“That was some quick thinking,” she said, tossing the wipe somewhere in the tent.
“I have two pairs of boxers, and you’re wearing one of them,” he reminded her, catching his breath. “Somehow that realization penetrated at the critical moment.”
With the sleeping bag unzipped, he had room to collapse onto his back, and ran a hand down his chest, groaning.
“You okay?” she asked.
Eyes closed, he mumbled a quiet, happy sound, rolling back into her and throwing a heavy arm around her waist, pulling her flush against him. “Come here.”
But Lily was suddenly wide awake. How was she supposed to manage this feeling growing like a vine inside? She was elated and scared and anxious and relieved and still deeply, deeply turned on. The shape of him moving against her felt like a physical echo. She was suddenly insatiable, pressing her face to his neck, feeling the throb of his pulse, wanting inside him somehow. Wanting him inside her.
Leo.
Lovesick City Boy.
All over again, she couldn’t believe he was really here. He smelled like sweat and soap, like the sagebrush-filled air of the canyons. She wanted his hands on her skin, his mouth moving frantically everywhere. She was aware of every point of contact between their bodies: her face to his neck, their naked chests pressed together, their hips, her leg wound around his muscular thigh. The memory of the sound he made when he came echoed in her cranium. And had anything ever been sexier than the way his labored breaths expanded and contracted the wide expanse of his rib cage?
God, she was a mess.
Lily pulled back, running a hand up his chest. He’d always been game for round two.
“Hey,” she whispered, waiting. And then: “Leo?”
His lips parted and she felt her desire rise, anticipating the sound of his voice.
But instead, a quiet snore rumbled from his throat.
Chapter Twenty-Two
LEO AWOKE TO the sensation of Lily wiggling her way out of the sleeping bag and frantically whispering, “Shit, shit, shit.”
He rolled to his stomach, eyes blurry but not so blurry that he missed the view of her scrambling to find the shirt he’d pulled off her and thrown aside.
“Hey,” he croaked.
Startled, she wrapped a forearm across her chest, wrestling her way into the T-shirt. Her hair was insane, like she’d just wrapped a palm around a plasma globe. Her right cheek was bright pink from where it had been pressed to him, and her answering “Hey” was abrupt and stressed out.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
Lily lifted her chin. “Look at your watch.”
He dragged a heavy arm out of the sleeping bag and blinked down. “Shit.”
“Yeah.”
Somehow the morning had blown right past them. It was after nine thirty.
“I have no idea how we slept so long,” she said.
“Warm and comfy.”
“You were out.” She shoved her hair behind her ears. “Such a dude.” And then she ducked out of the tent.
He followed her and stretched in the morning sun. Wearing nothing but boxers, soaking in the desert air on his bare skin felt fucking amazing.
His balled-up pants hit him directly in the face, and Leo caught them before they fell to the ground. “It appears you’d like me to put these on,” he said dryly.
“We have to get rolling.” She tugged on her stiff jeans before pulling her shirt off and tossing that to him as well. He stared at her breasts just… right there, in front of him, like it hadn’t been a decade since he saw them last.
She reached for her bra, now dry on the rock. “Put your eyes back in your head,” she said, laughing. “It’s supposed to hit eighty-five today, and we have nearly four miles to hike.”
“Four miles is an hour, maybe two if we stop for water,” he told her.
“Not down here it isn’t.”
He pulled his shirt on and was immediately hit with a desire so heady it made his eyes roll closed. The shirt smelled like Lily. It was still warm from her body. Pulling it down over his torso, Leo looked to where she sat on the rocks, tugging her socks and shoes on.
But I guess if you need something more permanent than that, then… don’t kiss me. What a joke. Like he would have been able to stop himself.
There was so much he hadn’t said, and in the light of day he was glad. Things like how he was considering giving up his life as he knew it to be near her. Besides, his life was different now; he wasn’t tethered to New York in the way he’d been since his mother died. He was still figuring out how it would look, what he could even do for a living if he moved to be near her. He was organized and worked hard; in truth, if he wanted a job and not a career, Leo could probably find something relatively easily. He wouldn’t mourn leaving the office life behind; continually trying to outsmart some of the best hackers in the world had been a fun challenge at first—but in the last few years, the reality that even if he created the perfect code he would have to write a new one the very next week meant the job had lost some of the early glow. Still, even that had allowed him some creativity; if he got the promotion, he would be in meetings ten hours a day. And the point of moving would be to be near Lily, he reminded himself. A job was a means to an end, a means to make ends meet. A life was what he could have with her.