by Terry Spear
He lifted his mouth from hers and glowered at her for a second, his eyes smoky with desire. Speechless, she stared back at his chiseled face, the grim set of his lips, his dark silky hair curling down, dripping water on her cheeks. Then his fathomless, darkened eyes drifted closed and his tight grip loosened on her wrists.
“No!” she shouted, right before he collapsed on top of her in a faint, his dead weight pinning her to the beach.
“Hey!” she yelled, her hands on his shoulders, shaking him. “Wake up!” She couldn’t budge the muscled hunk, but if she didn’t revive him and get him to some place warm, he would die for sure. “Hey! Wake…up!” She pushed and shoved, trying to roll him off her. But he was too heavy—solid muscle and bone.
“Get…off…me!”
He moaned and lifted his head, his glazed eyes staring at her, his beautiful white teeth clenched in a grimace, but he didn’t seem to comprehend.
“Can you move? I’ll…I’ll take you up to my house and call for help.”
For the longest time—although it probably was no more than a second or two, but with the way his heavy body pressed against hers, it seemed like an eternity—he watched her.
Then he groaned and rolled off her onto his back. She hurried to recover him with the parka, yanked off her knit cap, and stretched it over his head. More heat was lost through the head than any other body part, she recalled hearing from a survival show. Odd the things that would come to mind in the middle of a crisis.
He observed her as the sleet continued to pelt them—an expression without feeling, icy cold like the storm, a face devoid of fear, unlike the way hers probably looked.
“Okay, listen…we’re both going to catch our deaths here on the beach in this weather. We need to get you up to the house. Can you move?” She pulled on her glove.
His gaze drifted to her soaking wet turtleneck. But otherwise he didn’t move or speak. Tugging at him, she finally managed to help him sit. She slipped behind him, wrapped her arms around his chest with her body hugging his, braced with her knees, and tried to pull him up. She couldn’t budge him.
“You’ve got to help.” Her voice exasperated—not with him, but with herself—her frosty breath curled around his ear.
He finally leaned forward, pressed his hands against the sand, pushed himself up, and moaned. The sound of his pain streaked through her like a warning. He was in bad shape and could still die if she didn’t move fast enough, didn’t do the right things.
As soon as he stood, he grabbed hold of her shoulder and swayed.
Her heart lurching, she seized his free arm. He leaned hard against her, ready to collapse, and a new thrill of panic swept her. If he pulled her down with him, she’d be where she was before, trying to lift the veritable muscled mountain off the beach.
She hung her parka over his broad shoulders and wrapped her arm around his trim waist. “Okay, it’s not too far to climb.”
Although it was, considering the injured man’s shaky condition.
They stumbled up the rough path, and she glanced down at his poor feet, taking a beating on the icy rocks. Every step could be his last, she worried, while he clung to her as if his life depended on it.
Which it probably did.
When they reached the short path to her back door, she intended to rush him inside, call for help, get him warm—not necessarily in that order—but instead, she froze in place several feet away from the edge of the small brick patio.
The back door was standing wide open, the wind banging it against the house.
“I locked it,” she said under her breath. “I know I locked it.”
Despite the overwhelming panic that filled her, she had to get the injured man into the protective shelter of the house. With trepidation, she walked him the rest of the way, and once inside, she led him through the kitchen. No sign of an intruder. But her spine remained stiff with tension.
The injured man lifted his nose and smelled. He tilted his head to the side as if he was listening for the same thing she was—sounds of the housebreaker.
She hurried the man to the velour sofa where he collapsed in a ragged heap, his expression slightly dazed. She had to get him warmed up. But she had to make sure no danger could threaten them inside the house. Glancing toward the hall and the three bedrooms, she listened. No sound of anyone rummaging through any of the rooms.
Sleet continued to pour on the roof, the sound a loud roar, which could hide the presence of someone moving around inside. She grabbed the wool afghan at the end of the couch and covered the injured man’s lap, the parka still draped across his shoulders and pink ski cap stretched tight on his head.
“I’ll turn on the heat and get some more blankets for you,” she said to him, without taking her eyes off the hallway to the bedrooms.
First, she was calling 911 and getting a knife for protection. She patted his shoulder. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”
She didn’t wait for his response. Instead, she hastened to the kitchen, yanked open a drawer, and pulled out her largest carving knife, although it was about as dull as her butter knives. Too bad she couldn’t get to her gun. With weapon in hand, she grabbed her phone, punched in 9–1–1, and lifted the receiver to her ear. No signal. She tried again. Same thing. Hell, what else could go wrong?
Shivering in her wet, icy clothes, she shut and locked the back door. When she turned, she gulped back a scream. The battered man was standing in her kitchen, looking even bigger, taller, nude again, and still blue. He moved as silently as the cat she had once shared the house with until it took off for parts unknown.
“My god, you need to rest on the couch and…and I’ll turn the heat on and…”
His indomitable gaze lowered to the knife in her hand.
Mouth dry, her heartbeat quickened. “I…someone broke into my house. I think.”
Without a word, he stalked off, his step more sure, although he had to be in terrible pain, as bruised and beaten as he was. She followed him, her gaze shifting to his butt, firm, muscled perfection with every step he took. He glanced over his shoulder with a glower, but when he caught her checking out his derrière, his mouth curved up a hint.
Her cheeks on fire, she raised her brows and stood taller.
Realizing he couldn’t dissuade her from following him, he grunted and moved forward, checking out her brother’s room first. The navy velvet curtains flopped in the breeze, framing the shattered window. She sucked in the chilled air and stared at the jagged window, now a gaping hole into the black void outside. A shudder shook her to the center of her being. He could return anytime.
She examined the carpet closer. No glass, which meant the intruder had broken it from the inside, not outside to get in. This further meant he must have entered through the back door and hadn’t escaped that way like she was beginning to think.
The injured man crossed the floor to the window, peered into the dark, standing in the icy breeze as if he was made of pure marble and the cold couldn’t touch him. Then he turned, shaking his head slightly.
Her gaze dropped from his furrowed brows, narrowed eyes, and the set of his grim mouth to his ruggedly sculpted abs, and then lower to the dark patch of curly hair at the apex of his sturdy thighs and his incredible…size.
Her eyes shot up. He was injured, for heaven’s sakes, and probably suffering from frostbite and a concussion. Yet, she swore lust clouded his eyes.
Ha! More likely the onset of pneumonia.
“Let me, uhm, get you some of my brother’s clothes.”
She hurried into the closet, grabbed Michael’s fleecelined navy sweats and a pair of his sneakers, and exited. The man was gone. She glanced at the wind and sleet coming into the room, wetting the beige carpeting. Wishing she could tack something up in the meantime, she knew they didn’t have a shred of canvas. Although even if she did, it wouldn’t prevent the intruder from coming back in that way.
Clutching her brother’s things to her chest with one arm, the knife readied i
n her free fist, she rushed into the hall and nearly collided with the naked man. A gasp slipped from her lips before she could hide her unsettled reaction.
“You’re going to hurt yourself with that.” His words sounded husky and wearied. His colorless lips lifted slightly. “Or me.”
The way he said, “Or me,” sounded suspiciously like he didn’t believe she could hurt him. As wired as she was, her hands trembled with the notion she might have accidentally stabbed him.
His icy hand touched hers, almost reverently. Was he worried she was scared to be unarmed? She was more fearful that she might have caused him further injury.
Despite how cold they both were, his flesh sent a volley of warmth sliding through her, his eyes never straying from hers. Heat, passion, and a knowing look as though he could read the way she was feeling showed in the glint of his amber eyes. And then he slipped the knife from her grasp, his fingers leaving hers and the cold returned.
He had to be chilled to the marrow of his bones. She was and she wasn’t even nude in the icebox of a house, although wearing wet clothes had to come in a close second for making a body cold under these inhospitable conditions.
“No one in any of the rooms,” he assured her, his voice cloaked in darkness, his gaze steady, penetrating.
Something unspoken tied them together, although she couldn’t sense what. The way he considered her as if she was important to him somehow—not as his savior exactly, but more like his…captive, his prey.
Before her frozen mind made anything stranger of her reaction toward him, she shoved the sweats at his chest. “Here, get dressed and I’ll—”
“Turn on the heat?” He cocked an arrogant brow, his lips neutral.
One of her medieval romance novels could have featured him as a brooding, striking—albeit a bit battered—hero. Or the villain. What did she know about him, after all?
“I would have already,” she said, storming back down the hall, “if an intruder hadn’t been in the—”
“The electricity isn’t working.”
She stopped, turned, and stared at him. It would be dark soon. And even colder. Hell, she hadn’t even gotten one load of firewood from the beach yet.
Now, she was stuck in the middle of the ice storm with no electricity and no phone…with a total hunk of a stranger still standing in her hallway naked.
The man slipped her brother’s sweatpants on, but the corded muscles of his chest were exposed, his skin tan, no longer blue, but bruised and cut. He yanked the sweatshirt over his head. “I checked the heater while you were getting the knife. Light switches, too. There’s no electricity.” He pulled on the pair of sneakers.
“Then I need to gather wood for the fire.” Tessa shuddered involuntarily, both from the cold and her wet clothes. But also from the fact she would have to trek back down the hill alone when the prowler might still be out there hidden in the woods, watching, waiting.
The injured man swept his hair back away from his chiseled face, the planes edged in marble. “You need to slip into something dry. I’ll get the firewood.”
“But you…you were half dead.”
“I heal quickly.”
“Good.” Her voice conveyed she wasn’t convinced.
No one could heal that quickly—probably trying to sound macho to appease her. She took a deep settling breath and watched him deposit the knife on the tiled kitchen counter with a clunk. His hands were big and rough. Not an artist’s hands like her brother’s, but strong enough to pin her to the beach, not allowing her an inch to struggle. An annoying sliver of eroticism stoked a fire deep inside her, just thinking about the way his body had pressed against hers. He’d been delirious, for heaven’s sakes, and didn’t even realize what he had done.
“I’m going with you, just in case you begin to feel badly. You probably suffered from a concussion and should go to the hospital. But the road will be too icy and—”
He pulled the back door open.
“Wait! Let me get my parka, and I’ll get Michael’s field jacket for you.”
She rushed into the living room, grabbed her coat from the couch, and pulled it over her wet clothes. The turtleneck and jeans clung to her skin like pieces of cloth soaked in ice water, and again she shivered. She would have changed clothes if he had given her a couple of minutes. But if they didn’t get wood in a hurry, it would be soaking wet. Forget a warm fire then.
After retrieving her brother’s jacket from the hall closet, she joined the stranger in the kitchen.
“I’m Tessa Anderson, by the way, and you are?”
His forehead wrinkled slightly and his jaw tightened. “Hunter’s the name, although…I can’t seem to remember anything else. My tumble in the ocean probably had something to do with it.”
“You don’t remember a last name?” Her skin prickled with fresh unease. A naked stranger without a last name washed up on her beach and no way to get outside help in the event he was unsafe—
“I’m sure it’ll come to me after a while.” He threw on the jacket and headed outside.
“Wait! Gloves!”
But he was already halfway down the trail. She grabbed a pair of her brother’s fur-lined leather gloves from the hall closet and rushed after Hunter. As much as she didn’t want to admit it, she was more afraid of staying alone in the unsecured house, than with chasing after a stranger. Even so, she sensed the driving power inside him, the danger inherent, something about him that made her think of—she wasn’t sure.
“Wait! Here are Michael’s gloves!”
Moving too fast on the icy ground, she slipped. Her heart tumbled and she threw her hands out to brace her fall on the rocky path. If Hunter hadn’t leapt forward and caught her wrist, pulling her into his hard embrace, she would have landed on her face.
Heat suffused every pore, and the stranger showed more than a spark of interest. His gaze smoldered with passion as he looked into her eyes, lower…to her lips.
Her chest pressed against his, his heart beat as fast as hers, maybe faster, and for an instant, he didn’t seem to want to let go, his arms holding her tight, lots closer and longer than necessary. More than that—he acted like he wanted to kiss her again. Although she knew the first time had to have been a mistake—a deliriously, delicious mistake. And for an instant, she envisioned the kiss. Possessive, demanding, and oh so hot. And she, too shocked to respond, but wondering if she had, how would he have reacted?
His gaze drew back to hers. His whiskey-colored eyes—like the wolf’s.
A strange awareness crept through her—like she was looking into the eyes of a predator. But then he averted his attention and released her. “The path’s icy.”
“Right.” As if she wasn’t aware of the obvious. But that wasn’t half as dangerous as what had just occurred between them.
So what had occurred between them?
Trying to keep up, she hurried down the path after him.
She didn’t know him. He didn’t know her. Hell, he didn’t even know himself. Yet there was something about him that was driving her crazy. Almost like animal magnetism. Which really was nuts. She didn’t believe in primitive sexual attraction, although her brother had always teased her that she would know when she finally met the right man—a sexual draw so compelling would exist between them, she wouldn’t be able to resist.
That would be the day.
“You should have stayed behind.” The stranger’s gruff voice snapped her right out of her sexual fantasies.
He slipped Michael’s gloves on and continued down the path to the woodpile where she had first found him.
A thank you would have sufficed, she grumbled silently to herself.
Even though he appeared to be all right now, his jaw tightened when he leaned down and lifted an armload of wood, and again when he straightened his back. As injured as he was, she wished he hadn’t had to help. Gathering up as much timber as she would have in three trips, he returned to the path leading up to the house.
A little
ways up the hill, he stopped, cast a glance over his shoulder, his dark brows pinched together, his eyes watchful while he waited for her.
She stumbled up the path with an armload of timber, miniscule compared to the load he was carrying.
He grumbled, “I told you that you should have stayed in the house.”
“Yeah, well, we need all the firewood we can get if we’re going to be stuck here without electricity. Besides, I do this all the time without anyone’s help.”
Although that had been the case only since her brother had been incarcerated. Otherwise, he had always been the one to get the firewood and do the other more manly chores around the place. At the thought she might not see him here again for a good long while, her eyes filled with tears and she sniffled.
But she wasn’t going to sit in the house, worrying whether the stranger might reinjure himself on another trip to the beach or back alone. So he was stuck with her, whether he liked it or not. Besides, staying there and worrying about the intruder’s return wasn’t an option either.
He shook his head, yet the corners of his mouth turned slightly upward.
He walked the rest of the way to the house, moving slower this time, as if making sure she didn’t slip again or fall too far behind. At least that’s what she assumed. Unless he just hurt so much, walking was difficult.
They headed inside and he set his firewood on the rack. Taking the wood from her arms, he stacked it with the rest. Then like a good Boy Scout, despite looking too roguish to be one, he set up a perfect fire. Slowly, the flames began to crackle and throw off a curl of heat.
Crouching in front of the fireplace, he frowned up at her, his darkening gaze drifting again to her turtleneck. “Why don’t you get into something dry.”
“I’ll be fine.” She couldn’t admit she was afraid to be by herself.
“Your clothes are soaking wet. You’re shivering. The house is freezing. You’re not fine. Lock the bedroom door, if you’re afraid.”
She clenched her teeth. She wasn’t afraid of the veritable god. Well, maybe a little. She yanked off her wet gloves and parka, tossed them on the coffee table so they’d dry by the fire, and then returned to the bedroom and locked the door—as a precaution. She tried the phone; still no dial tone. She glanced at her bedside table. The gun.
