“Ouch,” she jerked when she felt a needle pierce her flesh.
“Sorry. Shouldn’t take more than seven or eight stitches to close the wound.”
Biting her tongue, Paisley counted each stitch while she tried to keep herself perfectly still.
One.
Two.
Three.
At four, she didn't think she could take any more, but somehow Stephen sensed it and his hand began to stroke the length of her spine. The stroking motion soothed her and lulled her back into a half-asleep haze.
Five.
Six.
This time she lasted only two more stitches before the pain got too much and she started to whimper and squirm again.
“You’re doing great, Paisley,” Stephen said softly, squeezing her uninjured shoulder.
Seven.
Eight.
It wasn't until he did the last stitch that she realized he’d said her name.
She hadn’t told him her name.
Immediately, her hackles went back up.
Had he been following her?
Was he targeting her specifically?
Had he been waiting for her?
Or maybe he had used his cop powers to run her license plate, and he was just lying to her that reception was down.
Stephen taped a bandage over the wound, and as soon as he removed his hands, she darted up and shrank away from him, cowering in one corner of the couch.
“How do you know my name?” Hurt as she was, she had never felt so vulnerable in her life. How could she get out of here unless he let her? She was getting her first good look at him, and the man was even more of a rock than he’d looked out in the storm.
He had to be well over six feet tall, towering over her own five-foot-five frame. His jaw was every bit as chiseled as his abs had been, but it was tempered by his messy blond hair and bright blue eyes. He was hot, there was no denying that, but were his looks just another tool he used to lure in victims?
“Relax.” He lifted one corner of his mouth in a half smile. “I got your bag from the car. I thought you might want it.” He stood and walked to the table and retrieved her bag, bringing it back to her and handing it over. “I checked your driver’s license before I came running after you. Thought it might help to calm you down if I could call you by your name, but it seems it had the opposite effect.”
He looked dismayed by that, and her heart softened a little. Her fear did too. “Thank you.” She offered him as much of a smile as she could muster, then quickly opened her bag and yanked out her cell phone, quickly confirming that it had no coverage. “Sorry,” she said, shooting Stephen an apologetic smile.
“That’s okay,” he assured her with another smile of his own. It was a bigger smile this time, and the transformation in his face was like night and day; he went from cold and hard, to hot, just plain hot. “Someone shot you. I get why you're paranoid. But you’re safe here, Paisley. I am a cop, and I won't let anyone hurt you.”
She believed him.
Chapter Ten
She kept sneaking surreptitious glances in Stephen's direction.
“I think we can get away with just putting butterfly strips on the cut on your head.”
He’d shed his jacket which left him in just a pair of jeans hung low on his hips and a black sweatshirt that clung to his body, highlighting every single muscle.
It was probably just the concussion and shock making her drool all over him.
Yes, Paisley told herself, that’s all it was.
And since she no longer thought he was the killer, he had kind of saved her life.
Well, really, there was no “kind of.” His arrival had likely scared off the man with the human head. If Stephen hadn’t been out there, then she’d probably—no, definitely—be dead right now.
That was a definite extra point in his corner.
What was she doing?
Was she actually working out the pros and cons of getting involved with this man?
“Paisley? You still with me?”
She blinked and could feel herself blushing. “What? Oh, yeah, my head, that’s good.”
“You zoned out again. Do you have a headache? Nausea? Dizziness?” he rattled off.
“Yes, yes, and yes.”
“Concussion,” he said grimly. The idea of being stuck with a strange woman who had been shot and had a concussion in the middle of a storm didn't seem to appeal to him very much. Not that she could blame him. He had seemed so eager to get her inside his cabin while they were out in the storm, but now that he did, it seemed he had changed his mind.
“I’ll be okay.” For some reason, Paisley felt an overwhelming need to reassure him.
“Yeah, you will be,” he murmured. He then stood over her with a damp cloth in his hand. “I need to clean this before I close the wound.”
When he leaned over her, she felt a fluttering in her stomach.
He was so close.
His breath warmed her cold cheeks, and again his hands were gentle as he cleaned around the cut, taking care to cause her as little pain as he could. His palm cradled her neck and his fingers tangled in her hair. She wondered what it would feel like to have those long, nimble fingers touching other parts of her body. Teasing her, stroking her, driving her wild.
Desire pooled in her belly, and she sucked in a surprised breath.
Stephen’s eyes met hers, and she got the uncomfortable feeling that what she had just been thinking was written all over her face.
His eyes were so blue. A mesmerizing blue. Like a summer sky when you stared into it for so long that you seemed to lose yourself.
His gaze dipped to her lips, and of their own accord, they parted and the tip of her tongue darted out between her teeth to wet them. Then, embarrassed, she drew her bottom lip in and began to chew on it. Hopefully, he attributed this sudden dose of libido to the bump on her head.
Stephen cleared his throat and deliberately returned his gaze to her head. He patted it dry with another towel, and she couldn’t stop a small moan from getting out as he pressed against the lump on her temple. He refused to make eye contact as he put three small strips of tape across the wound.
Paisley probably should feel bad for making him uncomfortable, but she couldn’t really summon any regret. Every time he touched her, all she could think of was those fingers inside her, bringing her to the edge of immeasurable pleasure and then throwing her over. It really had been too long since she’d been with a guy. That had to be why she was having fantasies about making out with a man she still wasn't entirely sure wasn't going to murder her.
“Hh—hmm.” Stephen cleared his throat again. “How’s your pain; do you need something else?”
“No, it’s not so bad,” she assured him, attempting to shift into a more comfortable position without jostling her injured shoulder too much. It wasn't just the gunshot wound and the lump on her head that were hurting now—with every second that passed, a new scratch or bruise was making itself known.
“Ah, then, maybe, I’ll, ah, get you something to wear.” Stephen stood awkwardly, trying to look anywhere but directly at her.
Oh, right.
She was wearing only her bra since he’d cut away her sweater to get to her wound. The bra was white and lacy and pretty much covered everything, but she got why he felt weird and probably a bit like a pervert sitting there looking at it.
Instead of being mortified that she was sitting in front of a stranger half naked, her nipples hardened as she imagined him rolling them between his fingertips, then drawing them into his mouth.
“Um, yeah, I’ll be right back.” Stephen made a hasty exit.
Her body had gone off on its own tangent. It really had to stop embarrassing her like this. She wasn't usually this sex obsessed. In fact, between being booked solid teaching riding lessons, and taking care of her own horses, then family and friends, she never usually had time to think about sex. She hadn’t been with anyone since she’d ended things with her fian
cé almost ten months ago.
It was probably just everything that had happened over the last hour or so. Seeing a man holding a human head, getting shot, crashing her car, the fear, the adrenalin, the shock, the pain—it had all overloaded her body and shoved it into a zone where all it wanted was to feel something good.
“Here you go.” A large gray sweater was thrust at her, and Stephen remained behind her while she tried to get it on.
Every time she moved the arm on the same side as the bullet wound pain shot up and down it like an electrical current. Paisley groaned and grunted and did her best to lift the arm enough to get it through the sleeve but made little progress.
“Let me help,” Stephen finally said with a small, resigned sigh. He took the sweater from her, then picked up her hand, and without moving her injured arm much, managed to slide it through the sleeve. Then he pulled the sweater over her head, and although she could have gotten her good arm in on her own, he picked up that hand as well and pushed her arm into the other sleeve.
“Thank you.” She gave him a shy smile as he sat down on the coffee table in front of the sofa.
He merely nodded his head once, then launched into cop mode. “Do you know who shot you?”
Paisley didn't want to talk about this right now.
Her emotions were already all over the place and talking about what had happened was only going to bring back all that fear that was just starting to simmer down.
“Paisley?” he prompted.
“No,” she replied in a small voice.
“You thought I was a killer, so you knew someone was after you.”
“I … it was … I don’t know who he is, but … but there was a man in the road,” she began haltingly, all thoughts of making out with this sexy guy vanishing.
“A man in the road, before you crashed your car?”
“Yes. He … he had … he was holding …” She trailed off, now wondering if the entire thing had been just a figment of her imagination.
“He was holding what?”
She lifted her eyes to meet his, needing something to anchor herself. “He was holding a human head.”
“A human head?” Stephen repeated, looking both shocked and skeptical.
“And then he pointed a gun at me. I swerved, but he must have shot me, and then I crashed the car.”
For a long moment, Stephen said nothing. The silence began to make her uncomfortable, and she fidgeted with the sleeve of the sweatshirt that was several sizes too big and came right down past her fingertips.
“Are you sure?” Stephen asked at last.
“Would I have been so scared of you when you found me if I hadn’t just seen a man standing with a human head and a gun in the middle of the road?” she reasoned.
“No, I guess you wouldn’t,” he agreed, looking thoughtful now.
“He’s probably still out there,” she said, and needing to move to keep her fear at bay, Paisley struggled to stand and walked to the kitchen. Not caring whether it was rude, and she was overstepping her position as a guest in his home, she rifled through Stephen's drawers and cupboards, searching for a glass. Her throat was dry from being out in the wind, and she needed some water to soothe it and her fears.
Instead, what she found only increased those fears.
“Where are all the knives?” she asked. There was a knife block on the counter, so she knew he owned some, but they all seemed to be missing.
“You don’t fully trust me yet; I don’t want to get stabbed just for trying to help you.”
A reasonable answer or he wanted to make sure that she had nothing to defend herself with.
Paisley went to the front door and tried to turn the handle. Not surprised, but still unnerved when she found it wouldn’t turn. “You locked me in.”
“You're my responsibility now. I have to keep you safe.”
Stephen seemed more resigned and annoyed when he said that than he did menacing, and she felt a small wave of disappointment wash over her.
She should be afraid of him.
But she wasn't.
Not really, anyway.
She wanted to be more than just his responsibility.
She wanted him to care about her.
It was stupid, and it made absolutely no sense, but it was what it was. Her body wanted him. There was no use arguing with herself about it. Her mind wasn't sure what it wanted, but a guy who would help a stranger, especially one who had behaved as hysterically as she had, couldn’t be a bad man.
Paisley still wanted to get out of here, but now that wasn't wholly fueled by fear, it was also fueled by desire. The longer she stayed here, the more she was going to crave him, and until she knew more about who he was, she wasn't sure that she should.
Stephen came and stood in front of her, studying her with an inscrutable expression. “You should get some rest.”
“What if he followed us here? What if he comes back?”
“Do you really think I'd let him get to you?” Stephen’s blue eyes met hers and held them with an unwavering gaze. His hand reached out as though to stroke her cheek but froze at the last minute, like he was battling an internal struggle of his own. Eventually, he must have decided he couldn’t resist because the backs of his fingers brushed across her cheekbone with a featherlight touch.
The answer to that was simple.
She didn't even have to consider it.
Did she think he would let anyone lay a finger on her?
No.
Did she think he was going to lay a finger on her?
The jury was still out on that.
Just like it was still out on whether or not she wanted him to.
Chapter Eleven
Stephen couldn’t stop watching her.
Paisley had been reluctant to lie down and try to get some sleep, but her body needed rest, so he had insisted. Despite her protestations to the contrary, the second she lay her head down on the pillow on his couch, she was asleep.
That was over an hour ago now.
She hadn’t moved an inch; her exhausted body had reached the end of the road and crashed.
He’d been sitting keeping watch over her. If what she had said was true, and her hysterics when he’d found her certainly supported what she’d told him, then he wanted to be ready in case the man had tracked them here and came after her.
What she’d told him was a crazy story.
A man standing in the middle of the road, in the middle of an incoming storm, holding a human head. A human head. Even if there was a killer around here who was killing people and cutting off their heads, why would he be standing in the middle of the road holding it? He would have had to know that there was a good chance someone would see him.
If it hadn’t been for the fact that Paisley had a bullet in her shoulder, then he might not have believed her. There was no denying that someone had shot her, and since they had, why couldn’t it have been this decapitating killer? It had to have been someone and why would she lie?
As soon as the storm passed, he would call in reinforcements, and they'd see what they could find.
Right now, he just had to get through the next twenty-four hours or so without doing something stupid.
She wasn't making that easy though.
Every time he looked into those emerald eyes, he knew what she was thinking about.
Sex.
With him.
She must have hit her head harder than he’d thought because the very idea of the two of them having sex was ludicrous.
Absurd.
Crazy.
Insane.
Ridiculous.
Never going to happen.
Ever.
No matter how good it would be.
And it would be good.
Her toffee brown hair was like silk, and he could imagine wrapping it around his hand and tilting her head back, exposing her slender neck so he could trail a line of kisses down it. He wanted to rip off that lacy, white bra—that barely concealed an
ything and had nearly driven him to distraction while he’d been trying to patch her up—with his teeth, to expose those small round breasts that would fit perfectly in his hands. He wanted to hear her scream his name as—
No.
He had to stop thinking like this.
He was a killer.
He didn't deserve a sweet girl like Paisley. He deserved a lifetime of pain and misery and suffering, not a beautiful woman.
Get through the next day or so, get rid of the woman, that was all he had to do.
Don’t let it get personal.
Stephen sighed.
He knew it was already too late for that.
Chapter Twelve
Paisley woke with a start, disoriented and unsure of where she was.
Then came the pain.
And with it, her memories.
She was in Stephen’s cabin—locked in—and if the need arose, had nothing with which she could defend herself.
Stephen.
Where was he?
When he’d insisted that she lie down and try to get some rest, she had resisted, knowing he was right but unsure about letting herself fall asleep in his presence. In the end, it hadn’t been up to her, her exhausted body and mind had simply given out.
After helping her lie down, she had assumed that he would have stayed close by, but the room was empty.
Tentatively, she sat up, unsure how her head and her stomach were going to react to the change in position. Her head swam as soon as she was upright, and her stomach churned right along with it, but it wasn't too bad, certainly manageable.
A fire raged in the fireplace, but other than the light from the flames, the room was dark. Perhaps Stephen had gone to bed satisfied that she would be out for hours. She should take advantage of being alone and do a little snooping. Paisley couldn’t deny she was curious about the cop who lived alone in a tiny place in the middle of the woods.
First, though, she needed to go to the bathroom.
Whispers of Winter: A Limited Edition Collection of Winter Romances Page 90
