He doesn't speak. He remains completely still, watching me.
"I fell," I rasp, the words rushing out. "My ankle... I think it's broken. My radio is gone."
He starts moving again. He doesn't rush. He walks with a predator’s fluid grace, eating up the distance between us with long, powerful strides. As he gets closer, the details sharpen.
Dark hair, short but shaggy enough to curl slightly at the nape of his neck. A jawline carved from the same granite I just smashed my body against. And eyes...
When he stops towering over me, he looks down, and our gazes lock.
The air leaves the ravine. It’s sucked right out of the atmosphere, leaving a vacuum that pulls everything into tight focus.
His eyes are the color of moss submerged in a river—green, dark, and shifting with depths I can’t fathom. No pity resides in them. No panic. Only a fierce, terrifying intensity pins me to the earth more effectively than gravity ever could.
That look is a physical weight. It feels like a warm hand pressing against my chest, right over my heart. My brain, usually so good at categorizing and analyzing, stutters to a halt. I forget the pain in my leg. I forget the cold seeping into my back. All I am aware of is him.
He drops to a crouch beside me. Up close, he smells of pine resin, old leather, and the metallic tang of a motorcycle engine. An intoxicating, hyper-masculine scent triggers something primal in my hindbrain. Safe. Dangerous.Mine.
The thought is so absurd I almost laugh, but the sound dies in my throat as he reaches out.
"Where?" he demands. His voice is a low rumble, like thunder rolling through a valley. It vibrates through the ground and into my skin.
I point shakily to my right leg. "The ankle. I heard a snap."
His jaw tightens. He doesn't ask for permission. His large hands move to my leg. I flinch instinctively, bracing for agony, but his touch is shocking in its gentleness. His fingers are calloused, rough against my skin where my jeans have ridden up, but he handles my injured limb as if it were made of spun glass.
One hand stabilizes my calf, the heat of his palm searing through the denim. The other fingers ghost over the swollen joint of my ankle.
"Boot needs to come off," he murmurs, not looking at my face, his focus entirely on the injury. "It's cutting off circulation."
"It's going to hurt," I whisper, gripping the dead leaves beneath me.
He looks up then, his eyes finding mine again. That connection slams into me a second time, harder than the first. Behind the stoicism, his pupils dilate—a flash of anger that I am hurt, which makes no sense because he doesn't know me.
"Look at me," he commands.
I do. I couldn't look away if I wanted to. I lock my eyes on his sharp cheekbones, the faint scar running through his left eyebrow.
"I’ve got you," he says.
The authority in his tone brooks no argument. He pulls a knife from his belt—a wicked, serrated thing gleaming in the twilight. With a precise, fluid motion, he slices through the laces of my hiking boot. He spreads the leather tongue, easing the pressure.
I hiss through my teeth, tears pricking the corners of my eyes as the blood rushes back into the swollen tissue.
"Breathe," he instructs. He hasn't looked away from my eyes. He’s anchoring me. "In. Out."
I follow his lead, inhaling the scent of him. He carefully slides the boot off. The relief is instant, followed immediately by a fresh wave of throbbing heat.
"Broken," he confirms, sliding the knife back into its sheath. "Tibia. Closed fracture."
"I need... I need to get to the clinic," I manage, trying to pull some PhD-level authority into my trembling voice. "If you can help me get to the road, I can take it from there. I have a very specific recovery protocol for mountain-related stupidity."
"Protocol doesn't account for a shattered leg and a blizzard, sweetheart," he rumbles. The sound is so deep it vibrates in my marrow, momentarily dulling the agony in my ankle.
"And you are?" I rasp, squinting up at the mountain of a man. "The local welcoming committee or just a very large hallucination?"
A dark, dangerous flicker of amusement crosses his face. "Tristan," he says. Just that. No surname. No title. "And you?"
"Alexandria," I breathe, my heart kicking against my ribs for a reason that has nothing to do with the fall. "But my friends call me Alex. Though, given I'm currently bait in a ravine, I'm not sure I deserve the 'smart' version of my name right now."
