Fletch’s mouth dropped open. For Christ’s sake. “Poppy, get back out here!” he bellowed, leaning down.
No answer.
Suddenly he thought that rabbits make a good meal for a bear—who might well live under a tree. He dropped to his knees and thrashed his way under the tree so fast that he bumped right into Poppy.
She was sitting, hugging her knees, as if she were in her own bedchamber. “Fletch!” Poppy said, sounding as delighted as if he’d decided to join her for a cup of tea.
“What the hell,” he growled, setting his lantern to the side. The light wavered and went out, leaving only Poppy’s thin flame.
“It’s like a little room,” she said. “Wait a minute, Fletch. Your eyes will get accustomed.”
“Are there any bears in here?”
But he took a breath.
“No rabbits and no bears. But it’s a little house.”
A minute later he saw what she meant. The snow had scoured around the fir tree, building little walls that came up to meet the bottom layer of fir. The ground was actually a soft mat of dried needles. The snow filtered light, somehow, so that it was a pearly gray under the tree, except for the shower of yellow light around her lantern. His head just brushed the bottom layer of fir branches.
“Very nice,” he said. “Let’s go, Poppy. Your skirts must be soaked through.”
“I’m not cold,” Poppy said. She was curled up against the fir tree, smiling at him. Her hair was escaping from a thick red wool hat the butler had given her. It was a world away from the elegant little bonnets she used to wear, tipped just so on top of elaborate nests of curls. She looked like a little girl.
Well, perhaps not so little. Not with that deep sensual lip and the way her eyes were watching him. She wasn’t wearing all the face paint of last night but she didn’t need it. Her lips were the dark plum color of ripe fruit.
Even as he watched her tongue stole out and wet her lips, and then she rolled out her bottom lip in that way she had and he was harder than the tree trunk.
There was hardly any room under there, so he crawled forward a bit. “Poppy,” he said slowly.
“It’s your turn,” she said.
“You’ll catch your death. We can’t—”
“In fact, it’s warm in here,” Poppy said. “This is a snow cave. I read about them in Gentleman’s Magazine. When Captain Sybil went to the mountains of Peru, they dug snow caves and described them as quite warm.”
“I am not warm,” Fletch said. “My knees are wet. And my feet are frozen.” He crawled forward again and stopped with his mouth just an inch from her lips. “I want my turn in a proper bed.”
But she reached out one little red-mittened hand, and before he knew it, he was on his back in a soft bed of needles. She was lying on top of him, and through layers of coat he could feel the soft curves of her body. Plus, she was kissing him. Rather clumsily, it was true. She kept clicking their teeth together.
But to Fletch’s mind, enthusiasm made up for everything. And when he managed to get his hands under her coat and started to rub her all over (for warmth, naturally), he found that he liked her kissing more and more.
She was kissing him and snuffling him, and licking his eyebrow and his eyelashes and then swooping down on his mouth whenever he said anything and kissing him into silence. He protested a bit when she started pulling his clothing apart, but by then they’d heated up the little cave. As she kissed her way down his chest, murmuring things about his turn, he felt his temperature go higher and higher.
“Poppy,” he gasped at one point, “I don’t think—”
She was playing, letting snow drift from her fingers onto his nipples and his more sensitive parts and then replacing the brief chill with her warm mouth. Being a naturalist, she accompanied her little experiments with a stream of commentary.