by Pamela Clare
Somehow, Hunter seemed to know where he was going. He turned a corner, then pulled into an empty parking lot, drove around to the back of a building, and killed the lights. It was a sporting goods store, one of those “last chance for ski rentals” places that were the winter mainstay of so many small Colorado towns.
“I need to get a few things.” He put the car in neutral, set the brake. “You stay here.”
He was leaving her in the car?
“Okay.” She avoided meeting his gaze, tried to hide her surprise.
As soon as he was inside, she would call the police on her cell phone and make a run for it. They’d passed a string of houses just down the street. Surely someone would be home. Someone would help her. Up here everyone owned guns.
He turned off the engine, pocketed her keys, and reached behind his back. “I hate to spoil the little plans you’re making, but I can’t have you running off just now.”
Before she could react, he’d handcuffed her to the handle of her door.
“No!” She stared at her wrists in astonishment, adrenaline and outrage temporarily burning away her chills. “You bastard! You said you’d let me go as soon as you got away!”
He leaned in close, his face inches from hers, his voice silky, icy amusement in his eyes. “Do you believe everything convicted murderers tell you?”
Then he fished her cell phone from her purse, climbed out, and slammed the battered driver’s side door behind him.
Sophie watched him disappear into the swirling storm, desperation and rage swelling in her chest. Well, she’d be damned if she’d just sit here like some subservient little captive waiting for him to come back and shoot her in the head—or worse.
She jerked on the cuffs, twisted them, looked for some kind of emergency release. After all, he’d broken out of them in a heartbeat. There had to be a way.
“Come on, Alton! If he did it, you can do it!”
But if there were a quick way out, she couldn’t find it. Heart hammering, she stopped, closed her eyes and took several deep breaths.
“Think! Think! Think!”
The door handle!
If she could pull it off at one end or the other, she could slip free that way.
She shifted her position, braced one knee against the door, and yanked on the cuffs with all her strength.
The steel bit painfully into her wrists, but the handle didn’t budge.
“Damn!” She glanced into the storm.
No sign of him.
Knowing she might never get another chance, she tried again, this time pulling on the door handle itself, but still it held.
“Oh, come on!”
What she needed was room to maneuver, more leverage. If she could put her foot against the door and push with the much stronger muscles of her leg…
Sophie unlocked her door, opened it, and was almost jerked out of the car when the wind caught it and blew it back on its hinges. Forced by the handcuffs to bend down, she stepped out into the icy gale, sinking deep in cold powder, the wind sucking her breath away, snow biting her damp skin. She kicked off her heels, pressed one foot against the door, pushed with all her might…and slid feet-first beneath the door, her knees hitting steel, her cheek slamming the side of the car on her way down.
For a moment she lay flat on her back in the snow, the breath knocked out of her, her cheek throbbing, her arms stretched painfully over her head. Then she forced air back into her lungs, tried to draw herself upright and get back to her feet. But the snow was deep and slick, and she couldn’t get her footing, even without her heels. Again and again she tried, until she was panting for breath and painfully cold, her wrists raw and aching, her body shaking, her skirt riding up to her hips.
Good job, Alton. Any other brilliant ideas?
It was only then that she realized she was in real trouble.
If Hunter didn’t come back soon, she wouldn’t have to wonder whether he planned to kill her. She would already be dead.
MARC GRABBED AN internal frame pack off the wall and began to fill it. There’d been no alarm on the store, which had made breaking in a piece of cake. But he couldn’t waste time. He had to get back to the car before Sophie got too cold. He could have brought her inside with him, but then he’d have been distracted by her inevitable attempts to run off or get to the phone or spear him with a ski pole. Better to get what he needed quickly and hit the road. He still had a long night ahead of him.
Head lamp. GPS receiver. Batteries. Waterproof watch. Pocket knife. Ice ax. Cook pot for water. Bivvy bag. Subzero sleeping bag. Rope. Instep crampons.
He’d been debating for most of an hour whether he should tell her who he was. She didn’t need to know. She could get through this without knowing. But some part of him wanted her to know. She might be less afraid of him if she knew, and he fucking hated scaring her. Besides, no matter how much he tried to pretend otherwise, it galled the hell out of him to think she’d forgotten him when he’d spent years carrying the memory of her with him like some kind of goddamned jewel.
How many nights had he reached for that memory to keep himself from going over the edge? How many times had he fought back desperation and loneliness by remembering what it had been like to talk with her, to hold her hand, to see her smile? How many times had he banged one out while imagining he was burying his cock inside her sweet, tight body?
No woman before or after had come close to touching him the way Sophie had, and she didn’t even remember him.
Snowshoes. Polypro glove liners and socks. Men’s and women’s long underwear. Thermal hat. Boots. Down mittens. Ski pants. Turtleneck. Merino sweater. Jeans.
So what was stopping him from telling her? Why hadn’t he just come out with it? Why hadn’t he forced her to remember him?
He knew the answer as soon as he asked the question.
He wasn’t sure he wanted her to know the man he’d become.
Emergency hand warmers. Waterproof matches. Candles. MREs. Power Bars. Instant coffee. Iodine tablets. Biodegradable shampoo and soap. Disposable razors. Bottled water. Duct tape. Wilderness first-aid kit.
He’d put her through hell today. He’d made her believe he was both willing and able to kill her. He’d risked her life along with his own at the prison and on the highway. He’d put terror in those pretty blue eyes of hers. And he’d done it knowingly.
Please don’t! I helped your sister!
The regret he’d been trying so hard not to feel edged into his gut. He quashed the emotion, ruthlessly forcing his feelings aside. He’d only done what he’d had to do.
Out there, somewhere, Megan and little Emily needed him.
He walked over to the cash register, pulled out forty dollars plus change and stuffed it into one of the backpack’s many pockets. Then, on a hunch, he lifted the cash drawer and found another two hundred in twenties stashed beneath it. “That’s more like it.”
He moved to a display of winter parkas, grabbed one off the rack, slipped into it. Then he lifted the heavy pack onto his back, wincing as the padded strap scraped over the wound on his right shoulder. With one last glance around the store, he grabbed a parka for Sophie, then made for the door, impatient to get moving.
He would tell her who he was once they were back on the road. After what he’d done to her, he owed her at least that much.
He stepped outside, sucked cold, fresh air into his lungs, savoring the shock, the chill, the scent of it. Wind-driven snow pricked his cheeks and forehead, caught in his beard, sand-blasting the lingering stench of prison from his skin. He couldn’t have gotten better weather if he’d asked for it. The storm would delay the cops, cover his tracks, make it almost impossible for search teams to pick up his trail. By sunrise tomorrow, he’d be free and clear.
Of course, anything could happen.
He rounded the corner, stopped in his tracks. “Oh, for fuck’s sake!”
Sophie lay sprawled in the snow beside the open car door, struggling clumsily to get upright, arms
stretched over her head, her wrists still cuffed to the door handle.
He reached her in two long strides, dropped the pack on the ground, and knelt beside her, fear kicking him hard in the gut. “How in the hell did you manage this?”
Apart from a fresh bruise on her cheek, her face was deathly pale. She shivered violently, snowflakes on her skin and lashes, her wrists badly bruised, her fingers bloodless. But when she looked at him, her eyes spat fire. “B-bastard!”
At least she was conscious and aware and cussing.
“Save the name-calling for later, sweetheart.” He covered her with the parka he’d stolen for her and shoved a hat over her head to preserve whatever body heat he could, then dug in his pack for the pocket knife, knowing he had to get her warm if he wanted to save her life. “Right now, you have bigger problems.”
He flipped to one of the attachments on the pocket knife—a thin metal blade—and jimmied it into the tiny space beside the teeth of the handcuffs, forcing back the internal locking mechanism, freeing first her right wrist and then her left. Then he slipped his arm beneath her shoulders and eased her to a sitting position.
Furious with her, even angrier with himself, it was all he could do not to shout. “Do you realize how fucking stupid this was? Jesus, Sophie! Are you trying to kill yourself?”
She tried to push him away, her motions sluggish and weak. “I-I forgot. K-killing m-me is y-your job.”
“Don’t tempt me!” He stuffed her arms into the sleeves of the stolen parka, then dug in the pack for one of the emergency hand warmers. “Can you stand?”
“Y-yes.” But she didn’t budge.
“Damn it!” He lifted her off the snowy ground, buckled her in the passenger seat, then activated the emergency warmer and slipped it inside her parka. “Stay awake, do you hear me? Watching you die is not on my list of things to do tonight!”
CHAPTER 5
“EASY, SOPHIE. I’M not going to hurt you.”
Sophie heard a man’s voice, felt hands move over her, tugging off her bra, unzipping her skirt, ripping off her panties. A spark of panic ignited in her belly, moved sluggishly to her brain. She tried to push the hands away, but couldn’t seem to move. “N-no!”
“That’s right, sweetheart. Get angry. I’d love nothing more right now than for you to wake up and hit me.”
But she couldn’t hit him. She couldn’t even open her eyes.
Then strong arms surrounded her, precious heat enfolding her, soothing her, chasing away her shivers. And she drifted.
Sometime later—she couldn’t say how much later—gentle fingers tested the pulse at her throat, pushed back the hair from her face, brushed over a sore spot on her cheek. Then she felt her head being lifted. A cup nudged her lips.
“Come on, sweetheart. Drink. That’s it.” The man’s voice was deep, comforting, somehow familiar.
Coffee.
Warmth slid down her throat to her stomach, spread through her belly and into her limbs, rousing her, driving the terrible cold away, bringing her slowly back to herself.
The crackling of a fire. The scent of wood smoke. The soft warmth of skin against skin. An arm around her waist. The steady thrum of a heartbeat.
She opened her eyes, found her face pressed into a bare chest.
A man’s bare chest.
Her heartbeat picked up as she tried to remember, her mind strangely fogged.
Had she met someone? Had she gone home with someone last night? Had she been so drunk that she’d forgotten? She’d never done that before—ever. That was Holly’s MO.
But here she was. And here he was.
They lay as close together as a man and woman could without having sex, her head resting on the hard mound of his bicep, one of her legs tucked intimately between his, her breasts squashed against his rib cage. As close as she was, she couldn’t see much of him. But she could feel all of him—the coarse hair on his hard thighs, the prodding outline of his testicles and penis, the ripped muscles of his chest and abdomen.
She was in bed with Adonis, and she couldn’t remember how she’d gotten here.
She drew her head back to get a better view of him. The firelight revealed some kind of tattoo on his right arm, which lay possessively around her waist. She tried to make out what it was—an eagle?—but most of it was concealed by a dark band of duct tape and something that looked like—
Dried blood.
Her memories flooded back, riding on a surge of fear.
It was him.
Marc Hunter.
The man who’d held a gun to her head. The man who had kidnapped her. The man who’d…oh, God! Had he raped her?
“No!” She pushed, kicked, tried to shove him away.
“Calm down, Soph—!” He gave a grunt, then a growl, then rolled her beneath him, the length of his naked body holding her motionless on the mattress, his hands pinning her arms above her head. “Oh, Christ!”
Some part of her registered the pain in his voice, but she was too afraid, too panicked, too damned angry to care. “Get off—”
“Not till you promise to keep your knees away from my balls!” He groaned through gritted teeth. “Damn, woman, you’re hard on the manberries!”
It took a moment for him to catch his breath.
Then he raised his head and scowled down at her. “Listen to me, sprite! I’m sure this is confusing as hell, but it’s not what you think. Nothing violent or X-rated happened. You were hypothermic, and I spent the past few hours trying to keep you alive. We’re in a sleeping bag together to preserve body heat.”
But Sophie barely heard him.
Only one person had ever called her that.
She stared up at him, almost too stunned to breathe. But even as she tried to deny it, she knew it was true, recognition dawning in a bittersweet rush.
She drew in a shaky breath, then let it go. “Hunt?”
The scowl on his face softened to a frown. “So you don’t recognize me till I’m lying naked on top of you? I guess I’ll take that as a compliment.”
Through the havoc of her feelings, she tried to explain. “Y-you called me ‘sprite.’”
His dark brows drew together. “I did?”
“Yeah.” The word came out a whisper.
For a moment, they lay there in silence, skin to skin, the weight of his body pressing down on her, their gazes locked. At an emotional edge, she forgot all the big things—like the fact he’d held a gun to her head—her mind catching only the details.
The rapid beat of his heart against hers. The rasp of his chest hair. The hard ridges of his abdomen against her belly. The heat of his skin. The strength of his grasp. The dark length of his lashes. The unreadable emotion in his eyes.
Slowly, he released her wrists, his hands shifting until they pressed palm to palm with hers, his gaze never leaving hers.
Somehow her fingers twined with his, locked.
Then he groaned—and kissed her.
It was a deep kiss, full and scorching, his lips pressing hot against hers, his tongue probing the recesses of her mouth with skilled strokes, his body moving against hers in a slow grind as if he were kissing her with every fiber of his being.
A bolt of heat ricocheted through her, unexpected and overwhelming, making her shudder. Unable to think, she arched against him, her tongue seeking his, her body driven by raw instinct. And for a moment she was lost in him—in the male feel of him, in the intensity of his kiss, in the erotic pressure of his erection against her hip.
Then she caught it—the coppery scent of blood.
His blood.
Reality crashed in on her like an avalanche.
Drop the steel and back off, or I’ll blow her the fuck away!
She was kissing a cold-blooded killer, the man who’d held a loaded gun to her head, the man who’d almost gotten her killed.
In a heartbeat, the fire inside her became fury. She wrenched her head to the side, tried to twist away. “N-no! Stop!”
“God, Sophie!
” He sounded breathless, his voice strained. “Jesus!”
“Don’t touch—”
He clamped a hand over her mouth, glared down at her. “Believe it or not, I didn’t mean for that to happen any more than you did! Now, I’m going to unzip the sleeping bag and get out, and you’re going to leave my nuts intact, got it?”
HER BODY TREMBLING, Sophie pulled the sleeping bag tighter around her, struggling to come to grips with all that had happened and watching as Hunt, still naked as a Greek statue, fed his prison garb to the fire, one piece at a time.
Marc Hunter was Hunt.
Strange to think she’d never known his real name. She’d thought Hunt was his real name. She’d never heard anyone call him anything but Hunt, not even teachers. She hadn’t known he had a younger sister, either. So much for teenage intimacy.
She ought to have recognized him at the prison. True, he had a beard and much longer hair, and he was taller now, more muscular, his rangy frame filled out. But those green eyes, those lips, those high cheekbones were the same. In retrospect, it seemed so clear. Hadn’t she had a strange feeling about him? God, she felt stupid!
But then prison was the last place she’d expected to see him. All these years she’d imagined Hunt serving his time in the army, going to college, and setting out for the stars, a wife and three kids at home. Instead, he’d been rotting in a prison cell.
The teenager who’d secretly wanted to be an astronaut—the young man who’d taken her virginity and given her the most romantic night of her life—had grown up to become a cold-blooded killer.
The pain of it cut through her like a razor, her anguish made sharper because he’d clearly known who she was from the beginning—and he’d put a loaded gun to her head anyway.
Drop the steel and back off, or I’ll blow her the fuck away!
She swallowed, forced down the rush of emotions that welled up in her chest, unwilling to let him see how much he’d hurt her.
And if he’d also saved her life?
She’d been unconscious for part of the time, but she remembered enough—hands tearing away her wet clothing; a voice urging her to wake up, to open her eyes, to drink; strong arms holding her close, enfolding her in warmth.