Page 10 of Twisted Road

He barely heard the thread of sound, but she had acknowledged his effort. Polite. She might give him a bad time, but she always had impeccable manners. They’d gotten coffee together and gone to the diner a couple of times late at night. She always spoke to the waiter or waitress, asking about their day. Calling them by name. Smiling no matter how tired she was from being on her feet all day.

She was such a mystery to him. A puzzle he needed to solve. She dressed in shapeless clothes for work or just doing errands around town. She didn’t look at men or flirt with them. He was the one exception, and he’d worked his ass off to find the right way to break her down. He was excellent at reading an opponent and knowing the exact thing to trap them.

“There,” she said suddenly, indicating a small pile of large rocks covered in needles, dirt and other rotting vegetation. A steady stream of water ran down the mountain above it, rushing over dirt to cut a silvery waterfall. It was slender but fast-moving and ran a good distance over the vegetation, continuing to carve itself a path.

Her teeth were chattering, a bad sign. She was very slight in comparison to him, and keeping her body temperature up clearly was going to be a problem, especially in the rain. “There could be a small cave right there. I don’t know how stable the mountain is, but usually, when you have so many trees and brush, the roots will hold the dirt in place.”

He could shore up a cave with tree branches. The most important thing was to get her into a shelter and start a fire. They could dry out their clothes and shoes again. He took a good look at her as they neared the area she had indicated. She was shaking uncontrollably again. Definitely hypothermia setting in.

Keys wasn’t a man to feel desperate. Under ordinary circumstances, if he’d been in the same situation with another woman, he’d take care of her, but he wouldn’t feel the anxiety he was experiencing. It wasn’t a pleasant sensation and forced him to face a disturbing truth. When his club came for them—and they would come—he was taking his Wildfire home with him. He wasn’t leaving her behind, where it wasn’t safe. He couldn’t protect her in Caspar, his home base, if she remained behind. This was Headed for Hell territory, and they would be out for revenge.

Bottom line. Lyric was his. She didn’t have to like it, and she wouldn’t. He had no idea what he was going to do with her. He didn’t want or need an old lady. But if he brought her home, she’d have to live with him. She couldn’t stay at the clubhouse. She wouldn’t stay put. She was that kind of independent woman.

He left her standing close to the stream as he clawed his way up the embankment through mud and rotting vegetation. Damn if she wasn’t right. There was a sharp curved entrance leading beneath the rocks. A cave, all right. A shallow one, but it was shelter. He could get a fire going near the entrance to vent it and put her toward the back, where the wind and rain couldn’t touch her.

He went in first. She would be able to stand, but he had to remain bent to keep from hitting his head. That didn’t matter. The only thing that did was getting his woman out of the wet clothes and getting her warmed up. She was too weak to climb up the embankment and so in the end, he just picked her up and all but threw her to the back of the small space. Her body was icy cold.

“Can you manage to get your clothes off? Everything. Shoes, socks, strip down to bare skin. I’ve got the sleeping bag laid out. I’ll make us a fire. The space is small, and it will heat up fast.” He dropped their supplies between her and where he intended to make the fire, not looking at her. Inexplicably angry with her all over again. She could do that to him. Make him insane.

He dug out a ring in the loose dirt and went out to find as much dry firewood as possible. Fortunately, the vegetation was so thick in places that when he dug it out, using the edge of his makeshift umbrella like a shovel, he was able to find quite a lot of dead wood in small pieces that were dry enough. The rain hadn’t managed to penetrate all the way to the bottom layer in several places on the sides of steep slopes.

Lyric Johansen, with her vivid red hair and emerald-green eyes, most decidedly was not his woman, and if he didn’t stop thinking with his dick, they weren’t going to make it home. Except…he was pretty damned certain he wasn’t thinking with his dick, and that meant he was in way over his head. Why in the name of Bog did she get under his skin the way she did? Why did he want to bury his cock in her for endless hours and then do it again and again? Because he only did that once and then he walked. He didn’t think about owning the woman’s body. Her heart. Her fuckin’ soul. Yeah, that was how pathetic he had become. Because he was thinking just that.

He built the fire carefully, coaxing it to start with shavings of wood for kindling. He had stacked as much dried wood as he could find away from the fire ring and then the slightly damp wood closer so it would dry out. The water canteen was full, and he took a few drinks before he moved around the tiny flames to force himself to deal with her.

“Need your clothes and shoes to set them out to dry,” he said, gruffer than he intended. He was already pulling off his boots to set them close to the fire. He hadn’t noticed how cold he’d gotten. It would be good to lie down for a few minutes, get warm, and then he could figure out what to eat from their meager supplies.

There was no answer. No movement. She wasn’t lying down naked on the sleeping bag. She was slumped against the back wall of the little grotto-like cavern. She hadn’t even taken off her coat. Huddled as she was, knees drawn up, arms around her middle, head down, she looked tiny. So small he could barely tell she was there.

Swearing, he pushed past their gear and got to her, dragging her away from the cold dirt that made up the wall. He began to strip her fast, using minimal movement, meaning he nearly ripped her clothes in the process. He didn’t talk, didn’t instruct her, he just shoved the sleeves down and yanked the jacket and then shirt off. He had her on his lap and just as if she were a doll, he opened the jeans and peeled them over her hips and down her thighs. Even in the dim light of the cave, her legs appeared a ghostly white and those strange scars stood out, marring her satin skin.

For a woman who appeared not to have curves, she had them. Her hips were just wide enough to form a perfect miniature hourglass thanks to that little tucked-in waist and narrow rib cage. It just made it more difficult to get the wet material over her hips and down her legs. She wasn’t responding. Not cooperating. Not anything.

“Talk to me, Wildfire,” he demanded, stripping off his shirt while she lay in his arms completely naked. He didn’t have the time to admire the fiery red at the junction between her legs, and that just plain scared the shit out of him.

He set her on the sleeping bag and divested himself of the rest of his clothes. He could lay them out much more neatly and efficiently after he brought her body temperature up. The little space that would be home until the storm passed warmed fast. That was the good news. The bad news was she was entirely unresponsive.

His fault. His fuckin’ fault because he was so busy thinking about himself, trying to understand what he planned to do with her once they were off the mountain and within the safety of his club.

Then he was lying on the open sleeping bag, no clothes, Lyric’s naked body over his, with the one thin blanket he’d found in the truck over the top of them. It smelled like motor oil, but he tucked it around them both and wrapped her in his arms. He just held her at first, eyes closed, praying to whatever higher power was in the universe to let him have her. To keep her alive. He made bargains. Stupid ones he’d never keep. Even stupider ones he would.

He began to massage her arms. She was ice-cold, but the longer she stayed lying over him, skin-to-skin, as if they’d been created that way, made exclusively for each other, she began to warm. He moved on to her neck and then her back. His hands were big, rough, but when he touched her, it was with the way he felt. He massaged her with the uncertainty, the need and that unnamed emotion that overwhelmed and confused him, the one he’d never known and refused to put a name to. He took all of that and pushed it deep into her body right along with heat.

It took longer than he’d hoped. He massaged her buttocks, the sweet rounded cheeks that formed a heart of pure temptation. She walked like a ballerina, and whenever he was behind her, he found his gaze fixed on that extremely feminine invitation. When his hands found the backs of her thighs, right where her bottom ended, she moved. His heart nearly stopped and then began racing.

“It’s becoming a habit.”

Her voice was slightly slurred, very thin, almost too low for him to hear. He caught that trace of amusement, and his world righted itself.

“What’s becoming a habit?” He continued the massage, but his fingers went deeper.

“Waking up surrounded by you after dreaming about you.”

That was an unguarded answer if he’d ever heard one. She was still drifting. “Good or bad habit?” He needed to know she was feeling something for him, even if she was only dreaming good things about him, so he pushed it.

“How could you be anything but good, Keys?”

He squeezed his eyes closed tight. How many men had he killed? Tortured? It didn’t matter if there were good reasons or if it was his life or theirs, he’d done things she couldn’t conceive of. That monster had slipped loose in front of her on more than one occasion, and she still dreamt of him as good. Named him that. Looked at him as if he mattered.