Irritation crawled up my spine. I shouldn’t have to do this. I was a champion skier, not a babysitter.
Except I couldn’t bring myself to be too pissed off about spending time with her.
“All right, stop,” I said, skiing in front of her. “Your problem is you’re way too stiff. You’re fighting the mountain instead of moving with it.”
She tried to make a wedge with her skis and managed to stop without tumbling head over heels. She stared up at me, breathing hard. “I don’t know what that means.”
“It means you need to loosen up. Here.” I moved behind her and put my hands on her hips. Through all the padding of the ski suit, I could still feel the curve of her waist, the way her body tensed under my touch.
Fuck, I liked this. Except making her muscles more tense wasn’t the goal.
“Feel that?” I shifted her hips gently from side to side. “You need to move. Flow with it. Skiing’s all about rhythm—left, right, left, right. Your body and skis need to be loose and ready to adjust your course at any moment. skis follow.”
I demonstrated again, guiding her through themotion. After a few tries, she started to relax into the movement, at least a little.
“Better,” I said, my hands still on her hips. I should probably let go, but I didn’t want to.
“Like this?” she asked, trying one more time.
“Yeah. Exactly like that.” I finally dropped my hands and moved back alongside her. “Let’s try again. And remember—loose hips, let them move.”
We continued down, and yeah, she still fell once more before we hit the bottom, but she was getting it. Slowly.
Asher had been out of sorts when he arrived yesterday—grumpy as hell after the drive up. He’d described Zoe as frigid and stuck-up, which I’d filed away as useful information and possibly a fun challenge. But the woman I’d seen this morning, staring out at the view with her mouth slightly open, hadn’t been frigid. She’d been awed.
And unless I was completely off my game, the awe didn’t completely stop when she looked at me.
So, frigid and stuck-up? Not what I was seeing. Terrified and really bad at skiing? Definitely.
So, I did my best to be patient. Picked her up when she fell. Didn’t let my hands linger too long on that shapely little body, even though I wanted to.
When we reached the base, she looked ready to kiss the snow-covered ground in relief.
“Want to try again?” I asked, expecting her to bail.
To my surprise, she said yes. She was a determined little thing, I’d give her that.
I lifted her back on the chairlift and sat down beside her. She was quiet on the way up, staring straight ahead.
“You scared?” I remembered to ask this time.
“No. Just angry.”
Shit. What did I do? I tried to see her eyes through the goggles. Had I made her cry? That had happened before in Colorado. Management had never let me forget it. No wait there had been two times. Jesus, no wonder I had a reputation for being bad with beginners. “Angry at me?”
“No. I just don’t like not knowing how to do things.”
I blinked. “Everyone starts at the beginning.”
“But I don’t have to like it.”
“If you were never a beginner, you’d never learn anything new.” I shifted to look at her. “You’re a student, right? Don’t you like learning?”
“Yes, but I prefer to do it myself with nobody watching.”
The phrasing put my mind straight in the gutter. My cock twitched despite the cold. I could tell she had no idea she’d said something suggestive—or maybe she hadn’t, and I just had a dirty mind.
Probably the second one.
