Alaska Wild

Most guys—the ones who even notice me in the first place—find me too hard, all stone and iron when I should be giggly and soft.

I could see it in his eyes. He wanted me.

“You’re transporting him?” I asked, trying to make my voice coolly neutral. The young marshal grinned. He swung a huge, dull green army holdall down off his shoulder and dropped it to the floor with a wumf. He had tight curls of sandy-blond hair and looked as if he should be playing bass in a band, not wrangling prisoners. He looked too young. And he was big but the prisoner was huge. I glanced down at my own petite frame. Not like I can talk.
“Boone here won’t give me any trouble,” said the marshal. “Will you, Boone?”
The prisoner—Boone—had finally stopped looking at me and was gazing impassively at the restroom door. It was a relief...and yet, some traitorous little part of me wanted those blue eyes back on me again, no matter what crime he’d committed. (<- also, WTF?)
“Local cops picked up Boone last night,” said the marshal, talking about the guy as if he wasn’t there. “In a little town called Koyuk. Found out there was a warrant out for him and they knew we were flying another prisoner out of here today, so they drove him over and handed him off to us.” I nodded dumbly.
It was gradually dawning on me that the marshal was trying to flirt with me. I hadn’t picked up on the vibe at first because...well, it’s not something that happens to me a lot. And now that it was, I had no idea what to do. I had no procedure for flirting. And I’m not good with things I don’t have a procedure for.

Boone was gazing towards the front of the plane, eyes unfocused. He must know I’m here. Was he deliberately not looking at me?

The accent made me think of the landscape beneath us: rough and hard as granite, but with the syllables smoothed by wind and rain. It had that measured pace you only find a long way from a city.

He was staring back down at me and I just froze because…. Because suddenly, all of that wild that had made me so nervous outside was standing right in front of me, distilled into six feet plus of muscle and stubble. His eyes were the same brutal, frozen blue as the sky outside. Alaskan blue. I’d never thought about what my exact opposite would be like. Now I knew. Huge, where I’m tiny. Rough where I’m smooth. Everything, from his battered boots to his wide, muscled shoulders were built for work: grunting, rock-smashing, tree-chopping work. I stood there in my suit, clutching my laptop bag, and it was as if I was from a different world. He belonged in this place as much as I didn’t. I knew, straightaway, that he was born here. And yet while the landscape outside unnerved me, this man triggered something completely different, an awakening that started at every millimeter of my skin that touched his but rippled in until it hit me soul-deep. There was something about him: animal and raw. Not just wild but Alaska wild. It was new and intoxicating, ripping through me like a hurricane and leaving behind a scalding heat. It was so strong, it was almost frightening. But somehow, touching him felt...right. Like some tiny piece of technology, all brushed aluminum and glossy screen, slotting into a crack in a granite cliff face...and discovering it fits perfectly. I stepped back. “Sorry.” I tried to get myself together but, as soon as I met his eyes again, it was as if every thread of my clothing had been reduced to ash, the particles blasted aside by a scorching wind that seemed to slam me back against the restroom door. I tried to take a breath and found I couldn’t. My chest was tight, my eyes wide. The heat inside me went lava-hot, a crashing, scorching waterfall that slammed straight down to my groin. I’d never in my life felt such want. He wanted me. I looked deliberately away and then back. I tried to reduce him to something ordered, to a description. Six-four. Dark hair. Blue eyes— It didn’t work. The words were boxes into which this man refused to be stuffed. He wasn’t six-four. He was just big, big like the mountains outside were big. His hair wasn’t dark, it wasn’t some color you could pick off a chart. It was as thick and lushly black as an animal’s, and grown long and loose enough to brush his collar. He had a couple of days’ worth of stubble but it wasn’t carefully shaped and precisely trimmed, like the guys back in New York wore it, the artfully rough look. This was just a guy who hadn’t come near a razor in a few days because he’d been out in the wilds. He was gorgeous, those blue eyes eating me up from a face that could have been carved from rock, all hard jaw and strong cheekbones. And he was so big. If he was heading somewhere and I literally threw myself at him to stop him, my small body hitting his in the chest, he’d just walk on unimpeded with me clinging to him. It hit me that he still hadn’t spoken. I took another half step back. But this time, he didn’t let me open up the distance between us. This time, he took a step forward, bringing us even closer. I caught my breath as his broad chest pressed up against me and his blue eyes filled my vision. I could smell icy, fresh water, moss and forests. And beneath it, a scent I knew was him, the smell of warm skin and taut muscle with just a hint of something hard and ready and primal.

“Kate,” he said, “You are the bravest, smartest woman I’ve ever met.

That braid was her. It summed up everything about her, all her gorgeous femininity pulled back into something practical and efficient, twisted tight and knotted in place.

I flushed, flustered and confused.

I’d left my handgun back in New York.