by Abbie Roads
She landed—ass, shoulders—then her head thunked on the ground. Sparklers of light shot through her vision, but she felt no real pain.
Time did something strange. It stopped completely. Freezing her on the ground with the man locked in a lunge, hatchet raised in the air.
“Use your legs. They are stronger than your arms.” Words flowed through her again. What was going on?
Time released her from its grip. Automatically, her legs started kicking.
He launched himself at her, hatchet raised over his head, but she was ready. Her heel struck him in his hip. A zing of dull sensation vibrated up her leg as she connected with the point of his hip bone. The blow twisted him, knocking him back a step, throwing off his aim—which had been toward her face. But he’d already committed to the downward stroke.
Micro moments of time passed while she watched the hatchet descend closer and closer to her thigh. Time grabbed hold of her and tossed her forward a few seconds, skipping completely over him actually hitting her with the blade. For that, she was grateful.
She kicked out with her other leg, connecting with the softness of his kid-makers.
Breath oomphed out of him, and he fell to the side in slow motion. His body hit the ground, and she was on top of him. Using her knees, she bashed blows into his ribs and stomach while grappling for control of the hatchet.
His grip on the weapon faltered, and she unexpectedly found it in her hand. Time froze them both again. “He won’t stop until he’s incapacitated.” That strange voice came through her again. Time released her once more. There was a strange pattern to this. Whenever the voice had something to say, time stopped, then started again when the voice was done speaking.
The hatchet felt surprisingly light in her hand. She turned it in her palm and swung it at his temple, hitting him not with the blade but the flat side. The sound of metal to bone smacked loudly in the quiet. The man slumped, unconscious but alive.
She threw herself off him and crawled a few feet away. In her wake, she left a trail of blood from her thigh.
Out of nowhere, a woman stood over her. Her blond hair was streaked with perky pink highlights. Her face was fresh and lovely and wide open in horror. “Who are you? Why did he attack you in my bedroom?”
“That is how you will survive.” The words came through Helena.
As she watched, the shimmer on her flesh began to recede, leaving insurmountable exhaustion in its wake. From a distance, she heard the woman asking more questions, but she was too tired to answer and too weak to move. Sleep claimed her.
* * *
Thomas lurched upright in his bed. Adrenaline scorched through him. He gasped for breath as if sleep had held him in a choke hold. Probably another nightmare. It was a blessing that he couldn’t remember his dreams.
He stood, legs quaking beneath him, and stumbled to the window to press his forehead against the cold glass. He closed his eyes and sucked in a few slow breaths to calm himself.
In the basement, the old-fashioned, completely inefficient boiler clicked on. A radiator downstairs popped. The comforting sounds of his old Victorian eased him.
The invisible terror he’d woken to finally let go of him. He opened his eyes and stared out into the dark.
Black night and white snow contrasted, casting the world in an X-ray glow. In the woods behind his house, no more than a quarter mile away, a tiny patch of light caught his gaze. Faint and flickering the way a campfire does. A campfire?
Why was someone out there in the middle of a wintery night, and more importantly, why were they trespassing in his woods? It was cold out. Snow covered the ground. More was fluttering down. There’d be half a foot by morning.
A thought detonated inside his head, the impact so great, he gripped the window molding.
Malone.
It made perfect sense. Malone knew exactly where law enforcement would be searching for him—highways, airports, bus terminals, train stations. All those places would be on alert, but here he was, hiding so close to home—in Thomas’s backyard—where no one ever would suspect.
That flickering light outside was an opportunity. A chance to right all the wrongs and bring Malone down.
Thomas shoved away from the window and ran downstairs and through his house to the kitchen.
The lights were out, but the newspaper he’d bought with that terrible headline—POSTHUMOUS LETTER OUTLINES SHERIFF’S CRIMES—seemed to glow in the dark from its spot on the table. He practically had the article memorized.
In the mudroom, he threw on his winter gear and sprinted out the back door.
The cold air invigorated him, charging him with anticipation. He ran past the post his bird feeder was perched on—needed to refill the thing tomorrow.
Fat flakes of snow meandered out of the sky, taking their sweet time to hit the ground. The naked trees, their trunks black in the night, speared toward heaven. In his stark, gray existence, few things were more beautiful than snowfall at night. But he didn’t stop to savor its majesty.
A calm settled over him. His mind shifted into hyperfocus; his body became a finely crafted machine built for racing through the snow, dodging and darting around the trees, jumping over the fallen limbs. Bushes and brambles that would’ve been impossible to walk through in the spring and summer were mere annoyances that scraped along his legs. His pajama pants would probably be full of burrs when he got back—if he got back. No telling what this confrontation with Malone would bring.
He burst into the small clearing and slid to a halt. A pup tent frosted with snow sat near a smoldering fire. Even in black and white, the scene was oddly picturesque. Something he’d expect to see in a magazine advertising the outdoor life, not in the woods behind his house at o dark thirty.
“Get out here and face me like a man.” His voice came out sharp and angry. He held his breath, waiting for a reply.
He scanned the tent for movement. Nothing.
He scanned the snow for footprints. Nothing.
He scanned the edges of the clearing. Nothing.
Years of pent-up rage sizzled along his nerve endings. He clenched his fists, ready, willing, and able to handle whatever happened next.
But nothing happened. Not a single thing.
He walked to the tent. With rock-steady hands, he reached out and began unzipping it. The release of each zipper tooth was as loud as a machine gun in the quiet clearing. Plenty of time for Malone to ready, aim, fire from inside.
There was a line where reckless crossed into suicidal. Thomas suspected he’d jumped it when he ran out of the house without calling for backup and without a weapon. He didn’t care.
He inhaled, braced himself as if expecting a blow, and parted the tent flaps.
His mind went empty, as if everything he’d ever known had been suctioned out, leaving a chasm. Yet somewhere in the empty depths, new, unbelievable thoughts began to grow.
Chapter 4
The. Woman. From. The. Cemetery. Each word slowly bloomed in Thomas’s mind, along with the dawning realization that he saw color again.
A warm, radiant blue glowed inside the tent. Orange firelight flickered across the woman’s face. A thick, red sleeping bag covered her entire body. She still wore her coat zipped over her mouth, hood up and pulled low over her forehead. Only her nose, a sliver of cheek, and her eyes were visible—gorgeous tawny eyes that reminded him of sunshine, autumn, and Indian summer.
Their gazes collided. A head-on impact of massive proportion—a visceral, raw moment that catapulted him into another era where she was his world and he was hers. A place where nothing mattered except the two of them. They were a lock and key. They could open themselves to power or lock themselves away from pain.
He clamped his eyes closed, cutting off the connection. Surely, he couldn’t really be seeing this—or her. He popped his lids open, bracing himself for disapp
ointment. For an empty tent or, worse, Malone. But she still lay there watching him. Just watching.
“Thomas.” His name popped out of his mouth without warning. It seemed to hang suspended in the air between them with no reference. “Yeah.” His head bobbed on his shoulders. “My name.” Jesus. He was acting like he’d never talked to a woman before. Well, he’d certainly never spoken to one as beautiful as this one. “Thomas. Thomas Brown. My name.” Jeez. He sounded about a dozen IQ points below average. “My name is Thomas Brown.” At least he’d figured out how to string a coherent sentence together. Finally.
He witnessed his name being taken in, absorbed, and could almost—almost—read her name in her eyes. It was something alluring and regal. An image air-dropped into his mind of her riding him, using him in the best way, while he chanted that elusive name. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Where was that thought coming from?
A tiny voice inside his head whispered that he might be losing his shit—he’d just met her. Well, sort of. A louder voice argued that if ever someone had been created for him, it was her. She brought color and texture to his gray world. She carried no shadow. She was his miracle.
During it all, she watched him, never moving, never speaking. His heart walloped against his sternum, propelling him into the tent. “What’s wrong?”
He waited for her response, but she just watched him. Shouldn’t she be flipping out? He was a strange man, invading her tent in the middle of the night, in the middle of the woods, in the middle of nowhere.
“Can you tell me what happened…where you’re hurt?” He studied her face for a response, but not so much as a muscle moved.
Stroke. Spinal injury. Brain damage. His mind listed the most terrible things that could’ve happened to her since he’d last seen her at the cemetery.
“I’m just going to check you over before I get you out of here.” He took off his gloves, untied her coat’s hood, then slowly drew down the zipper. Millimeter by millimeter, he revealed her face. High cheekbones, pale porcelain skin, plump, full lips with just a hint of natural rose. Lips that begged to be kissed, as if she were his Sleeping Beauty. Beauty personified. The only beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
She enthralled him, cast a spell over him. She was lovelier than spring blossoms, more captivating than a sunrise, more magnificent than a thunderstorm. It was more than the way she colored his world. It was her. Something about her. Something about him when he was near her. A deep internal sense that she was intended for him.
He pressed his fingers to the warm skin of her neck, searching for a pulse. An electric jolt zipped from where he touched her—up his arm, down his torso, straight to his dick.
He ripped his hand off her and flung himself against the flimsy tent wall, nearly toppling the thing over. His dick didn’t need to have anything to do with this situation. So why the hell was the little fucker reacting to this woman as though she was his favorite fetish when she was obviously in distress.
What was wrong with him?
Thomas smacked himself in the forehead to knock some sense back into himself, but knocked a thought loose instead.
Soul mates. Holy motherfucking shit, they were soul mates. Only he didn’t believe in that crap. Or hadn’t believed. Until now. Until her. It felt as if they’d been carved from the same block of wood, and the joining of the two created something expansive and vast. Too large for mere words.
He shook her shoulder like a little kid trying to get a sleeping parent’s attention. “Do you feel…” There wasn’t a word in existence to describe the sensation between them. “…this thing between us?”
She returned his stare, and he knew without her speaking that she felt it too.
The hood of her coat slipped back off her forehead, and all those thoughts vanished.
Her hair. Oh God, her hair. It was the same color as her eyes. The gold of a wheat field at the end of a summer day—all burnished and full of wonder. He settled his hand over her hair as if it were priceless metal. Damn if it didn’t feel precious and silky. He wanted to run those strands over his lips while inhaling the scent of her.
He brushed a clump of hair off her forehead, revealing a jagged wound stretching from just above her eyebrow to her hairline—pink, painful, and fresh. Coarse black thread held the injury together.
All his pansy-assed feelings died as neatly as if they had been chopped off by a butcher’s knife. “What happened?” Could that injury be the cause of her paralysis? An urge came over him. An instinctual feeling that he needed to touch her injury, despite how weird that seemed.
Lightly, so as not to hurt her, he settled his fingertips over the thick, black thread. Her eyes locked with his. He tumbled into them. Let waves of warmth stroke him from the inside out. Peace and a sense of deep connection surged through him. She relaxed him in a way he’d never experienced. He wanted beyond wanting to spread his body over hers and simply live out his days staring into her and feeling her body beneath his.
“Are you hurt anywhere else?” His voice was thick and slow.
Her eyes narrowed almost as if she were trying to force words from her gaze since her mouth wouldn’t work. And damn if he didn’t read her loud and clear. Only the message she conveyed couldn’t tell him the whole story.
“I won’t let anything else harm you.” His voice sounded like Determined and Obstinate got together to make a baby named That’s-a-Promise. Way too intense. Jeez. And those words weren’t even what he’d intended to say. He’d been going for something along the lines of I’m going to check you over.
Instead of letting anything crazier pop out his piehole, he pulled his hand off her forehead, but it took effort, like pulling two magnets apart. Or maybe that was just in his head, and he needed to get a grip on his mental reins.
He unzipped the sleeping bag to reveal the rest of her body. Her hands were covered with a fat pair of gloves. Her coat was long and bulky and landed halfway down her thighs. Her legs were covered in heavy insulated pants, and she wore a pair of thick socks on her feet. At least she was prepared to be out here in the cold and snow.
He scanned her for any wounds or injuries. Ran his hands over her, feeling nothing other than the gentle curves of a woman hidden beneath all that fabric. No, he was not going to allow his mind to conjure images of what his hands were touching. No, he would not. He would focus on what was most important.
Priority one: Get her help. Call him psychic, but he saw a trip to the ER in their future. “I’m gonna get you out of here.”
He backed out of the tent. There wasn’t a nice way to do this. He grabbed her ankles and hauled her limp body out onto his lap, then paused to savor the sensation of her being in his arms. The gentle pressure of her weight against him. The way she leaned in to him. The way she needed him, an intoxicating combination he’d never experienced, and never wanted to let go.
He got to his feet, expecting holding her—hell, holding anyone—to feel awkward, but it was comforting and slightly addicting. The closeness of human contact…amazing.
He turned away from the tent. Vibrant, brilliant colors filled the world around him. A gasp of shock and wonder slipped from his lips. The flickering campfire cast the clearing in a warm light, making the snow shine as if cast in gold leaf. The fire itself flared, fluttering with every shade of orange imaginable. He could’ve stood there all night just taking in the beauty.
Reluctantly, he kicked snow over the blaze until it went out, then started following his tracks back through the woods.
He glanced down at her. She looked up at him, gratitude in her gaze.
“Hey…” His voice soft and imploring. Damn. Didn’t even know he possessed the ability to use that tone. “My house is a little ways from here. I’ll take you to the hospital and then…”
It was like watching the tide turn, subtle and violent at the same time, those gorgeous, tawny eyes filled with naked terror.
/> No hospital. She hadn’t moved her lips, but he swore he could see her unspoken words.
“You don’t want to go? But you’re not talking. You’re not moving. Something is wrong.”
She begged him with her eyes, pleaded with him to not take her to the hospital. Despite all the logical arguments that lined up inside his head, he couldn’t force her into something she didn’t want.
A sigh of absolute resignation and capitulation came out of him. “Listen. I’ll give you an hour. If you aren’t better by then, I’m taking you to the hospital. No matter how you look at me.”
The relief in her expression was enough to assure him that he’d made the right decision. For the moment, anyway.
Whoa… Wait…
What. The. Hell. He’d just had a semi-conversation with her, and she hadn’t spoken a word. He thought he knew what she wanted just by the way she looked at him?
Either his sanity had cracked down the middle…or for the first time in his life, everything was impossibly right.
As he carried her through the snow, his eyes darted around, taking in the colors he’d been missing. The verdant leaves of a wild cedar. The way snow at night took on a sapphire-blue hue. The world dazzled him. And it was all because of her.
He walked out of the woods into his yard. Without warning, tension grabbed him by the back of the neck. He turned to look back the way they’d come, but saw only trees and snow and his own tracks.
A feral howl pierced the quiet, the sound eerie and too close for safety. His heart clenched, holding tight, refusing to release. The forest was full of coyotes. All year, he heard them yipping and howling at night, but this one sounded…mad and threatening. Like it wasn’t happy that Thomas had just walked off with its meal and was going to fight him for her.