by April Hunt
“If I were infallible, you never would’ve disappeared this morning in the first place. But no. I know I didn’t mutter another woman’s name because the only woman in my life is you. Your turn for honesty. What are you so afraid of that you’re out here chopping wood and picking a fight?”
Elle’s throat convulsed as she swallowed.
“I don’t think it’s even this fucked-up threat hanging over your head—or being holed away in this cabin.” Trey stroked his gloved finger over her cheek. “You know what I think it is?” He focused on the way her heartbeat thundered at the base of her throat. “I think what has you running, Elle, is us.”
“There is no us,” she croaked softly.
Trey’s internal alarm blared. That was the proverbial nail on the fucking head. He could see it in her eyes, and he didn’t like the uncertainty one bit—or the fact that her first instinct was to run, even if it was only outside.
And yeah, it was a tad bit hypocritical, considering that he’d once done the same damn thing, except it was from his familial responsibilities. But he’d learned from his mistake and tried making amends for it every damn day. It helped that he had a patient, understanding family—at least, after they’d finished kicking his ass.
He couldn’t kick Elle’s ass—but he could give it a slight nudge.
“You and I both know that’s not entirely true.” When she opened her mouth to argue, Trey silenced her with a finger to her lips. “I already told you once that I wouldn’t push you into something you don’t want, and I aim to keep that promise. But you’re not doing either of us any favors by lying to yourself. Denial only increases your chances of missing out on something that could be great.”
Elle nibbled her bottom lip again, tempting him to kiss away whatever reservations were currently firing through her pretty little head. “And you’re saying that you’re that something great?”
“Sweetness, I’m the best.”
“You’re also too cocky for your own good.” Elle stepped back, and Trey took one step forward. Three steps each, and the backs of her knees hit the tree stump and brought her to a stop.
He grinned, knowing he had her trapped. “If I wasn’t fucking great, our clothes wouldn’t keep coming off.”
“Well, you have to realize that I was in Thailand for a really long time. It made for one hell of a dry spell. I could be making up for lost time.”
He chuckled at her attempt to brush him off. “Yeah, I don’t think so.”
“Fine. You’re right. It’s called lust. It’s a physical response to the release of endorphins.”
“Lust burns out, Elle. Do you honestly feel like we’ve backpedaled to a slow simmer?”
She was back to biting that plump lower lip and, goddamn, he wanted to take a little nibble, too. But he’d be damned if she was going to distract him into letting her escape again.
“You made it clear that you don’t want hearts and flowers and rose-strewn aisles, and I’ve accepted that,” Trey stated. “But while we’re in this…agreement…you need to be all-in. No half-assed retreats. No hide-and-seek or hot-and-cold. I’m too old for games.”
“So you’re saying it’s an all-or-nothing kind of arrangement? Isn’t that kind of odd for something with a shelf life?”
“It’s exactly what we decide to make of it, and if you’re determined that this thing between us has an expiration date, then yes, I’m saying that while we’re in the thick of it, it’s all-or-nothing.” Trey pulled her to him. Even with mounds of layers between them, the heat they created simply by being in close proximity could’ve melted the snow around them.
Giving in to his need to feel her skin, he tugged off his gloves and cupped her pink cheeks. Her small hands wrapped around his wrists. She looked a second away from bolting, but she surprised him by grabbing onto the loops of his jeans and pulling him flush against her body.
She whispered, lifting onto her toes. “You’re right. This attraction hasn’t simmered down at all, has it?”
“Not in the least. And I don’t think it’s going to happen anytime soon.” The back of Elle’s hand brushed against the growing bulge in Trey’s jeans. “Definitely no time soon.”
A second after she tugged on his fly, he felt air. His eyes snapped open a split second before his dick took an ice-bath—or more accurately, a direct hit with a fucking snowball. He jerked like a squirrel had chomped on his nuts, but he forced himself still while the snow melted. Tears of laughter streamed down Elle’s cheeks.
“This is war, sweetness.”
“Oh, come on.” She lifted her hands in peace, chuckling nervously. “I was only doing my duty. It’s not healthy for a man to run that hot all the time.”
“I’d be more than happy to provide you the same kind of service.”
She skirted around the stump, stepping backward. “Thanks for the offer, but I don’t think that’s necessary. I’m pretty cool—chill, even.”
“Nope. You’re always so damn hot.”
Elle squealed as he leapt. She turned to run, but stumbled, hitting the snowy ground. Trey effortlessly flipped her to her back.
Her eyes widened as she tried—and failed—to bat his hands away. “You wouldn’t dare!”
“I would. I really, really would.” Trey grabbed a handful of snow and smeared it in her face as if it were a cherry pie.
Elle sputtered and laughed, the sound dragging out his own. Fistfuls of snow flew all around them in a winter version of a mud sling-off. Trey couldn’t remember ever laughing this hard. Only when they were so frozen they couldn’t physically move did they lie there, breathless and panting.
Elle halfheartedly smacked him on the chest and chuckled. “You make it impossible to stay in a foul mood. Do you know that?”
“Good. That’s what I was trying for.” Trey pulled her into a slow, unhurried kiss. When he finally relinquished her lips, Elle’s mouth slid into a mischievous smirk. She rolled, using his chest to push herself to her feet, and with her eyes still on him, walked backward toward the cabin.
“I’m going to take a very hot, very steamy shower in order to stave off frostbite,” she announced in a low purr. “But first I’m going to have to peel out of these wet, clingy clothes. Too bad I don’t have an extra set of hands to make it a little easier.”
Trey didn’t wait for an engraved invitation. He caught up to her easily at the mouth of the back door. Piece by piece, they tossed aside damp jackets and soaking-wet shirts. Her bra. His pants. By the time they reached the bedroom, the only thing wrapped around him were Elle’s legs.
Chapter Seventeen
No backpedaling. No second-guessing every touch. No putting her life into a choke hold. Enjoy now, deal with the fallout later.
That had been the focus during their weeklong seclusion at the cabin, and even though Elle occasionally felt the start of the reversion process, she managed to catch herself before it turned full-scale. Trey’s earlier words had shaken her up enough to realize that by strapping her life with regulations, she wasn’t so much staying in control as shuffling through the motions.
Now, if only things were moving on trying to locate Alley Man and his merry band of mercenaries—or the people who hired them—they’d be all set. There was a big fat lot of nothing. No facial matches. No leads. Elle heard Trey’s frustration when he’d threatened to reach through the video-comm and start busting heads together if some kind of information didn’t start trickling in soon.
He probably needed this hike more than she did.
Multiple layers and a puffy jacket made her feel—and look—like a microwaved marshmallow, while Trey had nailed down the sexy mountaineer look with a few days’ worth of stubble and a flannel hunter’s jacket.
Zipped, buttoned, and covered, they hiked over an area of the mountain that probably hadn’t seen visitors, other than the furry kind, in years. Trey effortlessly jumped over a particularly wide joint on the rocky ground and then turned to help her do the same.
“You c
laim this is a spontaneous trip for some fresh air, but I get the distinct impression that you have a specific destination in mind,” Elle teased. She looked up the next hilly incline and blew away the hair that fell into her eyes. “Or you’re trying to find someplace cool to get rid of my body.”
Trey’s chuckle made her look to where he offered her his hand. She took it and let out a soft grunt when he tugged her up the first foot.
“You’re right about one of those things,” Trey admitted, “but I’m too obsessed with your body to do anything as stupid as get rid of it. You’re stuck with me, babe.”
It was those kind of words, falling so easily from his mouth, that brought a special warmth to the center of Elle’s chest. Once upon a time, they would’ve sent her running into a blind panic. But now, they made her squeeze onto his hand a little tighter. She just wasn’t ready to dwell on exactly why that was, and true to his word, Trey didn’t push.
They’d made it to the top of the hill when she felt the weight of his gaze.
“What?” she asked, self-conscious.
He nodded outward, and Elle looked—and gasped.
Spread out in front of them, a snow-dusted clearing stretched from a foot away to the next steep incline—what had to be a fifty-yard distance. But it was the sleek, glass-like surface of the frozen lake that stole her breath. “This is gorgeous.”
“Welcome to Alpha Lake.” Trey urged her closer to the rocky edge. “It’s actually called Peterson’s Pond, but there hasn’t been a Peterson around these woods for probably a hundred years.”
He dropped her hand and skated his boots onto the ice. “When was the last time you went ice-skating, Miss Monroe?”
“I was probably eight,” she admitted. “And I had actual skates on my feet.”
“And you were probably skating around in a well-maintained rink, right?” He crooked his finger and beckoned to her. “How fucking boring. You haven’t really skated if you haven’t skated on a pond in the dead of winter.”
She glanced warily at the ice. “That means I also haven’t fallen through the ice and died from hypothermia.”
“It’s perfectly safe. I checked the thickness yesterday and the temps aren’t due to rise for at least another two weeks.” Even from a distance, Elle could see the determined glint in his green eyes. He wasn’t going to give up. “Don’t make me come over there and get you.”
“Always with the threats,” Elle teased. “I’m starting to think you’re all talk, Hanson.”
Her taunt backfired. When he took his first step back in her direction, she threw up her hands. “Okay! Okay! You’re the Big-Bad. I’m coming!”
Elle swallowed her lump of nerves before taking her first tentative step. She pushed down and bounced on the balls on her feet before taking another one.
“It’s going to be spring by the time you get out here,” Trey joked.
“Hardy-har-har,” Elle deadpanned. After a half dozen steps, she felt a little more comfortable.
“Slide on the soles of your boots,” Trey advised. “The traction will prevent your feet from flying out from beneath you.”
“This isn’t too bad.” She did as he said, and before long, grabbed hold of his arms. He held her upright, smirking. “Okay, so you were right. This is actually pretty neat. But I’m a little surprised that you guys don’t have skates holed up somewhere in the cabin. You seem to have everything else.”
Trey snorted. “Do we look like ice-skating kind of guys to you?”
Elle giggled at the mental image of Trey and Vince, dressed in sequined spandex and performing synchronized triple salchows.
Holding on to any part of Trey’s body she could, Elle shuffled around him, striking the occasional figure-skating pose that made him shake his head and chuckle. After she’d heard the sound once, she wanted to hear it again. She skidded. She shimmied. Trey took hold of her wrists and spun her in circles.
“I’m going to let go on three,” he warned, prepping her for a grand release that would slide her across the slick surface.
“Do it.” Cold air whipped past her face as she skidded nearly six feet. “Woohoo! Let’s do that again.”
Elle turned back around and took her first shuffle-step—and froze.
Directly beneath her left heel, a forming fissure began cracking—and expanding—through the ice. “Um…Trey?”
“Don’t move, Elle,” Trey demanded, a moment before the sound of splintering ice reached her ears. “Whatever you do, don’t move even an inch. Do you hear me?”
Fear tossed her heart into her throat, and the soft creak came again. This time, the hair-like fractures spidering out from her boot lengthened. “I can’t hear anything above the pounding of my heart. I need to move.”
“No. As a matter of fact, stop talking.”
This wasn’t Chuckling Trey. Or Sexy Trey. The man slowly edging his way toward her was most definitely Commando Trey. His eyes, narrowed in concentration, glanced to her feet and back. He skidded one foot closer, and then another. On the second step, the ice beneath Elle cracked a little wider.
Elle swallowed a screech. “Do you really think it’s a good idea to bring your two-hundred-pound body any closer? I’m going to jump back.”
“Elle, look at me,” Trey demanded calmly. He fixed his eyes on her, steady and sure.
“I’m looking! I’m also looking at this huge-ass crack I’m about to plunge through!”
“You’re not going to plunge through, babe. I’m not going to let that happen. Keep your eyes on me and focus on taking slow, deep breaths.” When she glanced nervously to her feet, he scolded gently, “Eyes on me, sweetness.”
“Trey.”
“You’re doing great.” He got closer an inch at a time. At three feet away, he was so close and yet so far away.
Everything that happened next, happened in the time span of a finger-snap. The ice beneath Elle’s feet shattered. Her left boot dipped into icy water. Trey shouted, his body a huge blur as he lunged in her direction.
Elle didn’t have time to register it all before her body was propelled backward, ass sliding on the ice until she hit the pond’s rocky edge with a loud thwack. It took a few shaky breaths to restart her heart, and then a couple more to realize she wasn’t submerged in freezing water.
Trey. She looked onto the lake and saw nothing except an Alpha-sized hole in the ice and small area of surfacing bubbles.
“No. No, no, no, no.” Elle scrambled to her feet, slipping twice. “Trey! Trey! I swear to God. if this is your idea of a joke there’ll be no place on this mountain you can hide from me.”
Running on pure adrenaline, she dropped to her stomach and belly-crawled back to where Trey had plunged through the ice. She saw the outline of his body immediately. His hand reached for the broken ledge and instead, kept bumping into the underside of the ice shelf.
Elle ripped off her mittens with her teeth and immediately plunged her entire arm into the murky depths and latched onto his coat sleeve. She struggled to plant her feet—and pulled. Trey’s two hundred pounds of muscle had her straining, but two hundred pounds of muscle and wet clothes had her cursing a blue streak that would shock a sailor.
There was power in the yell. Elle hoped Charlie’s words about punches and kicks applied to hauling six feet of Alpha male out of a frozen lake. With each tug, Elle howled. Her arms ached from the exertion, but somewhere after the sixth attempt, Trey finally hit air and gasped.
“L-l-let g-go,” he stuttered. “The ice is g-gonna b-break.”
“Then I suggest you help me get your ass out of here.”
They worked together, but with each passing second, Trey’s movements became more sluggish. Elle skidded on the ice as she scrambled to pull him higher. “Trey, damn it! You need to use those freaking muscles of yours! Bring your knee over the edge.”
“G-go before you f-fall in, t-too.” His teeth chattered.
“Stop talking stupid and lift your damn leg.” Elle tightened her grip. An omi
nous creak beneath her had Elle swearing. “Did you hear that, Trey? If you don’t suck it up and help me haul your ass out of this hole, we’re both going to be taking a dunk. Is that what you want, huh? Some freaking bodyguard you are.”
Trey grunted, and then his knee hooked the rim of the hole.
A-ha! Dare to question the machismo. Works every time.
Elle practically growled as she dragged them backward an inch at a time. Trey’s body slowly resurfaced, and she kept pulling—numb hands be damned—until they reached the edge of the pond.
“G-goddamn, it’s f-fucking c-cold,” Trey complained. His lips had taken on a blue sheen.
“We need to get you out of these wet clothes.”
“B-bag. In th-the b-bag.”
Elle scrambled to his backpack and back, then immediately started dumping everything. Dry clothes. Water. Power bars. But…clothes. This time, there was nothing erotic about undressing him. She tossed the wet things aside and struggled to get him into the dry ones. By the time she wrestled him back into his boots, sweat dotted her brow.
Trey’s eyes drifted shut.
“Wake up!” Elle gave his cheek a firm pat. “I swear to God, if you think you’re going to freeze to death on me, you best change your plans right now.”
His green eyes flickered open, but he looked so damn tired. “Since when d-did you g-get s-so bossy?”
“You haven’t begun to see bossy,” Elle warned, dragging him to his feet.
Thanks to her hazy memory and Trey’s unbalanced coordination, it took double the time to make it back to the cabin. She scanned their way through the front door and dropped him onto the couch.
“Hypothermia. Hypothermia.” Elle stopped and took a breath, trying to work through her options. Warming him slowly was the better and safer option. Going fast would only put his vital organs at risk for failure.
She tossed a handful of firewood into the hearth. Then, after finding the matches on the mantel, she lit one and threw the entire booklet in right after. As the flames grew, she heated water and poured it into emptied plastic bottles.
