Cold Snap (In From the Cold #1)

by Lee Brazil

Chapter Three

  Waking up in a strange bed wasn't exactly a first for Cannon Malloy. Waking up next to a Nordic god of a man? That was new. And so wrong. But warm…Cannon cuddled a little closer and squeezed his eyes shut. If he could force himself back to sleep before the voice of reason started speaking, he could enjoy this longer.

  Too fucking late.

  You know nothing about this man. You let a man you just met fuck you into unconsciousness, begged him to do it even!

  His ears burned at the memory of his voice pleading…Oh god…

  He'd learned nothing about self-preservation from the incident in Atlanta.

  Serial killer. Stalker. The dead vagrant on his living room floor.

  Charred, burned bodies in wrecked cars. Even knowing the killer had been caught, justice had been served, he couldn't dismiss the fear, the wretched uncertainty and suspicion.

  Logic told him he was safe. He just couldn't trust anything…anyone.

  Cannon's eyes snapped open and his vision adjusted to the dim morning light. He extracted himself carefully from under a muscular tanned arm. Fine gold hair, not as white-blond as the hair on Finn's head, dotted that arm, and his fingers positively itched to stroke it, to feel it scratch against his fingers. He scrambled off the bed with a muffled whimper as he realized he wanted to touch a lot more than the arm that had held him safe and warm through the night, pinned to the hard muscled body of an athlete, a young, lusty athlete who put Cannon to shame and even made Chance look like a sloth by comparison.

  He had to get out of here, get his car, and go home. Or back to his cabin, which was as close to home as he was going to get any time soon. His suit pants were on the floor, and his wallet was in the pocket, shirt on the floor, underwear…He cast a frantic glance at the gently snoring man on the bed and dropped to his knees to peer under the bed.

  Underwear.

  Fuck the socks.

  Fuck. Just. Fuck.

  Turning his back on the bed and the spineless urge to crawl under the covers and pretend he wasn't an adult with a logical mind, he dragged the pants on, shrugged into the shirt, and tiptoed to the door. He winced as the old floorboards creaked, then shook himself. The whole hotel creaked. It was ancient, and though the remodeling was well done, the bones of the building were old and sound carried.

  The whole fucking hotel probably heard him screaming in ecstasy.

  Worse, at least the closest neighbors had heard him begging.

  Ears burning, fingers trembling, Cannon thanked the god's that his walk of shame was at least short as he'd been given a room just a few doors down from Finn's. He darted into the hall and down to his room, where gathering his belongings took only a few minutes.

  He stood with it all in his arms, poised to run for it, when he remembered that he had no car to escape in.

  Dumping his clothes, coats, boots, and cold weather gear on the unused bed, he dropped to the floor. Cannon dragged in deep breaths and squeezed his eyes shut as he ran his fingers through his hair over and over again. He was shaking, but not from the cold. When he'd entered the room yesterday, the first thing he'd done was turn the heat up as high as he could. In these early morning hours, it was almost too hot for comfort. The cell phone he'd left behind the night before beckoned him. It held the answers to all his problems, and not just a lifeline to his friends in Atlanta.

  The sun hadn't even risen yet, he needed a snow shovel to dig his car out, a taxi to drive him to his car, and…Google could find it all for him, if he could just pull his shit together. The bone-deep chill he hadn't been able to shake since—if he were honest, and it seemed his voice of reason was determined to be heard today—since long before he'd left Atlanta made him shiver. His fingers trembled, a jittery reaction not even visible to the naked eye, but he could feel it. He held the hand out in front of himself as though to prove it once again. Clenching the hand in a tight fist, he snorted, then chuckled darkly in the dim room. Atlanta's finest neurosurgeon, taking a job in a teaching hospital for a semester? Outrageous, his colleagues had declared.

  His superiors had been outraged, he'd just received a promotion that most of his peers would have killed for.

  If he'd gone back into an operating room, death would have been inevitable. The surgeon's hands that had saved lives, the hands that had crafted a career he'd sacrificed genuine love for, had failed him.

  So he ran.

  And he was going to keep right the fuck on running.

  Cannon pushed himself upright until he stood among the mess of his belongings. Ignoring them all, he crossed the small patch of carpeted floor and turned on the shower. Billows of steam rose, and he stepped gratefully into the scalding heat, immediately ducking his head to burn away the thoughts he didn't want to think.

  Ten minutes to shower the cum off his belly wasn't going to make any of that easier to deal with, but at least it would reduce the number of reminders of his behavior with Finn Lorensson to the ache in his ass.

  And the smile that danced behind his closed eyelids while he shampooed his hair? Well…it would fade too.