Ice (Thor Book 2), page 4
“Nah,” he said with another shrug. “It’s a bit too early in the season for that, so I don’t think so.”
***
Ice had been right about the smell and wrong about the timing because we did indeed get snow.
Unfortunately, this was something I knew because I had an excellent view of enormous snowflakes swirling around a car I’d managed to slide off the road and into a small tree. I was used to driving in snow, so at first, I thought I'd get it up on the road quickly, but the way the car was angled, the wheels just spun when I tried to back out of the stupid ditch. It sounded kind of funky too, but I had no damned clue what was under the hood because a very friendly mechanic named Bo always sorted out whatever he considered in need of sorting.
I couldn’t call him, though, because he was in Boise.
I could, however, call someone else who was skilled with cars, and who lived a lot closer to my current whereabouts.
So, I did.
“Yeah?”
I blinked when I suddenly heard Black’s rough voice and cleared my throat.
“It’s Re –”
“I know. You back in Rogan?”
“Not exactly.”
“How not exactly would that be?”
“Twenty miles up the small road leading to the lookout pressed up against a tree.”
“Why the hell aren’t you driving back down?”
“Probably since it’s more the car than me that is pressed up against, you know...” I said breezily, and added for clarification, “The tree.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he snapped.
There was suddenly a scuffle in the background, and then Black was talking to someone who barked out such a long string of f-bombs that I moved the phone away from my ear to stare at it.
“Hello?” I yelled when the profanities seemed to go on forever.
“Yeah,” another rough voice said, and that voice was also not a happy one.
“Ice?” I murmured.
“Road up to the lookout?”
“Yes, but I can walk back –”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he said, but his voice had softened, so it wasn’t the angry snap his brother had given me.
It was more a gentle caress, and I felt my lips twist into a small smile.
“Sorry,” I murmured.
“On my way.”
I stared at the phone again when I realized that he had hung up on me and smiled when a warm, sweet feeling swept through me.
He was on his way.
Someone was on his way to help me.
I’d been married for what felt like my whole life, but Harry hadn’t been at home much, and when he was in the house, he’d wanted to relax. My neighbors had helped me with the garden when I asked them, and I had friends. I hiked with a group of people and occasionally spent time with my co-workers.
I wasn’t a pathetic hermit.
But for almost as long as I could remember, there hadn't been anyone offering to help me with anything.
An hour later I decided that I couldn’t stay in the car any longer. The weather had turned increasingly worse, and pretty soon, it would get dark. The road was narrow, and I had started to wonder if there perhaps were other roads to the lookout since Ice hadn’t shown up.
It was also very, very cold. I had a pair of jeans and a hoodie, and a thick parka but no mittens and only a thin beanie, so my teeth were chattering.
I’d have to move around a little to keep warm, and if I started walking down toward Rogan, I’d meet Ice once he got to the road I was on. There had been houses about half-way down the mountain, so I could knock on doors or even break a window if I had to.
Yes, I decided. That was a pretty crappy plan, but it was the best I could come up with, so I grit my teeth, took a deep breath, and opened the door.
It was colder outside than I’d expected, but as I slowly made my way down the road, I got warmer.
Then I slipped and tumbled headfirst down a short slope.
“Fucking shit,” I wailed when snow made its way up under the parka and into my pants, and I kept the litany of profanities up as I crawled back up toward the road. “Goddamned fucking horrible shitty fucking piss,” I snapped when my knee bumped into something hard.
“That is a lot of unladylike words, Reena,” a deep and mostly amused voice said from somewhere above me.
Ice had arrived.
***
Ice
He didn’t yell at her because it wouldn’t help right then, but he wanted to. His anger was mostly due to relief anyway, and it would probably just piss her off even more.
“What the hell are you doing?” he asked instead, which he thought was a pretty reasonable question.
“What the hell does it look like I’m doing?” she snarled and managed to get up on her feet.
He was about to start laughing at the snow covering her from head to toe, but then he saw her bottom lip quiver slightly and realized that her anger was for show and that she was very close to crying.
“Come here,” he murmured. “I'm sorry it took so long for me to get up here. The weather turned worse, and I got stuck.”
“I’m cold,” she said, and there was a small hitch in her voice. “Can we please get back to Rogan?”
“Not in this weather,” Ice said. “One of our neighbors has a small cabin up here, though, so we’ll go there for the night.”
“Is it warm?”
He tucked her into his side and moved them toward his car.
“Will be once I light a fire.”
“Okay,” she said, and the hitch was back in her voice.
“Don’t worry, baby. We’ll have you warm in no time at all.”
Fifteen minutes later, Ice closed the door to the small cabin. Their neighbors kept the key under a pot just outside the door, and Black had texted that they didn’t mind if Ice used it for shelter.
“Get out of everything wet and get into bed. There are a few extra blankets in the closet,” Ice said over his shoulder as he walked over to the fireplace.
“Okay,” Reena said quietly, and he heard her move around behind him, but focused on getting the fire going.
Then he texted Black to let him know they were in the cabin and got a long string of small yellow faces with various versions of smiles back. While he tried to get his stunned brain to digest that his brother – the president of Thor Motorcycle Club – even knew what emojis were, there was another text.
“That fucking woman.”
Ice grinned at the screen, knowing that Black had laughed while he wrote the message, and so had Cas when she tapped the various smileys and probably even more when Black noticed what she’d done.
When warmth started to spread from the cast iron fireplace, he turned and looked at Reena. She’d bundled up with at least two extra blankets, but her teeth were chattering, and her eyes were sad.
“Right,” he muttered, kicked off his shoes, and pulled off his sweater and tee.
Then he let his jeans fall to the floor and climbed into bed with her.
She felt like a block of ice, and he rubbed his hands over her back to warm her up.
“Thank you,” she mumbled into his chest. “I should have stayed in the car.”
“Yeah, babe,” he agreed, and let his hands slide down over her hips. “You sh –”
His agreement ended in a hoarse puff of air when he felt smooth skin, and nothing else.
“You said to remove everything wet,” she mumbled and tilted her head away from him, so he couldn’t see her face. “I, um... removed everything that was wet.”
“Huh,” he said, winced when he heard how stupid that sounded and added with what he hoped was a casual curiosity, “Your panties were wet?”
“Yes,” she confirmed. “Sorry. I fell, and a lot of snow got into...”
Her voice trailed off when he used a finger under her jaw to make her look at him.
“No need to apologize, Reena. You feel good under my hands,” he murmured, and couldn’t hold back a grin. “Really, really good.”
He’d been taking things slow with her and had enjoyed doing that in spite of feeling more frustrated than he could remember ever having felt before. His dick had been anything from attentive to begging for action since that first day when he saw her leaning on the bar, and the hand he’d thought was better than actual sex had eased the pressure but not for long.
Now they were in a small, cozy cabin for the night, she was in his arms, in an actual bed.
And she was apparently naked.
There was no way he’d back off right then unless she told him to, in which case he was pretty certain he’d start crying.
“Oh,” she breathed out.
Oh? Was that code for ‘yes we’ll have sex right now and through the rest of the night’? Or was she stalling while trying to figure out how to thank him for coming to her rescue and inform him about how they should just be friends?
“Reena,” he said quietly and shifted them around until she was leaning into his side. Then he slid his hand over her leg and reached down to pull it up over his crotch.
The way her eyelids drooped a little made him hope she wouldn’t run screaming into the snow.
“Ice,” she mumbled.
“Petter,” he corrected her. “When you’re in bed with me and naked, you call me Petter.”
He’d never asked anyone to use his given name, heck, most women he’d slept with didn’t even know it, but he wanted to hear her say it. Or yeah, mostly moan it. Or scream it.
“Petter,” she echoed, and his dick twitched.
Her eyes widened in a fucking adorable way, and he grinned at her.
“So...” he murmured and used a hand against her ass to pull her closer.
“I haven’t had sex in a long time,” she whispered, and added when his brows went up, “At least not with an actual man, and not in a very, very long time.”
“Okay,” he said. “What is a very long time? Months?”
“Many.”
“Many as in... a year? Years?”
“Yes. Plural,” Reena shared and tried to look away again, but he moved a hand to her chin and turned her head until their eyes met again.
“Jesus,” he rasped out.
“So, I don’t exactly know how to do this.”
She looked a little embarrassed, but she hadn’t said no and hadn’t moved away.
“I know exactly how to do this,” Ice said. “Can’t remember when I wanted it more than I want it now, though.”
“Really?” she asked, and again in that slightly breathy voice.
He had assumed that she was shy, but right then, when he saw the surprise in her eyes, he realized that she was more inexperienced than anything else. How someone looking like Reena could have reached almost fifty years of age and still be inexperienced was beyond him, and he wondered briefly what her story was.
Then she moved against him, and his goddamned dick twitched again.
“Yes, really,” he said.
“Okay.”
Ice felt his lips twitch, and put a hand on her cheek, caressing it with his thumb.
“I think I should get out of my briefs,” he said slowly, “Okay?”
“Yeah,” she whispered, and added with a cute smile that wrinkled her nose a little, “Totally okay actually.”
Chapter Four
I shouldn’t
Reena
I shouldn’t.
I really, really shouldn’t have sex with this man.
The reason I was in Rogan was to learn about the Hagen family, which I had done. Roddy and Gee were visiting their daughter, but everyone I’d talked to seemed to adore the older couple, and I liked Black and Cas.
And I liked Ice even more.
It had been such a surprise to meet someone like him with his easy smile and focused but oh-so-familiar eyes. As we got to know each other, I’d started wondering if I should just tell them why I was there. So far, I’d chickened out and told myself what we had was simply an innocent friendship.
Or, perhaps not friendship precisely because I’d had my fingers on my clit every night thinking about him. Wondering how it would be if I ever had a chance to be naked with him.
I’d heard the others talk, and I knew he liked women, but I’d also heard them discuss the long stretch of abstinence he’d apparently embarked upon. Months, they’d said, and I’d almost burst out laughing because I hadn’t had any kind of sexual relations with anyone, except myself, in nearly ten years. Harry had never seemed particularly interested in that part of our relationship, and I hadn’t been particularly interested in him. When Toby moved out, and I decided to stay anyway, Harry had stopped coming to my room, and it hadn’t bothered me. I’d always assumed I didn’t have much of a sex-drive, which had been true until I turned around in a roadside bar and saw a tall man with pale blue eyes move toward me. My libido geared up then in a way that was a little bit embarrassing, but it also made me feel good. I felt sexy for the first time in my life.
And now we were in a bed, and naked.
So, I shouldn’t have sex with Petter Hagen, but I wanted to in a way that made me tell him that I was totally okay with whatever he felt like doing.
“Good,” he murmured and let his hand slide down my side and around to my back to press me closer to him.
I felt how hard he was, and when I raised my eyes to look at him, there was something in his eyes that sent a quiver through my belly and down between my legs. Of its own accord, one of my hands moved over his chest, slowly letting the smattering of hair tickle my palm. Without thinking, I leaned forward to trail my fingers with my mouth, and he made a low, hoarse sound. I stopped moving, cursing my lack of experience, and pulled back a little to look at him.
“Am I –”
I cut myself off, not sure what I wanted to ask, but then he grinned.
“Babe,” he said. “I’m gonna guess that the long stretch of no sex at all now have you wondering if you’re doing it right, which is fucking ridiculous when you have got to feel my cock under your leg.”
He was right about that because I did indeed feel him, and I couldn’t hold back a small giggle when I realized that I did indeed do something right.
“Okay,” I mumbled. “Just tell me if I –”
“Reena,” he snorted, cutting me off and rolling us until he was on top at the same time. “Pretty sure you can do just about anything, and I’ll like it.”
My experience with men like Ice might be limited, but I knew the mechanics and had read plenty of books that were on the steamier side of hot, so I decided that to hell with it all. I wasn’t going to shy away from him like a goddamned Victorian virgin. I’d spent far too much time doing nothing, feeling nothing, and I might be a lot closer to fifty than forty, but I wasn’t going to let that matter either.
I’d take what I could get because how could I not when what I could get was the man who pressed me into the bed and ground his hard crotch against me in a way that made my breath hitch.
“Don’t worry,” he murmured. “I’ll make sure it’s spectacular.”
Oh, wow. Spectacular?
Yes. I could totally do that.
“Is that a promise?” I asked, aiming for cheeky, but it came out in a lazy drawl that made his lips widen in a grin.
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s definitely a promise.”
Then he started caressing me slowly and softly until I forgot to be nervous and awkward. I moved my own hands over his back and down to his hips.
“Shit,” he murmured suddenly and tilted his head forward to lean his forehead on my shoulder.
I froze and wondered how he possibly could dislike anything we were doing.
“What?” I asked when it suddenly felt as if he was laughing.
“Babe,” he mumbled. “I’m praying that I’m wrong, but I don’t think I am.”
“Wrong about what?”
“Since you shared that it’s been quite a while for you, I’m gonna guess that you don’t have a habit of carrying protection around with you.”
I blinked, and it took a few seconds for me to get what kind of protection he would be talking about, and he was right. I'd been on the pill until my marital relations had dried up but weren't anymore. And I had precisely zero condoms in my pockets.
Or anywhere, really.
“That guess would be accurate,” I said and tried to move away.
“Nu-huh,” he said, tightened his grip, and raised his head.
To my surprise, he was laughing.
“Do you think this is funny?” I asked.
“Yup,” he said, and added, “I’m fifty-five.”
“I know,” I said because I knew that.
I’d been curious, so I’d asked Cas.
“Usually have a little more finesse than this,” he said with a wry grin, and added when I tried to move away again, “Don’t, babe.”
“But –”
“We’ll just be creative,” he said, and the way his eyes were laughing down at me was contagious.
I also like the idea of being creative.
“Okay,” I said and slid my hands around his hips and over his behind. “I guess we could try.”
“Yeah,” he agreed, but his voice was suddenly deeper and a little bit hoarse.
Then he shifted to the side and let a strong hand move over my ribcage until he cupped a breast, tugging gently at the nipple. I did the same thing to him, and he leaned forward to kiss me, hard and deep.
When his hand was between my legs, and a long finger slid inside, I took him in my hand, and when he started caressing me with his thumb, I began to stroke him slowly. Our breaths were becoming heavy as it built for us both, but then he started flicking his fingers faster and wave after wave rushed through me. My gasp became a loud moan, and he caught it with another long, hot kiss.
“You’re gorgeous when you come, baby,” he murmured when I’d relaxed back into the bed.
His beautiful eyes smiled softly at me, and I tightened my grip around him and started moving my hand. We kept looking into each other’s eyes while I stroked him closer and closer to orgasm, and when his face was hard and focused, he suddenly put his hand between my legs again.
