Dallas grunted, and she put her foot into the first boot he offered, even the mere act of changing shoes oddly intimate in a way she’d never experienced before.
“Wow, it fits perfectly! How did you even guess my size?” she asked.
Dallas’s gaze slowly trailed up her in that intelligent, knowing way, and her skin seemed to sizzle as her eyes met his. Like he could undress her just by looking at her.
Not that she minded…
So long as she got to feel all those muscles bulging out of his shirt and jeans.
“Thank you so, so much,” she blurted out, trying to distract herself from the tension of the moment.
And when Dallas grinned up at her with satisfaction, she almost passed out right there.
Instead, she hurried to put on the other boot, then threw the shirt around her shoulders and buttoned it up before rolling the sleeves up to cuffs. When she was done, Dallas stood and folded his arms, smiling and nodding to himself.
She did a little twirl, unable to help beaming and feeling a little more Texas now than she was a minute ago, and Dallas just chuckled as he watched her.
Right, you’ve got a story to do, Mel. Remember?
She listened intently as Dallas gave her a pair of goggles to put on, then showed her the controls, which were still foreign to Mel because she’d never done something like this. At one point, when first testing the throttle, she nearly pulled too hard and did a few donuts before Dallas somehow leaped to her side and cut off the engine before she lost control.
After a few more minutes of practice, though, Dallas hopped on the other quad. With utter confidence, his engine roared to life, and he started ahead on the trail, looking over his shoulder to make sure she could follow.
Thankfully, he went slow at first, giving her a chance to get used to the raw, terrifying energy of having the wind fly past her as the ground beneath her feet became a blur of grass and dirt. Then, as Dallas seemed satisfied she had the hang of things, he revved his engine harder, and she pulled back on the throttle to chase after him.
The ATV bucked and dipped as they went over short hills and kicked up small clouds of dirt behind them. And as the mountains drew closer, the thrill of following Dallas teased at the edges of her nerves as she watched his huge muscles and arms control the vehicle beneath him with ease.
And along with it, the sense of something much bigger than herself that was happening around her, though whether it was the story she was working on or the wicked thoughts she was getting every time Dallas looked at her, Mel wasn’t quite sure.
In what felt like far too little time, they were at the base of the huge hill from the video. From their new vantage, she could see even deeper into the range of mountains that stretched far ahead.
Though, except for what appeared to be a huge mound of upturned earth that could have been from a mudslide or something, nothing seemed out of place.
That still didn’t change the remarkable beauty of the land around her, so empty it gave her that magical feeling of solitude so stark it could make her wonder if she was the only person alive.
With Dallas…
She gulped, getting off her ATV and taking off her goggles to pull a camera out of her pocket so she could start taking photos.
There were deep impressions in the ground as well, big enough you could park three or four cars in them. But because of the rain or the wind, she couldn’t tell if they could possibly be footprints or if they had just been there.
If the monster in the video had magically sprung up from the ground, walked around, then disappeared back into the ground, that could explain all the exposed dirt. But that was a pretty farfetched notion, and unless she saw something like that happen, she was going to have to keep looking.
“It’s so pretty out here. Are things like this normally?” she called out to Dallas.
Off to the side, Dallas was looking at something on the ground, kicking dirt around with the toe of his boot. But the second she spoke, he looked up at her like nothing was going on and appraised the mound of earth.
He nodded.
“Yeah, makes sense, right? With all the rain and such, I imagine mudslides like this just happen…” Though, she’d seen mudslides before. This looked like someone had used a backhoe the size of a house and dug around in the mud until there was this football-field-size disturbance.
She spent the next little while snapping photos of anything and everything that might be useful, as well as setting a GPS geotag on her phone if she ever needed to come out here again.
But as she wandered, she found herself focusing on the wild, untamed beauty surrounding her. Aside from the gentle blowing of a warm breeze, which caught the scent of distant wildflowers and clean air, everything was utterly quiet.
On a whim, she turned her camera and watched Dallas, whose arms were folded, looking westward. In front of him, the mountains sheared off, and huge, puffy white clouds floated above the limitless expanse.
She snapped one picture. Then a few more. And when she looked down to check how they’d come out, her heart fluttered with yearning for the tall, stoic man who seemed to stand alone against the entire world, calm and composed and so sexy it made breathing difficult at times.
“What’s that?” Dallas’s deep voice, harsh like a bonfire and calm like a sunset, startled Mel from over her shoulder.
“Oh, n-n-nothing. Just making sure I had what I needed, ha,” she replied, nearly jumping out of her brand-new boots with shock and sudden heat that burned her nerves just from his nearness.
Probably just the Texas heat.
Yeah, that’s what it was.
Dallas smirked at her,
