by Linzi Basset
She’d immediately packed her clothes and left before he returned. Luckily, she still had the loft she leased and had somewhere to go. Unfortunately, it also meant Jason knew where to find her and he continued to hound her to return to him. When Aunt Sophie phoned four months later and invited her to visit and spend Christmas in Gatlinburg, she didn’t hesitate. It would be a painful trip down memory lane for Riley, but it was the better of two evils.
“It’s time to let go of them. I’ve held onto the horror of how Mom and Dad died for too long. It’s time to remember the good memories. The love and happiness we shared as a family.” She sighed the words. It was something she should’ve done long ago.
An unexpected gust of wind pushed the usually sturdy SUV closer to the edge of the road. Riley frantically turned the wheel to ease away from the sharp drop she knew was on her left. She slammed on the brakes and yanked the steering wheel to the left as a ridge suddenly broke through the wall of white blowing snow she could barely see through.
“Shit! I can barely see through the snow and where the hell did that mountain come from? The road to Pigeon Forge is straight and— Oh. My. God!” Her gaze caught the small screen of the GPS unit. “I passed right through the town without realizing!” She’d been so caught up in her thoughts, she hadn’t taken in her surroundings. According to the location on the GPS, she must’ve turned off the main road to Gatlinburg at some point. She was now traveling on a road somewhere in the mountains between Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg.
“And I can’t see shit!”
Riley turned the switch to increase the speed of the windshield wipers. Her eyes darted between the road and the GPS screen.
“Nothing! There’s nothing here. I’ll have to turn around,” she muttered but with almost zero visibility, she had no idea how wide the road was. She didn’t fancy ending up in a mangled steel trap if she managed to drive over a cliff or a ridge.
“Damn it! How could I not have noticed the snow getting worse? Now I’m in the center of the blizzard.” She eased her foot off the gas and slowed down, intending to bring the car to a stop. “Let that be a lesson, Riley Miller. You should’ve listened to that old timer. Gatlinburg isn’t going anywhere!”
A sharp scratching noise penetrated her frayed mind. She glanced through the passenger window and went cold at the sight of the rough edges of the mountain.
“Oh no!”
In a panic, Riley yanked on the steering wheel to move away from the boulders the SUV was scraping against.
“Oh, thank god,” she cried as she suddenly broke through the curtain of falling snow into a clear void. “No!” she screamed as she noticed the sharp curve ahead.
Riley slammed on the brakes, whimpering as the SUV swerved across the narrow road, skidding over the icy surface in the direction of the edge of the cliff. The next moment, the falling snow engulfed the vehicle. She heaved in desperation on the wheel. She hadn’t been driving fast but with the wet road, she didn’t dare brake too hard again. Crashing into the mountain was a better option than careening over the cliff though.
The impending crash seemed to take forever. Adrenaline coursed through her veins. There was nothing she could do but cling to the steering wheel as the SUV hydroplaned across the road and skimmed along the surface of the rough boulders, shuddering and then …
Riley was flung forward as the car crashed head-on into the mountain. She screamed as she felt herself catapult forward; the airbag deployed at the same time, exploding against her face, flinging her back in the seat. Her face stung and she began to cry as a horrifying scraping sound alerted her to the backend of the car still moving. It wasn’t a full-frontal crash at she’d thought; the car was in a tailspin. She couldn’t see over the slowly deflating airbag and had no idea how close she was to the cliff. Her screams swelled over the sound of the SUV once again slamming into the side of the mountain. Her forehead connected with a sickening thud against the door panel. With a final shudder, the SUV finally came to a stop.
Riley could hear her sobs and the haggard sound of her breath in the sudden quiet.
I’m not dead!
It was the last coherent thought that flashed through her mind. She moved her head and moaned pitifully as pain lanced through her brain. A forlorn sigh escaped her lips as she gave herself over to the cocoon of unconsciousness that wrapped its black cloak around her.
Chapter Two
“What the devil is someone doing on this fucking road in a snowstorm?”
Trent Reeves squinted through the sheets of snow at the beams of light he could detect higher up on the mountain. He could barely see but the high intensity lights at the top of his truck aided his vision. He was on his way home from saving another distressed motorist who hadn’t heeded the blizzard warning and ended up in a ditch just outside of Pigeon Forge. He was one of the reaction volunteers to assist with any accidents in the mountains. He owned a Ford RaptorTRAX with a winch, a mobile snow blade, and Mattracks which he attached to the wheels this time of year.
“Stop the fucking car, goddammit!” His angry growl came in the wake of watching the beams bounce haphazardly all over the side of the mountain. From his vantage point, the only thing he could make out were the two streaks of light, but he knew the mountain like the back of his hand to know the vehicle was teetering on the edge of the cliff. It was evident that the driver was losing control.
“Jesus,” he shouted as he noticed it careening toward the edge. He sighed in relief as the car spun back toward the mountain before the beams became motionless. He pumped the gas, relieved that with the tracks on the truck, he wouldn’t skid over the icy road.
“I hope whoever it is, isn’t hurt badly,” he muttered as he eased around the curve in the road seconds later. The high intensity snow strobe lights illuminated the mangled red SUV that hugged the side of the mountain. The driver must have managed to put the car in a tailspin as it was facing the opposite direction it was going when he’d first spotted it. “At least the airbags deployed,” he muttered as he brought the truck to a stop and got out.
Trent rushed toward the SUV, noticing the long brown hair first that was spread out over the white airbag still in the process of deflating. The passenger door was scratched and dented from scraping against the mountain but Trent managed to force it open. He leaned in to press his fingers against the woman’s carotid, relieved to find a strong pulse.
“Miss?” he rasped as he eased her back against the seat and brushed her hair from her face. “Damn.” His deep voice floated darkly in the chilled silence as he noticed the blood dripping on the white parka from a wound on her forehead. She was out cold.
There was no way he could get her out of the SUV from the passenger side, especially as he had no idea how badly she was hurt. He got out, closed the door and examined the position of the car. He’d be able to pull it away from the mountain without too much effort. The wreck will have to be towed away as well. If he left it there, a car coming around the bend, even in clear conditions, wouldn’t be able to avoid it. With a grunt, he walked back to his truck and seconds later, hooked the winch to the bumper slot of the Renegade Trailhawk Jeep.
“Raptor to dispatch,” he said as he settled in the truck. He cranked up the heat as he waited for a response over the Bluetooth system. He kept his gaze on the SUV as he activated the automated winch control.
“Go Raptor.” The hollow voice of a woman responded to his call.
“Accident at the snake bend on Cove Mountain Road. Female in a red Jeep. She lost control and wrapped the car around the mountain.”
“Is she hurt?”
“She’s unconscious and bleeding from a head wound. I don’t know how bad, I couldn’t see. I’m busy winching the vehicle away from the boulder.”
“Damn, Trent, the weather is getting worse by the minute. We can’t send an ambulance into the mountain. The visibility is almost at zero.”
“Don’t worry, Sally, my cabin is around the next bend. It’ll be quicker and saf
er to take her there. I’ll assess her condition and keep you informed.”
“Thank you, Trent. You’ve been a lifesaver over the past couple of weeks. I don’t understand why people don’t pay attention to the blizzard warnings. That’s the fifth accident on the mountain roads in less than a week.”
“Yeah.” Trent banned the vision that flashed through his mind of another wreck caused by an icy road in a snowstorm. One where he was too late to assist. “Gotta go.”
“Good luck, Raptor.”
It took a lot more muscle power to force the driver’s door open. It was badly scraped and dented from crashing into the boulder at the side of the mountain.
“Come on, shithead!” Trent grunted as he anchored his foot against the backdoor and yanked hard. It gave slowly and with another mighty heave, he finally managed to crack it open. He yanked off one glove to check her vitals.
His hands moved with precision over the injured woman’s neck and face. The bleeding had stopped. He decided to leave the wound and attend to it once they got to his house.
“Damn.” His voice cracked through the silence as the coldness of her skin against his warm hands penetrated. Without wasting any further time, he carefully picked her out of the car, carried her to his truck where he laid her down on the back seat. He quickly covered her with the blankets that had a permanent spot in the truck this time of year.
Minutes later he pulled away carefully. He kept a sharp eye in the rearview mirror on the wreck he was towing away at the same time.
“What the hell were you doing on this road, woman? The only place it leads to is my cabin and I sure as hell don’t know you from a bar of soap.”
Trent didn’t like visitors. For that matter, he stayed away from people in general. He was more than happy with his two Siberian huskies as companions. He didn’t need more than that. He didn’t want more than that. Well, except for indulging in the desire of the flesh, which he was very selective about the partners he chose.
Since his wife and three-year-old daughter had died in a horrible accident, he’d become a recluse. Some of the folks in Pigeon Forge even referred to him as the Scrooge. He didn’t care. All he wanted was to be left alone in his mountain cabin on Beer Willow Gap in Caney Creek.
To wallow further in the guilt that had been like a boomerang; it kept coming back and wounding him anew. That he should’ve been the one driving his family from Tennessee to Pigeon Forge on that fateful day. That he should’ve said no to scrubbing in for that operation even though there was another surgeon on call. That for once, he should’ve put his family first before his desire to save every accident victim that arrived at the level one trauma unit of the Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville.
No one understood why he had walked away from his career as a brilliant trauma surgeon but Trent couldn’t face saving another life when he had failed to keep his own loved ones alive.
Loved ones? Yeah, the other guilt I can’t seem to shake.
The morbid thought invaded his mind unexpectedly. He’d managed since Adrienne’s death, to avoid thinking about that. The main reason he had spent more and more time at the hospital than at home all those years ago. Their marriage had been breaking apart ever since Taylor’s birth. Adrienne hadn’t planned on having children before she was thirty-five and had been resentful that her career as an actress had taken a back seat to taking care of their daughter. Trent, of course, had been the one she blamed for making her pregnant, notwithstanding the fact that she was on the pill. The way she acted made him wonder if she ever truly loved him or whether she only married him because of his high standing as a well-known and revered trauma surgeon. It had given her career a boost at the time of their marriage and she rode on that wave for four years, receiving one Emmy after the other.
His guilt didn’t sprout from the fact that he’d accepted their marriage was over, because on the day of the fatal accident, Adrienne had informed him it would be the last social event she’d attend with him. She had started divorce proceedings the previous day. In all honesty, he’d been relieved. Living with her had become impossible, especially since he’d learned that she’d been visiting an upmarket BDSM club on her own. He suspected she had an affair with a Dom there. He didn’t care enough at that point to investigate the matter, knowing they were heading to divorce court. At the same time, the Dom in him seethed at her deceit.
The guilt that would forever haunt him was that he had neglected his daughter in the process. The pain of losing his beautiful cherub three-year-old little girl never faded; it had stayed with him ever since.
He had learned to cope by losing himself in the imaginary worlds of medical suspense thrillers he created as a writer under the pseudonym of Alex Cross. A series that had catapulted him to the top as one of the bestselling-and-earning authors of all times, especially once Stan Spoon had turned them into blockbuster movies.
He sighed heavily as he parked the truck, resolutely banning the memories to the hidden compartment in his mind. It served no purpose regurgitating over it. It had been six years. He would never forget but maybe the time had come to move on.
By the time Trent had carried the woman into his bedroom, undressed and covered her with the thick duvet, he was highly irritated. As a surgeon, her nakedness didn’t affect him, not since he was viewing her as he would any trauma patient. As a man and a Dominant, he couldn’t deny she had a beautiful body. He stomped back outside to the truck to fetch his doctor’s bag, which he always kept on hand when he responded to a call for assistance.
What stirred his anger was the fact that the storm had now turned into a full-blown blizzard as he struggled against the wind to stomp back to the cabin.
“Idiotic damn female.”
His voice drifted off with the slashing wind. It meant he’d be forced to take care of the woman until the road back to town became passable. He could scrape it himself but depending on how long the blizzard lasted and the amount of snow, it could take as much as a week or more to clear it all the way to Highway 321.
The last thing he needed was a nosy female to usurp the tranquility of his home, especially this time of year. Christmas was the one time he kept to himself and stayed far away from town and people in general.
Armed with a bowl of hot water, a washcloth, and his bag, he walked back into the room. His hands were steady as he quickly cleaned the wound at the side of her forehead and washed the blood from her face.
He grunted as a brief glance offered him an enticing view of her heart-shaped face, high eyebrows, small nose and full cupid lips, which he imagined usually bloomed a rosy color. Now, they appeared as pale as the rest of her face. Her long chestnut tresses were strewn in luxurious disarray over the pillow.
Trent dogmatically dragged his attention back to the wound on her forehead. She might be beautiful with a gorgeous body but he had no interest in anything but treating her injury. The sooner she was better, the quicker he’d have his bed back.
“I should’ve put her on the sofa,” he grumbled. He cleaned the wound tentatively. It wasn’t too deep but it was a rather long laceration, which he could very effectively treat with butterfly Band-Aids.
A low rumble next to him drew his attention. He frowned at the two pairs of ice blue eyes staring unflinchingly at him. The only ones in his life who weren’t scared or hesitated to cut him down to the quick.
“Don’t give me that look. This is my bed and she’s an uninvited guest.”
Another growling yap indicated the large husky’s discontent with his master.
Trent snorted in response, studying the woman as he closed the laceration with three small butterfly Band-Aids. A soft moan escaped her lips, which were becoming rosier by the moment. He was startled as his cock twitched in reaction. It was the kind of involuntary excitement he hadn’t felt in years. Living the life he did, he now only allowed himself physical pleasure in the underground dungeon he’d added to his luxurious two-story mountain cabin five years ago.
&nb
sp; Adrienne, his wife, had been the perfect submissive until Taylor was born. After that, she punished him and took pleasure in only submitting to him when he took her to a club. Maybe that was why it had been easy to move on, but he always carefully selected subs to play with. As a Dom, he had full control over his body and lusts, which was why the reaction he’d just felt, didn’t sit well with him.
She was the exact opposite in looks from his wife, or from the kind of woman he usually preferred— tall, skinny and small-breasted blondes. This woman wasn’t overweight but her generous curves … he found himself hesitating as he envisioned her nakedness in his mind. There was no denying her ample curves made an impact on him. Perhaps it was the entire package she presented. Or the picture that had invaded his mind, of her bent over a spanking bench with his hand heating up her gorgeously rounded ass cheeks while her full breasts jiggled and bounced from the force. He even imagined her husky cries at the pain combined with the weighted clamps dangling from her nipples.
“Snap out of it, Reeves. This woman has a look of innocence about her. If she ever heard of BDSM, I’d eat Storm’s dog kibble.”
“Warf! Warf!” It was evident from the annoyed bark that Storm didn’t take too kindly to that idea.
So, did Adrienne when you first met her, his subconscious mocked him. Trent frowned as he gathered his stethoscope and mobile blood pressure unit. He carefully returned it to his medical bag.
Why the devil does this woman intrigue me so?
Trent wasn’t someone who ever acted on impulse. He always weighed his options, studied every aspect of a problem before he made a decision and took precautions, always— especially insofar as play partners were concerned. Which was why the desire to test his patient’s submission smacked him in the center of his chest.
“There you have it, Reeves. She’s your patient and the reason why you have to keep your distance from her.”
