Let me. Let me die.
“No. No way, Ms. Sm—Angel.”
Everything was fever-wrong. Clammy-hot, shaky-cold, and heavy. So heavy. Was someonesittingon her?
“’swrongwithmyhans?” Her tongue wouldn’t work.
“Drink.”
Something pressed against her mouth. Fighting the need to gag, she gave in, opened up, let it flow into her. Warm and sweet, sunshine coated her insides. No, not sunshine, but…
Good.
“More.”
“Okay.” Prying open her eyes was like pulling apart thick, cooling caramel. Finally, she got one, then the other. She immediately shut them again, hard. “’stoobright.”
Something landed on her face. Sunglasses. “Try again.”
This time, things were slightly darker, no blazing shaft of agony.
“More.” That rough voice cut in and out, as if it couldn’t quite find a note to cling to. As if part of its register had been ripped out, leaving swiss cheese holes.
Something about it irritated her. She shook her head—or tried to. It ended up as more of a side nudge. And her head was big and cotton-filled.
“You want to die?”
No. No she didn’t want that. Her lids weighed a ton. They shut again.
More sweetness trickled down her throat, followed by a bigger mouthful, then a gulp.
“Wha’s going on?”
“You tell me.” The bed shifted beneath her.Bed. What bed?“Sit up.”
Turning to face the seesawing mattress, she pushed hard on hands that felt like lead, shifted up and back, away from this incredible, firm warmth, and managed to crack her eyes open one more time, focusing on—
Holy mother of God in Heaven above.
She’d have done the sign of the cross if her hand had worked, because the sight of the Ice Man half-naked andright therewas too much for her poor, overwhelmed senses to handle.
She could only slam her eyes shut, but that did nothing to obliterate the image, burned into the inside of her eyelids.
He had one of those thick, wide, flat-planed male bodies that she’d only ever seen in movies, his pecs slabs of squared-off stone, with a light fan of dark blond, almost reddish hair, leading down to…
She swallowed and squeezed her eyes tighter to clear away the hallucination.
I must be dead. And this is what Dead Me wants: the dude who rejected me with his shirt off.
But common sense followed right on that thought’s heels.No. No way would Dead Me settle for that. She’d want the bottom half, too.
She leaned back and cracked an eye open to see thighs covered in tight merino wool.
Oh well.
Besides that, the mean expression he wore, too intense and hard to be anything but the real Ice Man, confirmed that she wasn’t dead. He’d be much nicer in the afterlife. Besides, the sun-, wind-, and ice-burned red of his face wasn’t something she’d ever conjure up on her own, nor were those hard brackets around his mouth.
Almost angrily, he put one of those muscle-packed arms around her and pulled her back into his heat. She was about to protest when he asked, “What the hell happened here today?”
