he said. 'There's the rest of the family.'
Three other wolves appeared behind Juliet, about the same size as their mother but lankier.
'They had five pups last summer,' Joe explained, 'but they lost two of them sometime in the fall. I'm not sure what happened.'
'That's sad,' she said.
'That's life in the wilderness,' he replied. He glanced at her again. Then, without hesitation, he leaned over and touched his mouth to hers. His lips were incredibly warm, sending a pulse of heat through her body that seemed to drive away the cold.
His tongue teased at hers, and for an instant, she thought about drawing away. But her common sense had fled and she was left with only instinct and the overwhelming need to have more. Unlike their first, challenging kiss or the frantic meeting of mouths that they'd experienced in the snow, this kiss was different. It was slow and delicious, filled with a longing that she didn't know existed between them.
She didn't want him to stop this time. Instead, she wanted to pull him down on top of her and find out how Joe Brennan really felt about her. And how she felt about him. As if he read her thoughts, he gently pushed her back into the soft down sleeping bag, his lips never leaving hers.
Everything that had stood between them-the arguments, the mistrust, the fight for control-simply dissolved, swept away by the stark solitude of the wilderness. They were completely alone, a brilliant blue sky above and nothing but untamed country all around them.
She felt wild, primal, uninhibited, like the wolves they'd watched, driven by instinct and pure need. She wanted to touch him, to feel his skin beneath her fingertips, to run her hands through his hair. Impatiently, she slipped off her mittens then clutched at the front of his down jacket, pulling him closer.
He groaned softly, his breath hot against her mouth. 'We're doing it again,' he murmured. 'You're making me crazy, Kincaid.'
'I know,' Perrie said, breathless. 'We should stop. But I don't want to stop.'
'No, we shouldn't stop,' Joe said, tugging off his gloves. 'Not this time.' He pushed her hat off to furrow his hands into her hair. Tipping her head, he kissed her again, deeper and longer, his mouth plundering hers until her head spun with uncontrolled desire.
She shuddered, the passion radiating through her in waves. Joe pulled his sleeping bag over them both, ere- ating a warm cocoon. Slowly, he tugged at the zipper of her jacket, then slipped his fingers beneath the layers of sweaters she wore. When he finally met warm skin, she heard him suck in his breath and hold it.
'This is not the place to do this,' Joe said. 'It's ten below zero.'
'It's warm enough,' Perrie said.
Joe pushed himself up, then looked at her, playfully running his finger along her bottom lip. 'But there are much warmer places to be, sweetheart. We don't have to risk frostbite to be with each other.'
Perrie closed her eyes. 'You know, we'd be risking a lot more than frostbite if we let this happen again.' Her common sense had returned in full force and she sat up and tugged her jacket closed. 'This is ridiculous, Brennan. We can't keep doing this.'
'Why not?' Joe asked.
Perrie opened her mouth to reply, then realized she didn't have a good reason. There had to be a reason. 'Because we can't.'
Joe nuzzled her neck. 'That's not a good reason, Kincaid. If you ask me, we do it pretty well.'
'That is not the point,' she scolded, pushing him away.
'What is the point?'
'I don't know.' The truth was, she
'Well, until you do, I'm going to keep kissing you, whenever and wherever I want.'
Perrie zipped her jacket then began to search for her mittens and her hat 'I think we'd better go now.'
Joe grabbed her hand and pulled her back down. A long, lingering kiss shook her resolve and she found herself slipping back into the languid pool of desire she had just left behind.
'Whenever and wherever,' Joe murmured, nibbling at her lower lip. With a teasing grin, he kissed the end of her cold nose, then scrambled to his feet. He offered her a hand up and she took it, expecting him to draw her back into his arms.
But he didn't. Instead, he grabbed the sleeping bags from the ground and rucked them beneath his arm. 'Come on, Kincaid. Let's get you back home where you'll be warm and safe.'
Chapter Six
The story seemed to tumble out of her head, word after word, sentence after sentence, as if the entire text had been there all along. The wolves and the Gebhardts, two families living in the midst of the wilderness, bent on survival. Perrie had stayed up all night putting her thoughts onto paper, rewriting each phrase until it was as perfect as it could possibly be.
She wasn't sure what had made her pick up pencil and paper. She had barely stepped inside the door of her cabin after saying a quick and uneasy goodbye to Joe, before she sat down and began to write. And until she began, she hadn't realized that her day with Joe had affected her so deeply.
Joe had called her name as she ran back to the cabin, but she'd been intent on putting some distance between them. Whenever they were together, all her resolve went right down the drain. Either they fought like a pair of pit bulls or they jumped on each other like a couple of hormone-charged teenagers. Until she figured out exactly how she wanted to handle Joe Brennan, she was going to stay away from him. So she wrote.
The day had faded, and rather than switch on a light, she brought an old kerosene lamp to the table. The soft glow seemed to enfold her in a world of her own making, a world without modern conveniences… deadlines and sources… story meetings and proofreaders. For the first time in many years, she wrote from her heart, not from her head. And she rediscovered the true joy of crafting a beautiful sentence, of taking a reader to a place they'd never been.
She had worked all night, catching only snatches of sleep before another turn of phrase would invade her dreams and she'd need to get up and jot it down. Then she would sleep again, and sometimes, mingled with the images of the wolves, she'd see Joe and he would become part of her story, personifying the wolf who had roamed the frigid winters alone.
She had tried to put their encounter in the wilderness out of her head. But it returned again and again. At first, throwing herself back into her work had been an antidote, the perfect way to put his kisses out of her head. But later, she enjoyed the memories, lingering over them as she wrote, reliving the feel of his hands on her body, his mouth over hers.
The day had dawned bright and clear, and when Perrie awoke she saw the story scattered beside her over the quilt. Slowly, she reread what she'd written, making a few more edits. Then she got up and carefully recopied the text onto clean paper. Though she'd brought her laptop along with her, this story didn't want to be written on a computer. This story was more like a letter-a letter from the wilderness.
Although this wasn't the type of story she usually wrote, she was still proud of how it came out. And she was anxious to find out if Milt thought there was any merit in the writing. Not that he'd run the story, but perhaps he'd enjoy her insights on Alaska.
'A fax machine,' she murmured, tugging a bulky knit sweater over her head. 'They've got to have a fax machine up at the lodge.' Perrie retrieved her mukluks from near the door and pulled them on, then grabbed her jacket and the sheaf of paper that was her story.
The air was crisp and biting and her breath clouded in front of her face as she trudged up to the lodge. The low log building had stirred her curiosity more than once since she'd arrived, but she'd tried to avoid it, knowing that Joe lived inside. She preferred the privacy of her own cabin.
As she stepped up onto the wide porch, she noticed an old carving above the door. No Wimin Kin Pass. Perrie
