Silver Heart (8 page)

Could it?

Slowly, painfully, Sawyer cursed under his breath and severed his lips from mine so that our eyes could meet. It was like watching a starving man back away from a feast. Not that I was comparing myself to a feast, but the turmoil reflected on his face was unmistakable. His jaw was hard and his gaze darker than I had ever seen it before, filled with lust, hunger, and something more turbulent.

I touched my fingers to my lips and tried to push away the sudden emptiness that had descended upon me. The heat of Sawyer’s mouth was replaced by an empty chill that covered my entire body.

His eyes dimmed even more as he ran a hand through his wet hair. “I’m sorry if I hurt you. I don’t know what came over me.”

Hurt me?!

I shook my head. “You didn’t hurt me.”

I wanted this. I needed this.

“I wasn’t lying when I said I wanted to talk and catch up,” he said. “But then you were right there in front of me, sucking on that bottom lip, and my first instinct was to kiss you.”

“Mine too,” I admitted. “I think I wanted to feel close to you again.” Though I had to say, this was the first time we’ve been
that
close.

Placing his hands on either side of my face, he peered into my eyes. “I’ve missed you, Silver,” he said. His voice was raspy and his breath came out in short, fast spurts. “So fucking much.”

“I’ve missed you more.” A cold wave of sadness washed over me.

The tension in his shoulders slowly began to melt. A hint of a smile began to form on his lips as he said, “My second instinct was to do
a lot more
than just kiss you. And I was pretty close to giving into it. I’m glad you stopped me when you did.”

“Why?” I couldn’t help but ask, though I already knew the answer.

There were years of unsaid words and unspoken feelings between us, but neither one of us dared to start the conversation. The tension billowed, partly brought on by our undeniable attraction to each other, but also because there was one very big inflatable elephant floating around in the pool with us. And its name was “The Past”.

“Because it’s you, Silver. You. Right here in front of me. After all these years.” He was still panting, but now he also seemed to be struggling to speak. “You.
Finally
. As crazy as this is going to make me sound, I’d like to get to know you again before…” he trailed off and ran his hand through his wet hair. “Fuck, this is hard. I have so much to say, but no idea where to begin. And you being this wet…and hot…and so damn close isn’t helping keep my thoughts in check.”

“It’s been six years,” I reminded him. “So much has changed.” And so much hadn’t. Sawyer still smelled so damn good. He was still familiar and so comfortable to talk to. It was like slipping on a favorite sweater, but now I wanted to do a lot more with that sweater than just cuddle.

“I’m still Sawyer and you’re still Silver, aren’t you?”

“I don’t know…”
Was I the same girl I had been six years ago?

“Then we’ll take things as slow as you want,” he suggested. “We have all week to get to know each other again.” His voice dropped as he added, “On every level.”

My heart agreed with his words, but my body yearned to knock him over, throw itself at him, and continue where it was so rudely interrupted by my freaking brain. “Then I propose we keep all future hangouts contained to extremely public areas,” I said.

His eyebrow ring shot up and his naughty grin reappeared. “You really think that I’ll be able to restrain myself around you in public?”

“I guess we’ll have to wait and see.”

Deep down, the rebellious part of my psyche hoped he wouldn’t.

CHAPTER SIX

“I think we should all snowboard,” Maddie said as we neared the rental shop at Blackcomb Daylodge. We had decided to start off at Blackcomb Mountain because Adam was going to ride its famed Horstman Glacier run.

I sighed. “I don’t know, Mads.” I could already see it in my mind:
Me at the top of a hill, my knees weak from terror, trying to gain balance on a board that had a life of its own. Then tumbling and falling…maybe even breaking my neck.

For me, snowboarding and failure went hand in hand. I’d tried to conquer my fear of it numerous times before, and the only thing I’d succeeded in was getting various bruises on my knees, butt, and the heels of my hands. Snowboards and I just didn’t get along. Every time I strapped my boots into the bindings, I felt like I was giving up control. Facing a downward slope of a hill as both of my feet were bound to a board made me feel completely and utterly helpless. On skis, perhaps simply because I’d started lessons when I was very young, I could at least feel somewhat in charge.

“Come on, Dee,” Maddie coaxed. “This is our crazy anything-goes vacation. I even managed to talk your brother into being Adventurous Adam for the next two days. He’s gonna conquer a glacier!”

Adam chuckled. “Funny you should say that,” he said, flashing his phone at us. “Mom just sent a text to remind me to keep away from all black diamond runs.”

“My jacket pocket just buzzed too,” I groaned. “Can’t wait to see what my friendly reminder of the day says.”

Adam read the second text. “She kindly suggested I stick to the bunny hills.”

Maddie rolled her eyes. “God forbid something happened to her prized piglets.”

“If we’re going to snowboard, not even a bunny hill can save my ass,” I said. “I need an
ant
hill.”

“Does that mean you’re in?” Maddie asked hopefully. “You’re gonna live a little, Dee?”

My mom’s texts set my teeth on edge. Even though I was in another country, she still had a way of worming herself into my life and trying to control it. Her behavior was nothing new. While I was away at Stanford, I’d gotten daily texts advising me to study hard, stay away from parties, and even remember to floss. I could’ve dealt with the messages if they happened to be usual parental care reminders, but what she did was constant and overbearing.

I was suddenly eager to do something I knew she wouldn’t approve of, so I made up my mind about snowboarding. I was going to rebel. Sure, my mother would never know what I was doing, but it felt good to stand up to her—at least in my head. I just hoped that I wasn’t going to die in the process of exploring this newfound courage.

“I’m in,” I said. “We’re going snowboarding!”

By the time we’d finished getting fitted for the boots and boards that would be ours for the week and purchased our chairlift tickets, it was almost ten-thirty in the morning. Since it was a warm January day—and a Saturday at that—the rental place and the hills were swarming with excited skiers, snowboarders, and snowskaters. Maddie and I decided to sign up for full-day snowboarding lesson with a private instructor, as there was no way that Adam could teach us both at the same time. For his sanity and our safety, we had to go with a professional.

Maddie pouted when it was time to part with my brother. I was pretty certain that she’d envisioned the two of them snuggling in the chairlift as they played footsies with their snowboards. Thankfully, this arrangement ensured that I didn’t have to bear witness to that. She brightened slightly when she found out that our instructor Connor was a twenty-five-year-old Australian with sandy blonde hair, a seductive grin, and dimples. I, on the other hand, had only one guy on my mind.

Ever since our kiss—okay,
more
than kiss—I couldn’t get Sawyer out of my head. It wasn’t just the steamy pool session that had me riled up, though there was no denying that it had been the hottest thing I’d ever experienced. It was the very fact that he was here.

Right now.

He was back in my life, if only for a brief moment in time, and I was freaking out. I was also slightly ashamed to admit that Preston hadn’t even crossed my mind the entire time I’d been with Sawyer. But then again, Preston rarely crossed my mind and I was certain that I never made any appearance in his thoughts. Which was fine with me.

My brain was too busy trying to figure out what to do with Sawyer. My body already knew what it wanted to do with him, but there was no way that I was going to allow myself to succumb to a crazy bout of passion the way I had last night.

I had no idea what had come over me, but I had almost pleaded with him to not stop and just have his way with me—right there in the pool. Maybe Maddie was right…two years of a sexless relationship could cause a girl to lose her marbles.

But I knew it wasn’t just the lack of sex that had me craving Sawyer. I wasn’t some romance novel heroine who was unable to keep my legs closed as I drooled over anything with a pulse. No other guy had ever made me have such a reaction—such an instantaneous need to be close, together,
one
.

The sexy Australian in front of me was doing absolutely nothing for me. Neither my brain, nor my heart, nor other more naughty organs experienced the slightest reaction to him. He was a very attractive male specimen, but I had no desire to throw him in a pool and rip off his shirt.

Clearly my attraction to Sawyer couldn’t be explained by the fact that I’d been deprived of contact for so long. It was much more complicated.
We had a history—our lives had been woven together long before I even knew that sexual desires even existed.

Though I now definitely had an irresistible, magnetic pull toward him—a very strong one at that—I didn’t just want his body. I craved his mind. I wanted everything he had to offer. I needed to listen to his words, to touch his hands, to taste his lips, to be close to him again.

It was him. Just him. All of him.

“Are you ready to side-slip down the hill on your own?” Connor asked, forcing me to press a mental pause button on my thoughts about Sawyer.

Next to me, Maddie let out a small, barely audible sigh. She had a thing for accents; I was pretty sure that part of her wanderlust was based purely on
accentlust
.

“We’ll start with your heel edge,” he instructed as he boarded halfway down the green beginners’ slope. “Okay, now…slow and steady.” The poor guy had no idea that this would further excite Maddie.

She winked at me. “I’d like him to say that to me under the sheets. Or better yet, fast and hard.” Her attempt at whispering failed miserably. I was pretty sure our Aussie was turning a bright crimson under those goggles.

I groaned. “Do you ever
turn off
?” I asked her. “And yes, I meant that exactly how it sounded.”

Maddie grinned. “Men think about sex every seven seconds. Why shouldn’t women do the same?”

“Because we have better things to do,” I offered.

Like thinking about Sawyer Carter every two seconds.

Maddie could have her sexy thoughts. I would much rather reminisce about my kiss with Sawyer.

Now sex with Sawyer…

Oh, shit!

Mind, please focus on not meeting an untimely death!

I did well on the side-slipping, slowly gliding on one of my edges while the snowboard behaved and stayed parallel with the bottom of the hill. When Connor suggested that we try to turn, I immediately panicked and began to lose all sense of control. My muscles stiffened and I lost my ability to breathe. As a result, my knees locked and I fell flat on my butt.

First bruise of the day.

I knew, without a doubt, that I would be covered in them by the end of our session.

Maddie, my fearless and free bestie was flying down the hill and already beginning to link her turns. A cold sense of disappointment washed over me, chilling me to the bone. I’d always had weird hang-ups about control. I wasn’t a certifiable control freak, per se, though sometimes a little bit of OCD would slip through. Nothing diagnosable, just a need for order on bookshelves, the necessity for exact change at coffee shops, and the inability to skip over a single word while reading study notes and textbook chapters before an exam.

But it was more than fear of losing control that had me so locked up. I was afraid that letting go would lead to making mistakes. I didn’t have to be a shrink to know where that panic came from. My parents had embedded me with a need for perfection. They demanded good grades and perfect behavior, but that wasn’t even the biggest issue. They had planted a little seed of doubt within my mind when I was a little girl and had watered it throughout my life. Nothing had ever been good enough for their daughter—no toy, no book, no friend—and the more perfect they thought I was, the harder I strained to attain this perfect image they had of me.