Free Easy Little Lick (Copperline #3) by Sibylla Matilde

told her a quick ride, but this wasn’t a road you sped on. Apart from being dangerous, it was simply too stunning to rush through.
    Plus, I was really in no hurry to end this.
    Her arms held tight around my abs, causing me to tingle a little all over. Her body pressed against my back and moved with mine around the deep U-shaped turns in the highway. At the top of the pass, I turned off the highway onto a dirt road that headed back to a picnic area. A day-use spot that would be vacant at this time in the evening, hidden from the main road by thick pine and aspen trees.
    I slowed to a stop and looked back at her over my shoulder.
    “Hop off,” I urged.
    For a moment, she didn’t move.
    “I thought we were going for a ride,” she reminded me.
    “Yeah, but we’re also going to have a little chat.”
    “Cody—”
    “Hop off, Ils,” I repeated.
    “Cody—”
    “Ilsa.” The tone of my voice parroted hers, and I twisted around to look at her, one eyebrow raised.
    Again, I could see that what she wanted to do and what she thought she should do were at war in her head. Her face softened and she bit her lip, one last indecisive motion before she climbed off the back of my bike.
    After I’d done the same, I reached out to take her hand and led her up a small path through the trees, circling over and around some thick chunks of granite that stuck out of the ground. Literally sitting right on the continental divide, these mountains were rough and wild, formed by the forces deep in the earth. They were spectacular, the foliage green and lush. The path came to a rocky outcropping that faced back to the north, overlooking the winding road below us, showcasing the higher, snow-capped peaks in the distance that overlooked Butte.
    This spot was truly breathtaking.
    “That’s beautiful,” Ilsa murmured. She let go of my hand and stepped closer to the cliffs and watched as the sun began to dip behind the hills to the west. A light breeze blew the hair back from her face, hair that had fallen loose from her ponytail on the windy, winding ride. As she looked back at me, I reached out to tuck a lock behind her ear. She faintly leaned into my touch, then caught herself. Reaching back, she pulled the ponytail tie from her hair and began to gather the strands to put it back in place, but I reached out, tangling my fingers with hers and gently stole the elastic band away.
    With my other hand, I combed through her long, thick hair and stepped closer.
    “Why are you avoiding me?” I quietly asked into the calm wind.
    Dodging my gaze, she gave a faint shake of her head. “I’m not.”
    “Liar.” My voice came out more as a caress, softening the retort.
    “I’m here, aren’t I?” she replied.
    “That took a little work on my part,” I smiled, grazing my fingers around her outer ear and tracing my thumb down her throat. “I get the feeling you don’t want to be.”
    “That’s not it.” She gently shook her head. “It’s not that I don’t want to be here with you. I actually do. It’s that I shouldn’t want that. I don’t want to want to be here with you.”
    “Why?” I murmured, dipping my face down towards hers, lured by the sweet taste of her kiss that still haunted me days after it had happened.
    “It’s so complicated. My life is complicated.”
    I drew back to look at her more directly. “Maybe I could help,” I offered, brushing my fingers along the curve of her cheek.
    Her eyes seemed sad even as she smiled up at me. She looked down to where her hands had come to rest on my chest. “You can’t.”
    “You don’t know that,” I murmured. The breeze picked up for a minute and her sweet, warm scent mixed with the fresh pine, tickling my senses.
    As she lifted her head, her hand rose to trace the line of my jaw, scraping along the scruff. “It’s wonderful that you want to,” she whispered. “That’s enough.”
    “You have to trust somebody sometime,” I said. “I won’t hurt you.”
    “I know