“His voice rose several octaves higher than normal. I just remember choking on the smell.”
“Fruity-sweet,” she conceded. “Pungent.”
“Need any help?”
“No, I’ll collect samples.” She dropped down on one knee to muscle her backpack off. “It might take a while.”
He lifted the camera. “I’ll go hunting.”
He strode away, neck arched, searching the trees. The clearing seemed darker, duller, when he was gone. Shaking off the odd sensation, she got to work making observations about the surrounding flora. She had to check pH and water hardness levels in the stream nearby. She had to test the soil for alkalinity, and then collect the samples of the honeysuckle itself. She yanked open her pack and started pulling out plastic bags and test tubes, as Logan’s footsteps retreated.
Some time later, she was jolted out of concentration by the distinct click of a camera. She rose up out of her absorption to find a lens aimed directly at her. Her breath caught as Logan lifted his face from behind the camera, his narrowed eyes bright. He’d caught her unawares, and yet she felt keenly seen. She was overreacting. Capping the test tube in her hand, she straightened up and dropped the tube in the Styrofoam holder with the others.
“Good timing.” She stood up and smoothed her shorts down her thighs. “The flowers are too high for me to reach. I could use your help.”
He swung the camera off his head. “You do need me here.”
Need was an odd word, it sent a trill shooting through her as he dropped his camera on his pack and followed her to the tree. They stood, heads tilted back, watching bees meander from one blossom to another. Logan raised an arm and stretched up, but the blossoms hung just above his reach, too, only blooming in the range of the little dappled light that made it through the canopy.
“If you sit on my shoulders,” he said, dropping to one knee, “I can heft you up high enough to reach.”
She fixed on the exposed skin of the nape he was offering. He expected her to put his head between her thighs?
She said, “Not a good idea.”
“Afraid of heights?”
“No.” She didn’t feel like sinking her backside on those meaty shoulders, or putting herself in a position where her vulva would press against his hot nape. “I’m too heavy for you.”
“I can handle you, Red.”
I just bet you can. She didn’t want to imagine it, Logan with that tee-shirt stripped off his back, lowering his head between her thighs—Stop. Just stop. Why was she making a big deal of this? In graduate school, she’d climbed higher on a walking palm in Costa Rica just to get a better look at the yellow fruits. Short of heading back home, grabbing a ladder, and hauling it all the way out here, she didn’t have much of a choice but to accept Logan’s help.
He said, “Are you good?”
“S’pose.”
She swung one bare leg over his shoulder. He slapped a gritty hand around her thigh, fingers pressing into the flesh. She braced her hand on his head, shifted her weight, and then swung her other leg over his shoulder. His dark hair tickled the inside of her thighs as he shifted beneath her, lumbering up until her feet left the ground. She swayed as she rose, dizzy with the height and the heat of his breath along the inside of her thighs.
He said, solid beneath her, “Can you reach now?”
“Y-yes.” She loosened her death’s-grip on the plastic sample bag. Tightening her thighs on either side of his head, she started picking. “I’ll be done here as soon as I can.”
“Relax, Red.” He squeezed both thighs. “Loosen up.”
“S-sorry.”
Relaxing only made her backside sink deeper into the swell of his wide shoulders. His hair brushed soft on the tender skin of her abdomen, where her shirt had come free of the waistband of her shorts.
“So,” he said, flexing his grip on her legs, “how did you get into this field? You don’t strike me as a country girl.”
“I’m not.” She yanked the nearest blossoms off in fistfuls and stuffed them in the bag, probably bruising them. “I grew up in New York City. Move closer to the trunk if you can.”
“Ah the concrete madness of New York City.” He swayed forward. “A friend of mine lives there. I couldn’t take it for a day.”
She couldn’t help asking. “Where’d you grow up?”
“Montana. Is missing green things the reason you went into botany?”
“Not really.” She ducked her head to dodge a bee she’d dislodged from one of the flower cups. “I’m done,” she said, sealing the bag with a swipe of her fingers.
“That was quick.”
“It’s the bark and the leaves that hold the medicinal properties of this genus, generally, and I already took samples of those.” She sank as he dropped to one knee, until the soles of her fit hit the ground. “I just need a small sample of blossoms for a rougher analysis--Oh.”
Logan unlocked his head from the V of her thighs and swept out behind her, dragging his head against her lady parts. She swayed as he grasped her arms from behind, pulling her hard against his chest.
“Steady, Red.”
“I’m good.” She shoved away. He let her go as if he hadn’t just lit her up like a roman candle.
“So, city girl, if you liked that concrete madhouse so much, what are you doing here in the woods of Washington picking flowers?”
“So many questions, Macallister.” She turned away and strode to her backpack to unzip another section for the blossom samples.
“Don’t run away.” He followed right behind, a lumbering hunk of warm and tempting man. “I’m curious as to how you became you.”
“My grandmother,” she stuttered, unsettled into the truth. “She had this great big plot of wild land in upstate New York.”
“You lived with her?”
“Only for a few months of summer. She was an amateur herbalist. Taught me everything.”
Those were the best summers of her life. Not a single tutoring session, piano lesson,
