Ciaran
I found her to be as adorable as she had been in my dream. There was a sweet innocence to her that I found refreshing—and a bit frustrating. She seemed to worry and fuss over me, a complete stranger, and while part of me reveled in her attentions, the rest of me just wanted her to leave me the hell alone. I’d dig out her damn car if I wanted to.
Even though that hadn’t gone so well.
Still, the whole taking off of my clothes to get me warm again thing…that had been fun. I hadn’t been embarrassed by her sudden and frenzied need to take off my clothes, but she certainly had been. I’d been half hoping that she’d drop my pants too and say hello to my manhood, but she’d caught herself just in time. And worse still, she’d managed to find some Goddamned pants, too. They were sweats at least and I was grateful for their warmth, but I was enjoying making her uncomfortable with my nakedness.
At least my shirt was still off and that was apparently enough to make her a little uncomfortable and flushed. And she looked damn good flushed.
My dream had revved me up to begin with and I had to remind myself that she hadn’t experienced that same dream. It hadn’t been real, which meant she hadn’t swallowed my cock like a pro until I shot my load down her throat. Which was unfortunate on some levels, but would probably make everything a little less complicated in the long run.
Besides, I didn’t need to be worrying about her any more than I already was. Which was quite a bit to start with.
I was worried because whoever beat me over the head with that tire iron the night before was still out there. If it were Shane as I suspected, that posed a slew of different problems for me. If it were just some random mugger, I would at least have the duration of the storm before I had to worry about any trouble from him. No one was going to find my body out there in the snow and he would know that, so he wouldn’t notice that they hadn’t found it until the storm began to clear.
It was a miracle that Elle had found me in the first place, I thought, examining her once again as we sat in front of the fire. Her long, bare legs were pulled up beneath her as she held her hands out towards the flames. I was sitting off to the side, my shoulder pressed against the wall so I didn’t have to sit up, but still got most of the warmth. She was a damn pretty little thing with her dark hair and blue eyes and those long, long legs.
Doing my best to focus on the problems at hand, I reminded myself that staying in the cabin, as Elle seemed content to do, was foolish. Because if it were Shane, there was a good chance he knew I wasn’t dead. He probably left me to freeze the night before and now was out there digging around for me. And even if he weren’t, he was back home telling my boys I was dead. Which meant the Lucky Skulls were without a leader.
And that really was dangerous.
Shane could try to take over. He could persuade some of my boys to switch sides, and those who stayed would face his wrath. The Irish Hounds were already a thorn in our side and plenty dangerous. If they picked now to start a war or try for a hostile takeover, a lot of my boys were going to die. And it was my job to prevent that.
I couldn’t do that from this damn cabin.
That being said, I needed some way to get the hell out of here—or to get ahold of my boys and let them know what was going down. But there was a little hiccup in my plans and what needed to be done, and it had nothing to do with the storm.
It had to do with Elle.
I was beginning to realize I only had a few options with her. I could dig out her car and steal it, leaving her behind and effectively making sure no one knew of the connection between us. That would make sure she stayed safe and that Shane didn’t decide to come after her for saving my life. The other option was to dig out the car and have her drop me off where she’d found me the night before. My bike was still there, hopefully, and that would mostly keep the two of us from being linked.
Unless someone’s out there looking for me.
Unfortunately, both of those plans hinged on one thing: Elle’s car. If I couldn’t dig it out, it didn’t matter. If it didn’t start, it didn’t matter. If I couldn’t plow it through the snow-covered roads, it didn’t matter. And, unfortunately, I wasn’t one hundred percent sure I could manage any of those things.
I decided I’d try the car again in the morning when I was feeling a little better and hopefully while she was still asleep. That way she couldn’t get angry for my deliberately ignoring her earlier insistence. This afternoon, I would let her try for the damn office, but I already had a pretty good guess that she wasn’t going to find a working phone. If there wasn’t one here—I noted a landline here in the living room—then whatever phone she found there probably wasn’t working either. But I’d let her try to keep her complacent.
She seemed like a worrying little thing.
“What were you doing out there on the road?” Elle asked me. She had canted her head sideways and was staring at me curiously now. Her eyes flickered to my chest, but didn’t linger.
I hesitated. I wasn’t about to tell her that I was having difficulties with a rival motorcycle club and had likely suffered an attempted murder before she found me. I doubted that would make her feel too good about saving me in the first place. Instead, I tried for a mixture of white lies and partial truths. “I was supposed to be meeting a friend,” I told her cautiously. “An old buddy of mine. But we got into a bit of a spat and we both left angry.”
She frowned. “Did he do that to you?” She gestured towards the bruising on my face and chest.
I shook my head. “No. I mean, I didn’t see who did it, but a friend wouldn’t do that, right?” I offered her a smile, because I was avoiding my suspicions of the truth and trying to put her at ease. Because no, technically, I hadn’t seen who had hit me, and technically, a friend wouldn’t do that. But Shane hadn’t really been my friend in a long time and I wouldn’t put it past him to pull some chickenshit stunt like this.
Something in my words must have struck her as true, because her shoulders relaxed a little and her face didn’t look quite so worried. “So you were on your way home when you were attacked?” she pushed.
I hesitated, trying to think through something plausible. “Yeah, basically. I’m lucky you found me.”
She blushed a little bit. “I didn’t see your car anywhere. Was it stolen?”
I shook my head and decided to answer this one honestly. “No, I was driving a motorcycle. It was parked there in the trees.”
Her eyebrows shot up in surprise. “A little cold for that, especially in a t-shirt!”
I laughed. “Well, I did have a jacket. Bastard must have taken it when he knocked me out.”
She bit her lower lip, something that reminded me of the raunchy dream I’d had of her. I told myself I just hadn’t been laid in a long time. Add that in with being a little loopy and messed up from being sick and injured and of course I’d dreamt of her doing dirty things with me. She was a beautiful woman. I knew her breasts were perky and firm; I knew her legs went on for miles. And I knew I wanted to see if her hips made as good of handholds as I thought they would.
“Do you think your bike’s still out there?”
I paused to think about it. In all honesty, I hadn’t thought much of my bike. Granted, I’d only been awake for a couple of hours maybe and I’d been delirious all of last night, so I really hadn’t had the time to devote to my bike. But now that I was thinking about it, I wondered if it was still there. Damnit, it’s not good to leave it out in the cold like that, I thought, pissed off.
“Probably,” I told her, still annoyed, though not at her. “Probably looks just like your car out there.” I jerked my thumb towards her buried piece of shit that she called a car. If it was anything like I recalled from my feverish night, it had been a real junker. Worn tires, broken window, half-assed heater. Yeah, a real fucking winner. Sure, it had saved my life and I appreciated that fact, but I doubted it would start now after it had been sitting out in the cold like that. Hell, it was a miracle it started when it was warm outside.
“I’m sorry,” she told me sincerely. “Maybe we can go find it?” She flushed and her eyes widened slightly. Quickly, she added, “I mean, once we get out of here, and you probably would want to do that yourself, but if I could give you a ride, not that I would have a ride anyway and—”
She was rambling again, a mile a minute, something she seemed to do when she was nervous. It was kind of annoying, kind of cute. I couldn’t decide which for sure, but I knew I didn’t want to just let her go off on a tangent for the next hour, so I changed the subject.
“Speaking of,” I interrupted. “Where were you heading out so late and in the middle of a damn blizzard?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “I was heading to visit my parents for the holidays. They live in Iowa.”
It was my turn to raise my eyebrows. Iowa? Seriously? “And you were taking that piece of crap out there to Iowa?”
She flushed a little, but pulled her shoulders up defensively. “Yeah, well, it’s better than nothing. And the bus was all full.”
I rolled my eyes. “Okay, fine. I get it. Sometimes you do what you gotta do, but in the middle of a damn blizzard? Wouldn’t your parents rather you just call them, be safe, and promise to visit another time? Like in the fucking summer?”
Elle winced a little at that, then said reluctantly, “Well, the car doesn’t really have air conditioning.”
“Jeez, does that thing do anything well?”
She folded her arms across her chest, which I instantly decided was a good thing. It plumped up her breasts, shoving them together, and confirmed my earlier suspicions that they were full and perky. “It saved your ass!”
For a moment, we were both silent. Then I burst out laughing. “Okay, okay, there is that.” Still smiling, I said, “But saving me or not, you probably shouldn’t have driven that thing out in a blizzard.”
She shrugged her shoulders. “I know. I was supposed to leave, like, three days ago to beat the weather, but then I got a gig and it’s so hard to get one that I had to stay for it!”
“A gig?” I repeated questioningly.
She nodded her head. “Yeah. I, uh, well, I’m a singer.” She blushed.
My mind flashed back to that soft humming sound. Had I heard her? Was that soft, angelic voice hers? It must have been. “Really. Wow, that’s a big deal. How long have you been in the music business?”
She winced at that. “Well, technically, I’m not really in the music business. I’m…I’m kind of a struggling artist, if you know what I mean. It’s really hard to get anyone to notice my music.”
I considered her for a moment, then I said, “That’s strange. Because I really enjoyed your singing last night.”
Her face turned beat red, her eyes going wide. “You heard that?”
I grinned and nodded. “I did. You’ve got a hell of a voice there. I can’t believe that no one’s picked you up yet.”
She smiled and we fell into companionable silence. She really did seem like a sweet little thing, and that made me feel bad for having unwittingly dragged her into my problems. I hoped I could still keep her out of them, though. All I had to do was play this smart.
…
Elle went to check the office and found about what I expected: no working phone. She said the electricity was out there, too, and while there was a generator it looked like it was out of gas. If we were going to find a phone, it wasn’t going to be around here. She suggested we wait out the storm and that they would probably clear the roads and fix the electricity by that time. Unfortunately, that was going to be a couple of days longer in the least, which didn’t sit well with me.
I didn’t have that kind of time.
But I didn’t argue with her. In fact, I agreed it was a good idea and that we should find some food and more blankets. She informed me she’d already found both and we settled down for food that consisted of canned stew. The best of a bad bunch, she assured me.
She said the water was running in the cabin, which was good, but there wasn’t any hot water. We could boil some if we had to, but that was it. I agreed and ended up actually doing that so I could clean myself up in the bathroom. I wasn’t looking too bad, but I hadn’t showered since yesterday morning and doubted that being feverish did me any favors.
When I was done with that, I ended up napping again. I hadn’t meant to, but my body was still recovering from being sick. Elle kept the fire going and around dinner time we had another canned meal.
Under normal circumstances—not that these were exactly normal—I would have found this to be…fun. Or if not fun, sort of enjoyable. Food, water, a hot fire and fresh clothes. Top it all off with a sexy woman that I couldn’t stop picturing naked and it could have been a lot worse.
All things considered, I was having a damn fine time.
Unfortunately, I knew it had to end soon before things blew up back home. I had to get back to the Lucky Skulls before things ended up badly. But I wasn’t going to get anything done tonight.
We ended up falling asleep that night close to the fire, several blankets pulled over us and additional pillows taken from the back bedroom. Anything to give us a little extra padding and warmth. We shared a blanket out of necessity, but the following morning I woke up with my arms wrapped around her, her legs entwined with mine, and her breasts pressing into my chest. That, I highly doubted, was out of necessity.
I woke up with morning wood and desperately wanted to take care of it. She was sexy as hell, sleeping there in my arms, still wearing only that sweater so her jeans could finish drying. I knew I could probably seduce her. The desire in her eyes the day before told me as much, but I didn’t see the point. Once I got that car out of the snow, I was just going to leave her behind anyway. Fucking her first probably wasn’t going to do me any favors.
Or maybe it’ll get her out of my system, a little voice in my head countered.
I stared down at her wrapped up in my arms, her hair tangled across the pillows spread beneath us, and her lips slightly parted. Oh yes, I definitely wanted to fuck her. I wanted to slide my cock into her pretty little mouth as I’d done in my dream, but I wanted more than that, too. I wanted to be between her legs until she called out my name in ecstasy.
The urge to wake her and seduce her was strong, but the knowledge that it wasn’t fair to her—and damn it, I owed her for saving my life—stayed my desire.
It wasn’t right. So instead, I pulled myself out of her arms carefully, leaving her sleeping beneath the covers. I stoked the fire and made sure it was going strong, then I dressed in yesterday’s clothes and headed outside. I needed to get that damn car uncovered before things got ugly.