“Abby?” He set down her plate and put a hand on her arm.
She moaned slightly, a breathy, sleepy noise that made him remember what she’d sounded like while fucking.
Her expression was stern, brows drawn, two harsh, red lines bisecting her pale face, and Luc began to worry in earnest. Did she look worse today? She’d come to him thin and naturally pale, but today her skin had a gray tinge that wasn’t right. His worry drove him to sit on the bed beside her and put his hand to her forehead.
Merde, she was hot. Hot and dry and—
She opened her eyes. They were like cognac, not whiskey as he’d originally thought. Liquid, shiny, and warm. His hand lingered, and he forgot, for a moment, his purpose in being here, especially when she smiled at him like that, those ridiculous, pink lips curving up and losing almost none of their plumpness. Luc, caught in the burnt honey of her eyes, sat like an idiot on his bed and grinned, her smile and smell bringing it all back.
“Hi,” she whispered in a voice he’d like to sublimate and add to this year’s vintage.
“Good morning.”
Instead of answering, she turned her head, just enough to make it an actual caress. Luc didn’t pull back. He couldn’t. She was magnetic, those glowing eyes focused solely on him.
“Feels good,” she said.
“What?”
“Your hand. So cool.”
Shit. That wasn’t normal. “You’re burning up, Abby. I think you—”
With a groan, she turned, curling in on herself and baring her back to his gaze. The shirt, stuck in places, was stained darkish and—
Oh fuck. The marks that had been red the day before were white- and yellow-tinged with infection. He needed to do something. Now.
21
Hours passed. Or minutes. Or days, days spent going in and out of fires, tight, hot arms, bullets tearing into the compound, bullets tearing into crying children. Sammy strung up on the cross and burned.
A voice, warm and rasping, but the words so smooth. “Abby. Abby.” Her name so soft on those lips. Soft-looking lips. Lips she needed to touch again. “You’re burning up.”
“It’s just a dream.”
He stilled when she touched him. So still, caught in the moment. Unmoving, hanging there above her. Her fingers, of their own accord, slid from his mouth to the side, across that scar and to the edge of his jaw, where the stubble thickened. They moved down over the angle there, to his chin. Through it all, he held himself still.
“This dream’s better.” She smiled. “Better.”
His breath was hot against her fingers, and she turned them, letting him heat the back as she bit her lip. Wanting to bite his.
“I have to call someone, Abby. The sheriff. I can’t let you—”
“No. No police, or they’ll die. The Center’s rigged. The kids will burn. We’ll all die.”
He put his hand over hers to still it, pressed it briefly before pulling it away. Pulling her away. She blinked and moaned and let him pick her up and carry her down the stairs.
* * *
Luc was frantic, and he wasn’t the only one. Le Dog, sensing that things were off, paced in front of the door, whining.
Luc picked up his phone, prepared to call the sheriff or an ambulance or the helicopter or whoever would come save her. It wouldn’t turn on. No batteries, of course, and no way to charge it.
That was when he remembered the snowplow. When he’d bought his truck, the thing had been mounted to the front. He’d taken it off himself, so he knew what a pain in the ass it would be to mount. For the past two years, the thing had sat filthy and rusting behind the barn, because…well, because he almost never felt the need to leave his place, with or without snow. Or he hadn’t before.
He hated leaving her here alone, but with no choice, he trudged outside.
Sliding the stupid thing down the hill and then getting it on took forever. By the time he finished and managed to plow a path close to the cabin, the sun had slid even farther to the west, its reflection blinding on the snow-covered mountain.
