She examined the carpet closer. No glass, which meant the intruder had broken it from the inside, not outside to get in. This further meant he must have entered through the back door and hadn’t escaped that way like she was beginning to think.
The injured man crossed the floor to the window, peered into the dark, standing in the icy breeze as if he was made of pure marble and the cold couldn’t touch him. Then he turned, shaking his head slightly.
Her gaze dropped from his furrowed brows, narrowed eyes, and the set of his grim mouth to his ruggedly sculpted abs, and then lower to the dark patch of curly hair at the apex of his sturdy thighs and his incredible… size.
Her eyes shot up. He was injured, for heaven’s sakes, and probably suffering from frostbite and a concussion. Yet, she swore lust clouded his eyes.
Ha! More likely the onset of pneumonia.
“Let me, uhm, get you some of my brother’s clothes.”
She hurried into the closet, grabbed Michael’s fleece-lined navy sweats and a pair of his sneakers, and exited. The man was gone. She glanced at the wind and sleet coming into the room, wetting the beige carpeting. Wishing she could tack something up in the meantime, she knew they didn’t have a shred of canvas. Although even if she did, it wouldn’t prevent the intruder from coming back in that way.
Clutching her brother’s things to her chest with one arm, the knife readied in her free fist, she rushed into the hall and nearly collided with the naked man. A gasp slipped from her lips before she could hide her unsettled reaction.
“You’re going to hurt yourself with that.” His words sounded husky and wearied. His colorless lips lifted slightly. “Or me.”
The way he said, “Or me,” sounded suspiciously like he didn’t believe she could hurt him. As wired as she was, her hands trembled with the notion she might have accidentally stabbed him.
His icy hand touched hers, almost reverently. Was he worried she was scared to be unarmed? She was more fearful that she might have caused him further injury.
Despite how cold they both were, his flesh sent a volley of warmth sliding through her, his eyes never straying from hers. Heat, passion, and a knowing look as though he could read the way she was feeling showed in the glint of his amber eyes. And then he slipped the knife from her grasp, his fingers leaving hers and the cold returned.
He had to be chilled to the marrow of his bones. She was and she wasn’t even nude in the icebox of a house, although wearing wet clothes had to come in a close second for making a body cold under these inhospitable conditions.
“No one in any of the rooms,” he assured her, his voice cloaked in darkness, his gaze steady, penetrating.
Something unspoken tied them together, although she couldn’t sense what. The way he considered her as if she was important to him somehow—not as his savior exactly, but more like his… captive, his prey.
Before her frozen mind made anything stranger of her reaction toward him, she shoved the sweats at his chest. “Here, get dressed and I’ll—”
“Turn on the heat?” He cocked an arrogant brow, his lips neutral.
One of her medieval romance novels could have featured him as a brooding, striking—albeit a bit battered—hero. Or the villain. What did she know about him, after all?
“I would have already,” she said, storming back down the hall, “if an intruder hadn’t been in the—”
“The electricity isn’t working.”
She stopped, turned, and stared at him. It would be dark soon. And even colder. Hell, she hadn’t even gotten one load of firewood from the beach yet.
Now, she was stuck in the middle of the ice storm with no electricity and no phone… with a total hunk of a stranger still standing in her hallway naked.
The man slipped her brother’s sweatpants on, but the corded muscles of his chest were exposed, his skin tan, no longer blue, but bruised and cut. He yanked the sweatshirt over his head. “I checked the heater while you were getting the knife. Light switches, too. There’s no electricity.” He pulled on the pair of sneakers.
“Then I need to gather wood for the fire.” Tessa shuddered involuntarily, both from the cold and her wet clothes. But also from the fact she would have to trek back down the hill alone when the prowler might still be out there hidden in the woods, watching, waiting.
The injured man swept his hair back away from his chiseled face, the planes edged in marble. “You need to slip into something dry. I’ll get the firewood.”
“But you… you were half dead.”
“I heal quickly.”
“Good.” Her voice conveyed she wasn’t convinced.
No one could heal that quickly—probably trying to sound macho to appease her. She took a deep settling breath and watched him deposit the knife on the tiled kitchen counter with a clunk. His hands were big and rough. Not an artist’s hands like her brother’s, but strong enough to pin her to the beach, not allowing her an inch to struggle. An annoying sliver of eroticism stoked a fire deep inside her, just thinking about the way his body had pressed against hers. He’d been delirious, for heaven’s sakes, and didn’t even realize what he had done.
“I’m going with you, just in case you begin to feel badly. You probably suffered from a concussion and should go to the hospital. But the road will be too icy and—”
He pulled the back door open.
“Wait! Let me get my parka, and I’ll get Michael’s field jacket for you.”
She rushed into the living room, grabbed her coat from the couch, and pulled it over her wet clothes. The turtleneck and jeans clung to her skin like pieces of cloth soaked in ice water, and again she shivered. She would have changed clothes if he had given her a couple of minutes. But if they didn’t get wood in a hurry, it would be soaking wet. Forget a warm fire then.
After retrieving her brother’s jacket from the hall closet, she joined the stranger in the kitchen.
“I’m Tessa Anderson, by the way, and you are?”
His forehead wrinkled slightly and his jaw tightened. “Hunter’s the name, although… I can’t seem to remember anything else. My tumble in the ocean probably had something to do with it.”
“You don’t remember a last name?” Her skin prickled with fresh unease. A naked stranger without a last name washed up on her beach and no way to get outside help in the event he was unsafe—
“I’m sure it’ll come to me after a while.” He threw on the jacket and headed outside.
“Wait! Gloves!”
But he was already halfway down the trail. She grabbed a pair of her brother’s fur-lined leather gloves from the hall closet and rushed after Hunter. As much as she didn’t want to admit it, she was more afraid of staying alone in the unsecured house, than with chasing after a stranger. Even so, she sensed the driving power inside him, the danger inherent, something about him that made her think of—she wasn’t sure.
“Wait! Here are Michael’s gloves!”
Moving too fast on the icy ground, she slipped. Her heart tumbled and she threw her hands out to brace her fall on the rocky path. If Hunter hadn’t leapt forward and caught her wrist, pulling her into his hard embrace, she would have landed on her face.
Heat suffused every pore, and the stranger showed more than a spark of interest. His gaze smoldered with passion as he looked into her eyes, lower… to her lips.
Her chest pressed against his, his heart beat as fast as hers, maybe faster, and for an instant, he didn’t seem to want to let go, his arms holding her tight, lots closer and longer than necessary. More than that—he acted like he wanted to kiss her again. Although she knew the first time had to have been a mistake—a deliriously, delicious mistake. And for an instant, she envisioned the kiss. Possessive, demanding, and oh so hot. And she, too shocked to respond, but wondering if she had, how would he have reacted?
His gaze drew back to hers. His whiskey-colored eyes—like the wolf’s.
A strange awareness crept through her—like she was looking into the eyes of a predator. But then he averted his attention and released her. “The path’s icy.”
“Right.” As if she wasn’t aware of the obvious. But that wasn’t half as dangerous as what had just occurred between them.
So what had occurred between them?
Trying to keep up, she hurried down the path after him.
She didn’t know him. He didn’t know her. Hell, he didn’t even know himself. Yet there was something about him that was driving her crazy. Almost like animal magnetism. Which really was nuts. She didn’t believe in primitive sexual attraction, although her brother had always teased her that she would know when she finally met the right man—a sexual draw so compelling would exist between them, she wouldn’t be able to resist.
That would be the day.
“You should have stayed behind.” The stranger’s gruff voice snapped her right out of her sexual fantasies.
He slipped Michael’s gloves on and continued down the path to the woodpile where she had first found him.
A thank you would have sufficed, she grumbled silently to herself.
Even though he appeared to be all right now, his jaw tightened when he leaned down and lifted an armload of wood, and again when he straightened his back. As injured as he was, she wished he hadn’t had to help. Gathering up as much timber as she would have in three trips, he returned to the path leading up to the house.
A little ways up the hill, he stopped, cast a glance over his shoulder, his dark brows pinched together, his eyes watchful while he waited for her.
She stumbled up the path with an armload of timber, miniscule compared to the load he was carrying.
He grumbled, “I told you that you should have stayed in the house.”
“Yeah, well, we need all the firewood we can get if we’re going to be stuck here without electricity. Besides, I do this all the time without anyone’s help.”
Although that had been the case only since her brother had been incarcerated. Otherwise, he had always been the one to get the firewood and do the other more manly chores around the place. At the thought she might not see him here again for a good long while, her eyes filled with tears and she sniffled.
