Read Melt for Free Online Page B

you lucky having me in your group?” He winked.
    She shook her head. “You’re not lacking in confidence, are you?”
    “Have you ever built a snow shelter before?” he asked. “Because I have.”
    He was strong, too—shoveling more snow than she and the others could work with. They had theirs built a good ten minutes before the other team. He was on it with the tents as well. He and the other woman in the group did one while she and the two remaining men did the other.
    “You’re a pro.”
    Emma heard Lily marveling at his efforts and glanced over, her gaze colliding with Hunter’s. The rogue winked. He really needed to stop doing that.
    They cooked dinner on a Primus and then settled in for the long evening. Emma wasn’t tired in the least, despite the day’s physical work. Nor was anyone else. They sat in camp chairs outside the tent, bundled in their survival gear, and stared at the endless horizon.
    Hunter had more energy than anyone. To Emma’s amazement he got up, grabbed a shovel again, and started digging out some blocks of ice. He then began constructing something with them. “Can you tell what it is yet?” he called to her.
    It took a while as he put the blocks into a circle, but then she nodded. “Stonehenge. Okay, that’s pretty cool.”
    “I’ve finally done something to impress you?” He pressed a thick mitt to his chest. “It’s a miracle.”
    “Sit down, you idiot, and have a rest. It’s late.”
    “Come and walk with me for a minute, or you’ll get stiff.” He reached out and hauled her up.
    “Is Lily a beaker?” Emma couldn’t help asking about the woman who’d been chatting nonstop to Hunter while he put the tent up all by himself.
    He shook his head. “Domestic replacement for the woman who had to be med-evaced out a couple of weeks ago. She’s actually a hairdresser, but like many of us, she’ll do anything for some time down here.”
    Anything ? Emma narrowed her eyes when she saw the twinkle in his. If another woman wanted to come here and experience everything Antarctic life had to offer, then she was perfectly entitled to do so. “Good for her for wanting to broaden her life experience.”
    He leaned close and whispered, “But you don’t think a quick screw in a tiny locked bathroom would broaden your life experience?”
    “Absolutely not. Too quick, too tacky, too uncomfortable.” She crossed her arms and stopped on the ice. “But enough. This joke’s old already. I am not your challenge for this trip. Go find someone else—I’m sure there’ll be someone desperate to roll in the ice and leap into that sauna with you.”
    “But I prefer a challenge.”
    “Only until the challenge is achieved,” Emma said tartly. “You’d just tick it off your list and move on to the next one, right?”
    “Is that so bad?” His shoulders lifted. “I think sometimes people like to be a challenge. They like to set the game so the pursuit has to be relentless and hard.”
    Relentless and hard? Oh my.
    He moved closer. “Sometimes people want to be conquered. They like to have control taken away from them.”
    She raised her brows. “You’re on thin ice with that idea.”
    He chuckled. “I mean, they like to be freed to be as bad as they don’t dare to be ordinarily.”
    “Really.” She almost rolled her eyes. “You’re into liberation?”
    “Yeah, that’s it.” He nodded, laughter in his voice. “Sometimes people need to be set free.”
    “By being conquered?”
    “By having their walls of repression smashed.” He dared her to have a fit at him.
    “Through sex?” she asked as sarcastically as she could, but inside she was totally heating up.
    “How else?” he murmured. “By being dominated and made to lose control and succumb to the ecstasy.”
    She managed a laugh and shook her head. “I don’t need to be liberated, thanks.”
    “You’d prefer to be captured, then?” He nodded like he finally got it now. “How about bound?”
    “You’re