35
Panic reignites so fast my finger twitches against the trigger.
One bolt.
His chest is right in front of it. If I pull, there are no more locked doors, no more rules – the one plate, one cup, one bed, one nightmare. It ends.
I might actually walk away from this place. Might.
His shoulders lower and his hands fall loose at his sides as he searches my eyes.
When he takes one step towards me, my arms jerk the weapon higher, centring the bolt on his chest. His boot stops on the edge of the shovelled path.
It feels as if he’s stomped on my lungs.
There’s a faint, broken sound in his breathing. I recognise it with a sick twist: the same ragged rasp I heard when he caught me in the forest, when violence and want began bleeding into each other. When something feral took over.
‘If you’re going to do it,’ he murmurs gruffly, ‘you’d better aim well enough. You won’t get another chance.’ Everything narrows to the line between us, the weight of the crossbow in my hands, the history in his eyes. ‘I promise you that.’
There is no way to run until I show you how, he’d said at the petrol station. My eyes slide beyond him where Anders’ and Inga’s snowmobiles have carved two long lines outwards.
‘Where’s my passport?’ The sentence quivers out as I lock eyes with him again.
For a moment, something almost tender feathers over his face.
His gaze flicks to the bolt aimed at his heart, then back to my eyes, the hold long enough for the silence between us to coagulate into something unbearable. His expression pulls taut as though letting me go might cost him more than keeping me.
‘Slot behind the antlers,’ he murmurs. ‘Above the entrance. Your phone’s in the bedroom drawer.’
He takes another step towards me. ‘Shoot, Leah.’
I’m shaking enough for my common sense to take control of my hand. It screams that he saved me just now, that I’ve seen the way his past gutted him and rebuilt him into this nightmare of a man.
Shoot him. Walk away. Go home.
The thoughts should fit together.
They don’t – his blood would forever be on my hands even if home reclaimed me.
My finger twitches. Loosens. Tightens again.
‘Please…’ The word barely survives coming out of him.
His eyes move to the bolt, and he sucks in a breath as if bracing.
He… wants me to do it.
My teeth clench together.
In one moment, he’s several feet away from me; in the next, his hand is snapping around the stock of the crossbow.
He jerks it aside, pushing the bolt off-line, then tearing the weapon from my grip before I can decide whether I’m relieved or furious at the loss of it.
The wound in his arm has made him uneven, his shoulder dragging low, but it did nothing to slow him down.
I twist to run, boots slipping, but his hand clamps around my arm before I’ve taken two steps and his fingers bite through the padding of my snowsuit.
Panicked, I spin back on instinct and my hand flies up – striking his cheek hard enough for the sting to shoot all the way up my wrist. The slap cleaves through the frozen air as Elias’ head whips to the side, and a low, smothered laugh slips out of him.
It shudders straight through my gut.
When he turns to me, his pupils have already devoured the pale blue.
And despite the fear clawing at my ribs, something in my middle clenches in a way that has nothing to do with terror.
A beat.
I dart, but his hand drops to my waist, and he snatches me, hauls me in, spins us both with dizzying force.
The sky lurches. I’m airborne for a second before the ground bites at my back, knocking the breath out of me in a whoof of cold, white powder.
A violent rip follows the impact – the front seam of my snow jacket bursts open beneath his grip. Cold air lunges at my chest and ribs as I wrench myself out of the insulated fabric to get away.
Scrabbling onto my elbows, I kick at him, limbs wild, movements already losing force.
And as I swing my palm again, this time he catches my wrist mid-arc.
His other arm bands around my middle, lugging me up – but not without effort. His wounded side gives and his breath breaks. We both nearly go down.
The solid heat of him rushes through the layers between us.
His breathing is rough against my ear, the hard, unmistakable evidence of his arousal pressed to my hip for a fleeting, shaming second as he drives my back against the smokehouse—
—and presses his mouth to mine.
Shock.
Fear.
Need.
They detonate together, and I hate that I recognise each one.
His lips are rough with the cold, beard wet with melted snow.
Fragments of sounds pass between us. No never forms properly. Yes blooms and dies in the same instance.
And I…
Melt.
But only for a second.
I stiffen when he grinds into my front. My wretched, starving body gives one soft, helpless lean into his, then pushes against him.
His lips latch onto my neck, his breath ragged, then his mouth moves back to my face.
My free palm cracks against his jaw. He takes it with a sharp breath and comes back like the blow has only pushed him deeper into the spiral.
He’s in my face in the next gasp.
His mouth claims me again.
I make a furious sound into him, trying to twist away, but every inch I deny him, he takes back with heat and breath and makes me feel it tenfold.
My hands shove at him. Then clutch him right back into me. My body is trying to survive too many commands at once.
Push. Hold. Breathe. Run. Survive.
I hate this.
I don’t.
The smokehouse door digs into my shoulder as he moves us sideways. The latch knocks against my hip, the stink of meat leaks through as he shoves us both in.
My back hits the rough wooden pillar just beyond the threshold. Hanging pieces of loin sway behind him, hooks creak softly.
He snatches my jumper and tears.
It splits at the seams, the lingering cold wrapping around my exposed skin as the white world of the yard drops away behind us.
Our lips connect before I can draw another breath – an invasion, not a kiss.
He samples me as if the desire and fear have stripped him down to instinct alone.
A strained groan tears out of his throat as his hands move everywhere at once, fabric ripping and buttons skittering across the floor.
Whatever restraint survived the yard does not follow us inside.
Within seconds, skin finds skin.
‘Elias…’ I try.
The absence in his eyes stokes the dread inside my chest.
Panic doesn’t disappear. But desire rises beside it, every bit as real and no less confusing.
He drives us down and cold boards kiss my spine. My legs are wrenched apart, one broad hand pinning both my wrists over my stomach, the other holding me open, exposed.
Then the world fractures.
White-hot sparks burst behind my eyes as his mouth closes over the sensitive part of me, unforgiving, and he releases a long, starving, decadent growl against it.
And finally latches on.
I cry out, my body arching – away, towards, I can’t tell – as every nerve lights up while he grips me tighter and drags me closer. Devouring me like he means to consume me whole.
The moans coming out of me don’t sound like mine.
My hips jerk helplessly, my thighs tremble as his tongue works me with a harsh, sinful rhythm that strips all thought from my head and blanks my vision.
My body opens beneath the sensation despite the fury still burning through me.
As his grip eases, I wrench my hands from his and my fingers thread through his hair, keeping him just… there.
Right there…
A sigh breaks out of my mouth as he does something feral with his tongue.
Just as the pressure starts building, he pulls up to my face. The loss of him almost makes me complain with a need so violent I see spots.
And then he’s right where he needs to be – poised at the precipice of the final boundary we have yet to cross.
His weight settles hard between my legs, and he punches through the obstruction.
The stretch steals the air from both our lungs as the tip of him settles inside me.
He chokes out a sound like a man wounded, forehead dropping to my shoulder as we lock together, my body stretching around him, shaky and alive.
There’s no going back from this.
Our fingers thread as if our bodies need the anchor. He holds tight, I hold tighter.
Pain, relief, hunger and release – all crash together as the wall between us finally, irrevocably breaks.
He doesn’t move though, and it’s almost worse than if he did. Just the feel of him inside me, buried only a small fraction of the way, has my body clenching in desperation.
Our chests are pressed together. The rasp of his beard against my neck sends tremors down my muscles. And he still holds back.
Every inch of me aches with the shock of him. I’m gripping him as if my body has already claimed him.
‘Elias…’ I breathe.
One breath.
He lifts himself onto his elbows, our breaths crashing against each other as he hovers over me.
His pupils are still wide, but there’s panic and horror bleeding into his face.
The hunger drains from it. His eyes dart over mine, then down between us, then back again.
Every muscle of his body goes rigid at once. The air he takes in does not leave him, and his eyes flick over my face with a frantic, searching terror that does not belong to the man who just forced his way past beasts and through everything else to get inside me.
Recognition washes cold over me.
‘Hey…’ I croak.
He flinches as if my voice has struck him harder than my palms earlier.
His eyes close for a moment.
‘No,’ he breathes.
‘Look at me.’
Then again, worse. ‘No—’
He moves as if he means to tear out of his skin. His arm slips; his shoulders give, and for a terrifying second, I think he might bolt blindly through the door – straight back into the ice and the wolves and whatever punishment he thinks he has earned.
He is no longer with me, no longer seeing me.
His weight shifts away.
I ease my hands free from his, so slowly he can see each movement coming before I complete it.
‘Elias,’ I whisper.
His eyes snap back to mine.
I lift my palms to his face. He jerks back at first with a violent recoil that punches straight through my chest. So I stop an inch from his skin, palms open, fingers unsteady between us.
‘Look at me,’ I whisper, softer. ‘It’s me. Just look.’
His throat works.
‘I can’t—’
‘You’re here,’ I say quietly. ‘You’re here with me. It’s Leah.’
A shudder runs through him. But as soon as I let my palms settle against his cheeks, he slips out of my hold, leaving behind a stretch of emptiness that makes me bite down on the whimper building in my throat.
He covers his face with both hands, shoulders drawing inwards until there is almost nothing of him left to reach.
My breath catches in my chest.
I push against the floor, then inch closer.
‘Elias…’ My voice falters.
He makes no motion. Doesn’t show me his face.
My throat works around the urgency to comfort him. ‘No. Look at me.’
But as my palms brush his wrists, he’s stepping away again as if my touch burns. He’s on his feet in a flash, grabbing an armful of his torn clothes as if they’re pieces of a broken shield.
Then he’s out.
Scrambling upright, I fumble my feet back into the boots kicked loose somewhere in the chaos.
I run after him, heart slamming painfully against my ribs, past the abandoned crossbow lying crooked in the snow – along with my resolve to free myself – and past the dark trails of blood scattered across the ground like puncture wounds torn straight through reality itself.
He’s already at the house, already slamming the door so hard it bounces back on its hinges, glass shuddering violently as sheets of ice crack and fall away.
‘Elias!’ I shout, reaching him just as the forbidden door at the end of the hallway clicks shut, several locks and chains sliding home with devastating finality. A smear of his blood darkens the wood where his sleeve brushed it.
I knock against the boards, keeping my voice low enough not to frighten him further, but loud enough that he has to hear me. ‘Please… listen to me…’ My throat tightens.
Silence.
‘Please,’ I whisper, pressing my forehead to the door, breath crashing against the rough surface. ‘Let me inside. I won’t touch you. I swear!’
Nothing.
It’s already too late.
I can feel it in the stillness behind the door. In the absence of his breathing.
He’s gone back into the dark where hands once took without asking, where love was twisted into punishment, where his father’s sins taught him that closeness always came at a cost.
I sag, helpless, my chest aching with the weight of it, my body buzzing with everything and nothing at all.
Then I realise – staying here feels like one more thing I’m forcing on him. One more presence he has to endure.
Unaware, I drift from the door and into the bedroom, start dragging my tracksuit over myself before the cold sets deeper into my bones.
From the drawer, I pull out my phone so quickly my nails scrape the wood.
I press the power button, but it’s dead. I do it again just to make my nerves believe it, then hold it down while the useless black screen reflects my own face back at me.
Fine.
Charger. Signal. Snowmobile. Passport.
At the front door, the chair beneath my grip shrieks against the wooden floor until it’s right beneath the antlers. My fingers prod behind the carved mount till they hit something smooth.
My passport.
Exactly where he said it would be.
As I come down from there, I turn it over in my hand. It reflects the firelight, but the sheen is faint.
Sinking onto the handwoven rug, I leave my phone beside me, its screen still dark. Dead enough that signal no longer matters.
My gaze climbs up to the heavy antlers where my way out has been sleeping so close it’s almost absurd. Beyond the crown of bones, through the half-frozen glass pane, I can just make out the silhouette of the snowmobile sitting like a taunt.
Not an exit.
But the possibility of one.
Right there.
Fresh snowmobile tracks cut away from the house, Anders and Inga having laid the route out for me. I could follow them towards civilisation.
The answer that the treeline beyond offers back is one that rattles me more than the wolves had: this choice would not end with him in it.
It’s not love. Not fate tying a ribbon around all this ugliness to make it pretty.
It might be fear. Might be guilt.
Or it might be the sick, stubborn ache of recognising someone’s wound is still bleeding where my hands have touched it. And opened it anew.
Drawing my knees to my chest, I wrap my arms around them and stare into the flames.
My fingers tense around the passport until the cover bends. I open it, flip to the page with my picture and stare at the face I no longer recognise.
Freedom in a palm.
But he’s right behind that door, with teeth marks in his flesh and shadows in his eyes.
My thumb follows the edge of the document in one slow stroke.
I suck in a breath. Give the treeline one firm glare.
And I flip it closed.