I turn off my life.
I turn off everything.
Because if I don't turn it off then I'll have to admit that what Caleb did…
How he did it…
How helooked—his eyes, his jaw, his grip on his cock, the way his come spewed out in streams…
Was…hot.
Chapter 2
Caleb
Snow fills my vision. Her footprints, already disappearing under fresh powder. The shape of her body in the drift where I tackled her.
I stand naked at my bedroom window, forehead pressed against the cold glass, looking out at the summer forest of lodgepole pines and quaking aspen.
I'm focused on the exact spot where she screamed.
Help! Someone help me!
The forest doesn't look anything like it did that morning. The snow has been gone so long now, it's about to come back. The leaves of the aspen grove are already starting to yellow and the elderberry bushes are heavy with clusters of nearly-black berries.
Time.
It passes whether you want it to or not.
That morning last Christmas I chased her naked through the snow. Watched her stumble and fall and get up and run again, her bare feet red from the freezing cold.
My cock was hard the entire time. It had every right to be. What we were doing—her running, me chasing—this madesense. I'd been fucking her like a monster for eight straight hours.
Of course, I was hard.
Scarletta herself had written these chase scenes. Dozens of times. It's arousing. The chase, the capture, the surrender. A common fantasy. Perfectly normal.
Except…
I pace away from the window, then back.
Except when looked down at her as I pinned her in the snow and she looked back at me—really saw me—there was nothing in her eyes but fear.
Not the fear she writes about. Not the fear that bleeds into arousal, that transforms into trust.
Just fear.
Raw. Animal. Survival.
The kind that saysthis man will kill me.
I stuck a needle in her thigh anyway.
I told myself it was necessary. She was hypothermic, irrational, putting herself in danger. I was protecting her from herself.
I was so fucking sure.
Now, as I stare at the place where I held her down, I'm not sure of anything.
