COTTON
IHAD CAUGHT HIM OFF GUARD.
I had a moment to wonder that he wasn’t on me immediately as I made it to the door in a few swift strides; then I was fumbling with the locks and swinging the door open wide. Frigid air hit me immediately and I saw nothing but a sea of white. I hesitated a scant second, hovering at the threshold, before running outside.Fucking snow.His slow reaction made more sense all of a sudden.He doesn’t think I’ll actually do it.
Part of me thought maybe I shouldn’t. I wouldn’t last five minutes out here barefoot, but then…which was the lesser of two evils? Take a chance in this icy prison or with the crazy man inside the cabin? I didn’t know why he had taken me. What he intended to do. Was he going to rape me? Torture me?
I wasn’t sure, and the snow beckoned. I wouldn’t go through that again. The one thing I was sure of was that I was tired of feeling all these feelings. Tired of hurting. Tired of being scared.
That an assassin had been dispatched after me was icing on the shit cake that was my life. And it pissed me off. Just one more thing outside my control. It was my turn to control my fate. Not the general’s. Not Brodie’s.
My feet burned with the cold, ached with it. Where the fuck had he taken me? The Arctic Circle? I swiveled, looking wildly about. My gaze caught on the SUV he’d bundled me into earlier, parked conveniently in a pull-out just beside the house.The car.I could take the car.
I ran to the driver’s side door first and tried the handle.Locked!Heart thumping, I tried the rest in quick succession, fingers scraping futilely at a crust of ice on each handle as I ran to each. They were all locked. Damnit! A moan escaped me at the cold creeping up my legs and I looked around desperately. Maybe there was something I could use to break a window?
The ground was a smooth and unbroken expanse of snow that gleamed bright with moonglow, except for where my feet had broken through its crust. To the left of the cabin was the drive, ending in a circular loop just in front of the porch. There was a small mound of snow-covered bushes in the center of the loop, but nothing I saw that would help. To the cabin’s right there was a copse of evergreen trees, rising tall and black against the star-studded night sky.
“Please don’t make me come after you.” I heard him speak from the porch and glanced back to see him sliding a shoe on to his foot in the doorway. Hesitating, I stepped away from him, closer to the copse of trees. “Emery, no!”
I fled.This was madness.I knew it as surely as I could feel the icy needles numbing my limbs. And yet I couldn’t stay…couldn’t just give up. Drawing on all of my reserves, I pumped my arms and legs and ran into the woods as quickly as the deep snow permitted.
It seemed only seconds had elapsed when I heard him crashing through the forest in my wake, his colorful cursing an eruption of sound in the peaceful night. I quickened my pace.
It was no good. A whoosh of sound reached my ears a moment before his body descended upon mine, bearing me down into the icy snow. He scrubbed my face into it, his hand hard upon the back of my head and the weight of his chest heavy atop my back. I sputtered and choked with a mouthful and bucked up against him, trying futilely to dislodge him. He was too heavy, too hard. Too male. He sat up, straddling my hips and tangling his hand in my hair, and I could feel that maleness against my backside. “What the feck were you thinking?”
I wasn’t thinking anything at the moment. I was shuddering, victim to both cold and fear. Even with my eyes shut, I could feel my vision graying around the edges, hear his voice grow muted and distant as panic rode me hard.Get off me. Get off me, get off me, getoffme!
His body rose, pulling me with it, and I realized I was screaming the words out loud. His hands gripped my shoulders, turning me roughly to face him, and he shook me a little. “Emery! Stop it, girl.”
From a distance, I heard myself subside into a low keening. “Feck.” His arms slid under my thighs and I felt myself being lifted and held against his chest. Turning, he started to carry me back to the cabin.
I was somewhere else. He was talking, saying something as he stumbled through the snow and up the porch steps, but I couldn’t hear him. I saw the light he’d turned on inside, felt the warmth that touched my skin as he kicked the door closed behind us, but couldn’t register their meaning.
Then he laid me down on the sofa, his hands going to the buttons of my dress, and began to strip it away from me. Memory possessed me and I fought, kicking, slapping, scratching, twisting with everything remaining in my reserves. Had to stay dressed. Had to keep my clothes, my dignity.
“Emery! Shite...I’m not going to hurt you! Calm—” Hands pinned my arms to the sofa beside me, and a body held itself taut just above me. It didn’t touch me, but I could feel the heat emanating from it and shivered hard at the contrast. “Emery. Come back to me...focus. Tell me what you see?”
His face hovered inches from mine. “Eyes,” I mumbled, and the sound of my own voice startled me. It was a rasp, throaty and broken.
“What else? Look around you.”
Turning my head to the side, I took in the room. “Fire. Wood. A table. A rug.”
“Good. What do you hear?”
He was calming me, I realized, pulling me into the present by forcing me to focus on my surroundings. I was good with that. I had no desire to stay in that other place, that place of panic and fear and pain. “I hear the fire crackling. The sound of my breath. Yours...” I concentrated. “The hum of an appliance.”
“Good girl. What do you feel?”
“You.” Blood rushed into my cheeks as his look sharpened with my admission. “The couch beneath me. Cold.” My teeth were starting to chatter, my limbs aching as sensation began to return with the burn of a thousand blades.
“Smell?”
I inhaled. “Wood. Aftershave.” He smelled good, like something icy and fresh.
“That’s good...and taste?”
Taste? I wrinkled my brow at the question. “I—”
