BIG: (A Bad Boy Stepbrother Romance) (29 page)

“That’s fucking humbling.” He sighed. “I hate falling on my ass.”

“I’ll kiss it and make it better.” She smiled when he snorted a laugh.

“That’s not what Anders told me.”

“I should hope not.” She laughed. She could imagine Arensen taking the tough-love thing to the extreme. “What did he say?”

“He told me to get off my ass.” Ric grinned. “Then he said—if you fall six times, you just have to get up seven. He’s the one who taught me that failing isn’t fatal. But failing to change just might be.”

“It’s nice to agree with him about something.”

“It’s nice to hear you in agreement with him about something!”

She laughed, relaxing in his hold as he put his arms around her. There was something incredibly peaceful about being with him as he unfolded, letting her in. In spite of his painful confession—or maybe because of it—she’d never felt closer to him. It was like there was some invisible cord connecting them, and every time they had an argument and made up, the cord was cut—then tied back together, bringing them even closer than before.

“Do you feel free?”

“God, yes.” That was one question that demanded absolutely nothing of her. “I’ve never felt this free.”

“I didn’t go through the physical transformation you did, but...” She kissed his chest. “I’ve never felt so free either. For me, it started when I decided that I was going to do anything you asked, just so I could prove to you that I really do love you.”

“Present tense?”

“Very much.” She smiled. “But it wasn’t easy for me. I had to surrender myself. I had to trust you—that you weren’t going to make me jump through all those hoops just so you could leave me, broken and humiliated.”

“Christ,” he muttered, squeezing her. “I’m so sorry. I’m a heartless goddamned bastard.”

“You didn’t leave,” she reminded him. “You stayed. I stayed. I think that’s what relationships are really about. Staying, even when it hurts and working through the pain. Elsa’s left two men in her life—one who loved her and another she loved—because she was afraid to stay. I’m not going to make that mistake.”

“You’re a saint.”

“No.” She snorted. “I’m not. I hated you too, sometimes. But even when I was pissed at you—and part of me is still pissed at you, you goddamned heartless bastard—I forgave you. Because my love for you is that big.”

“That’s the kind of big I like.” Ric pulled her on top of him and held her hard, molding his body against hers.

“You’ve got another kind of big I like,” she teased, wiggling on top of him.

“Evil temptress.” He smiled.

They were both too emotionally drained to make love, but she liked the light in his eyes anyway. She lay on him for a long time, his slow, steady pulse almost lulling her into a meditative state.

“I can’t tell you how happy you make me, Leesa.” He stroked her hair. “It’s like all my future birthdays at once.”

“Let’s make all of them good.” She stroked his jaw with her thumb. “Are you going to tell me about your most significant birthday? I mean... death-day?”

She wasn’t going to get used to saying that.

“Patience, young grasshopper. I will, I promise. But first...” Ric sat like he didn’t have a hundred-and-thirty pounds of girl on top of him and kissed her before lifting her off his lap. “Let’s clean up.”

They stayed together in the cave all day, talking, eating, making love. Night fell outside. And finally, Ric said, it was time.

Annalesa watched as he put his hand up to one of the prints on the wall, matching it perfectly. He smiled back over his shoulder at her.

“The one right above is Dad’s, and the one to the left of his is Anders’.”

She gazed from the wall where his hand was printed to the one lit up by the moon from the sky hole, where hundreds of hands had been printed with the ancient charcoal-ochre mixture. The cave seemed warmer, all of a sudden. It felt as if all the spirits of the Sami and Norse ancestors had solidified and risen as one behind them, raising the temperature of the room. It was like being enveloped in safety. She wondered if it was the protection of being in a place where every man in Ric’s bloodline had come of age.

She peered further up the wall, above Brad’s print. “Is your grandfather’s here?”

“Yep.” He pointed to a print about a foot up. The owner of the hand seemed to have had an accident—there was no forefinger.

Ric met her eyes, sharing her grimace. “Let’s just say the magazine reload on the earlier Ryker guns weren’t as smooth as they are now.”

“Ow.”

“Yeah. It made him seriously bad-tempered for the rest of his life.”

“I’m not sure I blame him!”

“Dad did. That’s why he came here with Anders for his rite of passage, instead of coming with his father. They never did get along so well.”

“And then Anders came here with you?”

“Only for the ritual. He understood why I wanted to stay a while afterwards.” Ric smiled.

It went all the way to his eyes, but he still looked wistful. Preoccupied.

“I think he knew in advance what I’d want to do. It was Anders that left all the cookware gear for me here, and showed me where to find the more basic weapons. And—I owe him so much for this—he was the one who persuaded Dad I could handle the extended rite of passage. Dad was having a hard time accepting I could make it out here so long on my own.”

Annalesa wrapped her arms around his waist, nuzzling her face into the velvet skin of his shoulder. “He was probably scared of you having an accident or getting an infection. This place is gorgeous but it’s not exactly operating-theatre sterile, is it?”

“How many years has mankind survived without antibiotics or fear of germs?”

That was a good point. She shrugged against him. “True, but that probably wasn’t his only concern. You’ve been really into your ancestry for a long time, Ric. He might’ve worried about you wanting to become a mountain man instead of rejoining civilization to take over Ryker Arms.”

“Yeah, maybe.” Ric laughed as he turned, putting his hands on her shoulders. “But Anders trained me just like he trained Dad. He made me strong enough to stay here. And he convinced Dad to let me do what I needed to do—now Dad actually trusts me. Both of them are letting me run my side of the business as I see fit, and you wouldn’t believe how much that means to me. I know Anders can be kind of... prickly and hard-headed, but I owe him everything, Leesa.”

She didn’t say anything as she looked up into his face, surprised by the intensity of his expression. His eyes were wide, but his jaw was tight and the little ridge beneath his lower lip had deepened. It was like he was still trying to get her blessing for being so close to Anders.

“Leesa?” he prompted.

“It’s okay, Ric.” She couldn’t help wondering why he thought she needed so much convincing. If anything, she’d done her best to push aside her early negative view of the guy and learn more about him. “He means a lot to you and you’re loyal to him. I’m not going to get in the way of that.”

Ric bent and lifted her, pinning her body against his as he kissed her. She wrapped her legs round his waist, taking a little of her own weight so she could thread her fingers through his hair as they explored one another. She stroked the tip of her tongue on the underside of his and he groaned, gripping hard with his hands across her shoulders and her waist. He retreated slowly from the kiss in a series of gentle nudges until they’d pulled apart.

She rested her face against his neck. A slight tremble went through him as he clung to her, and she knew it had nothing to do with withstanding her weight. She wanted to lay him down on the mattress and massage some of that tension out—wherever it was coming from—but knew he was working his way up to something. She only hoped it wasn’t another confession like the last. She didn’t think she could take any more.

“All right,” He set her on her feet, smoothing his hands down her shoulders. “I’m going to show you what this is all about before I lose my nerve. Come on.”

Dazed, she watched him pull a couple of small, rubber-coated Maglite flashlights from the front pocket of his Bergen. They were about three inches square with a bulb of the same circumference, with a clip on the back. He switched them both on and clipped them to their belts, then lit a couple of oil lamps with matches from his pocket.

She took a lamp as he handed it to her and felt her other hand disappear in his vast, soft palm as he led the way through the back of the cave. They passed the water gulley she’d seen earlier and entered a tunnel which took a few minutes to stumble through.

Their belt lights lit up various rocks along the ground and the oil lamps picked out the stalactites. It was difficult dodging all the obstacles, but at least she didn’t have to duck, unlike Ric. His back and thigh muscles visibly shuddered with the effort of hunkering his way down the passageway. It wasn’t a bad view, anyway, she thought with a smile.

She could see a beam of moonlight in the distance from another of those sky holes and they made their steady, silent way towards it until they stepped out into a dimly-lit area with a much higher ceiling. Ric straightened with a grunt and released her hand to touch the wall.

His hand emerged from the gloom holding a coil of rope.

“This is like some kind of Viking Penthouse.” She blinked. “Are you sure you don’t have a coffee machine hidden anywhere?”

“Sure we do.” He chuckled. “It’s called ‘a-bag-of-beans-and-two-big-stones.’ Okay, put your flashlight on the rock, strip down to your underwear, then put your belt back on.”

“Okaaaaay.” Annalesa did as he asked, hoping the flashlights were waterproof.

She clipped the belt back on and held her arms up as Ric tied the end of the rope in a knot round her waist, securing that to the belt too. She bit her lip as he stripped down, reverting to his Norse God status in the dim light. So strange how he looked even bigger in the half-light.

“Step down here with me.” He cleared his throat.

She followed him, stepping into darkness and then wet heat. The volcanic water was even hotter than the air of the cave. There were steps down into the hole and she felt for them gingerly, gasping as hot water pressed between her thighs, then soaked through her bra. Ric steadied her arm.

“This is where I died. I went through this cave and came out the other side, new. It’s about thirty feet from water to air, so stay close and swim fast.”

Annalesa let a long, slow breath go so she could refill just before going under. She was going to need to save her oxygen.

But then, something struck her.

“This isn’t a test, is it?” She frowned at him. “Please say this isn’t a test. Because I’m okay swimming in a pool, but—”

“Leesa, you’ll be fine.” He smiled his encouragement, looking a little guilty at her question. “And no, I promise. This isn’t a ‘test’. No more tests.”