’d been with. But he was glad she felt comfortable around him. “I’m glad I didn’t disappoint you.”

“Me, too. So what now? I invited you back here so I wouldn’t have to feel awkward and wonder if I should leave, but to be honest, I still feel weird.”

He shook his head. Lindsey was never going to react the way he thought she would. She surprised him yet again, but really that was proving to just be her way. “I’ll take that hot drink you offered, and then we can figure out what to do—or I can leave.” Turning toward her, he slowly searched her face. “What do you want?”

She hesitated, and at that moment he knew she was going to send him on his way. Disappointment churned inside him, but he kept his game face on. “Okay. Let me clean up and then I’ll head out.”