Strangers in the Night

by Linda Howard

  Hope’s heart was pounding, her hands sweating. She wiped her palms on her pajamas and gripped the rifle more securely.“Tink, be quiet!”

  He ignored her, barking even louder as another thump came, this one hard enough to rattle the door. Oh, God, was it a bear? The door would probably hold, but the windows wouldn’t, not if the animal was determined to get in.

  “Help.”

  She froze, not certain she had heard the muffled word.“Tink, shut up!” she yelled, and the tone of her voice briefly silenced the dog.

  She hurried over to the door, the rifle ready in her hands.“Is anyone out there?” she called.

  Another thump, much weaker, and what sounded like a groan.

  “Dear God,” she whispered, transferring the rifle to one hand and reaching to unbolt the door. There was a person out in this weather. She hadn’t even considered that possibility, because she was so far from a main road. Anyone who left the protection of their vehicle shouldn’t have been able to make it to her house, not in these conditions.

  She opened the door and something white and heavy crashed into her legs. She screamed, staggering back. The door crashed against the wall, and the wind blew snow all over the floor, then sucked the warmth from the cabin with its icy breath.

  The white thing on her floor was a man.

  Hope set the rifle aside and grabbed him under the arms. She braced her legs, trying to drag him across the threshold so she could shut the door, and grunted as she moved him only a few inches. Damn, he was heavy! Ice pellets stung her face like bees, and the wind was unbelievably cold. She closed her eyes against the onslaught and braced herself for another effort. Desperation gave her strength; she threw herself backward, hauling the man with her. She fell, his weight pinning her to the floor, but his legs were over the threshold.

  Tink was beside himself with worry, barking and lunging, then whining. He thrust his muzzle at her face for a quick lick of reassurance, for her or himself she couldn’t begin to guess; then he sniffed at the stranger and resumed barking. Hope gathered herself for one more effort, and pulled the man all the way inside.

  Panting, she crawled over to the door and wrestled it shut. The wind hammered at it, as if enraged at being shut out. She could feel the heavy door shuddering under the onslaught. Hope secured the bolt, then turned her attention to the man.

  He had to be in bad shape. Frantically she knelt beside him, brushing away snow and ice that crusted his clothes and the towel he had wrapped over his face.

  “Can you hear me?” she asked insistently.“Are you awake?”

  He was silent, limp, not even shivering, which wasn’t a good sign. She pushed back the hood of his heavy coat and unwrapped the towel from his face, then used it to wipe the snow from his eyes. His skin was white with cold, his lips blue. From the waist down, his clothes were wet and coated with a sheet of ice.

  As swiftly as possible, given his size and the difficulty of wrestling an unconscious man out of wet clothing that had been frozen stiff, she began undressing him. Thick gloves came off first, then the coat. She didn’t take the time to inspect his fingers for frostbite, but moved down to his feet and began unlacing the insulated boots, then tugged them off. He wore two pairs of socks, and she peeled them away. His feet were icy. Moving back up, she began unbuttoning his shirt and only then noticed that he wore a deputy sheriff’s uniform, the shirt stretched tight across his chest and shoulders.

  Under the shirt he wore a thermal pullover, and under that a T-shirt. He had been prepared for cold weather, but not for being caught out in it. Maybe his vehicle had slid off the road, though she didn’t see how he could have made his way such a distance under these drastic conditions. It was nothing less than a miracle, or sheer chance, that he’d managed to stumble onto the house. By all logic, he should be dead out in the snow. And unless she could get him warm, he might yet die.

  She tossed the three shirts into a heap, then attacked his belt buckle. It was coated with ice, the belt itself frozen stiff. Even the zipper of his fly was iced over. Unable to see in the storm, he must have stepped into the lake; the wonder was that he had managed to stay on his feet and not completely submerge himself. If he had gone under and gotten his head wet, he wouldn’t have been able to make it to the house; most of the body’s heat was lost through the scalp surface.

  She fought the stiff fabric, using sheer force to get his pants off. The thermal underwear underneath was even more difficult, because it clung. Finally he lay on her floor in a puddle of melting snow and ice, clad only in his white shorts. She thought to leave them on, but they were wet too, and getting him warm was more important than preserving his modesty. She stripped them down his legs and tossed them onto the pile of wet clothes.

  Now she had to get him dried off and wrapped up. She ran to the downstairs bathroom and gathered up some towels, and then stripped the blankets off her father’s bed. She raced back. The man hadn’t moved from his sprawled position on the floor. She dragged him out of the puddle, hastily dried him, then spread a blanket on the floor and rolled him onto it. Wrapping it around him, she then dragged him in front of the fire. Tink sniffed at him, whined, then lay down beside him.

  “That’s right, boy, snuggle close,” Hope whispered. Her muscles were trembling with exertion, but she ran to the kitchen and stuffed one of the towels into the microwave. When she got it out, the cloth was so hot she could barely hold it.

  She raced back to the great room and wrapped the hot towel around the man’s head. Then, grimly, she stripped off her own clothes. She was naked beneath her pajamas, but when this man’s life depended on how fast she could get him warm, she wasn’t about to waste time running upstairs to put on underwear. Grabbing up the other blanket, she held it in front of the fire until it was toasty. Throwing open the blanket wrapped around the man, she placed the warm blanket over him, tucking it around his cold feet; then she slid under it with him.

  Shared body heat was the best way to combat hypothermia. Hope pressed herself close to his cold body, forcing herself not to flinch as his icy skin touched hers. Oh, God, he was so cold. She got on top of him, put her arms around him, pressed her warm face to his. She massaged his arms and shoulders, tucked his hands under her belly, cupped her hands over his ears until they warmed. She slid her feet up and down his legs, stroking away the cold, massaging the blood through his veins.

  He moaned, a faint sound whispering past his parted lips.

  “That’s right,” she murmured.“Wake up, sweetie.” She stroked his face, his beard stubble scraping across her palm. His lips weren’t as blue, she thought.

  The towel around his head had cooled. Hope unwrapped it and slipped out from under the blanket, then ran to the kitchen and reheated the towel in the microwave. Back to the great room, put the towel around his head, crawl under the blanket with him again. He was tall, and she wasn’t; she couldn’t reach all of him at once. She slid down and warmed his feet with hers, curling her toes over his until his flesh caught some of her body heat.

  Slithering back up his body, she lay on top of him again. He was hard with muscle, and that was good, because muscles generated heat.

  He began to shiver.

  3

  Hope held him, murmuring to him, trying to get him to talk to her. If she could get him awake enough to drink some coffee, the heat and caffeine would go a long way toward rousing him, but trying to pour hot coffee into an unconscious man was a good way to both choke him and burn him.

  He moaned again, and sucked in a quick breath. He made a sharp movement with his head, dislodging the towel. The heat had dried his hair; it was dark, glistening with bronze lights in the glow of the fire. Hope tucked the towel back around his head to keep him from losing any of the precious body heat he had gained, and stroked his forehead, his cheeks.“Wake up, honey. Open your eyes and talk to me.” She whispered to him, unconsciously using endearments to both reassure him and entice him to respond. Tink’s ears perked up, because he was accustomed
to that sweet tone being used when she spoke to him. He moved down to the man’s feet, crowding against them when he lay down again. Maybe he could feel their chill through the blanket; with his thick fur, that would feel good to him. Or maybe it was instinct that led him to warm the man. Hope talked to Tink too, telling him what a good dog he was.

  The faint, occasional shivers began to intensify. They wracked the man’s body, roughening his skin, contorting his muscles. His teeth clenched and began chattering.

  Hope held him through the convulsive shaking. He was in pain, barely conscious, groaning and breathing hard. He tried to curl into a ball, but she held him too tightly.“You’re all right,” she kept telling him.“Wake up, please. Open your eyes.”

  Unbelievably, he obeyed. His lids half lifted. His eyes were glazed, unfocused. Then they closed again, dark lashes resting on his cheeks. His arms swept up and locked around her, desperately clinging to her warmth as he was wracked by another bout of uncontrollable shaking. His entire body was tense, shuddering.

  He was as strong as an ox; his arms were like steel bands around her. She murmured soothingly to him, rubbing his shoulders, pressing as close to him as she could. His skin definitely felt warmer now. She was hot, sweating from exertion and being swaddled in the heated blanket. She was exhausted from the effort of dragging him inside and wrestling him out of his clothes, as well as from the stress of knowing he would die if she didn’t get him warm.

  He relaxed beneath her, the bout of shivering over. He was breathing hard. He moved restlessly, shifting his legs, shrugging the towel away from his head. The towel seemed to annoy him, so she didn’t replace it. Instead she folded it and lifted his head to slide the towel underneath, giving him more padding between his head and the hard floor.

  At first he had been too cold, and the situation too urgent, for her to notice, but for some moments now she had been growing more aware of the sensations produced by his naked body against hers. He was a tall, well-built man, with a nice hairy chest and even nicer hard muscles. Good-looking too, now that his features weren’t pinched and blue. Her nipples tingled from the rasping of his chest hair, and Hope knew it was time to get up. She pushed gently against him, trying to rise, but he groaned and tightened his arms, shivering again, so she let herself relax.

  The shaking wasn’t as violent this time. He swallowed and licked his lips, and his eyes flickered open again, just for a second. Then he seemed to doze, and because he was warm now, Hope wasn’t alarmed. Her own muscles quivered from exhaustion. She closed her eyes too, resting for just a minute.

  Time drifted. Half-asleep, warm, boneless from fatigue, she didn’t know if a minute had passed, or an hour. His hand moved down to her bottom, curving over one rounded cheek. He shifted beneath her, muscled legs moving, sliding between her thighs. His engorged penis prodded at her exposed opening.

  It happened so fast that he was inside her before she was fully awake. He rolled, pinning her beneath him on the blanket, mounting her, squeezing his penis into her and driving it deep with quick, hard shoves. After five years of chastity the penetration hurt, stretching her around his thick shaft, but it felt good too. Disoriented, unbelievably aroused, Hope arched her hips and felt him prod deeply, nudging her cervix. She cried out, gasping, her neck arching back as the sensation rocketed through her nerve endings.

  There was no finesse, no lingering arousal. He simply began thrusting, his heavy weight holding her down, and she wound her arms and legs around him and met his thrusts with mindless ones of her own. In the mellow light of fire and lamp she saw his face, his eyes open now, very blue and still dazed, his expression set in the hardness of physical absorption. He was operating solely on animal instinct, his body aroused by the closeness of hers, by the naked intimacy that had been necessary to save his life. He was aware only of being warm and alive, and of her bare body in his arms.

  On a purely physical level, the pleasure was more intense than any she had ever known. She had never felt more female, never been so acutely aware of her own body, or of the hard masculinity of a man’s. She felt every inch of his smooth, hard shaft as he rocked back and forth inside her, felt the excited, welcoming cling of her inner flesh as each stroke took her closer and closer to climax. She was unbearably hot, her skin scorching, trembling pleasure lingering just out of reach. She grabbed his buttocks, holding him tight and grinding herself as deeply onto him as she could, crying out as the already intense pleasure became even more so. He gave a hoarse cry and convulsed, bucking, hips pumping, spurting hot semen, and Hope dissolved on an agonizing pulse of sensation.

  He sank down on her, trembling in every muscle, his heart pounding violently, his breathing hard and fast. As shaken and dazed as he, she put her arms around him and held him close.

  Unbelievably, they slept. Wrung out, emptied, hollowed, she felt the darkness descending on her and could do nothing to resist it. He was limp and heavy on top of her, already asleep. She managed to touch his cheek, stroke his dark hair back from his forehead, and then surrendered to the overwhelming need for rest.

  THE COLLAPSE OF A LOG woke her. She stirred, wincing as her muscles protested the hard floor beneath her, the heavy body weighing her down. Confused, at first she thought she was dreaming. This couldn’t be real, she couldn’t be lying naked on the floor with a strange man, who was also completely naked.

  But Tink was snoozing in his accustomed place, and the howling wind, the gently flickering lamplight, recalled the blizzard. Everything clicked into place.

  And just as abruptly she realized he was also awake. He was lying very still, but every muscle was tense, and the penis still nestled inside her was growing thicker and longer by the second.

  If she was confused, she could only imagine how disoriented he was. Gently she touched his back, smoothing her palm up the muscled expanse.“I’m awake,” she murmured, her touch telling him she was there because she wanted to be, that everything was okay.

  He lifted his head, and their eyes met. She felt an almost tangible shock as she stared into those blue eyes, eyes that were completely aware and revealed the sharpness of the personality behind them, as well as his comprehension of the situation.

  Hope blushed. Her cheeks heated and she almost groaned aloud. What should she say to a man she was meeting for the first time, when she was lying naked beneath him and his erection was firmly lodged inside her?

  He trailed one fingertip across her lips, then lightly stroked her hot cheek.“Do you want me to stop?” he whispered.

  The first time had caught her unawares, but Hope was always brutally honest with herself, and she didn’t allow herself to pretend she had been unwilling. This time, however, they were both fully cognizant of what they were doing. She didn’t stop to analyze or question her response; she simply gave it.“No,” she whispered in return. “Don’t stop.”

  He kissed her then, a kiss as gentle and searching as if nothing had ever passed between them, as if he wasn’t already inside her. He wooed her as if it were the first time, kissing her for a long time until her mouth slanted eagerly under his, until their tongues twined together. His hands were tender on her breasts, learning how she liked to be touched, teasing her nipples into tight peaks. He stroked her belly, her hips, between her legs. He licked his fingertips and stroked them over the ultrasensitive bud of her clitoris, drawing it out, make her gasp and arch her hips upward. He grunted at the resulting sensation as she took him even deeper.

  She thought she would die from sensual torment before he finally began moving, but she enjoyed it so much she didn’t urge him to hurry. She hadn’t realized how hungry she was for this, for a man’s attention, for his body, for the exquisite release of lovemaking. Even her frustration earlier, in the bath, hadn’t prepared her for her total surrender to sensuality. She reveled in every kiss, every touch, every stroke. She clung to him and returned the caresses, trying to return some of the pleasure he was giving her, and judging from his groans she succeeded.

 
The time came when they no longer needed the gentle touches, when nothing mattered but the pounding drive to orgasm. Hope let herself get lost in the urgency of the moment, let her body drown in pure pleasure … and then he aroused her again, whispering, “Let me feel it again, let me feel you come.”

  His self-control held, barely. When the pulses of her third climax began, he made a deep, helpless sound in his throat and shuddered over her.

  This time she didn’t allow herself the luxury of sleep. This time he gently withdrew and collapsed on the blanket beside her. His hand sought hers, clasping her fingers against his callused palm.

  “Tell me what happened,” he finally said, his voice low and even. “Who are you?”

  An introduction at this point seemed unbearably awkward. Hope blushed again, and cleared her throat. “Hope Bradshaw.”

  The blue eyes searched her face. “Tanner. Price Tanner.”

  The fire was getting too low. She needed to put another couple of logs on, but getting up and standing naked in front of him was somehow impossible. She looked around for her pajamas and, in an agony of embarrassment, realized she needed to bathe before putting them on.

  He saw where she was looking, and he didn’t suffer any such modesty. Unfolding his long length from the floor, he stepped over to the stack of wood and replenished the fire. Hope did exactly what she had been embarrassed to let him do to her, looked him over good, from head to foot. She liked what she saw, every inch of him. His muscles were delineated in the firelight, revealing the slope and curve of broad shoulders, wide chest, the long bulge of strong thigh muscles. His buttocks were round, firm. Even flaccid, his penis was intriguingly thick, and his testicles swung heavily below them. Price Tanner. She repeated his name in her mind, the syllables strong and brisk.

  Tink looked a little grumpy at having had his sleep disturbed. He got up and sniffed at the stranger, and wagged his tail when the man leaned down and patted him. “I remember the dog barking,” Price Tanner said.