“Oh, that.” How could a superstar jock have so much imagination? “But I’m nothing more than an innocent hiker.”

“Then you won’t mind if I search you.”

“Well…only to prove how innocent I am.”

“Sensible. Now spread ’em.”

She inched her bare legs open. He knelt behind her and shoved them farther apart. His stubbly jaw abraded her inner thigh as he pushed down her socks and bracketed her ankles with his fingers. He rubbed his thumb in the hollow just beneath the anklebone, igniting an erogenous zone she hadn’t even known existed. He took his time running his hands up her bare legs and along the backs of her thighs. Her skin broke out in goose bumps. She waited for him to reach the hem of her shorts, only to be disappointed when he bypassed those convenient leg openings and pushed up the back of her T-shirt instead.

“A prison tattoo,” he growled. “Just as I thought.”

“I got drunk at a Sunday school picnic, and when I woke up…”

His fingers settled in the smooth curve of her spine, just above the waistband of her shorts. “Save your breath. You know what this means, don’t you?”

“No more Sunday school picnics?”

“A strip search.”

“Oh, please, not that.”

“Don’t fight me or I’ll have to get rough.” He slipped his hands under her T-shirt, pushed up the front of her bra, and dragged his thumbs over her nipples. She moaned and her arms fell.

He pinched her nipples. “Did I say you could move?”

“S-sorry.” She was going to die from sexual ecstasy. Somehow she managed to get her rubbery arms back to their former position. He drew down her zipper and pushed her shorts and panties to her ankles. The cool air brushed her bare skin. She pressed the side of her face against the rough tree bark as he played with her bottom, kneading it, skimming the crack with his thumbs, testing to see how far she’d let him go with this wicked game.

Very far, as it turned out.

Finally, when she was so crazy with need, she could barely stand, she heard the slide of his zipper. “One last place to look,” he said huskily.

And then he turned her to face him, kicking away her panties and shorts. His eyes were half-lidded, opaque with desire. As though she weighed nothing, he picked her up and set her spine against the tree trunk. Splaying her legs, he stepped between them. She wrapped her calves around his hips and entwined her arms around the strong column of his neck. He opened her with his fingers, tested her arousal, and finally claimed what was, at that moment, indisputably his.