by Mac Flynn
Contents
Title Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Other Books
Trapped In Temptation Box Set (BBW Alpha Billionaire Romance)
MAC FLYNN
Text copyright 2016 by Mac Flynn
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission in writing from the author.
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TRAPPED IN TEMPTATION #1
CHAPTER 1
I lay naked atop the silk covers. My thick thighs rustled the expensive sheets. Rough hands teasingly toyed with my full, pert breasts. I groaned and arched into his touch. It was so deliciously enticing, so wonderfully torturous. I wanted more touch. I craved for him to be inside me, taking me with unbridled passion. Every fiber of my being begged for him to make me his own, to do with me what he wished.
"Please. . ." I murmured.
"Do you want the potatoes or the salad?" a shrill voice intruded on my dreaming.
I started back, and the world around me came back into focus. I wasn't in the arms of a gorgeous lover, but was instead standing in the line of the cafeteria located in the office building I worked at. In front of me stood one of the imposing cafeteria ladies, and before her were two trays. One had mashed potatoes, and the other salad.
"Huh?" was my intelligent reply.
"Did you want potatoes, salad, or both?" she growled at me.
"Oh, um, potatoes-er, salad," I told her. She plopped a skimpy serving of salad on my plate that would have disappointed a rabbit and turned to the person who stood beside me.
That was my best friend, Carin. She was another slave to the office system, but one who took it with a lot more spirit. Her eternal optimism was for me a source of exasperation and admiration. Only Carin could walk into the office at eight in the morning with a smile on her face and a hello on her lips. Everybody else shuffled in with a look of homicide in their eyes and a snarl on their lips.
"Potatoes, please," she requested of the cafeteria woman. The behemoth smiled at my cheerful friend and slopped a large helping of the mush onto her plate.
We turned away from the line of food and to the register. I glared at her potatoes. "How do you do it?"
"Do what?" she asked me.
"Get away with murder without actually murdering someone."
She sheepishly grinned and shrugged. "I guess I miss a lot and the person just kind of accidentally falls down the stairs."
"Uh-huh, and that's how you get away with murder, by acting all innocent," I playfully accused her as we slid into one of the dreary metal tables with the plastic white top.
The cafeteria around us was the typical white-painted affair with shining floors waxed to a homicidal finish and round tables spaced at intervals so nobody could talk with anybody at any other table unless they were really, really desperate for a conversation. The cafeteria was located on the fourth floor of a forty-floor building and had a passable view of the busy street below. Large windows showed the weather was a touch frosty with a chance for more snow on top of the piles built up on the sidewalks and in the alleys.
"So what were you thinking about?" Carin wondered.
I choked on the mouthful of salad I'd just stuffed into my mouth. "W-what?" I sputtered.
"I was wondering what you were thinking about in line. You know, when the lunch lady asked you what you wanted," she persisted.
I swallowed hard. The salad slid down like water-logged kelp. "Um, nothing."
She smiled and a mischievous twinkled slipped into her eyes. "Nothing?"
"Y-yeah. I like to shut down my brain for a couple hours a day. I was just-um, just had bad timing." Wow, if there was ever a lamer excuse I wouldn't have believed it.
"Are you sure you weren't thinking about better things?" Carin wondered.
"What? Other things? N-no, I don't have anything else to think about except work and home," I argued.
She leaned over the table towards me and lowered her voice. Her eyes looked into mine with that devilish twinkle. "Are you sure you weren't thinking about-"
"Guys? Hell no!" I shook my head so hard my feet felt the whiplash. "Why would I need to think about guys? I'm perfectly. . .happy. . ." I noticed Carin had paused and she looked at me with an expression of bewilderment. "You weren't going to say guys, were you?" She shook her head. I groaned and lay my forehead on the table. "Me and my big mouth. . ." I muttered.
Carin patted me on the shoulder. "Maybe you really do need that vacation I was going to suggest," she mused.
I raised my head and an eyebrow. "A vacation in this city doesn't sound all that exciting."
She smiled and shook her head. "Not in the city, out in the mountains. I know a great place where you can ski and sled and meet a ton of cute guys."
I frowned and slid down in my seat so my chin rested on the top of the table. "I don't need a guy. . ." I mumbled.
"What about exercise?"
"I don't need exercise."
"What about fun?"
"I don't need fun."
Carin looked at me with the patience of a saint in her eyes. "Crystal, what could a little vacation hurt? Who knows, you might hurt yourself on a trail and your knight-in-shining armor will come to save you."
I snorted. "And he'll come in on his white horse to carry me away."
She grinned and nodded. "Yep!"
I raised my head and folded my arms across my chest. "I'm not doing it."
She leaned in close and fluttered her eyes. "Come on. Do it for me?"
I pressed my lips in a pout and looked away. "No."
She leaned to the side to catch my eyes and her lower lip quivered. "Pretty please?"
Those Bambi eyes. That pouting lip. I couldn't resist her cuteness. My shoulders slumped and I sighed. "All right, you win. I'll do it. I'll go on a vacation."
Carin squealed and wrapped her arms around me. "You won't regret it!"
A week later I wanted to make her eat those words with a cold side dish of vengeance.
"Take a vacation, she said. Try out skiing, she said. . ." I muttered to myself as I squinted out the snow-covered, wind-whipped windshield.
It was a week since the talk and I was on a mountain pass on my way to the fabled land of exercise and hot guys in metal cans. Outside my car windows was anything but hot. Tall pine trees pushed up against either side of the two-lane highway, and their branches were loaded with snow. The white stuff covered the ground with three feet of itself, and more came down from the dark sky in a good imitation of a blizzard as I puttered my way along the icy roads.
I passed the last snow plow twenty minutes before, and the last oncoming car five minutes after that. No one followed me, and the weak light grew weaker as night threatened to win over day. My hands clutched the wheel so tight that my knuckles turned white. I leaned over the wheel and squinted into the fast-falling snow. Visibility was lower than the Mariana Trench and even at my slow speed I felt the wheels slip and slide above the icy road.
"Come on, Crystal,
you can do it. . ." I muttered as I drifted along. "You can do it. You can-oh shit!" The drifting was made quite real as I lost control of the ability to turn.
Lady Luck thumbed her nose at me and put a turn in the road in my path. I turned the wheel, but the car didn't turn with me. A giant ditch loomed ahead of me. This was it. This was how I would die. Not trapped in a candy factory like I always dreamed, but on a god-forsaken mountaintop in the middle of a blizzard that could keep a snowball frozen in hell. I closed my eyes and braced for impact. The passenger side of my car hit first. Every tense nerve in my body whipped forward as the wheels dove into the white abyss. Piles of snow fell down over part of the car.
It was over in a second, but the second felt like an hour to me. I dared open an eye and looked around me. I was still in one piece, but I was also seated at an angle. Snow was piled over the top of the passenger side window. I raised my head and let it down on the car horn. My body ached with the jarring stop of the crash.
I grabbed the handle on the door and tried to open it to get out and access the damage, but the door wouldn't budge. Snow lay against the side. To free myself I'd need to break the window or pray for an early spring. I opted for a breather to calm my nerves.
"It's all right, Crystal. You're all right," I whispered to myself.
Something caught my eye through my door window, and I turned to see a shadowy figure looming over me. I did the only practical thing and screamed my head off.
CHAPTER 2
The shadow stooped in the snow and the face of a handsome man came into focus. There was a bright smile on his face that wiped away my fear, and his blue eyes were captivating. He wore a large, heavy coat that couldn't hide his slim, well-built physique. His hair that wasn't covered by his cap was a dirty blond, and he wore boots and gloves.
"You honked?" he asked me. I was too dumbfounded to speak. Maybe I'd died and gone to heaven, and this was my guiding angel. "One sec and I can get you free," he told me. He pawed at the snow in front of the door and pulled at the handle. The door came out and I was free of my metal prison.
I was so happy to be free and see a face that didn't belong to a yeti that I launched myself out of the car and into the arms of my rescuer. We tumbled into the snow and I ended up on top of him. He lay on his back and was partially buried in the snow. My rescuer wheezed and coughed out bits of the white fluff.
A smile graced his lips as his blue eyes looked into mine. "Is that a thank-you or are you trying to tell me you don't like me?" he teased.
"Oh! Sorry!" I pushed off from him to stumble back. My pushing shoved him deeper into the snow until he had made an impression a foot deep in the ditch.
He sat up and brushed the snow from the arms of his jacket. "You must have been trapped there a while," he commented.
I shook my head. "No, but long enough to be worried."
He tried to stand, but his position was unstable. The snow kept moving on him. He stretched out his hand to me. "A little help here?" he pleaded.
I grabbed his hand, stiffened my legs, and yanked back. He pushed off his his free hand, and our combined powers was a little stronger than I expected. My rescuer flew from the snow and tumbled into me. I fell back into the drifts, and ate snow and his jacket. His body spread out over me and he raised himself on his arms. There was a mischievous grin on his tasty lips.
"We seem to be in some sort of an infinite swing," he mused.
"I wish it would've stopped on the other swing," I returned. The wetness from the snow sank into my coat and I shivered. "Can we break this vicious cycle and just get back into my car?" I pleaded.
He stood and helped me to my feet. This time we didn't go tumbling into the snow. "Actually, my truck's just over there." He nodded in the direction of the road.
I looked past him at a large white pickup truck that idled on the road. My knight with a white horse had arrived. I turned my attention back to him and smiled. "Any way you can give a poor girl a lift before the snowmen try to woo her?"
He smiled and gave a nod. "I'd like nothing better than to save a damsel in distress, especially one so beautiful."
I blushed so hard I was surprised the snow around me didn't melt. "Can we skip the chit-chat until we-we-achoo!" I sneezed hard enough to give myself whiplash.
The stranger wrapped his arms around me and led me to the running truck. "I think that's my cue to get you into my truck."
"But my bags-"
"I can get your bags, but what I don't want is for you to get a cold on my watch. I'm not that great of a patient, and even worse a nurse," he told me.
I imagined him in a slimming male-nurse's outfit, and the image warmed me in not-unpleasant ways. His eyes flickered down at my face and he frowned. "Do you have a fever? Your face is red."
I shook my head and rubbed my palms against my cheeks. "N-no, just thinking of-um, warm places." Like him inside my body. That dirty little tempting thought made the heat inside me worse.
"All right, but don't think so hard that you combust on me," he teased.
We reached his pickup and he helped me into the tall cab. He shut the door and I watched him flounder back into the snow and grab my few bags. Good thing I traveled light. He shut the car door and returned to the pickup where he put my bags on top of his own in the back seat.
"You travel light for a girl," he teased as he slid into the driver's seat.
"I wish I hadn't been traveling at all," I quipped.
"It is pretty bad, isn't it? I don't know how much farther ol' Bessy can take it, herself," he mused as he patted the top of the dashboard.
"Do you know how far it is to the High Mountain Lodge?" I asked him.
He turned to me with a smile and a raised brow. "So you're going there, too?"
"Yeah. I'm supposed to be on a relaxing vacation, but I'm not seeing much of the relaxing part," I told him.
"Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but we've still got about twenty miles until we reach the lodge, and it'll be night in ten minutes," he revealed.
I cringed. "So do we wait it out here or keep going?"
He shook his head. "If we keep going we'll end up in a rerun of your accident. I'll keep driving until it's too dark to see, and you keep your eyes out for the hunters' cabins I know are up here. They're about thirty yards off the road on either side, if they aren't buried up to their chimneys in snow."
"And occupied by anybody else who's dumb enough to be up here," I added.
The stranger pressed his foot slowly on the pedal and we creaked forward. "I was the last vehicle allowed on the pass from our side, and I doubt anybody else will be coming from the other direction," he revealed.
"So we're essentially the last two people on the mountain?" I guessed.
That sly smile of his slipped onto his lips and his eyes flickered to me. "Possibly the last two people in the world."
I snorted. "So the fate of our entire species rests on our shoulders? I admit my shoulders are a little broad, but that's a pretty heavy burden."
One of his eyes scrutinized my appearance while the other kept on the road. I squirmed under his careful, thorough gaze. "I can think of a lot of worse fates," he quipped.
"Like what?"
He nodded out the window where the snow kept its steady falling. "Like getting stuck in this blizzard. If we don't find a cabin soon we'll have to sleep in the truck. I haven't tried it yet, and I'd rather not start now."
I peered out the windows for a sign of anything that wasn't white-colored. "I'll look, but I charge by the hour for being a spotter," I teased.
He chuckled. "I can afford it. And speaking of myself, I haven't introduced myself. The name's Nick Frost. I'd shake your hand, but-" he nodded at the wheel where clutched both his hands.
"My name's Crystal," I told him.
"Is that a first or last name?"
"First."
"Did your parents forget the last name?"
"No, but we only just met," I pointed out.
He raised an eyebrow. "And we're completely alone on a mountain top in the middle of a blizzard. If I wanted to do something to you that you wouldn't like then I wouldn't be trying to drive us out of this mess," he returned.
I furrowed my brow. He had a couple of good points. "Smith."
Mr. Frost frowned. "I know we only just met, but you have to trust me enough to at least give me your real name."
I snorted. "That is my real name. Crystal Smith."
He blinked at the windshield. "Smith?"
"Smith."
"You were hiding Smith?"
I sheepishly smiled and shrugged. "An ordinary name for an ordinary woman."
"I'll be the judge of that, but have you spotted anything? We should be getting to one of the cabins soon," he reminded me.
I turned my attention back to the windows. My eyes swept over the area as we puttered through the thick snow. Even his truck couldn't break twenty miles an hour without starting to fish-tail along the slick road. I pursed my lips and squinted my eyes. Wait!
I jabbed a finger at the left side of the road and thirty yards off where the road should end. "There!"
Frost slowed the truck and followed my finger. He leaned over the wheel and squinted at what I pointed out. It was the brown, steep roof of a squat log cabin. A road filled three-feet deep with snow led through the trees and to the front door. I could just make out some windows on the front and a stone chimney on the roof.
A smile lit up his face and he nodded. "Good job. That's just the cabin I was looking for. Let me just park here and we can get out and take a look at it."
"Park in the middle of the road?" I questioned him.
"It's safer than the sides where we might slip into the ditch," he pointed out. He stopped the truck and jumped out. I followed suit and joined him on the driver's side of the truck. "Looks intact, but we'll have to get a closer look before we move in. You stay with the truck in case somebody should come by," he advised.
"All right, but if you're not back in ten minutes I'm sending out the dogs," I warned him.
Frost chuckled and trudged forward. He dove into the deepest settled snow and worked his way through the thick white stuff. I watched the road, but mostly him. Even with the deep snow I could still admire his rear, and I had to admit it wasn't too bad. Frost ended his journey at the door and pushed the snow from the entrance. He squeezed inside and, though he was only out of sight, I felt oppressively alone.