CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER FIVE
‘Y OU ARE WEAK , R ENE . I tried to make you a man but, as always, you are a disappointment. Why don’t you lie down, as you want to—the storm is stronger than you are…’
‘No, it damn well isn’t,’ Rene hissed. But the reply to his father’s caustic words was whisked away on the freezing wind.
He bent his head and kept going.
Every part of him hurt now, the parts he could still feel anyway. His cheeks were in a state of agony as he faced into the icy wind. But his father’s voice, telling him what a failure he was—and had always been—galvanised his temper. And his determination to survive.
That and the thought of Melody huddled behind him as she clung on and kept going too.
This was his fault. He should have informed his staff he was leaving with Mel. Should have contacted the authorities while he still had a phone signal. Should never have taken that detour.
In fact, he should never have embarked on this damn drive in the first place. The mountain range here was mostly undeveloped and could be treacherous. The storm had come from nowhere, had not been forecast, but, even so, he knew the region well enough to know one’s safety was never guaranteed.
But he’d been too mad with her, too determined to save her from herself to think clearly. And then he’d been too busy thinking about her, asleep beside him, to concentrate on anything else, until their situation had gone from bad to potentially catastrophic.
Maybe your father was right all along…
The words whispered on the wind, cruel, damning, but not necessarily incorrect, making him doubt himself once more.
But then Melody stumbled against his back. He stopped to drag her up with numb hands, and yanked her against his side. She looked up at him, her exhaustion clear even in the hazy torchlight.
‘We have to keep going, Melody,’ he shouted into her ear. ‘Do you need me to carry you?’
She shook her head vigorously, forcing herself upright. Then pushed against his back, urging him onwards.
Pride and possessiveness swelled in his chest, the rush of adrenaline giving him the strength he needed to turn back into the wind and trudge on.
No way was he letting her die tonight. His lips cracked, still buzzing with the memory of their furious kiss in the car. He concentrated on the heat, the desperation to have her under him again.
They would get through this, and when they did, perhaps all they really needed to do was satisfy this incessant yearning, give in to the infernal chemistry once more… To burn it out for good.
He walked for what felt like hours, the pain lessening as numbness set in, the storm deafening, the exhaustion suffocating and so heavy it made each laboured step more torturous than the last.
The doubts grew back stronger. What if he’d set off in the wrong direction? Who the hell knew where they were at this point? The advice was always to stay with your vehicle.
‘You are nothing but a spoilt child. To be a prince you need to be a man.’
His father’s voice, so clear, so cutting, so disgusted with him, echoed again.
‘Go away, you bastard. Leave me alone.’ He lifted his head to shout into the wind…and spotted a shape through the trees. A solid shape.
Adrenaline surged, obliterating the old nightmares. A house? A chalet? Maybe. No lights. But shelter… Surely.
He grabbed Melody, but when she stumbled again he bent and slung her over his shoulder, the last of his strength pushing him through the pain, the numbness, the fear and the fury as he headed towards the structure which rose up through the trees.
He reached a two-storey building. Its ornate wooden balconies faced the valley below, which was obliterated by the raging storm. He climbed the steps to the porch to escape the icy wind at last.
‘Put me down, Rene. I can walk.’ Melody’s cry had him lowering her to her feet.
Still, he gathered her close, scared to let her go. She softened against him, her body so small, so fragile, so weary.
He thumped the heavy wooden door. Pain ricocheted up his arm.
No answer. The closed shutters made it clear the place was empty. But it looked sturdy, well-kept, not derelict, simply deserted.
He tugged Melody up by her lapels to whisper in her ear. ‘Wait here,’ he said, his voice hoarse. ‘Don’t go to sleep. We have to get warm.’
But first he had to find a way inside.
Leaving her propped against the door, he stumbled the length of the porch, wrenched at the shutters. No luck. Then he spotted a door at the far end. Unlike the main entrance, there were panes of glass—and no shutters. Ripping off his hat, he wrapped it around his fist and punched the glass. It broke with a muffled crash. He shoved his hand through, the slice of pain dimmed by the burst of triumph.
Finding the bolt inside with clumsy fingers, he yanked it back. Then he shoved the door hard with his shoulder. But it only bent, still attached at the bottom of the frame.
He swore viciously, triumph giving way to panic. They couldn’t stay out here any longer without freezing to death. He had to get the door open.
He stepped back and kicked it hard enough to crack the frame.
The door buckled and bent inward.
Racing back to Melody, he scooped her into his arms, carried her back along the porch then wedged them both through the broken door into the house. The scent of lavender polish and fresh, clean linen assailed his senses.
And then warmth enveloped him.
Euphoria surged. He found a series of switches. Flipped them. Nothing. But then an eerie glow illuminated what looked like a utility room.
Emergency lights, he realised as he heard the distant hum of a generator.
Staggering out of the small room, his numb fingers gripping Melody’s, he slammed the connecting door shut behind them to contain the cold from outside.
The glow brightened, casting a blue light over the vast room they had entered—all dark wood and high beams and stone, with a mezzanine level above.
A luxury ski chalet…
Thank the Lord.
‘It’s beautiful… And it’s heated. Hallelujah,’ Melody murmured, her voice dull with fatigue but sharp enough to pierce through the mist fogging his brain.
His arm began to throb. He staggered, his balance shot, as he stared at the stone wall opposite, a huge unlit fireplace piled high with logs. The expensive furniture—sofas, coffee table, a white fur rug—levitated and began to dance.
Exhaustion wrapped around him like a blanket, taking away the pain. The fear.
‘Rene, are you okay? Oh, my God, you’re bleeding.’
He watched Melody, stumbling out of her layers of clothing.
He smiled. God, how he wanted to see her naked again. How he wanted to sink into that tight wet heat and have her hold him—and keep the nightmares at bay.
But as the disjointed thoughts collided in his head, the heat in his crotch built, becoming unbearable, and he couldn’t seem to speak, couldn’t tear off his clothing, because he was too busy waltzing with the furniture now—then floating, falling, crashing onto the soft white rug, which welcomed him with open arms.
* * *
‘Oh, no…oh, no…oh, no… Rene, wake up. Please, wake up!’ Mel dropped to her knees on the rug, gripped his arm to shake him. The panic rose like a wave. A tsunami of fear, coming from nowhere to bowl her over.
They were safe. Rene had saved them both. And now he was dead.
Terror clawed at her throat, threatening to choke off what was left of her air supply as she continued to shake his long, strong body, which was laid out on the rug where he’d slid—with surprising grace—to the floor.
But then he groaned. ‘Stop. Shaking. Arm. Hurts,’ he muttered, then seemed to lapse back into sleep.
Not dead. Alive. Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
She sat back on her heels, pushed the wave of panic back, to assess the damage and figure out a solution.
She’d been exhausted, wiped out, ready to sleep for ever during their endless march through the storm, which had felt like a lifetime trek but could only have been about an hour.
He’d been there like a wall in front of her. Solid, unyielding, unstoppable, giving her the strength she needed not to let the fear overwhelm her.
Now you need to return the favour.
She had to get him warm first. Then get him out of the wet clothing. A new wave rose up, still fearful, but also focused, and determined.
The chalet was clearly some luxury holiday home—closed up for the season. But while it was a lot warmer in here than outside, it wasn’t exactly balmy.
No way would she be able to figure out how to turn up the heating without leaving Rene, though, and she couldn’t do that. Then her gaze landed on the lavish stone hearth, which was a signature feature of the living area.
The fire. Light a fire. Duh.
She kicked off her boots, wrenched off the heavy ski gloves, then scrambled over to the huge fireplace. Finding kindling, lighter fuel, matches, she sent up several more thank you prayers as she built the fire in record time, dredging up the knowledge from memories of staying in a small cottage in Wales the winter after her parents’ divorce.
Good to know I learnt one useful skill during the worst Christmas of my life.
It took several attempts, but after figuring out how to work the flue she finally got the fire roaring.
She crawled back to Rene. He hadn’t budged, but the frown on his face and the grimace flattening his lips suggested he wasn’t in a coma, just trying to avoid the pain.
Grasping the edge of the rug, she used all her strength to drag him closer to the fire. The jacket, which had a rip in the arm, was soaked through. As was most of the rest of his clothing because, unlike hers, it wasn’t made for an endless trek in a freezing snowstorm.
How on earth had he survived, she wondered, and stayed strong enough to break into the house and carry her in here?
She brushed his wet hair back from his brow.
‘Rene, you idiot, why didn’t you take some of my clothing?’ she whispered, affection washing through her on another emotional tsunami. But then the thought of his lips branding hers before they’d thrown themselves into the storm turned the affection into something wilder and hotter and a lot more disturbing.
She pressed her fingers to her mouth, which, even numb from the cold, still held the imprint of that possessive kiss.
He groaned again and then began to shiver.
Stop daydreaming about a kiss that meant nothing…and get his wet clothes off.
She tugged off the leather gloves first, relieved to find his fingers chapped and red but with no signs of frostbite. It took her an age to undo the snarled laces of his boots and then pull off the wet jeans. Her own reserves of energy began to flag as she wrestled the soaked frozen denim over lean hips and the roped, hair-dusted muscles of his thighs. Again, the skin on his legs looked sore but not damaged. The jacket and sweater took even longer, but once she’d got them both off her gaze raked over him.
The firelight lit his muscular torso, the flickering flames turning the tanned skin to a burnished bronze and highlighting the sprinkle of dark hair which trailed through washboard abs. She flushed, remembering how she had reacted that night to seeing him naked. He was even more solid and overwhelming at twenty-eight than he had been at twenty-four—the scars she’d been so shocked by before somehow more pronounced. But then she noticed the blood seeping from a wound on his left arm.
And recalled the crunch of broken glass as he’d carried her into the house.
She shook her head, trying to snap out of the exhaustion. She had to stop the bleeding. She mopped the blood with his wet sweater, sighing with relief when she discovered it was a jagged wound but not too deep. The heat from the fire—and her juvenile reaction to seeing him virtually naked again—had sweat dripping into her eyes. She stripped off her undershirt—leaving her in nothing but her underwear, because the room had become much warmer, positively toasty. She ripped the cotton into strips and gently wrapped his arm.
When she had finished he had stopped shivering and seemed peaceful at last. His breathing was deep and even, the grimace relaxing.
Dragging a throw from the couch with the last vestiges of her strength, she wrapped it around them both and snuggled against his right side, placing her hand on his belly.
But as woozy fatigue began to overwhelm her, the soft murmur of his breathing, the salty scent of sweat and the hints of bergamot and cedar drew her back into dreams of a night long ago.
* * *
‘Shh… Here, let me touch you. Let me make it good.’
‘Oh, yes, please do,’ Mel had gasped as Rene’s thumb found the place where their bodies joined, teasing, tempting and tormenting her. ‘I think you’re missing the best bit,’ she offered.
Rene chuckled, but all she heard was husky approval, instead of the disgust she had panicked she might hear when he’d asked her if she was a virgin.
Thank goodness she had kept that a secret—even though that thick thrust had hurt a bit. He certainly wasn’t a small guy in any way, but the pain was fading fast now.
‘How about this?’ he murmured, and then his thumb swept across the perfect spot at last.
She bucked. ‘Oh… Oh… Yes. Right there.’
The coil of pleasure tightened sharply, her body clamouring for a release which felt just out of reach as he caressed that perfect spot. The full stretched feeling—where he was lodged so deeply inside her—felt so good now too.
This feels so perfect. But how does he know just where to touch me?
‘I can’t… It’s so much,’ she gasped, suddenly scared by the intensity of her feelings. The perfection of his touch.
‘Shh, Melody. I’ve got this… Just relax.’ He cupped her cheek, his gaze fierce in the darkened room—and her heart contracted in her chest.
How could this be the boy she remembered? The boy who had once made her feel like nothing, but had made her feel so special tonight. The man who had flirted with her and flattered her all evening, ever since she had confronted him in the Mayfair club. He had made her feel cherished and witty and important in front of her friends, before they’d sneaked back to her place together.
He groaned heavily, the taste of brandy on his breath delicious as he kissed her with fury and purpose. Then he grasped her hips in both hands. ‘I need to move.’
She lifted her knees, gripped his shoulders and nodded, giving him permission, eager to feel it all now.
He slid out of her, then thrust slowly, surely, but so carefully back in—filling her to bursting. But this time he nudged a spot so perfect her whole body quivered. She sobbed, the immense sensation rippling outwards.
He let out a harsh laugh. ‘Good?’ he asked.
She nodded furiously. ‘Yes, do that again.’
‘Your wish is my command,’ he teased, but the deep chuckle which followed felt even more validating, even more glorious, filling up all the inadequate places inside her.
The last of the discomfort disappeared as he held her firmly and stroked that perfect spot, over and over.
The pleasure swelled—soaring, bursting—until her sobs matched his grunts, their sweat slick bodies moving in furious unison.
Finally, she flew, the joy sweeping her body matched by the joy swooping into her heart. And as she sank into the bright, beautiful abyss he gathered her into his arms and kissed her forehead.
‘That was incredible, Melody,’ he murmured, his tone tinged with surprise as well as admiration.
And her heart whispered, Yes, yes, it was. Surely this makes Rene Gaultiere mine now, for ever.