Jill Shalvis - Out of This World

“Listen,” Axel said, looking around us a little uneasily, “I think we should go back to the inn.”

“I agree,” Rachel said. “You lead the way.”

“Oh.” Axel eyeballed the landscape all around us. Then he stuck his hands into his pockets, and looked around some more. “Why, you lost or something?”

“Not technically,” I muttered.

Rachel shot me a look. “Yes, technically. We’re lost. L-O-S-T, lost.”

“No prob.” Axel scratched his chest, looking around as if he had all the time in the world.

I looked at Rachel. She looked right back. Was this really happening to us? Because it was getting hard to tell if this was real or just some crazy-ass nightmare.

“Axel?” Rachel prompted after a full moment of silence.

“Yeah?”

“Get us out of here?”

“Oh. Right.” He turned and began to walk, then stopped. “No, not this way,” he muttered to himself, and did an about-face. “This way. Yeah.”

Rachel reached for my hand as we went to follow him, and pulled me close so that she could whisper in my ear. “Maybe you should take off your shirt.”

My stupid heart leaped. “What for?”

“So we can tear it into strips and tie pieces on branches to mark our way. Since our guide is as lost as we are.”

“We’re not lost.”

She sent me a baleful look. “We are so lost.”

Axel pointed to the bushes through which he’d come a moment ago. “There. Follow me.” And he vanished into them.

Now that my erection was gone, I had enough blood to operate my brain again. And I was able to think that we hadn’t ducked through a bush to get here.

“Yeah, not going in there,” Rachel said, staring at the bushes as she backed herself into me. “No way.”

“Why?”

“Axel?” she called out to the bush.

No response, and she wriggled closer to me, which wasn’t so good for my thinking capabilities.

“He’s gone already,” she said. “He thinks we’re right behind him.” Grabbing my hand, she pulled me after her at a speed that was shocking given I’d had no idea she could even move that fast. “Rach-”

“We’re going around the bushes,” she said, still gripping my hand as if it were a lifeline. “There are…things in those bushes. Spiders, and creepy crawlies, and more spiders.”

“Okaaay.”

“Axel!” she called out as we rounded the bushes.

I thought I heard him call back to us, and we followed his voice, but after a few twists and turns through the heavy growth with no sign of him, we stopped again.

Rach sagged against the closest tree for one brief beat before letting out a soft cry and straightening away from the trunk as if it were possessed.

But she was the possessed one.

“Oh my God.” Turning in a circle, she looked madly around the small clearing like a cornered animal, one hand over her mouth, her eyes wide and wild. “They’re everywhere!”

“What’s everywhere?”

“Creepy crawlies!”

“Rach?”

She shook her head violently, holding up a hand to hold me off.

Uh-oh. She’d cracked. She’d utterly lost it. I knew firsthand that she didn’t fall apart easily. She had an inner strength that got her through any hardship that came her way. I’d seen her struggle through a tough college curriculum while working full time to support herself; I’d seen her work like crazy to make it on her own in the art world; and I’d seen her go through the death of her father. She’d lived through them as she experienced everything else: with her spirit and strength intact.

But she was at her limit here. That, or she’d hit her head harder than she’d let on. Fearing that, I stepped toward her, but she backed away. “Hey. Hey, are you okay?”

“No. No, I’m not okay. There’s…things out here, Kel. Rabid raccoons and crazy squirrels and gigantic bugs and…” She clamped her mouth shut. Still wet, she shivered.

I took another step toward her, and she jerked.

“It’s just me,” I said in the voice I used with the dolphins when they were spooked. “Just me, Rach.”

Her gaze ran over my face, my body, and then she went beet red, squeezing her eyes tightly shut. “Yeah. It’s just that, well, it’s a lot more of you than you think.”

Huh? “Come on. We’ll go back.”

Her laugh sounded more than half-hysterical. “Yeah. How exactly?”

I reached out my hand for hers, tugging her close. “We’ll get back.”

“So you’re not lost?”

“Well…” I looked around. “Maybe just a little.”

“Oh God.”

“But I can get us unlost. Okay?”

“How about to L.A.? Can you get us back to L.A.?” she joked weakly, then stopped my heart when she snuggled against me, pressing her face to my throat.

God, I loved when she did that.

Unable to help myself, I banded my arms tightly around her. I might have buried my face in her hair and inhaled deeply, too, but no one had to know that part, because it was the story of my life: lusting and yearning after this woman who usually thought of me as something she might absently pat on the head and feed a cookie.

So instead, I just held her for as long as she wanted.

“Something’s really-” She broke off.

“Really what, Rach?”

“Wrong. Really, really wrong.”

Pulling back, I looked her in the face, feeling an underlying sense of anxiety brought on by her tone.

“You mean something more than all this?”

She resisted looking into my eyes. Instead, she tried to burrow in again, tighter this time, nearly strangling me in the process.

But that was fine with me, because there were better things than breathing. Like holding her. Her lips brushed my neck, her hair stabbing into my eyes, but I didn’t mind, because the silky strands smelled like honey and vanilla, and I could have smelled her all damn day long. Jeez, I was pretty far gone if I was noticing the scent of her hair over the thought of any injuries she might have sustained…

“I want to go back,” she whispered. “We can talk there.”

“Okay.” Besides, I wasn’t any happier than she was, out here, in the middle of nowhere, with killer lightning bolts. “Let’s go.”

And holding her hand, I started to lead the way.

If only I knew exactly which way that was.

Hi, my name is Rachel, and I’m officially freaked out, thank you very much. The clouds had all but vanished from the sky, which still seemed a very strange color, and when I looked at it for more than a second and focused, that odd sense of seeing right through everything hit me again. You’d think there’d be nothing up there in the wild blue yonder but clouds. Wrong. There was plenty: birds, satellites, planes filled with people watching movies, sleeping, talking.

God.

I couldn’t look down either, because the ground was no better. It was filled with things like slugs and worms and other bugs the likes of which might make one go crazy if one thought about it for too long.

So I purposely drew a deep breath and didn’t focus on anything but the intangible. Axel, still missing. Kel and I, still standing here all alone. And, at least in my case, frightened half to death.

Kel squeezed my fingers. “No worries, Rach. We’ll be okay.”

I was trying not to panic, but I wasn’t having much luck. “No worries,” I repeated like a mantra. “No worries…”

“This way,” Kellan said, pointing. Then he pulled off his T-shirt, and even though I’d already peeked, the sight of him left me utterly speechless.

“Um,” I said ever so intelligently, my tongue hanging out at the sight of all his well-toned flesh and hard sinew, “what are you doing?”

“Just as you suggested.” He ripped the hemline off the T-shirt with shocking ease, the muscles in his arms rippling, causing me to drool more. I swallowed hard and tried not to stare at his bared chest or abs, but as I’ve already established, I have no willpower at all.

He tied a strip of cloth around a branch, then touched my jaw, oblivious to my lusting. “No worries, right?”

Let’s face it, the men in my life-both the bad boys I tend to collect and my brothers-spend little time coddling me, much less soothing or reassuring me.

Having Kellan do all three felt both foreign and utterly, shockingly…lovely.

Kel took a moment to look all around us carefully, as if memorizing landmarks.

Meanwhile, I couldn’t tear my gaze off him. “Kel?”

“Yeah?”

“Why don’t you need your glasses?”

He went still, then lifted his head, those piercing baby blues meeting mine. “I don’t know.”

There was a moment of silence, which I characteristically broke first. “That’s a little freaky, don’t you think?”

He actually went to push his glasses farther up his nose, and remembered they weren’t there. “A little, yeah.”

“Just so you know, the Twilight Zone theme song is running through my head.”

“As long as it’s not the sound track from Psycho.” Taking charge and my hand at the same time, he pulled me onward.

I stared at his sleek, smooth back, damp from either the rain or sweat. Which one didn’t matter, because both appealed. I was dizzy, wet and confused.

And desperately hungry for cookies.

Kel stopped to tear off a second strip of his shirt and tie it around yet a different branch. “Come on.”

“Right.” This take-charge Kellan was new. And incredibly appealing. “You think this is the right way?”

“Yep.”

Confident, too. Double whammy. We made more stops, tying a handful of strips to branches. Kel did the tying, muscles tight, brow furrowed. His jaw was scruffy, his hair its usual riotous mess. His eyes were fierce with concentration, and just looking into them made me shiver. The good kind of shiver, the kind that started at the toes, made pit stops at every erogenous zone and ended at the roots.