The Girl's Guide to (Man)Hunting (12 page)

I’ve had plenty of oral sex.

And no orgasms? I’m heartbroken at the thought. Those must have been some shitty boyfriends.

She pictured Dane between her legs, her hands rubbing on his too-short hair as he kissed the lips of her sex. Her nipples went erect just thinking about it and she squirmed, clenching the fire bundle tightly.

“Miranda, before you begin,” Dane said, interrupting her thoughts.

She looked up and jerked backward when she realized that Dane was standing over her, his crotch at eye level.

Damn. Was he thinking what she was thinking? She looked up at him and licked her lips, confused.

A bolt of desire crossed his face and he glanced around to make sure the others weren’t watching, and then he crouched next to her. “Stop that, Miranda,” he whispered.

“Stop what?”

“Stop looking at me like you want me to throw you on the ground and fuck that dazed expression off of your face.” His voice was husky, as if he’d been thinking about the same thing. “Hours to go before sunset and it’s not a good idea to let the others know what we’re planning.”

“Oh,” she said, and frowned at him, resisting the urge to give him a shove. “If you don’t want me thinking about later, then don’t shove your junk in my face, all right?”

Sure, she’d gotten a glimpse of the package last night, but when he practically pushed it into her face? She couldn’t help but think of other things. And to make it worse, he was definitely…well equipped.
Of course he was
, she thought sourly to herself. Dane Croft had been built like an Adonis and she was being swayed by his good looks and godlike smiles. She hated herself for being so very shallow.

He chuckled and patted her on the shoulder, standing up again. “That’s better. Now, can I see your fire bundle?”

She slapped the bundle into his hand, then winced at his surprised expression. It wasn’t like it could hurt him anyhow. The fire bundle was nothing more than a long piece of rubber pulled from the inside of a shoe that had been wrapped tightly around an ember buried in packed tinder. The bundle had been tied tightly with a shoelace. He’d shown them how to make it—to carry fire from campsite to campsite without having to make it all over again.

It was extremely important to survival, Dane had said, and Miranda had treated it so. She’d kept a careful eye on it, blowing on it from time to time to stoke the embers again. It had smoked and smoldered all day long.

Just like the desire that still burned through her body. And it irritated Miranda that Dane had decided to just waltz over and put his hands all over her bundle. “It’s still lit,” she pointed out. “Give it back.”

“Can’t do that,” he said with a smile. As she watched, he carefully unwrapped the fire bundle and exposed the ember, then poured water over it.

She sputtered in shock and tried to snatch it back from Dane. “What are you doing? That’s our fire!”

“It is,” he agreed with a grin. “Or I should say, it was.”

“I worked hard on that,” she blurted. “I kept it going all day long.” Was this some sort of message he was trying to send to her? If so, she was not amused. “Or does this mean you’re no longer interested in nurturing my spark, Dane Croft?”

Her voice had risen to a rather loud level, and he winced and gestured for her to lower her voice. When he’d glanced around and had determined that no one was listening to them, Dane looked back at her. “Doesn’t mean that at all, Miranda, and you know it.”

Actually, she
didn’t
know it.

“This course is about survival,” he said a little louder, and handed her the wet fire bundle. “And I need to know that you can make a fire on your own. So no bundle today.”

“You are a horrible man.”

Dane only laughed and smiled down at her with a satisfied expression. “You won’t be saying that tonight, I promise.”

Flustered, she knelt next to the fire pit. Her hands searched through the wood, trying to recall what he’d taught her. Focus on work, she told herself. Not Dane. Think about fire, not about his mouth on her body. So she sat back and concentrated, gathering her thoughts. She needed to make a bow. After a few moments of searching, she found a long piece for a bow and a second piece of soft pine that would be suitable for a baseboard. She examined the wood for a moment more, and then glanced over at Dane.

He crouched near the fire pit, looking like he had nothing better to do than to sit and harass her.

“You can quit hovering,” she pointed out. “Don’t you have someone else on this team to bug?”

He grinned, seemingly unbothered by her prickly attitude. “Fire’s important. Once I’ve established that you can get a spark going all on your own, I’ll check on the others.”

She wasn’t going to touch that double entendre with a ten-foot pole. “You’re going to be waiting a while if you think I’m going to spark anything with you sitting there staring at me.”

He didn’t move.

Miranda rolled her eyes in exasperation. “If you’re going to stay here, hand me your knife, then.”

He did. “I should make you get your own knife.”

She rolled her eyes again and used his knife to make a notch in the baseboard, like he’d showed her. Once that was done, Miranda handed his knife back and began to pull the laces off of her shoe to use to string the bow. He was watching her, and it made her nervous. Made her think about sex again, and that wouldn’t do. She needed a distraction. “So, Dane,” she began as she tied one end of the laces to her chosen stick. “What made you
decide to run a survival school? I have to admit it’s not what I pictured for you.”

His easy grin began to fade a little, and he hesitated for a moment, as if choosing his words carefully. When he answered, it was simple and direct. “I enjoy it. I spent the last year living off the grid.”

“Living off the grid?” she asked, finishing her bow and testing the cord. It was tight, with just enough slack to wrap around a stick. Hopefully that would do. “What does that mean?”

“No electricity, no running water, no power,” Dane explained, his gaze on her hands as she began to set up the fire-making implements. “Just you and the wild. Colt and I had a cabin in Alaska that we built. It was…” He paused, thinking. “It was nice.”

“Not a lot of girls up in the wilds of Alaska,” she teased. “Were you pinch-hitting for the other team or just doing a lot of masturbating?”

He laughed at that. “You have a filthy mind.”

“What? Admit it—that’s the first thing you thought about, too.”

Dane grinned. “I was there to camp. As for masturbating, nah. It wasn’t on my mind at all. By the time I got to Alaska, I was pretty much done with dating. It was nice to have a vacation from everything in my life.”

“You, done with women?” She laughed. She looped a stick through the bow and aimed it over the notch she’d carved in the baseboard. “That doesn’t sound like Casanova Croft at all.”

His look became shuttered immediately. “Yeah, well, sometimes what you get isn’t always what you want.”

Before she could comment on that, he reached over and corrected her hands. “Hold it like this. And don’t forget to put your tinder under the notch so your ember has something to fall on.”

She looked at him in wary surprise. His voice had been cold, efficient. Gone was the warm, teasing note. What had she said that was so wrong? Miranda put a bit of tinder under the baseboard and swallowed down the defensive feeling. She was here to fuck—and fuck with—Dane Croft this week, and if she pissed him off, she could kiss her revenge good-bye. Irritated at herself, she began to saw the bow, turning the spindle and creating friction against the baseboard. It was harder than Dane had made it look, and she gave it another rough tug, causing the spindle to twist again.

An uncomfortable silence fell, the only sound the sawing of her spindle against the wood. After a few minutes of watching her work, Dane glanced over at her again. “So, what about you?”

She glanced up, still sawing at the bow and turning the spindle. It was hard to concentrate on the conversation, especially when she was trying so hard to get enough friction to create a spark in the small notch she’d carved in the baseboard. Crap—why did she get the fire-making task? This was hard. Concentrating on her task, she didn’t look up. “What about me?”

“You wanted to be an editor or something, right? How come you never left town? Bluebonnet’s not exactly a hotbed of activity.” His voice was wry. “I couldn’t wait to get away from here.”

She didn’t like where this was heading. So she remained silent, hoping he’d continue talking until he moved long past what she had or hadn’t done with her life.

But he paused, waiting for her to respond.

“Journalist,” she finally offered, her arms beginning to ache from sawing at the fire-making bow. How long did she have to keep doing this before she got a spark? She didn’t even have smoke yet. Frustrated, she sawed it harder. “And you weren’t the only one who wanted to leave.”

“So why didn’t you?”

She was going to start throwing a temper tantrum if she didn’t get a wisp of smoke, she really was. So she just sawed harder, her teeth gritted. “Couldn’t.”

“How come?”

She didn’t answer.

He wouldn’t let it go. “Did you have to help your mother with her store? She still runs that antiques shop, right?”

That was a little too close to the ugly truth. What sort of game was he playing? Did he want her to come out and admit that the pictures he’d taken had ruined her life? Was this some sort of nasty revenge for somehow offending him? Reminding her who she was? Putting the slut of Bluebonnet back in her place? She threw the fire-making implements down and stood up. “I need to take a walk.”

“Miranda, what—”

She whirled around to face him, glaring. “Leave me alone. Understand? I need to take a walk, and not with you.” With that, she turned and stomped out of the camp.

Christ, but that woman was prickly. Dane stared after Miranda, wondering at her explosion and subsequent exit from camp. What exactly was she hiding that made her so upset? He was
tempted to ask one of the other men, but they wouldn’t know anything about her either, being out of towners. Anyone in Bluebonnet could have told him the truth, he suspected. Everyone in town knew everyone else’s business.

And Miranda’s was apparently unpleasant business, at least in her mind. He stared down at the tools she’d dropped on the ground. Then he moved to go after her.

“Dane! Look! I got dinner!” Pete held a fish aloft, trotting back through the woods. “I caught something!”

Dane glanced at Pete, then back at the woods, then sighed and turned back to him. The man’s forehead was beaded with sweat and his pants were splotchy with water. He held aloft a fish, about a foot in length.

“Good job,” Dane said absently, glancing at where Miranda had disappeared one last time before turning back to Pete. “Get a flat rock and I’ll show you how to scale it.”

Pete gave him a funny look. “I have to scale it?”

He chuckled at the other man’s expression. “Only if you plan on eating it. You’re going to have to gut it, too.”

The gamer looked a bit green at the thought, and Dane wondered how he’d managed to catch the fish if the thought of touching it was so revolting. He nodded at the fish. “Here, give it to me and I’ll show you how to do it this one time, but after this, it’s on you. Understand?”

Pete seemed reluctant to hand the fish over, but did so after a moment, and Dane immediately saw the problem.

“This fish is dead,” he pointed out, angling his face away from the smell. “Very, very dead. Several days dead.”

Pete crossed his arms over his chest. “Is that a problem?”

Dane held it toward Pete’s face, watching as the other man flinched away. “Do you want to eat it?”

“Well, no.”

He held it back out to Pete. “Take this out there and bury it somewhere. You’re supposed to be catching live fish, not scavenging dead ones. Leave that for the coyotes.”

The other man suddenly looked panicked. “There are coyotes?”

“Don’t worry about the coyotes,” Dane told him. “They’re terrified of people. You’re more likely to see a unicorn than a coyote out here. Now head back out and actually fish.
In
the water.
With
line and bait. I’m going to go find Miranda.”

“Speaking of Miranda,” Pete said, his voice low and thoughtful. “You guys know each other?”

The hair on the back of Dane’s neck prickled at Pete’s question. “We went to high school together. Why?”

“She single?”

Hot jealousy speared through him. He resisted the urge to bite off that no one was going to be touching Miranda but him. They were supposed to be keeping things a secret. Clenching his hands, he reached for a piece of kindling and began to snap it into smaller pieces. “I didn’t ask her. Why?”

Pete gave him a smug look. “She was checking me out the other day. I thought I might see if she’s interested in going out when we get out of this little hellhole called nature.”

For some reason, that really irked Dane. Nature wasn’t hell. And to think that Miranda had been checking the skinny creep out…he didn’t buy it.

“Unless you’re planning on tapping that ass?” Pete said, interrupting
his thoughts. “I’ve noticed the way you’ve been looking at her.”

His jaw tightened. The urge to suddenly pound Pete’s face in washed over him, and he clenched his fists. “No, I’m not,” he lied. In that moment, he missed hockey and the ability to punch the hell out of your opponent. “She’s just an old friend.”

He couldn’t say yes—
Sure, I slept with Miranda last night and she was wild. It was hot as hell, and I plan on doing it again. I want to see the expression on her face when I show her how to come again. I want to see the expression on her face when I put my mouth on her sweet pussy, and her expression when I feed my cock into her body.

He couldn’t say any of that. And even if he thought about Miranda’s sassy little thong or her curving smile or the way she’d made those soft, surprised little cries of pleasure when he’d pounded into her, as if she hadn’t been expecting to enjoy it so much. He couldn’t say a damn thing. This was business, and Miranda was business, and no matter how much he might like for it to be otherwise, it couldn’t be.