“Thank you. I have everything we need in the trunk of my car.”
Alarm zinged through her. “What . . . You want to do it now?”
“Yeah. The evening light is perfect. Do you know someplace really private? In the woods?”
“I . . .” She glanced around nervously. Her heart started to do a drumroll against her sternum. “Yes, I think so,” she said, anxiety edging her tone.
He grabbed her hand and squeezed it. She looked up at his face and saw his warm appraisal.
“I’ll call Katie and Rill once we get to the car and tell them you and I plan to spend the evening together,” he said.
Sherona blinked when she understood the message behind his words. He was reassuring her safety by telling dependable, mutual friends they were together that evening. Not only she would know she was putting herself in his hands for the night; Katie and Rill would know, as well.
It shocked her a little to realize she trusted him—a stranger—so much that she hadn’t ever considered such a precaution.
She nodded once, and they walked toward the path hand in hand.
Chapter Four
She directed him down a narrow, tree-lined country road.
“We’ll have to leave the car and hike into the woods about a mile and a half,” she said when he pulled into the empty forest preserve entrance. “This is one of the least known entrances to the forest, and hikers typically don’t venture this far when they enter at other locations. If there’s no one in the parking lot, then there’s an almost one-hundred-percent certainty that there’s no living person within a three-mile radius,” she explained, pointing to the nearly invisible entrance to the parking lot. Chance turned.
She exhaled when she saw the empty lot, unsure if the leap of her heart came from nervousness or excitement.
“Perfect.” Chance swung into a spot and gave her a swift smile.
She came around the opposite side of the vehicle from him when he popped the trunk. She glanced inside, seeing a large backpack that she suspected held his camera and equipment, although she also saw several bottles of water through a partially opened zipper, a soft-looking, folded ivory blanket and . . .
. . . rope.
He noticed her take a step back.
“It’s okay. It’s not harsh rope. It’s nylon winch rope. I use it to haul equipment up steep elevations when I’m working in the mountains.”
She just stared at him, suddenly reevaluating everything she’d agreed to.
Was she fucking crazy?
Was she so starved for some adventure, so desperate for hot, raw sex with a gorgeous man, that she’d put herself in danger?
One look at Chance’s concerned expression and her anxiety eased.
“It’s soft rope, Sherona, but it still looks like the heavy-duty variety. I thought it’d look . . . well, incredibly sexy, to be honest, for a made-up capture scenario—the texture of the black rope winding around your pale, soft skin.” She blinked, heat washing through her at his quiet description. “But I also have some pieces of cloth in my pack. We could use those. Whatever you want.”
Sherona strove to keep her expression impassive as she leaned into the small trunk of the sporty coupe and grabbed the two coils of rope. She gave him a sideways glance as she stood.
“Follow me,” she said.
He didn’t reply, but she heard him behind her, hastening to comply with her request.
Twenty-five minutes later, they broke the thick canopy of the woods and walked into a meadow filed with Queen Anne’s lace, goldenrod and daisies edging a small lake cupped in the valley of the surrounding hills.
“Blimey,” he breathed, staring at the meadow. “Look at that color.”
Sherona turned to him for the first time since they’d undertaken their trek. He studied the scene through a narrow-eyed gaze. She’d been acutely aware of him behind her the entire time they’d been in the woods. It was the most amazing thing, but she kept having fantasies of running and having him chase her. The crotch of her jeans had actually grown quite damp, her scissoring thighs stimulating her sex even further as they hiked.
Did her body somehow know she could trust him, despite this risk?