Chapter 18 Daphne
Chapter eighteen
Daphne
I have to jog to keep up with Andri as he walks fast, his legs being so much longer than my own.
By the time we make it up the mountain and through the resort to his cabin, I’m huffing harder than a pug with a pup cup.
He turns up the thermostat and pulls all the heavy curtains closed over the windows.
“I’m gonna run back over to the lodge and grab a few just-in-case things, sound good?”
I sit on his big easy chair and pull my knees against my chest.
“Yeah, are you sure you don’t need help?”
Andri looks me up and down. “You are so many things, but I think I can handle the heavy lifting. Is that alright with you?” He grins.
I nod and tuck a blanket over my lap as he leaves. When he opens the door, the wind seems stronger than before and bitter cold. My heart warms as he walks out and shuts the door behind him. How on earth do things change this quickly?
I’m only half talking about the weather with that thought. I don’t know what I did right in a past life to deserve someone as kind and protective as he is, but I thank my lucky stars for whatever good deed I accomplished.
He’s a snowman, and yes he’s technically an elusive mountain monster…
but he’s my monster, damn it. I’ve never felt more at home with anyone than I have with him—and it’s a bittersweet feeling when you’ve never really had a constant home.
He feels like what I always hoped my life would be with Gerald.
For someone to want me simply as I was. For a man to see the true me, even the strange and broken parts, and embrace them.
Sure, I’m nervous about this dang blizzard, but Andri’s right. There’s no one I’d rather be snowed in with than him, and the fact that he’s a snowman isn’t the biggest reason. It’s that he’s wonderful, no matter his species.
I don’t have too much time to obsess over him in my head before he’s back, and the man wasn’t joking about the heavy lifting. When he opens the door, his arms are weighed down with bags. Those same arms are also somehow carrying enough wood to heat this place all week.
“I guess you’re just not a two-trip guy?” I laugh and scramble to help him with the load.
“You didn’t see me setting up the generator or running gas cans down behind the cabin, I promise you it was a few trips.”
He bats me off before dropping the pile of wood by the fire with several loud clunks as the logs hit the floor. Then he takes the reusable grocery bags and drops them on the kitchen counter.
I don’t wait for him to tell me not to help and dive right in removing our supplies from the bags.
There’s a ton of canned and easy to make packet foods, flashlights, batteries, a crank radio, first aid kit, a few board games nicked from the hotel lobby, tons of bottled water, and what looks like a walkie-talkie.
“Who has the other one?” I ask, picking up the bulky two-way radio.
“It’s at Ted’s. Lerana uses it when the phones go on the fritz in case something happens with her son.
I guess her mother’s anxiety is our gain.
” He grabs the black rectangle out of my hands and switches it on.
“This is mountain to diner, repeating mountain to diner, over,” he says like he’s some army commando.
The radio buzzes and clicks before a gruff voice answers.
“Ted here, what’s going on up there? Over.” My new boss sounds grumpy, yet interested.
“Setting up to weather the storm, how about you? Over.”
“Same, I’ve got Lerana and hers, plus the mayor and a few day-trippers planning to crash here until the roads are passable.
I’m just glad my food shipment came in today, otherwise I might be headed up that damn mountain to come loot your kitchen.
Over.” He laughs, unsurprisingly, as I’ve gotten to know him.
That bigfoot always laughs at his own jokes.
“No looting required, mi kitchen es su kitchen, my brother. Besides it’s just Daphne and me up here, so we’ve got food to spare. Over.”
“Noted. Well, I’ve got to go drop some chicken nuggets for Lerana’s boy, stay safe—radio if anything gets dicey and we’ll do the same. Over and out.”
“Will do, stay safe out there! Over and out.” There’s something about how his face lights up after his little walkie-talkie conversation that has me seeing him as a gleeful little snowboy, and I want to bottle up that sparkle and keep it forever.
There’s two more bags I grab for on the far side of the counter, but he snags them out of my reach.
“Those are surprise bags,” he tells me, clutching them to his chest.
“What kind of surprise?” I jump up against him, trying to pull whatever secrets he’s got out of his arm. He only holds it higher, well over his own head.
“Good ones, I promise!” He reaches into one of the bags and pulls out a bottle of champagne and a bar of chocolate.
He places those on the counter and stuffs the rest on a wood beam that I have no chance of reaching without a ladder—well that, or I crawl up Andri, using his hair as handholds.
But I fear he might enjoy that too much.
“Oh, it’s even milk!” I laugh, eyeing the Hershey’s bar.
Andri prefers the dark stuff, but once he found out how much I hate the bitter taste, he brought a whole lot more of my favorite kind of candy into the house.
I appreciate the gesture. “I’ve never had champagne though,” I tell him without adding the bit where Gerald didn’t like it if I drank, so I was always toasting with sparkling water.
Andri frowns for a second and turns to snag a few water glasses from his cabinet.
“It’s actually a prosecco, on the sweet side. You’ll love it…I grabbed a bottle in case we needed a toast to pass the time.” He winks as he unwraps the foil from the glass neck. “But a toast to your first drink of bubbly is as good a reason as any, right?”
Andri pops the cork out, and it dings all the way across the large room until it lands squarely in the fireplace.
He fumbles a bit as the liquid fizzes up and out of the bottle before he can angle the cup to catch the overspray.
Pouring out just enough to fill a fourth of the glass, he hands it to me and then pours a little more for himself.
I hold my glass up in the air at the same time he does.
“To new friends, a future with unlimited possibilities, and not only surviving the storm—but thriving!” he bellows as if he’s in some kind of event hall.
“And to my luck, that I met someone as wonderful as you exactly when I needed to.” I lock eyes with him, and the love he has for me pours off him like heat.
“And to that, and to you,” he says quietly, nodding before throwing back his whole glass.
The sweet and bubbly pale yellow liquid hits my tongue, and I know with one hundred percent of my soul that I’m a champagne, or prosecco, or just bubbly in general kind of person.
“Delicious, you were right, this is very much my thing!”
“And you’re mine.” His voice is so deep it catches me off guard. “Sorry,” he quickly follows, as if he’s surprised that he said that out loud.
“You don’t have to be nervous about your feelings with me.” I refill my cup and walk back to the comfy oversized chair I’ve begun to claim for myself. “Let’s start a fire and relax a little, it’s not like we’ve got anywhere to be, right?”
“Given the chance to be anywhere else in the universe right now, I want you to know that I’d choose right here, right now, with you.”
I just smile, because I know he means it. He sets to work on the fire, setting a few logs around a firestarter. The hearth quickly roars to life, and in no time the room is even warmer than it was before.
“Good news, as long as we’ve got power, I’ve got a stack of Hallmark movies I picked up from the thrift store!
” I remembered that our movie date had been very rudely interrupted by inclement weather earlier.
“I guess a blizzard in a cabin is just as good as a snowy beach, right?” I grab a different DVD from my basket and slide it into the player of Andri’s TV.
My yeti sits down on the couch opposite me and pats the seat next to him. “Only if you sit with me. I can tolerate those movies if I get to hold you.”
“That won’t be a problem for me!” I rush over to him, blanket in hand, and nuzzle into his warm side. “I don’t know if I’ve told you before, but I really love your fur.”
“I’m glad because I don’t think there’s really any escaping it.”
I run a hand over the hard muscles of his abs, and the contrast of how luxuriously soft his fur feels really seals the deal on my affection for it.
“You really are an abdominal snowman, aren’t you?” I whisper, and wish I hadn’t as soon as the words leave my lips.
“That isn’t the first time I’ve heard that pun.” He rolls his eyes. I can’t help it, I’m suddenly jealous.
“Who said it?” I try to play off the green monster rearing its ugly head inside me. Andri catches on immediately though, unsurprisingly.
“Don’t worry, it was a man,” he smirks. When my brows raise in surprise, not judgement, he course-corrects.
“I mean a friend, a workout buddy even, used to make that joke—Rick, the minotaur who owns the hardware store, and I used to jog together.”
I just smile and nod, my jealous rage slightly smoothed over.
His body really is the best of both worlds. But as my hand slides lower down his stomach, he’s suddenly tensing. Our situation now is the reverse of how we found ourselves earlier.
“Can I touch…” I pause, not really sure what to say.
“My cock?” he whispers through gritted teeth.
“Yeah, your cock.” My hand slides back and forth, fingertips just teasing the skin right above his fly.
He pushes my hand away, and I suddenly feel a little dejected.
“Did I do something wrong?”
“No, not at all. I’m dying for you to touch me…but I don’t want to start our sexual relationship there. I want to make you feel good before we even bring my cock into the situation. Will you let me do that?” His voice is deep but needy.
I look back at the movie for a moment, and a woman on the TV wraps a scarf around a snowman and kisses him on the cheek while sweeping music plays in the background. If ever there was a sign from the universe that I should go for it…that has to be it, right?
“I’m ready for more.” I lock my gaze on him. “Things have been easy between us, easier than anything else in my life. I want to see this, whatever it is, through.”
He grins and cups my ass with his huge hands. He pulls me into a straddle over his hips.
“Tell me if I do anything you don’t like, or better yet if I do something you do.” He raises a brow as his lips descend onto my neck. He licks the hollow right above my collarbone up to my earlobe before pulling it between his teeth.
Like there’s some mystery thread between that ear and my clit, I swear I can feel a zip of pleasure jolting between the two locations.
“Good,” I groan, letting my fingers lace into his horribly endearing haircut.
“I’m going to take off your top.” He tugs the hem of my sweater up, pulling it over my head like some momentary yeti barricade, before tossing it behind him onto the floor.
Even though it’s probably damn near eighty degrees in here between the fire and central heat, I shiver.
The anticipation of what happens next has my breath catching in my throat, and the nerves in my fingertips tingle.
“You have the world’s most perfect breasts.” He breathes heavily as he takes in my petite rack in what turns out to be my most comfortable but hideous of bras.
“You should see them in their Sunday best,” I deflect. “They’re on the smaller side, so a pushup does wonders…unlike this old thing.”
“What part of ‘world’s most perfect’ didn’t get through there? Besides, you know what they say, right?” He reaches around my back and unhooks my bra quickly, letting the garment slide down to my navel.
“Wh—what’s that?” I bite my lip, nervous—in a good way.
“Anything more than a mouthful is a waste, anyway.”
His face descends, and he sucks one of my quickly hardening nipples into his mouth.
His tongue laps at its sensitive peak. I can’t help but buck my hips, grinding against the cock I’m supposed to be leaving out of this situation right now.
The pleasure at my breast turns sharp as he bites down, not very hard, but enough to get my attention.
“Bad girl.” Andri’s breath is hot against my chest, mirroring the growing heat in my core. There’s something about being scolded, though, that is making my pussy all the slicker. “I want you a mewling mess before I get any of your attention, is that understood?”
Something inside me awakens—a sharp and hungry beast of a thing.
The command should have me folding and falling back on my people-pleasing ways.
But it hits me all at once that even though he’s telling me what to do, I don’t have to obey.
There’s some newfound power in defiance, and I should lean into this spark of resistance under my skin.
I wouldn’t feel that way without Andri making me feel safe to test the edges of our boundaries, to push back, and to see what happens when I become a brat.
For the first time being contrary doesn’t feel like danger, it feels like trust.
I tilt my chin up, heart in my throat. “And what if I don’t listen?”