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Chapter One
A slap of water crested her upper thighs, forcing a reflexive hiss past pursed lips. Straining forward through the slosh, River traversed the half-frozen lake shore, her hiss replaced with creative profanity once icy water saturated her belly. The subsequent cramp stole her breath, but she was close enough to reach forward and fist her hand in the clothing of the massive body floating by.
Fingers losing feeling, the woman pulled, yanking whoever he was from the bracken he’d been tangled in.
And boy, was he damn lucky she had seen him drifting while she was fishing... that was, if the floating behemoth was still breathing.
There was no time to check. Dead or alive, she needed to get out of that arctic water. Hardly sparing him a glance, she hooked her arm around his chest and tugged her cargo to the lapping shore. The man was massive, his clothing waterlogged, and dragging him out of the tide took a feat of pure will.
Flopped on his back, he was tangled in layers of clothing. River tore at his hood, finding the fuzz of a military haircut, the man’s nose and mouth covered by a flap of cloth.
There was no time for delicacy.
She ripped the fabric away, scratching his face in her haste. It got a reaction: the male jerked.
He was alive.
Numb fingers pried apart his jaw. The man twitched again. Panting, she rolled him onto his side, certain by his garbled wheeze the giant’s lungs were full of water. She stood, and kicked the bastard square between the shoulder blades.
The instant gush from his mouth confirmed her suspicion.
Pressing his back to the rocky shore, angling the man’s thick neck, her lips went to his. She gave him her breath. There was hardly a need for compressions before he spit up another wave of water. After clearing his mouth, she breathed for him again.
When she puffed air into his mouth a third time, the man’s eyes flew open. An inhalation, rattling and unhealthy, was sucked deep even as she tried to turn him to his side so he could vomit up the rest. Shifting her feet, loudly cursing him to high heaven, she kneeled, fisted her hand, and began to vigorously rub his chest in hard, brutal circles.
With each retch, his color slowly went from purple to an unnatural shade of green. Jerking movement became erratic, panicked. A series of racking coughs pushed out the last bit of lake water, but the man, the great beast she was trying to tend, was far more obsessed with fighting her off than spitting up the fluid.
It was such a strange thing to witness, a powerful man gagging, shuddering, and wielding a muscled arm so big it seemed it could break her in two, yet so weak he could not move her an inch.
Batting his flailing arm away, she kept him on his side and helped him cough up the last of the lake water. But the way he watched her—the hatred in that glower—she almost hesitated, unsure if she would be safe once she’d fully revived him.
But integrity mattered.
She met a wide-eyed death glare with a squinted warning of her own. A huge noisy breath was immediately sucked deep. Then another, expanding a rib cage so massive, she felt the need to back away.
It was not a sensation she humored. Instead, she stood and offered a hand. “You lost your footing, stranger.”
Bowed over, clearly struggling, he loudly cleared his throat, hacking as he got to his knees and shoved her back.
